Wednesday, August 03, 2005
special edition of weirdness wednesday
I was going to take this week off blogging altogether, to participate in an umpteenth high-brow, elitist, nerve-racking and, ultimately, unrewarding writing contest... Yeah - one of those!
I decided not to... Why should I bother? I will run out of time - and time is of the essence, as always, and it sure is time-consuming as well to make sure that we have complied with every single tiny and infinitesimal requirement that they will impose upon every entrant... One single faux pas and it is NO PRIZE FOR YOU... sayeth the literary-saavy contest judge nazi...?!? Heck - complete utter disqualification awaits anyone who strays from "da rules" - carved in stone, are they? I thought they had invented the pen already...? Oh well - my mistake - carry on carving! ;)
Suffice it to say - sarcastically or not - I have had my fill of contests!
I tried enough of them to be fed up... There are two I did NOT try though; the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in particular... Where one can calmly writes whatever comes out and NOT worry about even such fundamentals as spellchecks - not doing them might actually contribute in your WINNING THE DAMN THING! Of course you do NOT want to win this one, as it is the biggest of its kind - and such contests are truly awarding the title of "Worst Writing of the Year"... Instead of an honor, it is a rather comical (dis)honor indeed...! One not to be taken too seriously, however, as one such lucky recipient of the title said that now he would be deemed totally unreliable - for he has a doctorate in English literature! Great career boost he got there... hmm? At least these public humiliations are rewarded with money - yes, cheques are issued to the ludicrous winners! It pays to be a wretched writer - it does not pay to dispense pearls of wisdom (and, admittedly, sarcastic witticisms aplenty as well) on a regular basis in a "luminous blog" though... otherwise, was my cheque LOST in the mail...?
What I always said - it doesn't pay to tell the truth... it's not what you know, it's who you know... there is no justice in this world... the whole shebang! And the goût du jour will always turn sour - and rarely appear to taste good toujours! ;)
That goes for legit contest winners... farcical contests "rewarding writers with talent but poor taste"... and maybe even vanity contests - although we know they only just want to sell you something with their promises of publications, don't we now?
I decided not to... Why should I bother? I will run out of time - and time is of the essence, as always, and it sure is time-consuming as well to make sure that we have complied with every single tiny and infinitesimal requirement that they will impose upon every entrant... One single faux pas and it is NO PRIZE FOR YOU... sayeth the literary-saavy contest judge nazi...?!? Heck - complete utter disqualification awaits anyone who strays from "da rules" - carved in stone, are they? I thought they had invented the pen already...? Oh well - my mistake - carry on carving! ;)
Suffice it to say - sarcastically or not - I have had my fill of contests!
I tried enough of them to be fed up... There are two I did NOT try though; the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in particular... Where one can calmly writes whatever comes out and NOT worry about even such fundamentals as spellchecks - not doing them might actually contribute in your WINNING THE DAMN THING! Of course you do NOT want to win this one, as it is the biggest of its kind - and such contests are truly awarding the title of "Worst Writing of the Year"... Instead of an honor, it is a rather comical (dis)honor indeed...! One not to be taken too seriously, however, as one such lucky recipient of the title said that now he would be deemed totally unreliable - for he has a doctorate in English literature! Great career boost he got there... hmm? At least these public humiliations are rewarded with money - yes, cheques are issued to the ludicrous winners! It pays to be a wretched writer - it does not pay to dispense pearls of wisdom (and, admittedly, sarcastic witticisms aplenty as well) on a regular basis in a "luminous blog" though... otherwise, was my cheque LOST in the mail...?
What I always said - it doesn't pay to tell the truth... it's not what you know, it's who you know... there is no justice in this world... the whole shebang! And the goût du jour will always turn sour - and rarely appear to taste good toujours! ;)
That goes for legit contest winners... farcical contests "rewarding writers with talent but poor taste"... and maybe even vanity contests - although we know they only just want to sell you something with their promises of publications, don't we now?
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Best of worst writing is recognized
Prize for comparing breasts to carburetors (?!?)
Thursday, July 28, 2005 Posted: 2201 GMT (0601 HKT)
RELATED
• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn't even be used to make a coat or something.
