The Idea

A few weeks ago, I started taking the New Yorker caption contest pretty seriously, and by pretty seriously, I mean much more so than any reasonable person should. Seeing as how the New Yorker is my favorite publication and all, I started becoming annoyed that my name (or psuedonym) had never made an appearance within. So after years of flirting with various ideas for the captions, I finally buckled down and submitted one. What gave me the final push? Well, one day a friend and I were brainstorming possible captions for the current issue, when we came up with what we thought might be a winner. With something finally submittable, I rushed to the nearest internet-machine only to find out that the "current issue" was actually two weeks old, and that the winning caption was nearly identical to the one we had independently come up with.

Anyway, buoyed by the support of friends and family, and more recently, Alissa, I/we have submitted caption(s) every week since, thus far with no success. BUT we have started to notice a strange trend: Our captions are often funnier than the ones the editors choose. While this does make me lose faith in humanity, it also makes me gain faith in myself. It also makes me want to share my and Alissa's hilarity with the world at large, by which I mean my immediate family and whatever readers Alissa manages to commandeer. Let's get to it.

First up, the contest from September 6th (yeah we're gonna go back a little and catch up to the present.)

The editors' choices:

"In the end, Ed, most of us are carried along by our delusions."

"You always have to be an early adopter."

"You don't have to tell me it's a vanishing breed."

Okay, the third one's pretty good, but the first two? Come on, now.

My rejected caption:

"Nice chameleon."

Perhaps as an interlude, we can get into the incongruity theory of humor. But it's 1:30 am on a schoolnight, and you know what means: I have to go brainstorm a caption for the next contest.