Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)

Subject: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 May 03 - 09:47 AM

A spinoff from the Good Writing Thread. A paragraph (or more) of quality (!) bad writing -- your own please. A modest entry to start off (I am not really warmed up):


"Melissa sensed that her dragon was unhappy, and reached into her bag of dragonsongs, but came up empty. There were only the two of them now -- the vast, immense snakelike, rippling creature who, in blithelier days, she would mount, feeling his great dragonness heaving below her, yet responsive to her every touch, as they winged their way in freedom over the face of Adrelgador and the sun and the wind of her home world streaked her face -- and she, bardess of Dragons. But, now that the war with the Men of Malfician was lost, the songs were all sung, and the dragons were all dragged."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: alanabit
Date: 28 May 03 - 10:19 AM

Peter, let me get back from the bathroom first...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 28 May 03 - 10:38 AM

There isn't one of my 450+ dragons not wincing at that... I don't think we could possibly surpass it!

LTS

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 May 03 - 10:46 AM

Damn..........that is bad.   I shall now begin questing to find other areas of influence within which I seek to best friend of mine Peter. Just when I think I have surpassed his talents in an area of expertise that he owns, he jumps up and writes down the ideas which are now ahead in the race we both are running to be a literary master of the written word which we have written down here. I give up and also quit and am not writing no more.

All the best and also best wishes as well,

Mick

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 28 May 03 - 10:53 AM

This contest could Drag-On for weeks!!!
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 28 May 03 - 11:02 AM

LOL, Peter T. Only problem is that writing like this is a dragon the market.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 28 May 03 - 11:32 AM

Contest? We don't need no steenkin' contest! Just give the trophy to Tweed and be done with it. Thet boy rites bofe bad and porely two.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 28 May 03 - 11:39 AM

Cliff Dastard plastered himself against the granite foundation, seeking, as always, to blend into the background, observing without being observed, listening without being heard, gathering the information and data with which by the selling of he made his living. Cliff noted that once again, as they did on a regular basis frequently, the Bilderburg Brethren were plotting the overthrow of world government in order to increase their already unimaginable wealth and power by destroying the very power base the world *thought* yielded them their riches and influence. Related primarily through the employment of servants and subordinates who could all trace their ancestry to one of the cousins of the kitchen steward of an obscure Danish prince before Denmark existed, the BB's were one of Cliff's primary and most important sources of subversive rumours, though they were unwittingly not aware of it.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: The O'Meara
Date: 28 May 03 - 12:47 PM

You might try the website for the "Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest" which is a contest for bad fiction writing. (bulwer-lytton.com) "It was a dark and stormy night..."

Theen, of course, there is The Great McGonigal, widely thought to be the world's worst poet.

O'Meara

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 May 03 - 01:18 PM

Misty Lou gave her pinkie toenail one last dollop of polish and snapped her chewing gum, mint flavoured, at the same time, with little wedges of cotton tucked between each toes. Her Giovanni liked them hot pink and shiny, so she then moved on to do her fingernails, actually they were more like long dragon claws, like you might see on the ends of a dragon lady's hands in one of those marital arts movies. Anyway, she was dressed in hot pink to match 'cause Giovanni, known as Joe, liked her in hot pink. He said it made her hair look even more shiny and blond AND it reminded him of her little pink "maryanne" and he loved it a lot, always wanting her to show it off to him, but he got mad if anyone else ever talked sexy about her at all. She didn't have any idea of why he liked to call it her "maryanne" but she thought it might have something to do with his mother, Marianna. Anyway, he said it was his and only his. She didn't name his after anybody but he really liked it when she played hide his "Kielbasa" or "Mr. K!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: DonMeixner
Date: 28 May 03 - 01:49 PM

Cut and paste any of the fiction from "Guest" under the heading
"Political Thriller"

Don

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 03 - 01:50 PM

Ha! Ha! Ha! I think Mario's is the worst so far. (Although Kat's is incredibly tacky.) Peter, of course, is as incomparable as ever, and has just completely trashed adult fantasy involving young women and dragons.

I'm gonna paste in my own deathless prose which started this:

Most people at Joyce-Aylwin & Company didn't like Vance Aylwin very much, but they did envy him. Jennifer had heard him described once as "brutally handsome", and it fit. From the slightly cruel jawline to the steely blue eyes that seemed to peel a woman's clothes off with a glance, he was a certified Beverly Hills stud, and he knew it. And he was rich. More than rich in fact. He oozed money from every pore. You could see it in the tailored suits, the Italian shoes, and the one-of-a-kind silk neckties. Vance Aylwin was filthy rich.

What really burned Jennifer's cookies was she was obscurely attracted to the man for some reason. Was it his arrogance? Was it his corporate power? Was it just his looks? Or was it something less obvious, some mysterious inner quality that didn't show on the surface, but still tickled Jennifer's feminine intuition and kept her awake far too late at night?

It would bear looking into, she thought, examining her cuticles for the nineteenth time and checking her lip gloss in the mirror for good measure. She had a meeting scheduled with Vance Aylwin for 6 O'Clock at the Coocoo Bird Lounge, and she intended to make the most of it...



Now here's a little inside tip from the author (me). Instead of plowing through 300 more pages of the sort of drek shown above, sprinkled with the obligatory melodramatic sex scene every 40 or so pages, why not just directly ask the author (me) what it is that causes Jennifer to be so drawn to the complete asshole that Vance Aylwin so obviously is?

Here it is, in a nutshell. Jennifer is a shallow, tawdry, acquisitive, materialistic little tart who is bored and frustrated, due to the total spiritual emptiness of her idiotic life. She is willing to do anything to relieve that boredom, no matter how stupid it is. She represents the dreams and inner yearnings of a host of people much like herself who will never get the chance to be screwed by someone as rich as Vance Aylwin, and that's why these books sell like hotcakes. Gotta love it!

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 May 03 - 02:08 PM

It was just a shot in the dark -- a dark that was thick and evil as pea soup. Bad pea soup. Suddenly, the lights came on and illuminated the scene like something bright casting a light on something that was once dark but now isn't.

There, crumpled in the once dark corner lay the unwitting target of the shot that was taken in the darkness that is now light. The victim, as unlikely as it might seem, was both shot through the heart, and shot in the brain. He was dead.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 03 - 02:28 PM

Oh! Oh! More, John, more!!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 May 03 - 02:33 PM

"There was a bad wind off the Badlands, and as it whipped through the dilapidated town, slamming doors and beating against window sashes, it carried with it the aroma of bad things, of men who had died in ambushes in blind valleys not of their own choosing, of mixed breed women who vainly tried to clean the reek of the previous man off their bodies, of the dirty smoke of rustler fires, of all the smells of the cattle drive passing along the high ridge, of the badnest of all badnesses, of despair, of the next-to-the-last roundup. "Snake" sniffed it, his pug nose held high, his eyes squinting in the sunlight like two thin dimes, and he loosened his gun in its holster. It was time. There was a reckoning coming, a hard reckoning, payment was due, and his accountant was waiting."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 May 03 - 02:48 PM

"I don't understand, Sergei."

"Oh, you British," Sergei smiled, and they kept moving through the hushed rooms of the Hermitage, night draping the masterpieces in the shadow world that they both lived and thrived in. "You think you have unravelled it all. You think that simply because you were able to piece together that Morris was really one of our agents, who was turned by the Americans, and then re-turned by us, and then counter-spied for you, feeding you misinformation that would lead you to the right action for all the wrong reasons, that simply because of that, the whole operation was a mistake, there you are mistaken."

"But why, Sergei, why?"

"Because," said Sergei slowly, removing his facial hair, "because it was in that night in the Spanish town in Andalucia, among the gypsies, as they howled their cante hondo that I fell in love with you, for I am not really Sergei Rostrenko, but" -- and here Sergei pulled off the dark wig revealing a fall of bottle blond hair --"Natasha Rostrenko!!!".

Colin gasped. So that was where the triple agent had been all that time, under his very patrician nose!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:06 PM

The night was long. It was so long that there seemed nothing short had ever resided in its long length. He waited impatiently for the night to end, but his patience finally was running out and he was beginning to look for other possibilities -- possibilities like waiting until summer when the nights would be shorter -- at least shorter in reference to the ratio of daylight to darkness, not in actual nighttime hours which would theoretically remain constant.

Suddenly the dawn broke over him like the yolk of very big, bright egg. It caught him unawares -- in his reverie over how to solve the long night dilemma he had found himself in until the sun finally arose.

"I will try to remember this from now on" He resolved to himself. "The night is never so long as it seems when you are waiting for it to end -- but it is never so short as it seems when you are trying to think of ways to make it end".

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:23 PM

Gawd. Truly astounding, John. We definitely have Shatnerization.

And Peter has effectively assassinated two more common genres of fiction.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:36 PM

"Get OUT!!"

"Don't EVEN go there"

"But I'm like, I have to"

"Whoa! I said don't go there, man!"

"But I'm like 'I've gotta' and you go like, 'Don't' and I'm like..."

Thus went the conversation throughout the long commute into the city.

And so the man in the adjacent seat calmly pulled the small handgun from the front pocket of his coat, raised the short pistol barrel to his temple, and happily blew his brains out.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,McGonagal
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:45 PM

BEAUTIFUL Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.
The greatest wonder of the day,
And a great beautification to the River Tay,
Most beautiful to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
That has caused the Emperor of Brazil to leave
His home far away, incognito in his dress,
And view thee ere he passed along en route to Inverness.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
The longest of the present day
That has ever crossed o'er a tidal river stream,
Most gigantic to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
Which will cause great rejoicing on the opening day
And hundreds of people will come from far away,
Also the Queen, most gorgeous to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Provost Cox, who has given
Thirty thousand pounds and upwards away
In helping to erect the Bridge of the Tay,
Most handsome to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe,
The famous engineers of the present day,
Who have succeeded in erecting the Railway
Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
Which stands unequalled to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:45 PM

Why do men, mostly men, have to use rough language to describe things that matter? To them? Like,'We've knocked the bastard off'? Why not do what women, mostly, do? They would say something like, 'It was such a thrill. The mountain is so lovely, even now.'