-- Adventure category's winning entry
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- 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, North Dakota, 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.
Dishonorable mention
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, Oregon.
"That was the least favorite of the five I entered, but you win any way you can," Guyse said.
Ken Aclin, of Shreveport, Louisiana, 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."
Prize for comparing breasts to carburetors (?!?)
Thursday, July 28, 2005 Posted: 2201 GMT (0601 HKT)
RELATED
• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn't even be used to make a coat or something.
-- Adventure category's winning entry
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- 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, North Dakota, 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.
Dishonorable mention
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, Oregon.
"That was the least favorite of the five I entered, but you win any way you can," Guyse said.
Ken Aclin, of Shreveport, Louisiana, 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."
'Obscure bureaucrat' wins bad writing contest
July 14, 1999
Web posted at: 4:57 p.m. EDT (2057 GMT)
----------------------------------
In this story:
Victory is a double-edged sword
Bad writing has planetwide appeal
'Best bad writing is by good people'
----------------------------------
(CNN) -- Was it "dark and stormy"? Maybe not, but it was night when a bored British civil servant, inspired by tales of gloom and catastrophe, conjured up the winner for an annual bad writing contest.
David Chuter, who describes himself as a "harmless and rather obscure bureaucrat," said he wrote the winning sentence in what he called "a moment of total insanity."
He was the first non-American to win the top (dis)honor in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian novelist famous for the opening sentence "It was a dark and stormy night" from his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford."
Competition organizer Scott Rice of California's San Jose State University said Chuter, 47, greased the competition with the following prose:
"Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracking 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."
Victory is a double-edged sword
Chuter said he had mixed feelings about winning. "The first thought I had was 'Oh, good!' The second thought I had was 'Oh, no!'"
Chuter, who has a doctorate in English literature, said he would now be deemed totally unreliable.
Chuter said he was inspired by stories from England's North Country, a fading industrial region, and John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."
"The interesting thing about parody is how far you can take it before you fall off the edge," he said in a telephone interview from London. "You begin with a certain theme like gloom and doom and death and things and see how long you can continue."
Bad writing has planetwide appeal
The idea for the bad writing contest emerged in 1983, Rice said. "It started out as kind of a lark," he said in a telephone interview. "Universities are always having literary contests that generate a lot of bad writing, so we decided to sponsor one of our own."
Thousands now enter the contest, with entries from as far away as Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Rice whittles down the most promising entries and then presents the best of the worst to a "panel of undistinguished judges" made up of colleagues at the university.
'Best bad writing is by good people'
Crafting a winning "bad" sentence is not as easy as it might seem. It's not just your average Joe who can come up with something truly bad, Rice said.
"We do get generally bad writers, but the best (bad) writing is by good people," Rice said.
Other efforts commended by the judges included:
"Her breasts were like ripe strawberries, but much bigger, a completely different color, not as bumpy, and without the little green things on top." "George stared intently across the table which supported the golden-brown fresh-baked cornbread with butter and sizzling cholesterol-laden bacon which could finish blocking his previously hardened arteries at any time, into Margerie's clear-blue eyes and realized that she knew what he knew, and she knew that he knew what she knew, and he must practice carpe diem before angina seized the day."
But wait, there's more!
David Hirsch of Seattle won in the Purple Prose category with this opening line:
"Rain -- violent torrents of it, rain like fetid water from a God-sized pot of pasta strained through a sky-wide colander, rain as Noah knew it, flaying the shuddering trees, whipping the whitecapped waters, violating the sodden firmament, purging purity and filth alike from the land, rain without mercy, without surcease, incontinent rain, turning to intermittent showers overnight with partial clearing Tuesday."
And Wendy Lawton of Hilmar, California, captured the children's literature prize with:
"The greedy schoolbus crept through the streets devouring clumps of children until its belly groaned with surfeit, then lumbered back to the schoolhouse where it obligingly regurgitated its meal onto the grounds."
In keeping with the stature and dignity of the competition, winners receive the traditional award: zilch.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report
July 14, 1999
Web posted at: 4:57 p.m. EDT (2057 GMT)
----------------------------------
In this story:
Victory is a double-edged sword
Bad writing has planetwide appeal
'Best bad writing is by good people'
----------------------------------
(CNN) -- Was it "dark and stormy"? Maybe not, but it was night when a bored British civil servant, inspired by tales of gloom and catastrophe, conjured up the winner for an annual bad writing contest.
