Only five days left until we pick the winner of our Ugly Tie Contest … and so far the pickings are slim. (Shame on you, lazy readers!) All you have to do is send us a picture of your ugliest tie for a chance to win 14 new ones from makers like Ermengildo Zegna, Ike Behar and Nautica. Our four — count ‘em, FOUR - entries (and full instructions on how to get in on the action yourself) are after the jumpDoes this count as double? John Frederick of Chandler’s entry has matching suspenders, too. (To see the full effect, click here.) "My daughter from Oregon sent it … to me for Father’s Day several years ago," he says. "She thought they were wonderful so I couldn’t disappoint her and wore them often." Thane Walton of Mesa entered all three of these ties. Of the one on the left, he says: "Can you believe I actually purchased this for my engagement photo in 1981? Luckily for me the photographer vetoed it." The center tie: "Sometime in the ’90s I saw this and wore it with pride for about three years before my senses caught up with me." The one on the right: "I thought all the various color schemes would match anything I had." Click here to enter our Ugly Tie Contest for a chance to win more than a dozen new ones from makers like Nautica, Bird Dog Bay, Ike Behar and Ermenegildo Zegna. (Photos and descriptions of the prize ties are on the form, too.) I’ll continue to post the entries; the winner also appears on the cover of our Arts & Life cover on Sunday, June 17 (aka Father’s Day).

The other day I was talking to a friend online and tried my hardest to write it in standard online form. You know, "i think im good 2go" — no capitals, punctuation only when deemed ultimately necessary. And I just couldn’t do it. It’s hard-wired into my system, the capital letters, two spaces after a period. So I found myself typing, then going back and … basically anti-correcting? Lowercasing things, swapping out "4" for "for" and the like.

And my friend finally said, "You know I can see what you’re typing keystroke by keystroke, right? It’s not like you have to hit ’send’ or anything." (Well, actually his sentence started with "u kno," but you get the picture.)

Anyway, this shirt makes me happy:

It’s the sort of shirt I would love to wear, except it would make all of my friends even more afraid to send me e-mails for fear I was, well, judging them. And, it just opens you up to grief the first time you get it wrong yourself.

I found it thanks to the blog Celebrity Hijinx, which had it sandwiched in among all the "news" about Lindsay Lohan and her ilk. If you like the shirt, it’s available here for $12.99.

In fact, they have two other styles, too. Click on either to see larger and/or order: