Since the new piece is sulking (okay, I know it's not really sulking, that's just how things feel - possibly courtesy me arguing with another bout of stress overload: something that happens periodically. I'll deal.) and it's that time again, today is once again dedicated to that literary celebration of all things overblown to gargantuan proportions of awfulness: the Bulwer-Lytton Awards (yes, I know poor Bulwer-Lytton doesn't deserve to have his name forever linked to bad prose: that doesn't change the fact that the competition and its entries are massively popular).
So, in honor of the Bulwer-Lytton Award winners of 2010 (the Baen people here may be interested to know that a regular contributor to the boards won the romance category), our honored readers are encouraged to celebrate with their own displays of prolixity, pusillanimous punnage, prose of the most lurid purple and other such literary homage as to astonish, astound and appall their fellow inhabitants of that rare pocket of sanity in a hostile world known to initiates as the Mad Genius Club, wherein they might indulge their most cherished authorly musings, hone their remarkable repartee (for the repartee is indeed remarkable, though this is not necessarily a good thing), and demonstrate the hitherto undiscovered depths of their prodigious abilities, albeit not to those lesser beings who have yet to discover the wonders of the Mad Genius Club or who are, alas, prevented accessing said wonders by the sad impairment of inadequate cogitative ability - or worse, a surplus of sanity (this is the Mad Genius Club, after all) - thus eternally barred from delighting in the delectable delicacies offered herein, and must therefore content themselves with the inferior enjoyments of the remainder of the Internet: though this may in fact be a disguised blessing, for it is a well known fact that one ought not cast pearls before swine lest said pearls find their way through said porcine's digestive tract making the equally inadvisable prospect of making silk purses of sow's ears even less desirable for in order to decorate silk purses adequately a supply of pearls is required and the exercise of extracting pearls from porcine excrement is not for those with functional nasal equipment.
If anyone can extract meaning from that mouthful, congratulations! You're doing better than me.
It's over to you, fellow Mad Geniuses (or is that Genii?) - can you outdo the Bulwer-Lytton winners?
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13 comments:
Your paragraph broke my eyes, Kate.
The list of Bulwer-Lytton entries broken mine... I could never hope to match such magnificent verbiage. There are some true gems there.
I'd be too afraid that I'd get my submission together, look at it and think, "Hey, I like that!"
Chris K,
No, no! It's supposed to break your BRAIN!
Jonathan,
There are indeed some gems in there. The scary section is the Hall of Shame for published "gems"
Synova,
Trust me, you have nothing to worry about :) Every now and again it helps to let something gloriously awful run free. It clears the air, so to speak.
Hi, Kate. Why, why, why!?
My eyes!!!!! Not only did I read your contribution here, Kate, but went over and read some of the winners -- if they can be called that. Please, someone, quick tell me I don't write quite that badly.
Marie-Antoinette, the dusky-eyed Comtesse de la Belle Blague that is, rather than the more famous wife of Louis XVI, although coincidentally she was in fact descended from the same aristocratic stock, looked out across the windswept, storm-lashed terrace where her soiree had been in full swing up until a few minutes ago and apologized seductively to her English guest: "C'est vraiment une nuit sombre et orageuse, but later per'aps I can make amends . . ."
(which won a dishonorable mention in 2002)
Chris M,
The simple answer is "Because, because, because"
I wrote the "tribute" sentence because if I don't let that kind of writing out occasionally, it happens in things I want to sell. Besides, deliberately writing as badly as you can is fun
(Yes, yes, I'm warped. I think we already knew that)
Amanda,
Nope, you don't write that badly. Unless of course you're trying for a Bulwer-Lytton.
Francis,
Deservedly so, too. Which category, vile punnage?
@kate - it was in the "dark & stormy night" category
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