Week 655: Laughing Inside

(Bob Staake for The Washington Post)

The atmosphere that I create

I ask you now to tolerate:

I think it's just something I ate.

They say everyone has a novel inside him. Well, They of course are full of it, but They are closer to the truth in the case of newspaper reporters, who often were lit'ry types in school and then found their prose in demand only insofar as it told about Wednesday night's sewer board hearing. Their only recourse: Hide the literature IN the sewer story. Your job: Find it. This week: Take any article appearing in The Washington Post or online onhttp://washingtonpost.comfrom today through April 3 -- the more serious and/or mundane its headline, the better -- and write a funny poem or other passage using only words that appear in that article. You can change punctuation or capitalization, but not the letters in the word. You can't use a word twice unless it's in the story twice. Include the story's date and page number if you are using the ink-and-paper Post; if you take your story from the Web site, please copy the article (or the portion you are using) onto your entry, so we can verify that the words you are using are actually there, and not just you-wish-were-there. The example above is from today's Ask Amy column.

Winner gets the Inker, the official Style Invitational trophy. First runner-up receives the genuine Vader-looking welder's helmet that was donated by Russell Beland, won by him, then foisted back on us again.

Other runners-up win a coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get one of the lusted-after Style Invitational Magnets. One prize per entrant per week. Send your entries by e-mail to losers@washpost.com or by fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, April 3. Include "Week 655" in the subject line of your e-mail, or it risks being ignored as spam. Include your name, postal address and phone number with your entry. Contests are judged on humor and originality. All entries become the property of The Washington Post. Entries may be edited for taste or content. Results will be published April 23. No purchase required for entry. Employees of The Washington Post, and their immediate relatives, are not eligible for prizes. Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified. The revised title for next week's contest is by Tom Witte of Montgomery Village.

Four weeks ago, we asked for more Loserly names for the too-polite "Honorable Mentions" category. The Empress, being a member of the two-X-chromosomes part of the population, was taken with several readers' suggestions that she use various names in rotation. As Loser Paul Cloutman of London quoted the Dodo (his own name suggestion) from "Alice in Wonderland": "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes." This week's heading is by Seth Brown of North Adams, Mass. He wins a toy germ donated eons ago by Paul Kondis of Alexandria.

Report From Week 651

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In which we asked you to add another character to a book or movie (new title optional) and describe the resultant plot. Some Losers just changed the title and came up with a totally different plot, forgetting the original characters. They lose, and we don't mean Lose. Just lose.

4 "Fun With Dick and Jane and Raskolnikov": See Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Run, run, run. Run from the howling pangs of guilt that sear your soul. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills)

3 The New Testament: Widely considered to be the least talented of the Thirteen Disciples, Ringo nonetheless lands all the hottest babes. (Pam Sweeney, Germantown)

2 The winner of the book "The Adventures of Peter Pangler Puncker 'Discovering the Pumping Heart' ": "Harold and the Purple Koran": Harold uses his crayon to show kids the acceptable way of sketching Muhammad: Just draw his house and say he's inside.

(Kevin Dopart, Washington)