bardiphouka | Yanked from the House List

This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, aka "Dark
andStormy Night Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San Jose
StateUniversity), wherein one writes only the first line of a bad
novel:

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break
wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep
azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that
vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty
that
defied description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept
along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism,
was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon
to become the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from
eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins
often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the
meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger
and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS...

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along
the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle
window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown
asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian
lying beside
her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming
madly, 'You lied!"

GREAT LITERARY TAUNTS
"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."
--- Stephen Bishop

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -- Winston
Churchill (about Clement Atlee)

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
--- Irvin S. Cobb

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure." --- Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary." --- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
--- Samuel Johnson

"He had delusions of adequacy." --- Walter Kerr

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." ---
Groucho Marx

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of
human knowledge." --- Thomas Brackett Reed

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." --- Forrest Tucker

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
approved of it." --- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." --- Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." ---
Oscar Wilde

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." --
Oscar Wilde

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." --- Billy Wilder

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