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. We'll know by checking your email address against our list of subscribers (low-tech, but manageable), so if you're a new Loser, and the email address you gave above can't be the one you gave Substack, let us know below in the field where we ask for your name.
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In this week’s Invitational contest, Week 48:
Take any sentence (or substantive part of a sentence) or a headline, from an article or ad published in print or online from Nov. 28 through Dec. 9, and make it sound more upbeat (or not so bad), as in the examples in this week's Invitational at GeneWeingarten.substack.com or directly at bit.ly/inv-week-48. (Also you can see the results of our similar 2011 contest.)
For each entry, please include the original quote, followed by your sugarcoated revision, along with a link to the article if it’s online, or the name, date, and page number of the publication if it’s in print.
HOW TO FORMAT YOUR ENTRIES: This week, don’t worry about getting everything on a single line, our usual request. Just make it clear where your original quote came from, and make sure you didn't misquote it.
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.