Cartoon Caption/Anti-Caption Contest Continues!

O Canada! I think that, somewhere along the line, someone must have changed a Caption Contest rule, resulting in the very first Canadian Caption Contest candidate!

You see, the nominees in Caption Contest 196 (Phil Noth's lab workers observing lab rodents in lab suits) are

"O.K., let's slowly lower in the grant money."
Todd Bearson (Arlington, MA)

"Relax, for them it's publish and perish."
David Burns (Needham, MA)

"The research is conclusive—mice are even cuter when you dress them up in little coats."
Brad Hodges (Dungannon, Ontario!)

But sorry, Quebec—according to the new rules, "Any legal resident of United States or Canada (except residents of the province of Quebec) age eighteen or over can enter...."

This NAFTA-like development must be very recent, as the soon-to-disappear voting page for Caption Contest 195 (Danny Shanahan's housewife confronting disheveled man with stigmata flanked by tiny cherubim) still stipulates that "Any U.S. resident age eighteen or older can vote"—excluding the entirety of Canada!

As for my Caption Contest 196 loser—

"We've been using the Nobel Prize instead of cheese."

—that's pretty close to Bearson's. Do you think mine is significantly worse?


The winner of Caption Contest 194 (Leo Cullum's slick operator speaking to man in desert) is

"First, we discuss my percentage of any water you find, real or imagined."
Jeff Joseph (Melville, NY)

Borne out of the same terrain as Walt Whitman, this caption returns New York to a first-place tie with California.


The winner of Anti-Caption Contest 197 (Drew Dernavich's pilot on plane with spiked heel landing gear) is

"I'm gellin' alright. And by gellin' I mean dropping napalm on noncombatants."
therblig

My loser:

"I say, have you checked for brevibacteria?"

Caption Contest 198 is here. Anti-Caption Contest 198 is here.


THE STANDINGS

Here is the current New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest breakdown by state. You can find it all (almost) mapped out here.

32 California

32 New York (27 from the Big Apple, where Lynn Tudor has won twice)

14 New Jersey

12 Virginia (six from NOVA, two from Richmond, one from Charlottesville, one from Newport News, one from Roanoke, one from Stanardsville)

10 Illinois (eight from Chicago including three captions by Lawrence Wood)

9 Massachusetts

7 North Carolina (two from Charlotte)

6 Connecticut (two from New Haven, four not)
6 Pennsylvania
6 Texas (three from Houston, one from Austin)

5 Maryland (none named Mary)

4 Arizona (two from Tucson)
4 Georgia (includes two-time winner Carl Gables)
4 Ohio
4 Washington

3 Michigan
3 Minnesota (Minneapolis 2, St. Paul 1)
3 Rhode Island

2 Alaska
2 District of Columbia
2 Florida
2 Mississippi
2 Missouri
2 Nevada (Las Vegas 1, Zephyr Cove 1)
2 New Hampshire
2 Oregon (both named Eric, both from Portland)
2 Utah
2 Vermont

1 Alabama
1 Arkansas
1 Delaware
1 Iowa
1 Kentucky
1 Louisiana (New Orleans)
1 Maine
1 New Mexico
1 Oklahoma
1 Wisconsin

Map Introduction

Thanks to Andriy Bidochko for Map Builder.

Parodic The Gothamer illustration realized by Deborah Grumet from concept by David Marc Fischer