No. Men talk about the 'bastard'. And talk about relationships. Men talk about 'my old woman' or if she is young, 'my old lady'. If they're around women, they say, 'the wife'. Why? I could go on and on about the language they use, but I am a woman, mostly, and I can't do it.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,The sequel
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:47 PM

The Tay Bridge Disaster
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:51 PM

The motorcycle black madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen and her silver-studded phantom cause the gray flannel dwarf to scream as he weeps to wicked birds of prey who pick up on his bread crumb sins.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 May 03 - 03:51 PM

I've just entered this, twice, but it didn't take. Perhaps because it is so gawd-awful?

The Twarps were running the bar on Aaltroous when our ship set down on a long flight from Timbuk2009-V-Sector. In a flash, Gordon the pilot, aimed his Warz-tag900-Bmodel Twarp-in-ator and took them out, one, two, three, four, eventually all 500 hundred of them in the time it took the rest of us to unfold our daddy long legs, stretch our antennae and step down.

So this was Aaltroous, famous planet of the Twarps and Twidgerees and their lackeys the Salavator300.98v6s originally from over in the North4000.56 vector7. That was a long hop, about 9.34972 billion light years if I had my guestimator working right. I wondered how they'd made it. It didn't really matter, though, flashing Gordon had taken care of that. Now, they were One with their owners, the pulverised, putrid, smoking, steaming mass that had been Twarps and Twidgerees, or T&Ts, also included the Salavator300.98v6s, all 5000 of them. God, they were rank smelling.

With a knee crack and another stretch of my antennae, I scampered over to the far end of the bar and bit open a bottle of Cricket de menthe. I figured that'd be a good start on washing down the crispy critters courtesy of our dear Flash.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Jeri
Date: 28 May 03 - 04:17 PM

If one scores essays as one's way of making money to pay the septic tank people, one, like, learns some, truly, horrendouse examples of.
Writing.

There is the run-on sentence (one per 'paragraph' which Mick gave us an example of to us.)
There are John's examples, except his punctuation was like too good you know!
Then there's the condition which I like to call "Thesaurosis."

The luminescent sun oozed over the horizon. And the arborage scintillated in the day-break of an exception majestic day. And I meandered down the verdant path and like heard the miniscule fowl chirping rampantly. But then I had an epiphany that I was'nt sporting nary any adornments. Myself without coverage! So I cloaked my reproductive organs in indigenous foliage. And it was just later I absorbed that those were the wrong ivy when the urtication commenced.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Giac
Date: 28 May 03 - 04:21 PM

Once, upon a Tyme, Gillian, spelled Gillian, but pronounced Jillian (why didn't they just name her Lillian?), sat picking mites from her senslessly long trusses (damn! those hernias). There was a heaving, like an earthquake or a vomiting of a very large creature and she was hurled to the rocks. She lived, but was stopped dead as she saw Tyme fly by.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 28 May 03 - 04:25 PM

In the immortal words of my second-cousin-three-times-removed on my father's side who is also my third-cousin-four-times-removed on my mother's side,The Grand-Duchess Olga, She who has Nine heads (eight of which are not visible); Mistress of the Scorching Hot Knitting Needles (pronounced Kuh-nitting Kuh-needles, the "K" of the second work is invisible but voiced, Bane of the Clan Bailey (who has single-handledly wiped out most male Baileys in the pursuit of making Baileys Balls (her speciality)),Daughter of the Mothership Unit:


"eep!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 03 - 05:20 PM

I couldn't agree more, Ebbie, and I'm a man. But...why did you ask the question in this thread?

Well, anyway, here's the reason(s) why men use rough language:

They do it mainly to impress other men. It starts when they are quite young (like maybe 7 or 10 years old) They have the idea that in order to be a "man among men" they must sound rough, tough, and worldly. Their deepest fear is that the other "men" will get the idea that they are wimps, geeks, sissies, and so on...and beat them up and make their lives miserable. Worse yet, the other men might get the idea they are gay!!! (Most gay men, by the way, can swear marvelously, but they do it in a more clever fashion, usually...)

Anyway, there is considerable justification for having such fears in primary school, junior high, and even high school...where homophobic bullies abound and where aggressive stupidity is the coveted ideal amongst a majority of the male students. Believe me, I remember it well (May they all marry domineering, selfish, greedy women and rot in hell!).

So, the habit gets established early, and it just keeps getting worse. Soon a "real man" feels that he must sprinkle his everday conversation with unnecessary words like "bastard", "son of a bitch", c*nt, etc...just in order to fit in with his peers.

Frequent references to penis size (always gigantic in one's own case, always tiny in the case of another) are also considered pretty obligatory. Study Spaw's posts carefully in order to fully grasp this concept in all its tediousness. :-) (of course, he's just pretending to be an idiot...I think...)

So that's it. Men are terrified that they may not measure up in the eyes of other men, so they talk tough.

Tenuously connected to this is an allied thought in the minds of most men...namely that their tough talk will also impress women. Perhaps it does, in some cases, but I don't think it does in too many. On the other hand, being a wimp certainly doesn't impress women, so it's a tricky issue at best.

BDiBR has been struggling with this conundrum for years, and his success rate with girls remains lamentable.

It's sad.

Now back to the lousy writing! That poetry about the bridge was utterly stunning!

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 May 03 - 05:47 PM

Your work, the rules are that it must be your work, horrible though it may be. yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: alanabit
Date: 28 May 03 - 06:06 PM

TV Script for a soap opera (I used to translate the bloody things)
Ellie: Joe, I know this is hard...
Joe : What's hard Ellie?
Ellie: Well Joe, it's like this...
Joe : What's it like Ellie?
Ellie: I know this is going to hurt you...
Joe : What's going to hurt Ellie?
Ellie: Well, Joe, when that airliner crashed this morning it landed...
Joe : But it didn't land Ellie - It crashed...
Ellie: And when it crashed, it crashed...
Joe : Sure did Ellie...
Ellie: It crashed on your house Joe..
Joe : On my house?
Ellie: On your house Joe and your wife Rita, and little Jack and Sue were in there too...
Joe : And Rover?
Ellie: I'm afraid he passed with them...
STAGE DIRECTION: JOE LOOKS SAD.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 28 May 03 - 06:17 PM

I thought Ebbie's letter was an entry in the contest.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 May 03 - 06:43 PM

I thought it was, too.:-)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 May 03 - 06:45 PM

The great ship, weighted down with her starboard guns helpless and smashed, slowly turned, majestic like what she was, a dying ship, The Majestic. Admiral Cornplaster, his wooden leg broken under him, cradled the wheel, and smiled, for he had one last trick in him. "Swinton!!" he howled, and through the debris, Captain Swinton, his other arm now having joined its mate at the bottom of the Mediterranean, swayed forward. "Sorry I can't salute anymore, sir," he said gamely.
"Damme, no time for saluting," spat the Admiral, "Heave the anchor to, and reef the topsails, and be smart about it."
Captain Swinton, for a moment, was sure he had misheard, amid the thunderous crashes, the yelling and screaming of dying men awash over the maststrewn deck, and then the possibility reached him too. "Gad, sir!! Will it work??"
The Admiral heaved himself over the wheelhouse, knocking Swinton into the gunwhales. "If it worked at Copenhagen, it will bloody well work here!!!!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 May 03 - 06:53 PM

How bloody awfull!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 May 03 - 07:09 PM

Well, durn. I can write lousily when I don't mean to but it appears when I make the effort I'm not good at it...

Little Hawk, thanks. I wasn't entirely serious in my question- but at the same time, I liked your exposition, and I think you are right. Of course you're right- who would know better: you or I? On the other hand, I seem to have some memories of what it's like to be male. Can't remember swearing, though. I must have been good.

Does this qualify? I don't feel flowery - or even lurid- today.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 03 - 10:08 PM

That's cool, Ebbie. I have memories of being female too, which is probably why I've regarded North American male cultural conditioning so skeptically in this life...matter of fact, it's downright hilarious...but not when you're in public school! :-)

I regarded school as a sort of vile bureaucratic internment camp, to be survived until adulthood set me free. I sympathize strongly with any kid who hates school.

p.s. The above is not an entry in this contest. I can write much worse than that.

p.p.s. Wasn't that dreadful stuff about the bridge written by the same Canadian poet who wrote "Ode To The Mammoth Cheese"?

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 May 03 - 10:33 PM

Cheese

Limburger makes you smell my way
Cheddar is the most I'm bound to pay
Gouda's very very extraordinary
Muenster, not the Addam's family

Jack, don't hit the road I love ya babe
Colby, just the smoky taste I'm bound to crave
Gouda's very very extraordinary
Muenster, not the Addam's family.

Bleu I serve you in my salad bowls
Swiss I stick my fingers in your holes
Gouda's very very extraordinary
Muenster, not the Addam's family.

Oh baby baby,
I'll Brie around.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 28 May 03 - 11:31 PM

I'm trying to remember what it was you wanted from me. My mind is turning gray. Even when you reminded me twice already, I forget.
I thought it was because I forgot to pay attention, but then I realize I don't have to do that anymore, because I forget anyway.
Just forget it.
My mom used to say, "If you can't remember, it couldn't have been too important".
Why was I writing this anyway? I forgot.

Peace. Rustic

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: khandu
Date: 28 May 03 - 11:45 PM

A strange kind of darkness has beseiged the town. The kind of darkness that swallows to moon which is afraid to even dare give its light for fear of revealing the dark thoughts in the darkened minds of the shallow people. The sun had wilted neath its own weariness as darkness approached, aggressive and bold, with no thought of tomorrow, only of today...THE day of dark souls spewing forth their sick, twisted, dark desires.

Then someone from the back dared to stand and shout in a loud voice, "Let there be Light".

And there was Light.

k

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 May 03 - 08:36 AM

truly terrible, khandu. Almost worth getting a whole Tshirt inscribed with it -- it is so uplifting.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 May 03 - 11:54 AM

Yeah. If you walked around town with that on a T-shirt it would really freak out the born-again Christians, who would be trying to decide: "Is he one of us or does he belong to some insane cult?"

