THE NEW YORKER CAPTION CONTEST

Over the past few years, I have submitted no fewer than fifty captions guaranteed to make even the coldest stone cry tears of thought-provoking laughter.

And what have I gotten in return? Crickets. Meadows and meadows of spiteful crickets.

I don’t know where they’re getting these so-called judges, but I can venture one guess: Moron School.

I’d be at my wit’s end if it weren’t boundless. But let’s let the evidence speak for itself, shall we?

My first submission was for a picture of a lawn mower with a pelican on it.

My caption: Perfect for cutting the grass and the cheese.

Solid gold, right? Because lawnmowers wouldn’t actually...Wait, I don’t need to explain it to you. You plus me equals same page. Unlike those New Yorker nincompoops, you understand that the pelican is a poor man’s flamingo and therefore irrelevant to the comedy at hand. You get me. I just wish those hifalutin hackjobs over at The New Yorker did.

My next submission was for an illustration of a dead guy lying inside a glass atrium. My caption: Welcome to the bonerdome.

Sorry you just spit coffee all over your mactop. How could that possibly not win? Dead guys are stiffs, stiffs are boners, atriums are domes. Perhaps it was a bit too layered for the Buffoon Brigade. It’s called nuance guys. Maybe you should go to the detective store and get a clue. See? I can’t turn this off.

The next one was a picture of a doctor looking at a patient with a knife sticking out of his back. My award-winning submission that was never to be: Let me guess, marital flatulation?

I even kept it cerebral by using the grad-school word for fart. Someone call the cops, because I just got tazed!

Finally, the coup de foie gras. The cartoon was a picture of two cowboys out on the range hugging as a cactus looked on. Warning, what you’re about to read may bust your gut:

Just a couple of completely heterosexual guys engaged in a bro-hug. This ain’t San Francisco.

Topical? Check. Edgy? Check. Hilarious? Checkmate.

The winner of that submission was some blueblood bastard named Preston from Cambridge, Massachusetts. You know who else is from Cambridge? Probably every judge on The New Yorker panel. Wreaks of blatant familial nepotism.

I can just picture them sitting in their Manhattan office, surrounded by rich mahogany as they play backgammon and pass the Grey Poupon to each other. That’s the room where groundbreaking comedy goes to die. I feel like Lenny Bruce and Gallagher and Joan Rivers all wrapped into one. Misunderstood and muzzled. But my motivation will not be mollified!

So, go on you big city snoots. Keep reading your Fox and Hound magazines and sipping your fancy Chardonnays. Keep burying your heads in the sands of mediocrity.

Because I won't change for you. But, eventually, you will change for me.