| Three more of this year's winning entries....
from the "adventure" category....
"On this God-forsaken speck of land in the middle of nowhere,
with no sounds save the pounding of the waves and the raucous
cry of the gulls to break the silence, with no company save one
hairy, disgusting goat, Crusoe's days passed like kidney stones
until finally, inevitably, the goat began to look good to him."
- Dylan Worthy, Washington, DC
from the "vile puns" category (surely a winner in this file)...
"Dawn crept slowly over the sparkling emerald expanse of the
country club golf course, trying in vain to remember where she
had dropped her car keys."
- Sally Sams, Ben Lomond, CA
and a "dishonorable mention"...
"Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her
from eeking out a living at the local pet store."
- R.W. O'Bryan, Perrysburg, Ohio
- tom]
|
| The winning entry in the 10th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:
"As the newest Lady Turnpot descended into the kitchen
wrapped only in her celery-green dressing gown,
her creamy bosom rising and falling like a
temperamental souffle, her tart mouth pursed in
distaste, the sous-chef whispered to the scullery boy,
'I don't know what to make of her.'"
- by Laurel Fortuner of Sacramento, CA (written while
waiting for an interior design class to begin at
Sacramento State University)
Runner-up:
"The dirty gray sky hung over the city like the sneeze shield
on God's salad bar, as Jake watched from his grimy window,
cursing the spectacle that, to him, was just so much of God's
broccoli and carrot medley in light hollandaise, which he,
like the president, just couldn't stomach anymore."
- Robert Brown, of Naples, FL
[Hey, I thought "the sneeze shield on God's salad bar" was a
_great_ image!]
-b
|
| Subj: FWD: The annual Bulwer-Lytton contest awards
[forwards trashed]
From news.u.washington.edu!uunet!decwrl!decwrl!looking!clarinews
Thu May 13 13:26:07 PDT 1993
SAN JOSE, Calif. (UPI) -- For a Georgia baker, winning top honors in
the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest for bad fiction was in the numbers.
William W. ``Buddy'' Ocheltree, 39, of Lilburn, Ga., submitted the
winning entry announced Wednesday in the 12th annual competition, a
send-up of hard-boiled detective fiction:
``She really wasn't my type -- a hard-looking, untalented reporter for
the local cat-box liner; but the first second that third-rate
representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of Scotch,
my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from
Beethoven's 'Ninth Symphony,' so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in
eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing
arms, and while humming 'The Twelfth Of Never,' I got lucky on Friday
the thirteenth.''
Scott Rice, a professor of English at San Jose State University, said
Ocheltree ``prefers that his entry be read with a Humphrey Bogart voice.
''
The winner was chosen from more than 8,000 entries from all over the
United States as well as Britain, Germany, South Africa, Japan,
Australia and Saudi Arabia.
Rice said Ocheltree will receive ``a cheap word processor'' as his
prize.
The bad writing contest, named for Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-
Lytton, challenges writers to top his opening line to ``Paul Clifford'':
``It was a dark and stormy night.''
The judges, described by Rice as an ``undistinguished panel'' of
professors and friends of the San Jose State English Department, also
named winners in specific categories, including detective stories,
``purple prose,'' children's literature, romance, science fiction and
``vile puns.''
The winner of the science fiction category, Tom Butler of
Tallahassee, Fla., cast off the high-tech terms common to that genre in
favor simpler language:
``Those alarm things that make a real loud honking kind of noise were
going off as Captain James Hurley stared at the screen that showed him
the stuff outside in space, while he sat in the chair that the captain
sits in and slowly reached for the control panel for the thing that
makes the ship go real fast.''
Richard Patching, of Calgary, Alberta, submitted the opening line
that was the best of the worst in the adventure genre:
``As the finely honed points of the magnificent bull elk's antlers
perforated his spleen, lungs and lower colon, Lenny the Grifter wished
he had stayed working the street in Times Square, instead of going up to
the Rockies where this dumb animal had figured out that three-card monte
was a con, and gored him.''
This ``vile pun'' was submitted by Barbara Stegmen of Del Mar, Calif.
:
``After working the crowd, the autograph hound lacked only the
signature of the vice president's wife, so when he spotted her at the
far edge of the field, he called to his friend, ''Come on, it's a long
way to Tipper, Harry!``
An entry from Marc Roberge of Santa Rosa, Calif., was chosen in the
``special multicultural category'':
``Try as he might, Guido Smith could not get into the spirit of
Oktoberfest this year; his laissez-faire cum manana attitude made him
want to say sayonara to the whole shebang.''
Rick Vetter of Riverside, Calif., took one of three ``miscellaneous
dishonorable mentions'':
``Brenda Malthwit: attorney at law, young, attractive, well educated,
and full of self-confidence; a woman who, as swiftly as her lascivious
male co-workers undressed her with their eyes, would mentally fold the
clothes neatly and put them in a pile.''
|
| Reprinted without permission, Copyright Associated Press
From the Contra Costa Times, 18-May-1994
Suddenly, a really awful sentence rang out
by Richard Cole
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - It was the best of prose, it was the worst of prose.
Well, actually, it was just the worst of prose, and it included the
line "a shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo
left to rot on the information highway."
On Tuesday, San Jose State English Professor Scott Rice announced the
winners of the 1994 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, many of whom allowed
themselves to be identified.
Rice named the competition, now in its 13th year, after the British
author who opened the 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" with the immortal - or
undead - line, "It was a dark and stormy night."
This year's winning entries were no better, Rice said proudly. Hacks
from every state of the union entered, along with alleged writers from
Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Switzerland and Ghana.
This year's winner was Larry Brill, and anchor for Austin Texas, NBC
affiliate KXAN. He agreed he has an unfair advantage as a television
news writer.
Brill's entry:
"As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds,
Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the
serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless
tyrant that had mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of
the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal
Lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information
highway."
Brill will receive a cheap nonarmadillo word processor as his prize,
said Price.
The vile pun award went to Richard Patching, of Calgary, Canada, with an
Arnold Schwarzenegger stretch:
"The ex-weightlifter-director started the rehearsals by telling us,
'Okay, ve gonna be baroque composers in dis one; you be Telleman, you be
Vivaldi, and I'll be Bach.'"
The romance category prize went to Gini Jones of Santa Fe, N.M., with an
entry that included a hero "his skin aglow with a tan of catfish-fried
perfection."
|