Thursday, July 13, 2006

Bulwer-Lytton

I did not win the Bulwer-Lytton contest for bad writing this year. I sent in a dozen entries and got some (dis)Honorable Mentions a few years ago, but this year I only sent in two. It can only be one sentence long.

I still think mine are better than those that won.

Her hair was the color of gold found at Sutters Mill in 1848, setting off a period of westward expansion that forever changed the American experience, especially for the Indians who lived there but have now been displaced to reservations, mostly throughout the west, but seldom on their actual tribal lands and perhaps not coincidentally, a period of increased nationalism and desire for self-determination in Europe, but her roots were darker, probably more the color of the amber that they would make into jewelry in northern Europe, especially the Baltic countries that sometimes had preserved insects in them and date from much earlier than 1848, being actually hundreds of years old which is how we can tell whether insect species have changed much in that time.


“Well cowpoke,” belched Pierre ‘Pastille Pete’ Capuchin, his breath giving off the odor of camembert like old vomit, or vomit like old camembert, “Ah reckon ah could sing nahn verses o’ Alouette t’ yer seven verses, modulatin’ up a half step each chorus, yuh waffle-poopin’ pancreatic discharge of a Belgian, so we’ll see who surrenders to whom, mon-siuer.”


Of course, only Nikhail Rao over at OK, I'm Not Really A Cowboy might get all of the second one.

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