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: alanabit
Date: 29 May 03 - 12:02 PM

Like...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 29 May 03 - 12:42 PM

Rex K. Neauxt watched thee tide slowly creeping it's wiegh up the shingled beech,inch, by inch, by inch, as if it was some kind of cattapiller or something wormlike, maybe an inchworm,like the inch worms that ate his cabbage in his garden,the tide came in on kittens' feets;slowly getting closer across the sands, whetting each grain until it glistening in the sunlight,devouring the land as it came upwards on the shorline;and he wondered again as he had time and time before at other times weather or knot this time the tide would not cease to raise but continue onwards without stopping to flood the entire land as the culmination of the worldwide Dutch conspiracy to conquer the world finally reach fruit.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,terrified by the Dutch...
Date: 29 May 03 - 12:45 PM

EEEEEYAAAAUGGHGGGH!!! GLUB! GLUB!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: The O'Meara
Date: 29 May 03 - 01:35 PM

The poem about the Tay Bridge was written by The Great McGonigal, a Scot, who was a very bad actor and a terrible poet (as you can see) frequently referred to as the world's worst poet. He was unpopular in the late 1800s as I recall. It's rumored that Prince Phillip has his collected his complete works. He was a for real person.
    Legend has it that he once appeared onstage in Glasgow as Hamlet. When it came time for Hamlet's death scene, he couldn't stand the idea of leaving the stage so he stretched the death scene so far people in the audience shouted "Lie doon, McGonigal, lie doon!'

O'Meara

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 May 03 - 02:22 PM

Finally, I want to make 3 or 4 more points before closing. I know that many of you have been galvanized into action by the innovative management process I have been outlining over the last two hours, and lunch is waiting, but it is important that I do stress these final 5 points. First, when we evaluate the importance of innovation, it is important to be clear that we are not just in the business of "important innovation", but, more critically, we are in the business of "innovating importance!!!" What do I mean by "innovating importance!!"???? As you can see on this overhead -- or, well, you could see, if the bulb weren't so dim -- but anyway, there are a number of bullets here that I want to briefly run through -- "innovating importance" means..... (mass suicide breaks out in the conference room)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: LadyJean
Date: 29 May 03 - 03:27 PM

The waves crashed against the glistening, black boulders, that lined the Cornish coast. The wind from France howled it's queer comment ca va, through the whispering sea grass. It blew Garlanda's silken skirts against her long, slender, legs. Inside her was a passion as powerful as the rolling waves, as strong as the wind on the sea. Her loins throbbed as she thought of Dirk, the virile Scot who had captured her passion.
Suddenly he was there, striding along the cliffs, his eyes glistening, as the French wind ruffled his thick corn gold locks. His skin tight trousers betraying his intentions.
"Dirk!" she moaned, trying vainly to conceal her desire. "They told me you were sailing with the tide!"
"They were wrong," he wispered, huskily, ripping open her silken bodice, to reveal her creamy bosom.
Garlanda sighed as he pushed her onto the sand. She knew this would have to be their last encounter. She was running out of bodices.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 May 03 - 03:54 PM

Wonderful! A friend of mine who is a very good poet admitted today that once while penniless and desperate he wrote two Harlequin romance novels under a psuedonym (something like Daphne Pendrake or Violet Haize...)...and they sold!

He made me swear not to reveal his identity under any conditions.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,E.M.
Date: 29 May 03 - 04:05 PM

Ode to Ms Rutledge

Penelope Rutledge, O Vision sublime!
I think of you often, and wish you were mine
I think of you tripping down library stairs
The sun on your bonnet, the wind in your hair
No melody bright could express all you are
No vision of light and no heavenly star
No sunrise at dawn could encompass your grace
No vista at twilight could e'er match your face
I sit in my room and envision you now
The queen of my conscience, the wave at my bow
My ships are all stranded, now wretched they pine
No sails on their yardarms, no grapes on my vine
My vineyards are barren, my cats have no mice
My parrot has sought therapeutic advice
My hallway is empty, my phone's on the fritz
Penelope Rutledge, I love you to bits!
My hopes they are waning, as silent I wait
Intolerably distant from fair Twillingsgate
If not for thy grace I would plunge from the skies
As an albatross falls to his final demise
Yet hope springs anew with each stroke of my pen
That my words may yet sway you, and move you, and then
That together at last we may write history
With me beside you, dear, and you beside me
Penelope Rutledge, O Vision sublime!
I think of you often, and wish you were mine

E. M. (Ever Madly in love with you...)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 May 03 - 04:39 PM

I hope we are all singing from the same hymn book and saluting the same flag when I say, possitively and without fear of contraception, that the thing we wish to happen least or at least the thing we do not want to happen most is the event which is in the forefront of everybodies minds even though we are all treading around the issue as if on clear silicate of the fractured variety.

DON'T LET jOHN fRom 9HuLl ANYWHERE NEAR HERE...

May I wish you a felicitatious and decidedly glowing greeting in the effluvious style of my forebears, Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 29 May 03 - 04:45 PM

You could tell just by lookin at her that she was a skank clear through not in spite of or irregardless of the fact that she liked to pretend she was somebody importatn in this town. She called herself Brittney and she figgered she was hot. Well maybe she was hot but bein hot aint everything although it beats bein ugly or dead. I have spent time with nice girls and I have spent time with skanks and I know the difference! Brittney was not a nice girl. Matter of fact she was a sleeze of the worst kind but she tried to cover it up by using big words...like "optimistic".

That's what she said I was to ask her out. "Optimistic". That was her way of bein smart.

"You dont have to be optimistic when your playin with four aces, baby." Thats what I said to her.

She's like, "Where are they? Stuffed down your pants?"

I'm like, "Put your hand in and see."

She's like, "Flip off, you jerk!"

I'm like, "I was hopin we could do that together. How about a toke on Bobo?"

That's when she threw the bottle of beer at me. Lucky I got fast reflexes. It went past my head and busted the mirror behind the bar. What a mess. "Now you done it," I says to her.

That was when she went for me with the pool cue and nice girls dont do stuff like that. I dont hit girls but I shoulda hit this one. On account of her I got throwed out of the Iron Horse a hour before last call and I have put more time and money into that place than she ever did. Girls dont play fair when they are mad or any other time either. You cant trust em no farther than a turtle can spit.

Life in Blind River. It aint paradise, but it's home.

- BDiBR (p.s. I got sober for a hour before I wrote that. every word of it is true.)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,amergin
Date: 29 May 03 - 04:56 PM

LH, I got an aunt who has made a fairly successful living writing romances and mysteries....she loves doing it...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: khandu
Date: 29 May 03 - 07:38 PM

The Chair

Yes..the Chair. There, next to the lamp with the broken globe, it sat, self-assured, smug in its self-assuredness.
How many times I have desired...no, lusted, to climb into its leather well-worn seat and ponder the mysteries of Life. To sit and drink beer which I could quickly hide behind its back, should the preacher knock.
To watch the evening news and cuss the president while commanding the wife to make the brats shut-up and behave.
To be the MAN of the Chair.
To be my Father.

k

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST
Date: 29 May 03 - 07:41 PM

you forgot to talk to the chair....

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 29 May 03 - 07:41 PM

yer majesty - that explains a lot.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 May 03 - 08:19 PM

"I AM!" I cried. To no one there. And no one spoke. Not even the chair.

And then there's "songs she sang to me, songs she brang to me"

I tell ya, we're all mere amateurs when it comes to Neil Diamond. But keep tryin' folks!

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Dave Swan
Date: 29 May 03 - 09:01 PM

Grasp the overlying flange by the inferior projection(C). Stretch the temporary retaining band across the flange gap, attaching it to tab A1, just beneath the adjustment screw (a mirror may help in this step). Gently warm the shell housing using hot water or a hair dryer and form as needed. For recorded customer service assistance please call our central office between 0100 and 0115 PST. Press #1, 4, 6, * ,then enter your product number, found on the under side of the overlying flange.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 May 03 - 09:39 PM

Mark Twain knew how to write horrendously when he wanted to:

OESOPHAGUS - ( a hoax Clemens played on his readers via a paragraph of purple prose)

It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind nature for the wingless wild things that have their home in the tree-tops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of woodland, the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere, far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and the peace of God.
- "A Double Barrelled Detective Story"

I published a short story lately & it was in that that I put the oesophagus. I will say privately that I expected it to bother some people--in fact, that was the intention--but the harvest has been larger than I was calculating upon. The oesophagus has gathered in the guilty and the innocent alike, whereas I was only fishing for the innocent--the innocent and confiding.
- Letter to Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography

Beat that if you can. It has a grandeur that is awe-inspiring.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 29 May 03 - 10:18 PM

Blowing smoke into the smoky room, fills the sky and drifts away like a random thought.
The Goddess within can hear it all. She stoops and listens carefully.
She didn't want to miss anything. She thought she heard a giggle but missed the punchline.
I will help you if you let me.
You will help yourself if you let you.
She was in the gray zone, she could walk through the mirror if she wanted.
The smoke filled the room and she lit another cigarette.
She's stronger than she knows, she is. She just has to look into the other side of the mirror. Walk right in there, she thought. Take a look inside the inside.
The goddess was revealed just thinking about it.
The thought drifted with the smoke and twirled around the giggle. Than she remembered, she did get the punchline.

Peace. Rustic(attempting to write real bad!)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 May 03 - 10:47 PM

He felt himself siezed by a profound, lowering sadness, a creeping ennui that festered fitfully in his fragile and constricted heart and then coiled itself indifferently down to the depths of his very soul. It was a mood that had crept silently toward him on little cat feet ever since his boarding the wretched scow that had brought him inexorably down this damned river, past nameless settlements in featureless surroundings, past endless myriad tangles of jungle, swamp, and brief savannah, soon to be swallowed by another morass of green hell, its interminable vastness descending upon him like some faceless dowager empress of the antediluvian wilderness. He barely seemed to hear the cries of numerous unknown birds, mammals, and less familiar creatures, somewhere in the foliage nearby. Occasionally he glimpsed a parrot or a monkey, but to these he turned an uncaring eye. He had almost forgotten why he used to think anything mattered in that former life of his, now dimly fading behind the curtain of this endless river. What day was it today? It was no day at all, he thought, but the same day as before, waiting to yield its place to the same night as before, and return on the morrow...day after day after meaningless day...as a garishly coloured mechanical horse repeats its witless cycle on a merry-go-round, oblivious to the little human lives that pass by with their momentary noise and fuss. His blood seemed to flow more slowly now, his heart a distant murmur that he could sense but no longer interpret, like a grumbling rapids gurgling far ahead in the distance, up the river's course. Perhaps the rapids would come, and that would be a change? But no. The river wound on, silent, smug and oily, like a great patient serpent that has eaten its fill and bides its time. The river could swallow anything, he thought. Soon it will swallow me. And what does it matter? There is no me anyway, in truth. I am a mere echo fading, falling at last into the heart of darkness.

