This is how we do it. I don’t know what else to say.
Tell you what, I’ll send the writer of the best caption for this photo a free back issue of your choice. Leave your caption as a blog comment (You have to click on the post title above, then you’ll see the comment box. We get a lot of spam, so you’ll have to wait for the comment to be approved). Be sure to check back in a week or so to see if you won! Judging will be entirely subjective, flawed, and at my whim.
PS, If you are here looking for the mysterious and illustrious BLUE PENCIL PRIZE, it is scheduled to go live right here on Saturday the 27th at Noon. So get cracking, all you sharped-eyed subscribers! But don’t leave your rare finds as comments to THIS post, else you’ll tip off your competition.
Scientists hired us to test the placebo effect by packaging literature the same way bad dudes package coke. (Included in each envelope: a waiver that absolves us of responsibility if someone tries to jam our journal up his nose.)
I’m not sure going with Smallpox Press is worth the savings.
Can you smell what’s fresh off the presses? We can. That’s why our staff has to protect their delicate sinuses to keep these smoldering literary contents from knocking them over. That and the fact that subscribers want their magazines, not staff hairs or sneeze molecules. Until we can find a fleet of bald interns with noses like the aliens known as “Greys,” we’ll keep using these kids from the local Taco Bell: fast, efficient, accustomed to wearing hair nets and stuffing hot contents into flimsy shells.
We can’t just give Swine Flu away.
Americans who refuse to get the flu vaccine are required by law to wear masks and hair nets. This edict came from Nazi socialist regime in power. (Reuters)
The Cincinnati Review staff dons hairnets and flu masks obtained at a local CVS for next to nothing. These costumes allowed them to stage a relatively inexpensive “caption contest,” in which readers and potential readers will write a gag caption to accompany this photograph. The prize for the funniest caption will be an old copy of the Review that they have lying around the office. The hope is that dozens (perhaps scores) of Facebook “friends,” having little to do over the Thanksgiving holiday, will see the contest posted on Facebook and participate, and that some of them will subscribe to the magazine.
The team thought they prepared themselves from spreading germs by donning hair nets and masks plus using hand sanitizer. Unfortunately, they did not prepare for the most common type of spreading infection to journal readers – paper cuts! They forgot to purchase vinyl gloves and band-aids. See the girl in the back? She’s “sealing” her paper cuts with packaging tape. For the next addition, they’ll remember the essentials of hand protection.
@Ned: You are soooo not going to win.
Remember back in issue 4.2 when you left a sponge and a scalpel in that villanelle? We can’t afford another malpractice suit.
The hell you are. I’m Elliott Gould this time; you can’t keep making me be Donald Sutherland.
Eric: Surgical precision on paper.
Jack: Even doctors need a second job these days.
Lynne: Protected from the swine flu, little did they know the necrotizing fasciitis bacteria lurked between the pages.
Three out of four paranoids prefer Blue Paranoid Hats.
Blue Paranoid Hats—the Hat of Choice When You Fear Everything!
The Terrorists Have Won
Now that I know it’s safe from editor germs, I can finally actually READ my Cincinnati Review!
Tough to choose from among all these kicking captions, but the staff has voted, and the winner is . . . TARA. Many thanks to the rest of you for your superior efforts. You made us laugh, and we’re pretty tough sells because we are all professional comedians on, you know, other planets.