Hey, Loser! You must be a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool to enter The Invitational. (Sorry, but our lunches aren't free either.) Either monthly or yearly is fine (as little as $5 for a month) and your subscription also lets you participate in the Gene Pool chats and Q&As. Subscribe at GeneWeingarten.substack.com.
---
This week’s Invitational contest, Week 59, is based on "Why Not," a new feature in The Washington Post (see it paywall-free at tinyURL.com/invite-whynot) in which author Daniel Pink will propose some bold new ideas for government and our daily lives.
For this week's contest: Send us a humorous Why Not question, as in the example in the February 15, 2024, Invitational at GeneWeingarten.substack.com or directly at tinyURL.com/inv-week-59. You could accompany it with a brief pitch (up to seventy-five words or so), or your idea might be so hilarious that just stating it would be enough. Um, no, we won’t be judging the ideas by how feasible they are.
How to format your entries: The only thing we ask is that you type each individual entry as one long line (i.e., don't push Enter anywhere in the middle of that entry). Otherwise it could end up scattered into pieces on the Empress's judging list.
Include as many as 25 entries in the area below where it says "Your answer." It's best to copy them in from another document so you'll have them if your computer suddenly dies or something, or if you click to submit the form and something goes wonky.
Note: Your auto-reply confirmation might be missing formatting, with everything squished into one big blob of text, but it seems that it's nothing to worry about; the entries have been coming out fine on this end.
If you don't get a confirmation within a few minutes that you've sent your entry -- you've searched your email filters (e.g., Updates or Promotions in Gmail; and good ol' Spam) and there's nothing -- don't just send it over and over! Feel free to contact the Empress at myerspat@gmail.com and she can check if it got through (put something in the subject line that refers to The Invitational). She might not get back to you immediately but promises that you won't miss the deadline.
Entry deadline is 9 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, Feb. 24. Results will be posted in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Feb. 29. Entries will sometimes be edited by the Empress and/or Czar for space, taste, and just better wording of the joke. Unfortunately, time doesn’t permit full consultations about every editing tweak.
Every entry will be personally read and ruminated on (ewwww!) every week by either the Czar or the Empress or, when there's time, by both of us.