Note: Leonard Graves Doomfellow, the author of the 6,300-page novel "River of Darkness", from which this brief, but brilliant excerpt is taken, had high hopes that Francis Ford Coppolla or someone else like that would use his book as the basis for a spectacular feature film about despair and futility, but it didn't happen, so he killed himself by jumping into a pit of starving gerbils. He had apparently bought all the gerbils in Schenectady and the surrounding area, as well as two chinchillas and a white rat, in order to prepare his demise in a suitable fashion. It was really quite tragic. The World has lost a great, great talent.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Bobert
Date: 29 May 03 - 10:50 PM

Well danged, this'll teach me. Go off to Misissippi fir a few days fir the Handy Awards and you all gotta start a bad writing thread and let some of these bad writin' wantabees get a few laps on the ol' hillbilly....

Well, all I can say is good danged luck. I got a PHD in bad writing with double minors in bad spellin' and bad typin'! Any of you wantabees that fortunate, experienced 'er qualified? I reckon not! Hey, I was right behind Al Gore at the patent office waitin' to patent bad writing and he'll tell ya that it's true. Not sure what he was there for.(The Bobert cleverly ends yet another sentence with a proposition... that's bad, bad, bad but wait 'til I dangle my partisiple... oh, baby...).

Yeah, you all thought you were gonna pull a fast one on me, didn't ya. Well, yer gonna have to get up a little earlier if yer gonna play in my world....

Bobert

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 May 03 - 11:02 PM

I like yours, Rustic. Churn out another fifty or so pages like that and we might just have a New Age bestseller. Goddess is a very popular concept these days, having been neglected for these past few thousand years.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 30 May 03 - 01:40 AM

Call me Ishmael.

   Yadda yadda yadda homina homina homina yackity smackity. Hurbily burbily fleebity flewtery fly. Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Skinna ma rinky dinky dink; skinna marinky doo. Soo soo soodeeo? Hoocheemama! You should not have come back, Obi Wan. Rubby dub dub wid lub inna tub. John Grady poured himself another coffee.

   All mimsy were the borogroves and the mome raths outgrabe. Dung nung nung nung gung. Damn your eyes, man! They outgrabe, I say! Sassinfrassa takahashi lhasa apso franistan. His male name is "Begotten, Perfect Mind", and his female name is "All-wise Begettress Sophia." Hoowah! Sim sim salabim... Rosanne Kobar! Onchess nobsis; innob keesis. "Jonny! Hadji! Keep your heads down, boys!"

   The inky dinky spider went up the water spout. Zooey tie filbertson? Shit poo shitty and a pow pow pow! Shilfy falferton co tun rotunda. I am thy father's spirit; doom'd for a certain term to walk the night. Gackiter rack ta mackita sack chack flackeroo. Zo jann cull sigganee intel gone zinfandel tanelorn. All things, O monks, are on fire. Whoop tee doo! Ga haha yee hay hey heya hey. Punchbuggy; no punchbacks. !Kung sleepers weepers keepers, jeepers creepers; where'd you get them peepers? Norn tahree feelabung ta zoo? "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado." Waha hoo! Everybody wang chung tonight. Bada boom bada bing.

   "Fortunately, ah keep mah feathahs numbered for jus' sech an emergenseh."

   Rave on, John Donne and Fart smartly, cheeky tart. So chulba nin gin filton and swinker sigh gunsel tin town gulf. And now the Wasichus had made another treaty to take away from us about half the land we had left. And crow man kye ton vilgin mo creaser. Wilby nun till vygin shnowzola. Vigil strange I kept on the field one night. Meeker tan vow, sun hee way. Hee keek neeker sife tannaroo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, comsect quis nostrud exercitation ullam corp squidbite to the uterus, my drolly roxut o' the flolumberry eyes. He and Egil walked inside, taking half of Arinbjörn's men with them and leaving the rest outside the door. Grilst hintin vowd? Nygin fleaful, so gwulthin hay!! How rotten for Daphne!

   Humma gumma naw go hillabay geetch... Wheep hoo!

   Come to think of it, how rotten for me, too.

   Snawdilg int kywin lubbadub. Sheedle fydle ingye nildirt giesin viddle. Meen? Togar. So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly. Nine sidle downer tin corson zeet boyd, zo chilgar vere dey. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis. Tem est poribud autem right in the yump gwilger whenever he reached down for his miezenfliger.

   "Ah, Luthien Gilthananiel! So marveluminous are your wunkterflaggers in the felluginous glow from my electromandibular chugwugger. Please perform again in all splendifular maxitrunction, the Dance of the Seventeen Flexofellation Variations (as choreoscripted so proglaciously by Lady Shloopp herself, no less) whilst I twerdle and smulg in ranxtorous glee above thee."

   Alas, go tilken cab as the shuzzger manker swann'd pilfanye tossward mockertly. So fible fwink go lankus dink. He was her man, but he was doin' her wrong. Coeful dreens did spank the wallabing in ankertuss swads. You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. And then the jostankers flolloped costallition thuds in profusion. Sammon finer dropped in the killer whale tank, greamlinning velsmirchedly. Oh, the golglomming! I blew the candle out and left the cabin. Soupin meener somun highwire. Ha! Spunca dinga danga ringa rangaroo.

   And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: alison
Date: 30 May 03 - 02:23 AM

the scary thing is that I understood every word....

rapturous applause for Cluin......lol


slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 30 May 03 - 05:40 AM

Cluin dear, time to take your medication.....

LTS

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 May 03 - 08:38 AM

This thread is definitely getting warmer....

(Actual conversation overheard this morning in a breakfast diner, transcribed in passing):

"So we get there, and we are walking down the street, and I think, like, wouldn't it be great to get a cup of coffee. Guess."
"I don't know. $5.00?"
"$5.25. I couldn't believe it. And my husband had, what do you call it, you know, something latte, and guess --"
"How can I guess when I don't know what it was?"
"You know, anyway, it was $7.00. We decided right then that we were probably going to starve to death. Then later, at the hotel, I had a burger and fries, well, not really, you couldn't call it a real burger, they can't make them there, isn't that strange, you would think with all the McDonald's everywhere, they would have learned. $20.00. $20."
"Wow."
(and so on).
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 03 - 10:35 AM

Ha! Ha! Ha! Christ, how can our attempts at bad writing match that? There are a couple of really memorable quotes in there...

"How can I guess when I don't know what it was?"

Right........

And if you want to know what a REAL hamburger is, whaddya do? Go to McDonald's, right?

Right........


Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Yak! Yak! Gasp! Snarf!

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 03 - 10:43 AM

Cluin - We are aiming for BAD writing here, but not total literary incoherence, okay? There is a difference. Study William Shatner's acting in the original Star Trek series for pointers. The idea is to still make sense, but to do it in a way that is overstated, cliche-ridden, clumsy, melodramatic, and so on...

Bad writing is not achieved by stringing together nonsequiters and by spelling badly. No, indeed. Bad writing is achieved by people who think they are doing GREAT writing! You must convince yourself that you are writing the most overwhelmingly great prose that has ever been committed to the blank page...and then write, man, write! And let the World decide afterward whether or not it is truly BAD writing.

It takes confidence and determination to do this. Just ask William Shatner.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Apache
Date: 30 May 03 - 10:53 AM

Am I God?

For many years I have wondered if I am God. I think I am but many people don't. Never mind. I believe that I am God because I can perform miricales, I can turn tractors into fields, I can pull a rabbit out of a hat (if I can stuff the little bastard in there first). I'm bigger than Jesus and you all know it, so worship me.

NB: This is not supposed to be me being big headed, it's an example of bad writing.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:04 AM

Do you aspire to great feats of literary endeavor in the writing of prose, poetry, poems, plays, books, ad copy or other written material of a literary nature? WSSOBA* now offers a subsidiary course in the techniques and technicalities of inspired and inspiring writing of language in addition to our traditional courses. The WSSOBW**, the newest offshoot of the tree of knowledge and wisdom emmanating from the godlike inspiration of our founder patron will uplift and raise you to new heights of elucidation. Send $75*** to the number on your screen NOW! Don't ...miss... the chance of a ...lifetime!

*William Shatner School of Bad Acting

** William Shatner School of Bad Writing


***non refundable. No Canadian funds accepted. 60% surcharge on bounced checks

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:12 AM

What do you mean, no Canadian funds accepted? This school is a fraud, in no way would Bill go for this, he is a true blue Canadian, living in L.A. and everything.


"There is something going on here, I can feel it. Ever since we landed, I have had this sense that --"
"That someone is watching us?"
"No, more like someone -- or some THING is playing us, like we were musical instruments. Don't you think it is odd that we just happened to start arguing, right at the moment when --"
"Captain, sorry to interrupt, but I'm getting strange readings --"
"I knew we should have banned that Open Poetry night on Deck 5!!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: HuwG
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:22 AM

It had been a long night, the sort of long night that leaves you with Rosie the Riveter working on piece-rates inside of your skull, and a taste in your mouth like the garbage men held a wake there. It was the sort of long night that left me not wanting to do anything with the morning except wait for Rosie to knock off. So I didn't need a dame to knock on the door like the Mighty Mo firing an Veterans' Day salute and then sail in through the door and announce, "Sorry, your door was open. May I come in?". Especially I didn't need dames with a figure like hers, which was that of a pin-up, for Greenpeace.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Apache
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:36 AM

So was mine bad?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:42 AM

Bloody MARVELOUS!!!

