[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Out of curiousity, did anyone else get a response sort of mocking them for only submitting one entry?
[/QUOTE]
I never got anything like that, even last year before I had won anything. OTOH, I sent in several entries with several sentences each.
Personally, I would take that as a compliment, if a little off-handed.
I couldn’t resist trying. Here’s my entry:
James arrived home to the smell of eggs, the smell of eggs that two cheating lovers might cook after a night of lust, the smell of eggs cooked by a man who doesn’t cook much and who damaged a good non-stick pan by using metal utensils, the smell of eggs enjoyed by two adulterers off the same plate while wearing nothing but bathrobes and socks, the smell of eggs that would make anyone suspicious unless they lived alone and had cooked eggs that morning as James had done.
I aspire to write badly. I do, but badly enough?
Wonderful stuff. I love each and every one, and have for years. I have a stack of previous years’ winners and now and again I curl up with a cigarillo and a glass of absinthe and just, you know, wallow.
[QUOTE=Pithy Moniker]
…James arrived home to the smell of eggs, the smell of eggs that two cheating lovers might cook after a night of lust, the smell of eggs cooked by a man who doesn’t cook much and who damaged a good non-stick pan by using metal utensils, the smell of eggs enjoyed by two adulterers off the same plate while wearing nothing but bathrobes and socks, the smell of eggs that would make anyone suspicious unless they lived alone and had cooked eggs that morning as James had done.
[/QUOTE]
You win. I saw it coming, but I still laughed.
My Entries:
It was quite difficult for anyone like Joshua, who was born and spent the initial seventeen of his short twenty-three years on this green earth in that rainiest of cities Seattle, to stomach hearing the light drizzle falling on the night of his tragic and mysterious death in Los Angeles described as anything close to a storm, despite the panicked weathermen’s insistence on doing so, nor could it be considered dark, as a combination of a recently-full but waning moon lit the sky between the passing cumulus clouds, and an excess of light pollution from the sprawling city lit those same clouds, as well as the haze beneath them.
—
He sauntered into the saloon with a throat as dry as the bottles behind the teetotaling barkeep.
—
Roger’s mother told him long ago that the smell of sautéing onions was sure to impress a girl he was cooking dinner for, but because his mother never taught him how to cook, it was the sound of the smoke alarm that was making the biggest impression on Linda.
—
Thank you.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
You win. I saw it coming, but I still laughed.
[/QUOTE]
Agreed - that’s brilliant. I’ll have to try to beat that before I bother submitting.
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
You’re right that it’s not expecially bad, or even abnormal, for 19th century writing. In fact, this web quiz gives you a series of sentences and asks whether they were written by Bulwer-Lytton or Charles Dickens, and it is tough to tell.
The best answer I can give you is that this is the 21st century, not the 19th, and standards have changed. The contest is about parodying (is that a word?) the old style when everything including the kitchen sink was thrown in.
[/QUOTE]
I got 10/12, but Dickens is too recognizable to me probably.
Stuff like “wet lay clammy” is classic Dickens.
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
Go here. Click on the icon OR the name Scott Rice at the bottom of the page. The address isn’t spelled out as a defense against bots.
[/QUOTE]
Well, considering the headache-inducing trauma of sorting our entries from randomly generated Spam e-mails, I can understand him.
Outside the airlock, as his skin moisture evaporated, his bowels expelled in a somewhat but not completely violent movement, and his blood boiled off in a frantic attempt to retain equilibrium with the surrounding vacuum, Carl used his remaining good eye to search in vain for a horizon in which to gaze upon and reflect that his assumption had been correct: space really would take his breath away.
[QUOTE=Enderw24]
Outside the airlock, as his skin moisture evaporated, his bowels expelled in a somewhat but not completely violent movement, and his blood boiled off in a frantic attempt to retain equilibrium with the surrounding vacuum, Carl used his remaining good eye to search in vain for a horizon in which to gaze upon and reflect that his assumption had been correct: space really would take his breath away.
[/QUOTE]
That’s more of a bad closing sentence.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
That’s more of a bad closing sentence.
[/QUOTE]
Well, maybe, but one comment I got back from the judges last year was that I wrote an opening sentence with no future, that everyone around would be dead in just a few minutes, so what kind of book could there be?
