[882] in Humor
HUMOR: The Annual Bad Writing Contest
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Thu May 18 09:54:47 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 09:50:45 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 17 May 95 23:02:53 EDT
From: abennett@MIT.EDU (Andrew Bennett)
SAN FRANCISCO, (Reuter) - A pun-laden tale of Paul Revere
penned by a retired Houston oil executive beat out thousands of
other cliches to take first prize in a ``bad writing'' contest
at a California university.
``We challenge our contestants to compose bad opening
sentences to imaginary novels,'' explained English professor
Scott Rice of San Jose State University, which sponsors the
annual writing contest. ``With any luck, nobody goes any further
than the opening sentence.''
The winning entry, by John Ashman, was selected from
thousands. It tells of how Paul Revere tracks down a spy in a
Boston restaurant. Rice said the entry is a classic ``groaner,''
to wit:
``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.''' Ashman wrote.
The contest officially began at the university in 1983 to
honor Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian novelist who
penned the now immortal opening sentence: ``It was a dark and
stormy night'' in his 1830 novel ``Paul Clifford.''
``We call it the Bulwer-Lytton Writing Contest, but it's
really a bad writing contest,'' Rice said. ``We groan at puns
because we feel dumb for not having thought of them first.''
Rice annually thins out the 8,000 to 10,000 entries from as
far away as Japan and Saudi Arabia before his San Jose State
English Department colleagues join the judging.
The winner gets a ``cheap word processor,'' Rice said.
Rice said other submissions from winner Ashman included
these gems:
``You was my brudda', Charley, but you made me lose my
chance to be a guard at th' prison like I always wanted -- I
coulda been a con tender,'' his homage to the classic Marlon
Brando film ``On the Waterfront,'' and
``Mon Dieu! It should be enough that I have written 'The
Hunchback of Notre Damn,' 'Les Miserables,' and all my other
great works, but nooo -- whenever my family needs a quart of
milk or a loaf of French bread from the corner store, it's
always 'Victor, you go.'''
New York resident Eric Bam took honors in the adventure
category for ``Snap! crash! bang! went the mast as it toppled
deckward toward the helpless boatswain, causing his whole life
to flash before his eyes.''
Sherman Oaks, Calif., resident David Crandall won the
science fiction category with this tale of time travel:
``The time machine had worked perfectly, landing Professor
Thwaitcastle gently on Plymouth Rock as the Mayflower appeared
on the horizon, but unfortunately there were several other time
machines and their occupants already there, waiting to observe
this, the first successful case of time travel.''
--
Andrew Bennett MIT AUV Lab abennett@mit.edu
MIT Room E38-300 abennett%athena@mitvma.bitnet
292 Main St. Phone: (617) 258-6302
Cambridge, MA 02139 <Standard disclaimers apply>
--> Johan Gaspar Spurzheim 1776-1832, The Father of Phrenology <--
