2005 Bulwer–Lytton prize

As I sit before my computer, on a dark and stormy New Orleans night (really, no kidding), I read Electronic Ephemera, which leads me to the 2005 Bulwer–Lytton prize. For those unfamiliar with B–L, here's the skinny:

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."

Here's the winning entry:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

To read the runner-up entries, click here.

Comments

[Richard]

Don't forget to mention the sub-catagories. One of my favorites was from the detective genre a few years ago, "I sat on the couch recovering from the three slugs I took, one from a .45 and two more from the bottle of whiskey in my bottom drawer."