I was wondering when we'd get a Mike Hammer type of thing...what would us gumshoes do without all these hardheaded dames who need a case solved by a hardheaded man that ain't afraid to use a gat or down a stiff drink even when he's starin' down the barrel of a smokin' .45? "Pour me another one, Jimmy. The night's only gettin' started."

I think I'll put together an anthology of this stuff later, and wow the literary world.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:46 AM

bad? or Ba-a-ad? or baa-aa-aa'd? The first is indicitive of negatory excellence in writing achievment; while the second is a term meaning the oppisete in street slang among selected groupings of particular ethnicity;especially urban youth. The tertiary term is most commonly found among scattered and usually isolated rements of population that derive from sheep-herding economic factors.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 May 03 - 12:19 PM

Our various Blake Madison threads were perhaps the ne-plus-ultra of this kind of writing. yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 03 - 12:24 PM

Blake Madison? Hmmmm. Gotta look it up.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 30 May 03 - 07:09 PM

Been away for a day - trying to catch up with the thread. Lots of reading to do, so might take a couple of weeks before I get to the head of the queueueueueueueue!
Blue Clicky to the William McGonagall poems BLICKY generally regarded s the worst poet ever (in the english language).
Quack!
Geoff the (tardy) Duck.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Donuel
Date: 30 May 03 - 07:59 PM

Front row and center in the middle of Swan Lake I watched her arch her leg ever so effortlesly, like a dog at a hydrant.

......................

Three year old Dean says
"I Buzz lightyear, to ifinity and beyond".

If you interrupt his reality twist.
he'll get mad.

Its so cute.

The warm wonderful world of pretend
is a refuge even for grown up adults.

And they get mad
if you interrupt their reality.

No matter what
the facts are.

Its so sad.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 30 May 03 - 08:16 PM

It's that wire that no one sees but draws us to the magician's hand.

It's the true north that mysteriously keeps our needle pointing one way.

One day we hear the jangle, the strum of an E chord, the tip-of-a-hat in a G run, or the one-man-band of a fingerstyle song and we're never the same. We wander through life with a different song in our mind.

We notice everything guitar—-of course in sound on the radio and in recording-—but also the physical presence of the guitar. In the background scenery of a movie set, in a commercial on TV, we'll notice the guitars. If we walk into a strange place and there happens to be a guitar in the room, little else occupies our mind.

It calls our attention like an overheard conversation that sounds more interesting than the one in which we're currently engaged. "Oh, excuse me. Did you say something?"

Maybe it's the sound that hooks us first but almost simultaneously we're drawn to the guitar as a work of art. Curiously, in the horizontal position we view it as a practical tool to make our music. But we view it as art in the vertical—resting on its heel, that perfect balance, that anthropomorphic symmetry. Proof? --the guitar tester's dance-- you know the one. You've seen it and you've done it. Play a riff, a chord, a song, and as that final strum is cast…we pick it up, left hand still holding the neck, right hand on the end pin…and we do that graceful pirouette 'til we're face to face with the guitar and the sound it's making. Eyes take in the beauty from peg to bridge. Then the grin…

…..Fred, meet Ginger.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 30 May 03 - 09:01 PM

Maybe I've got no taste, but I don't see that last one as bad writing.

But then maybe I've got just a tad of prejudice on the subject discussed.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: khandu
Date: 30 May 03 - 10:58 PM

Horace Wigley, the Public Latrine Inspector, ran naked through the lobby of the Bijou ("White Heat" was playing), shouting, "I am more like I am tonight than I was when I was like what I was like what I was before!"
As the police carried him away, Constable Homer Buford remarked to the other officers about the tatoo of a naked midget wearing a top-hat on Horace's thumb...

At the same moment, three blocks away, Linus McGivney stood in front of the local brothel screaming, "My God, the Women are spitting on my shoes!" Linus wore no shoes...only a top hat.

At the same moment, Gene Andrews, the no-necked garage mechanic, awoke to find himself dead. There was a look of boredom on his face as though he had non-chalantly died bored. There was a top hat in the leather chair beside his bed...

Thirty minutes later, God awakened from a deep slumber and asked the recently deceased Earl Pinbrook, "Where is my top hat?"

k

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 03 - 11:33 PM

John Hardly, that is GOOD writing. You is in the wrong thread, sucka!!! Or maybe you are just incapable of bad writing...

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: HuwG
Date: 31 May 03 - 09:54 AM

Hello, Godot. Nice to see you. Are you doing anything for the next couple of hours ?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 05 Jun 03 - 11:11 AM

Well! Mudcat is back, and I still haven't caught up on this thread. I copied the page to my hard drive so that I could read it at leisure whilst the cat was down. Suddenly we are up and running again after about 4 days instead of the 10 Max promised. I should have had another 6 days to get to this posting - Oh blow!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jun 03 - 04:23 PM

(Heavy RAP soundtrack batters the ear, as...) "ACTION LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!" (SCREECH!!!! CRASH! BOOOOM!!!) "KEANU REEVES LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE!" (split-second shot of expressionless face in sunglasses...ZZZZAPPP! BLAM!!!) "FIGHT SCENES LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!" (except in the last 150 or so movies...) (BAD-DAM! BANG! POW!) "MATRIX RECANTED IS A MIND-BOGGLING ASSAULT ON THE SENSES..." (true...) "A DIZZYING FREEFALL INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF VIOLENCE..." (and stupidity) "...THAT WILL LEAVE YOU BREATHLESS..." (if you don't give up and go outside to get some peace and quiet before it's over) "...AND BEGGING FOR MORE!!!" (...more good taste in movies...). "DON'T MISS THIS ONE ON THE BIG SCREEN!~ MATRIX RECANTED PUTS THE 'ACK!' IN ACTION!!!" (Heavy RAP soundtrack ends suddenly in mid-thump and screech, nailing you to your seat...get ready for next f**king obnoxious trailer to begin in about 1 millisecond from now...)

Bleaugh! Want a lucrative career in bad writing AND bad music? Do scripts for Hollywood movie trailers.

p.s. "Matrix Reloaded" is an overblown piece of garbage. Don't see it.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 05 Jun 03 - 04:45 PM

Kavanagh wasn't referring to the tart as clay, at all. The clay references only the mysterious dichotomy in human existence, the "art and soul" of living, symbiotically related to, but simultaneously to be sheltered safely from, all issues material to the corporeal dwelling. There is no tint of judgment or condescension whatsoever. Cluin ingeniously referred us to Donne, and Donne provides the clue: "Now all the parts built up, and knit by a lovely soul, now but a statue of clay, and now these limbs melted off, as if that clay were but snow;" In other words, Kavanagh had merely failed to protect his soul and his art, nothing more grave than that, but with devastating consequences.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jun 03 - 06:17 PM

Prepare yourself for an experience beyond the ordinary, beyond the surreal, beyond your most extreme expectations in this extraordinary exhibit of the postmodern visual arts by the legendary Kant Drawurthadam, the most avante-garde artist in all of Europe...if not the entire World. His bold new use of vibrant colours and savage lines literally leaps off the canvas at the viewer, transporting one into vistas of as yet undreamt-of vastness, disturbing the senses, undermining moral structures, and inducing hypertension on a molecular scale! Kant Drawurthadam has tossed aside all art conventions in his search for inner truth, plumbing the depths of his own tortured psyche and sparing himself nothing in this brutally honest expose of the mores and foibles of our time. When I first saw his art, I was struck speechless. I have recovered enough now to tell you this...don't miss this showing! Be there. Nothing more need be said.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,A fan...
Date: 06 Jun 03 - 01:54 PM

The 35th Marrisonade

Behold the verdant meadow!
Spilling its seeds in incomprehensible riot
Over the fair flanks of quiescent virgin
Niobes of orgiastic splendour.
Soft!
There comes a footfall
As of some fabled spirit queen
Her tresses unloosed to the rising shaft
Of dawn!
"Methinks," cries the bard, "the game is afoot!"
And was it merely yesterday that we knelt
You and I
Amid these primordial splendours
Our senses tickled by the bleating
Of distant farm animals
Our nostrils bedecked with the pollinated
Effulgence of the marrisonade
Our hearts as one
Engulfed in the puissant aroma
Of eros?
Nay! 'Twas an eon ago, or two
'Twas an epoch past
A space in time
A pause in creation
Upon whose naked limbs rested
The very grasp of all that is real
And all that is...a passing dream.

- a 1997 poem by Malcolm Buggeroll, the "Poet of the Highlands"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Jun 03 - 02:09 PM

John Hardly, THAT should be on Aine's Mudcat stories page! WEll-done, for real, beautifully done!
***************************************************************

The dog which was a dull brown sat in the brown dirt of the long road, the one just off the main highway down Soldier's Way and scratched hisself. He had a passel of fleas and they was all brown, too. Well, the dead ones was red filled up with his blood they'd been suckin' on. Ya ever heard the fat filled up ones pop? Ya git 'em just between yer fingernails like this and squish the suckers. They make a nasty little pop best sound in the world 'cause it's one last one what cain't bite me. Anyhows, that brown dog, well maybe he was more yeller, was itchin' something awful. Last time I went by he's still there, still scritchin'. Thet's why he was kicked out and left there. Ain't none of them wannna be with a mangy yeller itchy, scratchy son of a bitch. They might be bitches, too but they's got standards and none of 'em'll have a hang-dog for a beau!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 06 Jun 03 - 05:12 PM

WARNING: Contains rude words and innuendo.

