The Best of the Worst

Did you see the story online about the man who won the bad-writing contest? The contest was to write the best worst opening line. It was named “in honor” of the English novelist George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote the opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” It seems from the winning entry that run-on sentences are King. Here’s the 2009 winner:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

I wish I had known about that contest before it was already over. If I had a heads-up, I think I would have had a leg-up on my competition…because I pretty much write nothin’ but bad,bad sentences…plus…run-ons are my specialty.

I suppose there is always next year’s contest. I will have to work on perfecting the best worst sentence ever…so please bare/bear (which is it?) with me while I give it a try:

The rays from the dawn cracked morning burned through the bedroom window awakening Kat from her eight hour katnap to rise and retreat into the clutches of her computer where she placed her growing and decrepit ass into her tired and decrepit blog chair; determined to write an entertaining blog; all the while, fruitless in numerous attempts at writing an opening sentence that would deem capable of holding the attention of a mute, or rather it should be said, mite; she proceeded awkwardly onward; foraging for ideas, attempting a blog that would be deemed as perfection in the eyes of her single blog reader, when she arrived at a newfound sense of calm as the realization of her pursuits would inevitably be elusive; lest not impossible, as her writing abilities are not that much different from that of her four-legged dog, Duncandog, who has been caged, unwillingly in a kennel for a week; and who, using his abilities and capabilities of sending out Karma, has bestowed unimaginable excessive unrelenting Karma on Kat so that she would never be successful in attaining blog perfection, let alone a blog that would be considered mediocre, as it is widely known that bad writing is the bane of Kat’s existence.

Maybe my sentence should be shorter...the run-ons…of my run-ons…have run-ons. Heck, if I can't be the winner of the contest...maybe I'll have a shot at...Run-on Up.