SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – A lizard lover from Alabama won an annual contest celebrating bad writing with a ghastly simile comparing doomed romance to processed cheese. Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Ala., won $250 in the 22nd Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a parody honoring the writer of the worst beginning to an imaginary novel.
“They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white … Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn’t taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently,” Simms wrote. The contest, sponsored by San Jose State University, is named after the oft-mocked British novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel “Paul Clifford” began, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Many entries evoked processed foods - possibly reflecting America’s widening girth. Albert T. Keyack of Ambler, Penn., described similarities between lips and garnishes of Shirley Temple cocktails. “Bill shifted uncomfortably on his stool looking at the topless blonde bombshell on the bar, but the first thing that struck him was the pulchritude of the exotic dancer’s lips, which glowed like maraschino cherries, that is, pitted cherries macerated in an almond-flavored syrup then heated to boiling in an alum-containing brine full of carcinogenic red dyes,” Keyack wrote.
After reading some of those winning sentences I can honestly say that judging that contest must be one of the worst jobs in the world. It would induce a headache in record time.
Although, some of the sentences would make great sig lines.
“Although Sara could believe the brassiere she had found was from a mix-up at the laundromat, that the lipstick on Bill’s collar really had been from a cramped elevator, that the stiletto heel was indeed something the cat dragged in, when she pulled Chloe’s unmistakable prosthetic arm from under the bed, she realized she had been played for a fool.”
“When the time came for Timothy to fly the nest, he felt the best years of his life were ahead of him, if only because he had spent the childhood ones living in a nest.”
Sian Arthur, London
“The sun rose over the horizon like a great big radioactive baby’s head with a bad sunburn but then again it might just have been that Lisa was always cranky this early in the morning.”
Debra Allen; Wichita Falls, Texas
“Colonel Cleatus Yorbville had been one seriously bored astronaut for the first few months of his diplomatic mission on the third planet of the Frangelicus XIV system, but all that had changed on the day he’d discovered that his tiny, multipedal and infinitely hospitable alien hosts were not only edible but tasted remarkably like that stuff that’s left on the pan after you’ve made cinnamon buns and burned them a little.”
" Chloe hated the way the mud squished up between the toes of her Birkenstocks like cappuccino-colored bog-ooze, as she ran to meet Teddy, who hated her Birkenstocks anyway…"
[hijack]Sadly, though, the Julia A. More Poetry Parody Contest is now defunct after 11 dreadful years. My favorite entry? Yowl. Don’t miss Julia’s guide to bad poetry on the internet, complete with “Gansta Haiku.” R.I.P. [/hijack]
“I’d stumbled onto solving my first murder case, having found myself the only eyewitness, yet no matter how frantically I pleaded with John Law that the perp was right in front of them and the very dame they’d been grilling - the sultry but devious Miss Kitwinkle, who played the grieving patsy the way a concert pianist player plays a piano - the cops just kept smiling and stuffing crackers in my beak.”
“Jane was toast, and not the light buttery kind, nay, she was the kind that’s been charred and blackened in the bottom of the toaster and has to be thrown a away because no matter how much of the burnt part you scrape off with a knife, there’s always more blackened toast beneath, the kind that not even starving birds in winter will eat, that kind of toast.”
. . . and . . .
"And thus spake the Lord unto Saint Dominic, who is numbered among the lands as a baker above bakers, and said, “Ye shall bake it, and the span of the crust shall be one span, and the thickness of the crust shall be as of a thumb and the sauce shall be of fresh tomatoes for canned are anathema unto My sight and the pepperoni shall be sliced thin and be of meat from an animal that moos and thou shalt not use the meat of the pig nor mix it with pineapple nor Spam nor shall ye use anchovies strong enough to maketh even the angels gag and thou shalt deliver it anon thirty minutes or else it shall be free.”
Didn’t someone start a rival contest to the Bulwer-Lytton contest, because they felt the B-L was too dependent on spectacularly long and pointless sentences rather than the short and repulsive?
Personally I think the winner is rather weak, bland and waffly. Whereas some of the other entries are simply entirely separate sentences ensemicoloned together. And some are merely funny.
For some reason, I really like Chuck Keelan’s (runner up in the Adventure category), which at least seems to go somewhereand made me laugh, with the awfulness of the phrase “(hereafter PDA)”.
