It was a dark and stormy night..... [humor]

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University
has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical
literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the
opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, is
 best known for perpetrating the novel -Paul Clifford-, 
whose famous opener has been plagiarized
repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at
occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind
rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame
of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

 --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)



Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
2002 Results

Winner:

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had
always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when
the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and
every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity
in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of
annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. 

Runner-Up: 

The professor looked down at his new young lover, who rested fitfully,
lashed as she was with duct tape to the side of his stolen hovercraft,
her head lolling gently in the breeze, and as they soared over the
buildings of downtown St. Paul to his secret lair he mused that she was
much like a sweet ripe juicy peach, except for her not being a fuzzy
three-inch sphere produced by a tree with pink blossoms and that she had
internal organs and could talk. 

Winner: Detective 

Chief Inspector Blancharde knew that this murder would be easy to
solve-despite the fact that the clever killer had apparently dismembered
his victim, run the corpse through a chipper-shredder with some
Columbian beans to throw off the police dogs, and had run the mix
through the industrial-sized coffee maker in the diner owned by Joseph
Tilby (the apparent murder victim)--if only he could figure out who
would want a hot cup of Joe. 

Runner-Up: 

Detective Driscoll had fallen off the wagon like a frozen turkey from a
Goodwill helicopter and, like a talking elephant reunited with his old
circus buddies after 50 years, he reminisced about the most memorable
collars of his career -- and he guffawed so hard that he fell off the
barstool like another turkey from another helicopter as he recollected
the time he arrested a mime for shoplifting and had to say "You have a
right to remain silent . . ." 

Winner: Purple Prose 

The blood dripped from his nose like hot grease from a roasting
bratwurst pierced with a fork except that grease isn't red and the blood
wasn't that hot and it wasn't a fork that poked him in the nose but
there was a faint aroma of nutmeg in the air and it is of noses we speak
not to mention that if you looked at it in the right profile, his nose
did sort of look like a sausage.

Runner-Up: 

Henrietta slept like a log; not your garden variety log, mind you, but
one of those phenomenally enormous old-growth South American rain forest
logs that is completely enshrouded with luxurious plush green moss and
encircling vines with those unworldly twisted rope-like root structures
wrenched from the earth and sitting there on its side in the mud and
when you try to wake it up just lies there like the enormous
moss-covered, vine-enshrouded log in the mud that it is.

Winner: Science Fiction 

It was a dark and silent night in Pluto, a planet nobody had ever taken
seriously because of its name, which reminded us of the funny cartoon
dog, and it being so far from the sun and having no atmosphere, which
seemed unimportant as it was, obviously, lifeless - we thought - in
those happy and carefree days when all the world had to worry about was
war, famine, pestilence, and death.

Runner-Up: 

The controls looked normal--the beeping thing was beeping, the humming
thing was humming, the blue number display was displaying blue numbers,
the yellow number display was displaying yellow numbers, everything
seemed OK, but the redundancy of this interplanetary trip left Col.
Mountain feeling troubled, troubled like a beeping thing not beeping, or
a humming thing not humming, or a blue number display not displaying
blue numbers, or a yellow number display not displaying yellow numbers;
nothing felt right. 

Winner: Western 

Doc Parker looked down as Sheriff Eddie LaDuke lay desperately gasping
his final breaths in the dusty sun-baked Arizona desert, knowing there
was little he could do as the outlaw's bullet had shredded Eddie's
internal organs like fresh coleslaw, leaving Doc to ponder his next move
equipped only with his pistol, some chewing tobacco, and now, one extra
horse.

Spy Category: 

It was a long and boring flight to Moscow's Sheremetevo Airport and when
Special Agent Jasper Smoot debarked and walked into the restroom marked
"Dama" in Cyrillic he might have found the woman there attractive except
she had more whiskers than a Civil War general and was pointing a
crossbow at his head.

Winner: Romance 

Hermann lay with Esmerelda, entwined with one another among love-tangled
sheets and he thought how this one constant yet mercurial woman was one
whom he could hold in his arms forever, although eventually he'd have to
get up to go to the bathroom. 

Winner: Adventure 

The sun beat like a molten hammer upon the sand that Jasper trudged
upon, scorching his bare skin, baking his eyeballs dry, boiling his
brains in his skull, and bleaching his hair to that lovely yellowy shade
that perfectly matched his taupe shirt, the one that he could wear with
either his suede jacket or the denim one.

Winner: Dark & Stormy Night Category 

It was a stark and dormie night at the University of Texas as the
on-campus residents poured into the central quad, where the shimmering,
wafting, piercing, soaking beams from an authentic Longhorn cheese moon
lit the walls of the encircling buildings the way a really large
flashlight using AA batteries dimly brightens a cavernous mineshaft, for
the results of the city leaders' baking contest, hoping that they'd be
able to shag some pies from the Austin Powers.

Runner-up: 

Toadstool, the lackey of the evil black wizard Dar Kand who had
kidnapped and hid Off-White's knight in shining armor (Snow Off-White
was a princess by birthright and a detective by profession), had his
head stuck between the floor and one of Off-White's leather boots;
Off-White's question was simple, "Where did Dar Kand store my knight?"