BTW, this was a positive comment, and Enderw24’s sentence captures that same element.
I am very pleased by the genuine awesome crappinness of the entries posted here. Badly done, one and all! I salute you!
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
That’s more of a bad closing sentence.
[/QUOTE]
I thought about that and it’s possible that it is. But it’s why I tried to allude to the fact that he’s reflecting upon earlier times, as if the rest of the novel would be a flashback. Assuming you made it to the second sentence of that novel.
[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Out of curiousity, did anyone else get a response sort of mocking them for only submitting one entry?
[/QUOTE]
I got the same one too. I couldn’t help it and sent in two more. This could be a series!
“The surrounding mountains could have taken a lesson in patience from James as he calmly waited for the harsh glaring red of the traffic light to metamorphose into the meadowy verdant green that would signal the continuance of his quest for late-night soft tacos.”
“With gritted teeth, his decision made, consequences damned, James strode forward as his number was called: he’d have the onion rings instead of fries.”
Okay, I finally got mine sent in. Here they are:
While Bill busied himself with fixing dinner, Amy sat on the sofa with her legs tucked up under her, one hand holding a gin-and-tonic and the other lazily stroking Fluffy the cat, who was curled up beside her; and wondered just how Sam would take the news that she had left him.
Jimmy, whose birthday it was, smiled and laughed at the antics of Mr. Funny the Clown, who in spite of the happiness he was providing young Jimmy, was looking forward to his own happiness later which would be provided by a hot shower, a cold beer, and a night spent in Lola’s bed, in that order.
“Die, commie pigs,” grunted Sergeant “Rocky” Steele through his cigar stub as he machine-gunned the North Korean farm animals.
“Your number is up,” Fiona shouted as she kicked open the door, jacked a round in the chamber, and looked at the terrified telemarketers.
“Miss Bennett,” asked Jan of her biology teacher who was launching into yet another lecture about wetlands, “could we maybe study another biosphere, because for the last three weeks, it’s been nothing but marshes, marshes, marshes!”
Not far from the village of Hamncheese-on-Wrye, there was a farm, but it was not the quaint and picturesque farm that one might expect to see in the English countryside; rather, it was a larger and more industrialized concern, such as might be seen in the Great Plains of the United States or in the fertile fields of the Ukraine, though it certainly wasn’t a Soviet-style collective farm by any means; but for all its activity and size, it was still a farm and included all the things one would expect to find on a farm, including a barn and a hayloft, and it was in this hayloft one sunny day in May that Matilda the cat gave birth to a litter of tabby kittens.
[QUOTE=Spoons]
…
“Miss Bennett,” asked Jan of her biology teacher who was launching into yet another lecture about wetlands, “could we maybe study another biosphere, because for the last three weeks, it’s been nothing but marshes, marshes, marshes!”…
[/QUOTE]
Bonus points for the Brady Bunch pun.
Howard Dork laughed.
[QUOTE=elfkin477]
Out of curiousity, did anyone else get a response sort of mocking them for only submitting one entry?
[/QUOTE]
I got a really bizarre response… I submitted my entry, and he asked if I had a name, address and phone number, and I thought, “oh, oops, must have skipped that part of the rules, I’ll send them along”, and emailed him a little “oops, sorry I flaked, here’s what you requested”.
His reponse?
“Want to go to dinner or have you already eaten?”
My initial reaction was to be a little creeped out. Could it have been a misdirected email that landed in my inbox? Or does he just respond really weirdly to everyone?
I checked and double checked, the email is the same one as is on the page. Ah, well. If anything happens to me and mine, Dopers, you know who to look for first. 
Given that he’s going to be tied up in San Jose for at least a few months, I wouldn’t be worried.
[QUOTE=Hostile Dialect]
Given that he’s going to be tied up in San Jose for at least a few months, I wouldn’t be worried.
[/QUOTE]
That did cross my mind. It was just out of left field. I don’t like left field unless they throw at someone else so I can point and laugh.
I’ll give you that. It was certainly not something I would’ve sent to a stranger. The particular reason I’m so quick to chalk it up to an odd sense of humor is that he knew you lived in Seattle at that point, and you knew he lived in San Jose. A serious invitation for dinner that night would be more than a little absurd.
That said, I wouldn’t exactly be hooking this guy up with my sister if I had one.