OT (Humor): The Bulwer/Lytton Contest: The funniest/worst first sentence in an imaginary bad novel.

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Hi All,

The Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks for the funniest/worst sentence in an imaginary bad novel. To see past winners, the website is:

http:www.bulwer-lytton.com

Some examples (from past winners):

"The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know."

"Dolores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping across smooth water, ripping reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum and sank, due to an overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred-pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center."

"Rain -- violent torrents of it, rain like fetid water from a God-sized pot of pasta strained through a sky-wide colander, rain as Noah knew it, flaying the shuddering trees, whipping the whitecapped waters, violating the sodden firmament, purging purity and filth alike from the land, rain without mercy, without surcease, incontinent rain, turning to intermittent showers overnight with partial clearing Tuesday."

"The greedy schoolbus crept through the streets devouring clumps of children until its belly groaned with surfeit, then lumbered back to the schoolhouse where it obligingly regurgitated its meal onto the grounds."

Of course, this is also an invitation for all you budding writers out there to come up with a little something for this thread, if you like.

Enjoy!

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), March 01, 2000

Answers

I saw a few good examples earlier today, but the sysops have deleted them all.

-- Markus Archus (apxov@mail.com), March 01, 2000.

Better not add anything since I LIKED the one about the schoolbus. Mousie

-- Mousie (mousie@mymousehole.com), March 01, 2000.

Once upon a time, in a far away land, the king, standing in front of an assembly of anxious gazes of all the kingdom's inhabitants, tilts his crown jauntily, and, with his customarily natural facade of great seriousness, looking directly into the eyes of the crowd and wagging his finger, loudly intones "I did not have sex with that swan!", thinking slyly to himself and with the greatest satisfaction, "(because she was a woman at the time)!."

-- swanrake (swanrake@runtogether.sentence), March 01, 2000.

BTW, a book also written by Sir Lytton:

"Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale" - written in 1842, is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of Spiritual Fiction.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), March 02, 2000.


"Honey Bo, Is you going to feed the chickens or not?" "Sugar Plum, that depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is."

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), March 02, 2000.



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