I can't say I'm tickled with this week's choices, but that's not because I'm sore that my own executive-surfer caption wasn't picked for the team. (It was something like "Sorry I'm late, but tell the wave I'm stoked!" or possibly "Tell the West Coast I'm ready for the telecon"—next time I'll copy it for posterity.) No, my beef is with big winner Miriam Steinberg's caption for bedraggled-man-and-shouting-lady: "Neither the time nor the place, Doug!" It's not that it's terrible. It's just that it seems like such a schoolmarmish thing to say in anger, especially since the lady in question looks sort of like a schoolmarm; this is partly the joke, I guess, but it seems hollow to me, unless of course (as I noted earlier) Ms. Anger Management and Wretched Doug are playing out a kinky little game in public, which would be pretty funny. OK, I'll choose to take it that way.

The other thing I find slightly odd is the new cartoon's startlingly close resemblance to another recent one, from the May 16 issue and by Bob Mankoff himself: A man, working the complaint desk at a department store, says to the peeved woman first in line, "Look, I'm not denying the validity of your grievances. I just think they'd be better addressed at home, Helen." It's a funnier cartoon overall—it's absurd and yet somehow plausible, and Mr. Complaint Desk is Thurberishly whipped rather than Kathleen Turnerishly psycho—but look at how alike the two gags are. The wit rests on juxtaposing formal disapproval ("Neither the time nor the place" and "I'm not denying the validity of your grievances") at the beginning of the sentence, the familiarity/first-name address at the end ("Doug" and "at home, Helen"). Both disapprovers work under official signs (Complaint, Emergency Hotline); in both scenes three or four others are looking on. And so on. Anyway, not to belabor this, but it is peculiar. In any case, if you put the new winning Ziegler/Steinberg cartoon next to Mankoff's and decide that Doug and Helen actually star in both cartoons and regularly show up at each other's workplaces in a state, then it all seems much sillier and I can more than live with it.

As for the striped-suit surfer, the captions—by Eric Slade of Portland, Mary L. Tabor (whose name sounds familiar but I'm not up to googling it tonight) of D.C., and Lee Radsch of Summit, N.J.—are fine. Slade's is "Tell my one-thirty things got way gnarly"; Tabor's is "Hold my calls, cancel my appointments, and find my Speedo!"; Radsch's is "Gotta reschedule. Water-main break on Seventh!" I know Slade is from Portland and they have an ocean out there, but "way gnarly" feels off to me, and what's the fun of the exec's coming back from surfing, rather than being about to succumb to surfing lust? Tabor's doesn't do it—too wordy (it barely fits, and why do you need both kinds of cancellation?), and I don't want to think about Speedos. I'll have to go with Radsch, since the caption has made me smile a couple of times now. It's goofy and fun, it gives New Yorkers a nice break from worrying that every routine city mess signifies the End Times, and I like that the guy is talking to his secretary/assistant/colleague/boss in a friendly, cool way, not in a grandiose imperative. Go now, and vote.

Finally, here's the new drawing, of a startled woman (and her admirably perky breasts) waking up next to a guy (remember, don't assume anything, especially after Desperate Housewives—he could be her husband, he could be the Eagle Scouts leader, he could be a Tupperware-party host, he could be Christian Slater) only to realize...what? I know they get kazillions of entries, because the cartoonists I recently tormented with questions said so. I know you, emdashes reader, can outdo these good but unsatisfactory efforts. Remember, it's not about who moved your cheese, but about how much more cheese you want, and how jealous the other mice will be that your entry was published, and the revenge you can ultimately win by outdoing whoever it was who did move your cheese, by writing the best caption ever.