Meanwhile, several nautical miles behind the Salty Mouth, the prow of the Shagghappy Sharon plunged rythmically in and out of the briny deep. Her skipper has been secretly commissioned by the admiralty to hunt down the crew of ladyboys and eradicate them, thus ridding the fleet, pride of Brittania, of impure seamen.
The admiralty's appointment of Elzevere Black as captain had been unanimous: when asked to fill in the questionnaire, Captain Black had deftly stepped outside and felled the doorman with a left cross. He listed as his hobbies 'hurting' and 'shagging.' At the end of his left arm, just for effect, was a hook which he held in his hand which was tucked up his sleeve.
"How is your first name spelled?" the clerk had asked.
"Elzevere: B-A-S-T-A-R-D ... Elzevere."
Onboard Sharon, two figures were silhouetted matt black against a bad moon rising.
"Keep yer distance, Billy," gruffly spake the captain. "I feel in me bones a change in the weather. A storm is on the horizon."
"Where be that, Cap'n?"
"Where the sky loves the sea."
"Where be that, Cap'n?"
"At the world's edge, Billy."
"Where be ..."
"Over there, you dim fucker," roared the captain, pointing with his false appendage. "Black clouds and thunderbolts ... what are you, blind ... Pew, was that you?"
"Oops."
"Tis a storm a-brewin," said Black. "Have ye ever bin tossed on the high sea, Billy?"
"No, Cap'n, but I bin blown ashore."
The wind gets up and the captain whips out his spyglass and pulls it out to its full length. Far to the east the lights of a sleepy coastal town flicker through the blackness. The captain lowers his scope and smiles at Billy.
"We'll put in for the duration, Billy."
"Ooo, lovely."
A ship is spotted off the port bow. Spotted ships are uncommon even now, but were rare indeed in those days. "There's a Frenchie a-followin' us Billy. I've a partik'ler dislike fer Frenchies."
"I'd quite like one myself," sez Billy.
"There may be trouble -- where's me buccanneers?"
"They're on the sides o' yer buckin' 'ed, Cap'n."
"Muster the lads, Billy."
"Erm ..."
"Get the fuckers up here."
"Right, ahoy there, tally-ho."
"You wasn't brought up on the sea was you, Billy?"
"Actually no, sir. I fell off the quayside pissed about a week since. When I woke up I was aboard this ship two miles off St. Hild's at Hartlepool. I spent the first day blowing chunks, but now I'm getting more used to it."
"When I wants yer life story Billy, we'll break out the accordion an' set it to music. Now, set the mains'el"
"Erm ..."
"Shite, just go an make some tea." Black struts up to the hatch and bellows below.
"Haul it up here, Plunger me lad!"
Plunger Plunkett appears on deck complete with red bandana and blue stripey shirt.
"Aye, aye, Cap'n!"
"Why you dressed like a puff?"
"It's me pullin' gear Cap'n. I heard we was goin' ashore and foreign ladies do lust for me in this garb."
"They must be fuckin' desperate, Plunger. What you hiding down there?" said the captain, again with the appendage pointing.
"Nothing sir."
"Ah, so that's where the nickname comes from ..."
The ship lurches suddenly to the port side and the crew get excited, whirling their cutlasses and other sharp things in the air. They are upon the French ship before you can say "Alors, maintenent pour un spot de l'aggro!"
"Swing 'er into the wind an' we'll ram 'er amidships!" shouts Black, and the boys brace for battle.
"Tea everyone!" sez Billy, and the helmsman is hard put to swerve the ship to one side.
"No sugar in mine," sez Plunkett. "Shall we disengage for tea, Cap,'n?"
"Of course, no wait ... gunner Griswald, thump a couple of balls into her."
"Ooo, lovely, that should make her scream."
"He's very common that Griswald isn't he?" said Black. "I would have to consider him for promotion if you weren't all already Class-A wankers."
"Soon fix that though, hey Cap'n?"
"Ah, yes. Helmsman, tack about fifteen degrees to starboard."
"Erm ..."
"Turn right for fuck's sake. Oh, look. The Frenchies are sinking. Good. Time to reward ourselves with a night of horizontal refreshment I think."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Jun 03 - 11:30 PM

LMAO, BPL!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 12:11 AM

Little Hawk, I loved your movie preview.

I rarely go to movies. They make me motion sick. But when I do, I don't go in until the previews are over, because they are the most discombobulating form of film there is.

Peter T: I loved your contribution about the smells and the accountant!

I wish I could write as badly as you guys. Sigh.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 02:55 AM

While Nick walked through the little stretch of meadow alongside the stream, trout had jumped high out of water. Now as he looked down the river, the insects must be settling on the surface, for the trout were feeding steadily all down the stream. As far down the long stretch as he could see, the trout were rising, making circles all down the surface of the water, as though it were starting to rain.
"Fuckin' rain," muttered Nick as he broke down his rod and turned around to go home.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 07:42 AM

It's not original, but I submit a sample of one of a very common form of bad writing, the almost-meaningless prose that pads books of art history.

"In luminist landscapes, measure confines natural elements within an ideational order. This order operates both across the surface and in depth. As in classic art, mathematical and geometric correlations predominate over natural irregularities. Luminist measure, imposing an absolute order on reality, gives specificity to the ideal. Thus the categories of the real and ideal are recipically tempered. Quantification affects every aspect of luminist art; structure, form, tone, light are all subject to the subtlest discretions of calculated control. These minute and economic discriminations release poetic rather than cerebral effects."

FYI, luminist landscapes are the grand landscape paintings of the mid-to-late 19th C., such as works by Frederick Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt. There is nothing particularly "measured" about them.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 04:42 PM

The weather outside the mansion had passed from a gray, ponderous mist to a cacophonous downpour that, despite the violence of its assault on the moors and fens, gained no surcease from the torment innate in its bilious complexion. Lord Marsden was wakened from troubled slumber by a cough of thunder, and realized with a start that the physician was still in the bedroom, somberly tending to little Penelope. Her wan features had taken on the glowing translucence of an angel in these last stages of the consumption, and Marsden was again struck by the resemblance to his late wife who had passed on in the act of giving Penelope life. "Father," the tiny voice called out from some realm where heaven and earth met and mingled. "Father, are you there?"

"Yes my little Darling," Marsden choked, kneeling by the bed and taking her tiny, chilly fingers in his large hand. "Father...am I dying?" said Penelope, her eyes suddenly clear and innocent as she posed the question. "Why, of course not, Dearest!" He whispered, involuntarily turning to gaze at Dr Fitzhibbing, who had turned his bearded face away, the more discreetly to touch a tear from his haggard cheek.

"But Father...I thought I saw Mother at the foot of the bed, dressed in a white robe. She said I was to come with her to Heaven, but that first I should tell you that she still loves you. And that she will be able to care for me now," said Penelope. Marsden opened his lips to reassure his daughter, but his quavering tongue failed in its service. A knock at the door announced the arrival of Reverend Williams, who silently took his place by the deathbed. For a moment the pretty child was silent, her eyes closed as if in the last rapture of mortality, but then she again spoke to her father. "Father, please don't be so sad. Although I had so wanted to ride my pony Billy once more by the bank of the Tanner, where the birds make such lovely music. Promise me that you will go and tarry there and think of me." Marsden could hold back the tears no longer and they fell in profusion down his cheeks. "I promise, my sweetest Darling" he choked.

Again she fell silent, the rain now lashing the window panes as Marsden, the Reverend, and the physician held vigil. The ticking of the clock on the oaken mantle seemed to remind them of the fleeting nature of man's transient existence. Then Penelope's rosebud mouth parted, and she spoke quite loudly. "Oh Father, promise me that you will feed the young robins who were orphaned in the nest outside my window. They have no else to care for them now." Marsden touched her wan cheek, gasping "yes, my angel." Outside the window, the tree in which the tiny nestlings huddled swayed in the wind and rain. The child's eyes then opened and she smiled, her eyes taking on a distant yet warm gaze. "Yes, Mother," she said, "I will go with you now. But first a kiss for my dear Father..." and he gently kissed her a final goodbye. She sank peacefully back into the pillows, whispering "don't worry, Father. Mother and I shall wait for you in Heaven." Then her eyes fluttered, she gave a soft sigh, and her tiny hand fell limp on the coverlet. As if acknowledging her ascendance to a gentler realm, the rain and wind suddenly ceased, and a small ray of the November sun found its way through the window, falling on the child's peaceful face.

"Despair not, Marsden. She now dwells in a far better place than this," said Reverend Williams. Then the world around them was flooded with sunshine. And in the silence, Marsden heard the faint chirping of the baby nestlings outside.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 04:56 PM

Poem by Donald H. Rumsfeld (affectionally known as Rummy).
This poem by Rummy (really!) will appear in "The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld, due out this month, compiled and edited by Hart Seely.

Lyr. Add: (No, Lyr. Delete): Saddam-i-am!

I do not like Saddam-i-am!
I do not like that man, Saddam!
Would you like him with inspectors?
Would you like him with defectors?
Would you like him with no chemicals,
Which mens no
wartime epidemic-als?
Not with inspectors,
not with defectors!
Not with Islam, not with Iran.
I do not like Saddam-i-am!
I want regime change for that man!

Seely commends Rummy for blending irony with a cowboy sensibility and calls him America's poet lariat.
(Will Rogers is spinning in his grave)

From a column in the Los Angeles Times- Washington Post News Service, by Carole Goldberg.

And a little haiku by him:

Needless To Say

Needless to say,
The president was correct
Whatever it was he said.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 07:53 PM

LeeJ!! A Master has Returned!!! Bravo!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 07 Jun 03 - 10:10 PM

She was the kind of woman who would cook tortillas and eggs on the campfire in a blackened skillet for you. She was the one the other guerillas called La Hermana del Diablo, because she would split a man's skull with the same skillet she had just fried his eggs in. She was an easy woman to make love to, but difficult to sleep with because she could become angry over the lovemaking and try to kill you. She could disassemble a carbine with one hand and put it back together with the other. She bore grudges. She cared deeply about abstract concepts. She could mend a man's socks, but refused to do so.

He had not long been out of the University, where he had become bored and been expelled for performing accurate and degrading impressions of the Dean. He had been homesick for the cold trout streams of his native Idaho, but he could not return because of the warrant. He had ridden a freight car to New York City, where he had learned brutal lessons working on the docks. He carried several inches of a broken grappling hook in his forearm from the time he had laughed at the kilted Scots sailor. He had written one good story and two bad ones, one of the bad ones seeing publication in a Chicago pulp monthly. It was the story of Pedro, a boy who had been killed in Pamplona when he missed the entrance for the toilet and stumbled into the bullring. He felt the poor story had betrayed the boy. In the same way, a wrong turn had landed him in Spain. For a long time he had missed the blond girl. The novel his friends thought he was writing was merely a series of letters imploring her to take him back. When the drinking became too much, he had gone to Spain.

