As promised, today Daniel Radosh presents the results of Matt “Rejection Collection” Diffee’s caption-contest investigation: What were the original captions before they were stripped to make way for America’s merry endeavors? Drew Dernavich (who chatted with the contest winner about the “Everyone knows your parrot’s a clip-on” drawing for Emdashes) contributes two, and Tom Cheney and Frank Cotham have one each. I especially like the amusing juxtaposition of the winning, Radosh Anti-Caption Contest, and original captions.

Also in humor today, the latest edition of thoroughly lovable comedian Mike Birbiglia’s “My Secret Public Journal” has a sharp election-season observation:

Rudy Giuliani kind of scares me. I kind of feel like Rudy thinks 9/11 is his birthday. He gets that excited look on his face and buys himself a cake and lights two candles and watches them burn down. And then he looks around and says, “What do I get?” And his advisors are like “$15 million in speaking fees!” and he’s like, “That’s even better than last 9/11!”

And in the Wall St. Journal, there’s a review of William F. Buckley’s book Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription that parades some New Yorker cliches so sleepy they’re unfit to operate heavy machinery. If you say only three things about the magazine, say these three! It’s a surefire crowd-pleaser.