Complex Numbers

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

You probably know that the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest is held every year, "celebrating" the worst of the worst opening lines. Well, here's this year's.

The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest  

So fix yourself a Dark & Stormy   (it's that kind of night) and behold the radiance of the tortured prose.

I'll skip the Grand Prize winner; you'll need to go to the link to see that. But here are a few samples.

Despite an exhaustive search, rescuers were unable to locate young Christopher Robin in the Hundred Acre Wood before hypothermia took him, and the animals he once called friends descended upon his corpse like a silly old bear upon a pot of hunny.

-Paul Kollas, Orlando, FL

I mean, come on, that one's so bad it's good.

Dark and stormy, the night screamed like a ravished virgin .... the dark, stormy night ranted madly in a barometric tantrum .... it was an ebonic nocturnal tempest .... the stygian typhoon of eventide .... prosopopeic fuliginous Nyx, enceinte as it were with lachrymal lamia farouche as Hecate, disbosomed upon her terrene demiorb an empyreal borasque.

-Jack Holiday, Burbank, CA

The pitfalls of the thesaurus.

Our story begins in the cozy cottage of Bynnoldh-Dyr, son of Asgwitch-Torgwyr, in the idyllic elven village of Myrthffolwrd, but our book actually begins some two hundred pages earlier, in which you are pummeled by irrelevant history and unpronounceable names, because my publisher is paying me by the word.

-Neil B Harrison, Springville, UT

And this is what happens when you write The Silmarillion before The Hobbit.

Actually, it's fine to do that. Just publish them in the other order.

As the two beheld each other, Lady Asthenia's bosom swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop while Lord Mycort's heart melted like butter, making their union complete.

-Roni Markowitz, Brooklyn, NY

That one made me LOL.

I'm not even pasting the best ones here. Seriously, go look at What Not To Do as a writer (that is, unless you aspire to win this contest). I am, in fact, only going to give you one more, from the "Vile Puns" section:

One time at the hoagie shop the actress Ms. O'Hara asked what the tiny pimiento-stuffed thing in my cheddar-bread sandwich was and I had to respond: "Wee olive in a yellow sub, Maureen."

-Fr. Jerry Kopacek, Elma, IA

Hey! Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger here.

Yeah, after yesterday's slog, this collection is about right. Enjoy!

I went to see Reminiscence on Saturday, but yesterday's blog entry was already too long for me to squeeze in a review.

One-Sentence Movie Review: Reminiscence

Strip the movie of its science fiction, detective, crime, mystery and action elements, and you're left with a story about a guy who really, really should just get over a girl and move on with his life, which he won't because otherwise there's no plot; nevertheless, those genres are blended smoothly together with the romance aspect, and despite its utter lack of anything approaching comedy, it's absolutely worth watching if you're into any of those things.

Rating: 4/5