On the morning of the ambush, he had surprised her by the river where she had gone to fetch water. He had looked away from her, stripped off his canvas trousers, and dived into the stream. It had been shallower than he had guessed, and he had been knocked unconscious by a rock. He awoke to find her kneeling by him, naked. The sun had been shining when they began to make love, but he soon felt drops of rain on his back. When they went back to the camp, she fashioned a crude bandage for him from an old corset. Later, during the ambush, he had performed well, and afterwards she had moved into his tent with her skillet.

(this is too much fun)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Jun 03 - 12:32 AM

she fashioned a crude bandage for him from an old corset. Later, during the ambush, he had performed well one wonders just what the bandage was for and if it had anything to do with him performing well!

hehehehehe

She didn't know where he'd come from. She was on the beach. She looked down and there he was. She didn't have her clothes on. They were at the edge of the water where she was scrubbing them. She looked down and there he was, naked like her. She climbed on top of him. She climbed on top of him and rode like the wind. Then her back was against the sandy beach and he rode like the wind. It was all very confusing as there was no wind that night. She still liked him though and decided to take him back to her headquarters. She took him back with her where her iron skillet hung. She thought it might fit his head very well.

(it IS fun!)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Jun 03 - 10:17 AM

man, yous gize are ambitious. And funny.

I'd post more but its like that ship done sailed up a creek without a paddle in some water that long since ran over the bridge....or under the dam.....

......the torpedos.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: JenEllen
Date: 08 Jun 03 - 06:12 PM

So there I went, crazy-mad in love again but looking for the door, the tentflap from triage,
the hole in the yurt that led to the freedom of the grasslands. When had love become that tight corset of
choking passion? It wasn't that I didn't love enough, I loved it all, I was a frying pantheist.

Tonight the stars will come out in the darkening, hiding the skidmarks that the planes
make across the sky like the dark hides the skidmarks in his wadded pants by the river, and
he'll grin at me with all the power of the waning sun and he'll talk, trying to explain the meaning of
life like I don't already know. "Hey baybee, it's like Goethe and Charlie Parker, you know.
It takes hands to wash hands, girlie-doodle. You got to give to receive..." and I'll ask him
if he wants some eggs......

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Jun 03 - 10:30 PM

I had a thought, a splendid thought, that I must share with the world. But then I forgot it. What the hell. The world wouldn't care anyway. Outside the wind was howling. No, not the wind. It was my dog. The yellow one with the evil eye. He had a bad case of ringworm. I knew what that was like. I eyed the .303 that hung over the mantelpiece. It was oily, shiny, and cold. Just like my heart. She should not have left me, but she did. Women are like that. I didn't care. I was a man. A man has things he's got to do that only a man can understand. Well, some men, I guess. Woody Allen...maybe not. I don't give a damn about Woody Allen. The rifle was still on the wall. Silent. Blueing and oiled wood stock. It stared back at me. What the hell. There's not much use arguing with a gun, specially when you've got a fish to catch. I pushed the whiskey bottle away with a grimace. It fell on the floor, but didn't break. Too bad. I like the sound of breaking glass. It somehow liberates me. It's like blood when you cut yourself shaving. You see that blood and you know that it's real. Just as real as the smell of the sea when I stepped out the door. I made my way down the shingle to the beach. The sea was as gray as a nun's diary. I looked at the boat. It was old, leaky, and needed a paint job, but it would do. I got in and cast off. Khan was out there somewhere, waiting, and I was coming for him, and there was no way around it. He knew it and I knew it. It was only a matter of time.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 08 Jun 03 - 10:43 PM

a "frying pantheist"?! "The sea was as gray as a nun's diary"!?

That's the kind of crap that could easily win this contest!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Jun 03 - 11:08 PM

Every time I thought about Jason Burke I got a hot flash that started way "down under" and worked its way straight up to my curling iron. He was undeniably hot, but he was so insufferable. I couldn't stand the man. Still, I couldn't get him out of my mind either. The way he stroked his chin while dictating memos...it used to just paralyze me. I guess he probably figured I was just lousy at taking dictation. Still, he had kept me on, and that was what really made me wonder about Jason Burke. There was hardly one fucking middle management type left in this damn city who still gave dictation for Christ's sake, but Jason did. And to me. Why didn't he just type short, badly-spelled emails with no proper punctuation, like the rest of them did. Why dictate letters? And why to me? Was it because he was a perfectionist or because he was simply old-fashioned? He didn't strike me as the old-fashioned type. A guy who handles conference calls to businessmen in four different cities while playing squash and swallowing live sardines is not what I would call old-fashioned.

There was one possibility that I could not resist considering. Maybe I was the reason Jason Burke dictated those letters. It was an intriguing notion, and one that I meant to get to the bottom of by hook or by crook, by fair means or foul. I checked my lip gloss one more time. Not bad. Lock and load, baby...

* I hesitate to sign this as LH. Just call me "Violet Haize" instead.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jun 03 - 12:38 PM

By the way, LEJ, the story you wrote about the little girl dying is the most nauseating piece of crap in this entire thread. Bravo! You deserve a gold star for that one. It sounds like a great many dreadful stories of the same ilk written in the Victorian Age.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: HuwG
Date: 09 Jun 03 - 07:38 PM

"Fire!" barked Kimelsen, and with that, the primary projectors of his flagship vented forth their awesome power, an incandescent cascade of pure energy which no force in the universe could withstand, sending their terrifying bolts of power towards the helpless pirate vessels cowering before the approach of the hellish bolts of incredibly intense radiation.

"Damn!" snarled Kimelsen. "Missed!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 09 Jun 03 - 08:45 PM

Yes, I agree Littlehawk. Some of the most incredibly bad horseshit I have produced, which is saying something. I actually got a tear in my eye while writing it, but it may have been pain rather than sentiment.

I have to admit a certain susceptibility to that kind of sentimental garbage. I can read a scene like that, or sit through Nell's death scene in A Christmas Carol for example, knowing full well that it is an obvious contrived effort to pluck my heartstrings, and still tear up like an idiot. I have developed an immunity to bad sentimental poetry though, as well as music. I think it's the ridiculous rhymes that the poets are forced to use that break the spell. I mean the poems by people like Edward Arlington Robinson, or the kind you see in the local newspaper that some housewife or plumber was moved to compose.

He was just 16 and way too young
To die in an awful wreck
But he did not see the curve ahead
so he crashed and broke his neck
And we were all sad when we heard the news
It struck a terrible chord
Until we realized he was heaven bound
And now lives with the Lord

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 09 Jun 03 - 09:04 PM

He arrived in town unnoticed under cover of mediocrity. He did not "blow into town on a strong wind" – his personality was so devoid of substance that wind (strong or otherwise) could not have found purchase. The choices of his life could be described by one word – "safe". He might have been in town for weeks spreading his particularly gray charm to nobody.

Suddenly his world changed.

A full twelve inches of blue-black hair sat crookedly atop a face with skin made taut by the upward force of the huge tortoise shell combs that the foot-high coiffure required, and the downward pull of the immense turquoise and silver earrings that dangled from well-expanded holes in her ear lobes. It may be safe to assume that the earrings were originally a cowboy's belt buckles enjoying a second life as jewelry.

She jangled as she walked. She sparkled. She was a flashlight bulb stuck into a 220 outlet and she was shining way past capacity.

Their eyes met.

The void of his personality drew her to him. A force of nature. Irresistible. Suddenly the world achieved a balance never before dreamed of...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jun 03 - 11:16 PM

Wow. The mind boggles. "Suddenly, their eyes met across the crowded room..." (famous old Far Side cartoon in which ultimate male nerd meets ultimate female nerd at cocktail party)

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 09:05 AM

LEJ, little Nell does not die in A Christmas Carol. (Not much of a contribution, but hey, I am rushed at the moment). yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 09:45 AM

LEJ:

Mastery extended to the medicore!! You sure you aren't moonlighting as a housewife-plumber?

JohnH:

Wow!! Impressive indeed!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 09:48 AM

A Christmas Carol
c. Charles Dickens 1843
revised 2003 Little Charlie Dickins.

overview:
Scrooge, Marley, Kratchet and the rest of the boys are drivin' home from the barn dance. Christmas Eve. They've been drinkin'. They see what appears to be a ghost in the road. In their attempt to avoid the ghost, they run their truck off the road and run over a little girl.

Yeah. Nell dies in this one.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 10:47 AM

It wasn't the booze. It wasn't the blue-steel smell of a well-oiled .38. It wasn't the pheremones in the summer air, thick as Spanish sweat in the summernight simmer of a city too familiar with sinning. It wasn't even the teeth-grinding screech of bad brakes from a thousand dissonant taxicabs that made Sevilla die that night. It was her goddamned double crossing luminsecent Gardol smile, really, that did her in, finally -- that two-timing fluorescent cheapskate imitation of sunlight oozing out of the dark corners of her pusillanimous soul. That's why she died. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 11:59 AM

That is LOVELY, Amos! Encore! Encore!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 12:37 PM

Than yew kindly, dear sir. I am disinclined to get too much practice writing badly. It is hard enough to avoid in the ordinary course of things!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 12:51 PM

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! (Gasp!)

Bravo, Amos! What a beginning...

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 06:00 PM

OK Peter, you know the one I'm talking about, Scrooge's sister that died giving birth to his nephew. It was Little somebody..Nan?..FAN! That's it! Ever notice in Dickens, any female who died tragically had to be pre-fixed with "Little"?

I like the capsule summary, JH. That could be a whole new thread subject...Movie of the Week Capsule summaries.

Moby Dick A crazy seacaptain seeks revenge on the whale that ate his leg, bringing catastrophe to his crew mates.

The Bible A supreme being creates all things. Hilarious hijinks ensue.

Macbeth A power hungry Scotsman will do anything to be King, including plotting with witches. He is haunted by the ghost of his friend, his wife commits suicide, and things get even worse when his castle is attacked by a herd of trees.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 06:17 PM

Careful, LeeJ, they PAY people to write that kind of thing for book covers, ya know? You could have another whole new career!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 06:32 PM

Amos,
Man, why did I even offer up my lame attempts when you write so horridly? I can only aspire to your depths.

