Posted on 02/21/2005 4:43:50 AM PST by Vaquero
Subject: Fw: "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" winners
For you lovers of good writing, listed below are the 10 winners of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Contest, aka the "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" run by the English Department of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:
10. "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."
9. "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."
8. "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."
7. "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"
6. "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."
5. "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from seeking out a living at a local pet store."
4. "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."
3. "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."
2. "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."
AND THE WINNER IS.....
1. "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"
bttt
Ping!
Excellent. And surprising that an English department at a university actually teaches English.
There is hope.
I'm actually kind of interested to see where some of these go.
Throckmorton is correct ya know?
How is it that I can envy terrible writing? The sun oozed over the horizon is delectably bad. LOL!
Oddly enough, here in Los Angeles, it really was a dark and stormy night.
FMCDH(BITS)
Great piece...........unforunately this was posted over a year ago.
At least her face was cushioned by the carpet bag she now carried. Carpet had become a familiar taste to her.
As John strode heavily in to empty estate, made dim by the absence of campaign staff, press corps and hangers-on, he saw his beloved, disheveled and oblivious, collapsed in front of the unlit fireplace, clutching only the two bottles that bespoke the essence of their relationship...gin and ketchup.
"The golden orb had almost disappeared behind the interlacing fingers of the hawthorne- The golden orb...The golden orb..."
10,9,8,7 are all better (and funnier) than 6,5,4 + 3. 2 + 1 are good. #8 was the best, I laughed out loud.
LOL! You'd have won w/this one! (I liked #10 above myself. LOL)
Bump
Well.....if you liked that, try:
"As the storm rolled slowly in over the savannah, Ikembe scanned the horizon for any sign of his lost tribemates and finding none, he turned for solace and answers to his favorite pet...but Mbulu, the giraffe did not respond."
X that one.
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