David Chuter, who describes himself as a "harmless and rather obscure bureaucrat," said he wrote the winning sentence in what he called "a moment of total insanity."
He was the first non-American to win the top (dis)honor in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian novelist famous for the opening sentence "It was a dark and stormy night" from his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford."
Competition organizer Scott Rice of California's San Jose State University said Chuter, 47, greased the competition with the following prose:
"Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracking 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."
Victory is a double-edged sword
Chuter said he had mixed feelings about winning. "The first thought I had was 'Oh, good!' The second thought I had was 'Oh, no!'"
Chuter, who has a doctorate in English literature, said he would now be deemed totally unreliable.
Chuter said he was inspired by stories from England's North Country, a fading industrial region, and John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."
"The interesting thing about parody is how far you can take it before you fall off the edge," he said in a telephone interview from London. "You begin with a certain theme like gloom and doom and death and things and see how long you can continue."
Bad writing has planetwide appeal
The idea for the bad writing contest emerged in 1983, Rice said. "It started out as kind of a lark," he said in a telephone interview. "Universities are always having literary contests that generate a lot of bad writing, so we decided to sponsor one of our own."
Thousands now enter the contest, with entries from as far away as Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Rice whittles down the most promising entries and then presents the best of the worst to a "panel of undistinguished judges" made up of colleagues at the university.
'Best bad writing is by good people'
Crafting a winning "bad" sentence is not as easy as it might seem. It's not just your average Joe who can come up with something truly bad, Rice said.
"We do get generally bad writers, but the best (bad) writing is by good people," Rice said.
Other efforts commended by the judges included:
"Her breasts were like ripe strawberries, but much bigger, a completely different color, not as bumpy, and without the little green things on top." "George stared intently across the table which supported the golden-brown fresh-baked cornbread with butter and sizzling cholesterol-laden bacon which could finish blocking his previously hardened arteries at any time, into Margerie's clear-blue eyes and realized that she knew what he knew, and she knew that he knew what she knew, and he must practice carpe diem before angina seized the day."
But wait, there's more!
David Hirsch of Seattle won in the Purple Prose category with this opening line:
"Rain -- violent torrents of it, rain like fetid water from a God-sized pot of pasta strained through a sky-wide colander, rain as Noah knew it, flaying the shuddering trees, whipping the whitecapped waters, violating the sodden firmament, purging purity and filth alike from the land, rain without mercy, without surcease, incontinent rain, turning to intermittent showers overnight with partial clearing Tuesday."
And Wendy Lawton of Hilmar, California, captured the children's literature prize with:
"The greedy schoolbus crept through the streets devouring clumps of children until its belly groaned with surfeit, then lumbered back to the schoolhouse where it obligingly regurgitated its meal onto the grounds."
In keeping with the stature and dignity of the competition, winners receive the traditional award: zilch.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report
I don't see how anyone who is a real writer or wanting to become a published writer in the future, would EVER enter a contest that was for the WORST writer!!
That is just silly. Not only will people not take you seriously as a writer anymore, but it will also probably hurt your self-esteem if it isn't already low to begin with. If it is low already, then it will really hurt you inside to win this contest.
I would never do that contest no matter how bad I think my writing might be. As long as I stay positive and strive to better my writing I can't go wrong! :)
Well I have been up all night writing and am about to fall asleep at my keyboard. I'll have to read and comment on the other blog post when I get up! *yawn*
Good Night (\ô/)
((HUGS))
Countess
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That is just silly. Not only will people not take you seriously as a writer anymore, but it will also probably hurt your self-esteem if it isn't already low to begin with. If it is low already, then it will really hurt you inside to win this contest.
I would never do that contest no matter how bad I think my writing might be. As long as I stay positive and strive to better my writing I can't go wrong! :)
Well I have been up all night writing and am about to fall asleep at my keyboard. I'll have to read and comment on the other blog post when I get up! *yawn*
Good Night (\ô/)
((HUGS))
Countess
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