Richard -
Full winning passage is here:
http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm
Too bad they didn't print the whole passage in your article, the whole
passage is even funnier.
Cheers,
Alan
'53 BN1 '64 BJ8
On 7/30/05, Richard Feibusch <rfeibusch1@earthlink.net> wrote:
> This just in from Reader Dave Barry:
>
> SAN FRANCISCO - A man who compared a woman's anatomy to a carburetor won an
> annual contest that celebrates the worst writing in the English language.
>
> Dan McKay, a computer analyst at Microsoft Great Plains in Fargo, N.D.,
> bested thousands of entrants from North Pole, Alaska to Manchester, England
> to triumph Wednesday in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton
> Fiction Contest.
>
> "As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg
> carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire," he wrote, comparing a woman's
> breasts to "small knurled caps of the oil dampeners."
>
> The competition highlights literary achievements of the most dubious sort -
> terrifyingly bad sentences that take their inspiration from minor writer
> Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began,
> "It was a dark and stormy night."
>
> "We want writers with a little talent, but no taste," San Jose State
> English Professor Scott Rice said. "And Dan's entry was just ludicrous."
>
> McKay was is in China and could not be reached to comment about his status
> as a world-renowned wretched writer. He will receive $250.
>
> Rice said the challenge began as a worst paragraph contest, but judges soon
> realized no one should have to wade through so much putrid prose - such as
> this zinger, which took a dishonorable mention.
>
> "The rising sun crawled over the ridge and slithered across the hot barren
> terrain into every nook and cranny like grease on a Denny's grill in the
> morning rush, but only until eleven o'clock when they switch to the lunch
> menu," wrote Lester Guyse, a retired fraud investigator in Portland, Ore.
>
> "That was the least favorite of the five I entered, but you win any way you
> can," Guyse said.
>
> Ken Aclin, of Shreveport, La., won the Grand Panjandrum's Award for his
> shocking similes and abusive use of adjectives. He wrote that India "hangs
> like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia."
>
> "I just saw that washcloth hanging in the shower and it looked like India,"
> he said. "I'll be doggone."
>
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