OT:2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

[Robatoy]

Dunno why, but this stuff just cracks me up. I'm sure there are a few here who will enjoy this:

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

2009 Results

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

David McKenzie Federal Way, WA

The winner of 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is David McKenzie, a

55-year-old Quality Systems consultant and writer from Federal Way, Washington. A contest recidivist, he has formerly won the Western and Children's Literature categories. David McKenzie is the 27th grand prize winner of the contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982.

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer- Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Most entries are submitted electronically through the Contest's Web site:

them a few of my favourites:

The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor--the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride.

Warren Blair Ashburn, VA

and this gem/masterpiece:

In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's first and only hot air baboon ride.

Tony Alfieri Los Angeles, CA

Sometimes I laugh so hard it hurts....enjoy!

r

[HeyBub]

From memory:

"The senator must've really tied one on last night," remarked Sheriff Doppleganger, "he left the party about 11:00 p.m. and this morning his car was found in the smokestack of a British aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits."

"Remember children, kitten in the left hand, skinning knife in the right."

Amber had but one thought her first day on the job at the Pentagon: "Amber, staple; Amber, staple; Amber, staple..."

Ripping the third bodice from Laura's hot, palpitating body, Lord Threthwitt realized that he had also removed four camisoles, six petticoats, and five pairs of pantaloons so far and there still seemed a lot of linen ahead, and with a cry of passion demanded, "Good God, woman, are you nothing by skivvies?"

And, to bring it back on topic:

"The toilet's stopped up again!' screeched Esmeralda Fnark in a voice that had failed to endear her to over fifteen men in the past three years."

[DGDevin]

The one that sticks in my memory is:

Sister Mary Theresa coughed, spit a gobbet of blood, and threw the severed sheep's udder over the rim of the canyon.