Style Invitational Week 979: A ploy to annoy

If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.

In the memo field of all your checks, write “for sexual favors.”

The Style Invitational

The Style Invitational is The Post’s weekly humor/wordplay contest, serving up since 1993 an irreverent mix of highbrow and lowbrow -- haughty and potty -- in genres ranging from neologisms to cartoon captions to elaborate song parodies. A new contest appears at washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational every Friday.

Archive

• Style Conversational
• E-mail

Joining one of the zillion ongoing discussions on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, Loser David Genser — who’d amassed more than 300 blots of Invitational ink before making himself scarce for a full decade, then came roaring back last summer — said he thought “the competition is better now, being on-line and worldwide. Also, the contests tend to be harder. More verse. More complex rules. Less ba-da-boom one-liners.”

But we certainly don’t want to short-shrift our ba-da-booms.

This week, a contest as straightforward as they come, based on a list the Empress saw, uncredited, on StumbleUpon.com that she knew the Losers would improve on immeasurably: Suggest funny, original ways to tick people off, as in the examples above from that list. They may target a specific person or group.

Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial, the bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives, appropriately, a keychain called Annoying Orange; you push a little button and the little, nastily grinning fruit yells at you. Wait, there’s more! We’ll also throw in Lil’ Stinker Bubbles: “Blow bubbles that reek!” It comes in three varieties; this one is Tommy Toilet. Donated ages ago by Peter Metrinko.

Other runners-up win their choice of a coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt, a yearned-for Loser Mug or the ardently desired Grossery Bag. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders get a smelly, tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, July 16; results published Aug. 5 (online Aug. 3). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include “Week 979” in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules. The subhead for this week’s honorable mentions is by Tom Witte; the alternative headline in the “next week’s results” line is by Chris Doyle. Join the Style Invitational Devotees on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev.

Report from Week 975

in which we asked you to debunk a “Sixth Myth” in one of a dozen topics that have been featured in the “5 Myths” essays of The Post’s Sunday opinion section, Outlook:

The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial

White people: White people don’t lack rhythm, they just hear a different drummer — and HE lacks rhythm. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

2. Winner of the Spam T-shirt featuring a Spam “ham”: Cheating: Students caught cheating at Harvard Business School are NOT immediately offered positions in the banking industry. They got CAUGHT, for crying out loud. (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.)

3. School food: It is not true that the USDA ever counted ketchup as a vegetable. However, the school lunch program does classify school paste as a grain. (Ellen Raphaeli, Falls Church, Va.)