[font class="headline"]Full Disclaimer: I'm a big fan of the yearly Bulwer-Lytton contest and I love the entries. (The contest is for the worst writing, not the best.)
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Calif. Man Makes Bad Writing Judges Cringe[/font][font class="date"]
[/font] [font class="byline"]By RON HARRIS
[/font] [font class="byline"]Associated Press Writer[/font][/p] [font class="story"]A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him [a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="vny!://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22top+honors%22&sid=breitbart.com"]top honors[/a] in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing. [/font][/p][font class="story"] Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office. [/font][/p][font class="story"] "Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote. [/font][/p][font class="story"] "The judges were impressed by his appalling powers of invention," said Scott Rice, a professor in SJSU's Department of English and Comparative Literature. He has organized the bad writing contest since its inception in 1982. [/font][/p][font class="story"] Guigli will receive "a pittance" for his winning entry, a bit of cash he said he may put toward the purchase of a motor boat. His work for the contest represents a sampling of a career that never quite developed for him. [/font][/p][font class="story"] "At one time I thought I wanted to write to detective novels," Guigli told the Associated Press Monday. "I never got a good start on it." [/font][/p][font class="story"] His bad start was to be celebrated Tuesday, when the contest results were to be officially announced by Rice. [/font][/p][font class="story"] The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began with the oft-mocked, "It was a dark and stormy night."[/font][/p][hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]Some of the previous "winners":
[h4][dd] [/p][/dd][dd]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.
[/dd][dd]--Martha Simpson, Glastonbury, Connecticut ([font color="#ff0000"]1985 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]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 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.
[/dd][dd]--Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York ([font color="#ff0000"]1986 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd] [/p][/dd][dd]Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven--fueled by a single accelerant--and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.
[/dd][dd]--Rachel E. Sheeley, Williamsburg, Indiana ([font color="#ff0000"]1988 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd] [/p][/dd][dd]Dolores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping across smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her 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.
[/dd][dd]--Linda Vernon, Newark, California ([font color="#ff0000"]1990 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]Sultry it was and humid, but no whisper of air caused the plump, laden spears of golden grain to nod their burdened heads as they unheedingly awaited the cyclic rape of their gleaming treasure, while overhead the burning orb of luminescence ascended its ever-upward path toward a sweltering celestial apex, for although it is not in Kansas that our story takes place, it looks godawful like it.
[/dd][dd]--Judy Frazier, Lathrop, Missouri ([font color="#ff0000"]1991 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]As the newest Lady Turnpot descended into the kitchen wrapped only in her celery-green dressing gown, her creamy bosom rising and falling like a temperamental souffle, her tart mouth pursed in distaste, the sous-chef whispered to the scullery boy, "I don't know what to make of her." [/dd][dd]--Laurel Fortuner, Montendre, France ([font color="#ff0000"]1992 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.
[/dd][dd]--Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington ([font color="#ff0000"]1993 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.
[/dd][dd]--Larry Brill, Austin, Texas ([font color="#ff0000"]1994 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]Paul Revere had just discovered that someone in Boston was a spy for the British, and when he saw the young woman believed to be the spy's girlfriend in an Italian restaurant he said to the waiter, "Hold the spumoni--I'm going to follow the chick an' catch a Tory."
[/dd][dd]--John L. Ashman, Houston, Texas ([font color="#ff0000"]1995 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]"Ace, watch your head!" hissed Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively, through red, full, sensuous lips, but he couldn't you know, since nobody can actually watch more than part of his nose or a little cheek or lips if he really tries, but he appreciated her warning.
[/dd][dd]--Janice Estey, Aspen, Colorado ([font color="#ff0000"]1996 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][/h4][h4][dd]The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending her life.
[/dd][dd]-- Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, Virginia ([font color="#ff0000"]1997 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
[/dd][dd]--Bob Perry, Milton, Massachusetts ([font color="#ff0000"]1998 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracked paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life.
[/dd][dd] --Dr. David Chuter, Kingston, Surrey, ENGLAND([font color="#ff0000"]1999 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.
[/dd][dd]--Gary Dahl, Los Gatos, CA ([font color="#ff0000"]2000 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]A small assortment of astonishingly loud brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona's ankles, causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians in Liechtenstein was a stupid idea.
[/dd][dd]Sera Kirk, Vancouver, BC ([font color="#ff0000"]2001 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
[/dd][dd]Rephah Berg, Oakland CA ([font color="#ff0000"]2002 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]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.
[/dd][dd]Mariann Simms, Wetumpka, AL ([font color="#ff0000"]2003 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.
[/dd][dd]Dave Zobel, Manhattan Beach, CA ([font color="#ff0000"]2004 Winner[/font]) [/p][/dd][dd]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.
[/dd][dd]Dan McKay, Fargo, ND ([font color="#ff0000"]2005 Winner[/font])[/dd][/h4]
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