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Dark and Stormy....

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
University by Professor Scott Rice.  It is held in memory of Edward
George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular
(in his time) novelist.  He is best known today for having written
"The Last Days of Pompeii."  

Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night...." he is borrowing from
Lord Bulwer-Lytton.  This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul
Clifford," written in 1830.  The full line reveals why it is so bad:
    "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
    at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind
    which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies),
    rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame
    of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The contest is to write the worst opening line to a novel that hasn't
yet been published.  Literally tens of thousands of entries are
submitted and judged in various categories, including worst western
novel opening, worst science fiction entry, worst romance novel, and
worst overall.   These have been collected by Professor Rice and
published by Penguin books as "It was a Dark and Stormy Night," "Son
of 'It was a Dark and Stormy Night'," and "Bride of Dark and Stormy."
These are unrelentingly funny books, and I recommend them to you
whole-heartedly. 

Herewith are some of the winners over the past few years:

"Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
 skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to
 it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an over-
 dose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy,
 doomed herself 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."  -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

1987 Winner: "The notes blatted skyward as the rose over the Canada
geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically
pedaling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by
cruel Nature's maxim, 'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I
knew Pittsburgh.

1986 Winner: "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, the second half still balmy and quite 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."

1985 Winner: "The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when
Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly
and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably---the first of many
such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most
memorable, space voyage of my career."

1985 Grand Panjandrum's Special Award 1985:  "Sheriff Chameleotoptor
sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then turned to Doppelgutt and
said 'The Senator must really have been on a bender this time---he
left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last night, and they found
his car this morning in the smokestack of a British aircraft carrier
in the Formosa Straits.'"

1984 Winner: "The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to
the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe
now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of
the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that
chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal!'"

Grand Panjandrum's Special Award 1984: "Awash with unfocused desire,
Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining ear and felt the
presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror to push
through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville
Dam in 1959."

1983 Winner: "The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and
Selena fretted sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable
nails---not for the first time since the journey begain---pondered
snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences
like all the other holidays spent with Basil."

Other randomly selected entries:

"In these uncertain times, one must think of others' viewpoints, and
always remember that a crowded elevator smells different to a midget."

"The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and
green, much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid
says it is all right to buy it."

"In today's lesson, boys and girls, (from our super-secret book of
things we don't always tell our mommies and daddies), we are going to
learn about all the wonderful fun things you can make with a
combination of feather dusters, English peas, and your next-dorr
neighbor's kitty cat."

"We'd made it through yet another nuclear winter and the lawn had just
trapped and eaten its first robin."

"'Cha, cha, cha!' I whispered merrily in Mary Ellen's ear, as I
escorted her stiff and lifeless body around the dance floor, proud of
the envy I aroused in the fellows who had always dreamed of being this
close to the once vibrant cheerleader, but more than a little ashamed
of the means I had to use to get this date."

"Reginald was a little surprised at Lady Gwendolyn's exuberance on
their wedding night, but not nearly as surprised as he was when he
discovered that the two white bands he had mistaken for sexy
stocking-garters encircling Lady Gwendolyn's delicate thighs were, in
fact, a pair of Hertz Flea and Tick Collars."

Spaf says "Check them out -- but return them before they're overdue."