Leej,
The Scarlet Letter Hot young eastern girl gets it on in period costume. You bought it for the author -- you enjoyed it for the sex.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 06:47 PM

Jane Eyre Sex-starved teacher moves in with married man. Mad wife, kept locked in attic, sets house aflame, perishes. True love prevails.

The Virginian They said "Go west" so he did and brought back this incredible tale of baby-swapping, madcap dancing, dead-eye shoot 'em ups and a smile to die for!

The Jungle Book
* You've seen Dances with Wolves
* You've read Women Who Run With the Wolves

Now read about the original Child of the Wolves, as Mowgli, orphan boy becomes one with a pack of jungle wolves. Don't miss out on his life and death struggle with a real live tiger and his touching friendship with a bear. Cross-species communication at its best!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 07:38 PM

The Old Curiosity Shop

Adolescent orphan Nell Trent escapes with her gambling-addicted, mentally infirm grandfather from the villainous "dwarf" Daniel Quilp, to whom the old man, obsessed with making Nell wealthy, has lost his money and his shop. Quilp and a host of other malevolent and benevolent characters track the pair's journey through urban, rural, and industrial England. When the good characters reach the peaceful hamlet where Nell and her grandfather have settled, Nell has just died, soon to be joined by her grief-stricken grandfather.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 07:55 PM

Amos
Sounds complicated, but if its got Angelina Jolie I'm there.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: LadyJean
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 11:56 PM

I thought my entry had caused the great Mudcat crash. I'm relieved to see there are so man worse ones. I know I'm not to blame.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 02:40 AM

"Heart of Darkness" - Deeply depressed white man takes deeply depressing and virtually endless trip down deeply depressing river in a very depressing part of Africa. Read it to the end and then hang yourself.

Rambo: First Blood - Inarticulate American Vietnam War vet takes on southern redneck cops in forest and kicks ass real good!

Subsequent Rambo movies - Inarticulate American Vietnam War vet takes on assorted foreigners and commies and kicks ass real good!

Rocky movies - Inarticulate Eyetie boxer takes on other boxers, yells "AAAYYYY-DRIENNNE!!!" real loud, and kicks ass real good!

Generic Charles Bronson movie - Almost completely non-articulate guy with poker face and really squinty eyes wreaks inescapable vengeance and certain death on the 35 guys who raped his wife repeatedly in his cabin/houseboat/condo/whatever.

This thread has definitely been hijacked.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 11:31 AM

The sun swept over the sleeping island that morning like a big flashlight climbing from the sea. It peered through the cracks in the shutters where Too'da'mi-mani lay sleeping. It tickled the sodden brains of the fat white men on their boat, lying at anchor in the bay, who turned over and went back to building hangovers. It crawled across the soft white sands of the long beach on the eastern side of the island, it being morning, where only the night before Cara Pu'a'lu'aiani had found love at the hands of a stranger. But no-one suspected that the old, familiar constant sun would this day shine on an explosive tragedy which would, in the course of things, change all their lives, some for the worse.

(pardon me while I beat a hasty retreat to the Ceramic Repository.....)


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Castor
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 12:49 PM

Can the entry be one you heard from a Mudcatter? I hope I remember this correctly:

"All things being equal, you could say that Fred Dooley was having the worst day of his life. At least that's what the folks speeding by on the rural route 'tsk-tskd' to themselves as they drove by Fred, his tractor idling in the hayfield as he straddled the irrigation ditch and threw up what appeared to be biscuits and a skillet full of red-eye gravy.

Fren was gone. Town being what it was, everyone knew only shortly after Fred did. She drove off in her little truck, with the "Save a horse-Ride a cowboy" sticker in the window, and her AquaNet and Harlequin novel in the jockey-box right next to the lucky shaker she used to salt the beer she bought at the drive-thru liquor barn. Fred thought about that and shrugged his shoulders against a set of dry heaves that registered at least a 7.9.

He'd gotten an early atart that morning to try and escape memories of Fern. She'd always cooked his breakfast in the pre-dawn hours, listening to Hank Nelson reading the farm report on the radio. Fred knew Fern had a thing for Hank--just the sound of his voice on the radio was enough to make Fern shimmy out of her bathrobe and lay Fred on the table. Many's the breakfast that went uneaten to the tune of:
"Hogs is up" (oooooooh!)
"Cows is down" (mmmmmmm!)
"An' chickens is just fine like they is." (oh YESSSSSSS!)

But Fred never thought Fern would actually pack up and go off to the big city to find Hank. Fred'd woken up at the usual time, but after looking at his kitchen, decided to skip both breakfast and the farm report in order to get an early start on the day.

The thing those early morning passers-by never knew was that Fred wasn't losing his cookies over Fern, that feeling had passed with the sight of her tail-lights hitting the freeway. Oh no. Fred had simply discovered the reasoning behind the old addage: "Make hay while the sun shines"--for in those few tractoring minutes before dawn, Fred had accidentally baled a skunk.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST, heric
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 12:53 PM

The Perfect Storm - . . . .


Into Thin Air - People climb mountain with headaches.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 02:03 PM

If wishes were horses, well, the horsepower generated by the collective wishes of all present should have been enough to move a mountain. But mountains don't move that easily. In fact, mountains don't move at all. Well, except volcanos -- if you include volcanos then mountains do move. More accurately, they blow their tops, so I guess in actuality, though they achieve a state of motion (blowing their tops) they still don't actually move. For instance, I doubt that I'd ever see Pike's Peak suddenly appear in Indiana -- no matter how much horsepower wishes could generate. But I digress...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 02:08 PM

oh yeah,

The Name Of The Rose
Umberto Eco

Sherlock Holmes dons monks robes - solves crimes, drags Church kicking a screaming out of the middle ages.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 10:06 PM

Shoo fly, don't you bother me. I am here playing a sad melody on the piano and wondering where the hell can he be tonight. Talk about a jagged love affair. Shit. It seems as if I might as well have an affair with the fly. "Hey fly, come on back." Ah, I do delight myself when I need to.
I smell something burning in the kitchen and it smells charred and black. I guess I'll contemplate that while I take a hit of this wine. Oh fuck it., I'm going to polish off this bottle of wine.
I told him earlier tonight that crossing his fingers doesn't count when it comes to lying to me. I said, "You can fool yourself, but I don't want to be fooled no more."
Looks like smoke pouring out of the oven door. Now I know what's burning in the kitchen. It's that big old hunk of swine I threw in the roaster. "That's your dinner honey." I think I'll let it cook awhile more.

Peace. Rustic, loving all the stories in this thread. What a mix of talented people.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 11:38 PM

Amazing what a bottle of wine will do, isn't it?? :>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 11:49 PM

She strode through the still-dark halls, her sweeping gown trailing on the cold slate stones, sending small motes of dust from two centuries of royal banquets swirling upward behind her toward the fifteen-foot high ceilings.   On the benches along the walls, louts slept loudly. She stepped through the hall and out intothe chill pre-dawn gray of another dawn rising over Acquitaine. Her lip trembled with the passion rising in her, and the disdain she felt for the brutal men who dominated her life, from the crude louts asleep on the stones within, to the harsh father who demanded her complete acquiescence to his every idiotic scheme, to the scores of lustful and greedy suitors who came to win her name and title in marriage.

She scorned them all!! She alone had the vision to see that only one course of action -- conquering the heart of the hand that ruled England -- would save her lands, her family, her legacy and her throne. She pounded on the stone wall from which she could see almost, she imagined, clear to the Channel where, she saw clearly, her destiny rose before her like a cold Atlantic mist. She must have her way with this struggling land. She must make the men of this court see the reason in her thinking! She must, she must, she must!

She pounded in anger and frustration on the parapet, grinding her tender white skin into the hard stone, and imagining it was her obstinate father's nose.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 12:19 AM

Yikes! Pretty classic stuff there, Amos. Adult fantasy reels under another cliche-ridden assault...

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 12:55 AM

Their souls collided like two freight trains on the fast track to oblivion. It was instant and explosive. It left them spent and exhausted and that was just in the parking lot. They'd come together meeting for the first time in person after Madame All Souls Found introduced them on her website, The Soul Finder of Love. Madam said they were old souls. Madam said they had been together many, many times, in different lifetimes, of course. And, now, so here they were, soulmates...so stunned neither could get up from the pavement for a moment or two.

Then, it was as though they melded into one, one heart, one mind, one soul, they were paired, entwined, embraced, ensnared, entangled, each with the other until they were a blur of motion, pure motion, separating only long enough to check in at the motel.

"Oh, Rodney!" she cried.
"Oh, Georgina!" he cried back at her.

As he opened the door to their room, the setting sun illuminated the shabby room, turning it to a Shangri-La gold,like a nugget of miner's gold all shined up, glowing with warmth and golden rays of sunshine just like Shangri-La where their souls originally met. It shone as it had never done before on that room and they knew it was right, that they really were soulmates, entwined forever and ever in True Love's Embrace.

And the sign on the door read:
DO NOT DISTURB

courtesy of www.allsoulsfoundDOTcom

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:18 AM

Wow, KL, that's purdy bad all right! :>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:32 AM

Oh, No! There really IS a www.soulfinder.com! I'll have to change my story a bit! LOL!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 03:33 PM

I can't figger out a one/two paragraph way to poke fun at it, but...

...don't you hate the "Suspense Novels" that in every way set themselves up as a "whodunit", but then enter new, crucial evidence in the last page that, well, is just sorta cheating the game?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 04:00 PM

He squinted across the rolling valley floor, the wind and dust attacking his face in a series of gritty, burning bursts. The baleful heat of an early afternoon sun sent wavering illusions of motion into his brain from a vista in which nothing actually moved for mile upon baking, sun-drenched mile. He felt Thunderbolt sigh in protest, but he paid no attention; his eyes were riveted on a lonely stand of cottonwood brush that marked the sole source of water across the endless wasteland below him. He stared thoughtfully, noticing the brushwood bending with the breeze. Except for one detail, all seemed normal; but the brush was bending against the wind. He settled back in his worn saddle and reached for the Winchester rifle that hung from its side. The die had indeed been cast, and he was ready. He urged Thunderbolt into a slow lope down the long sloping flanks of the butte, the rifle ready across his lap, his steely gray eyes alert. He was ready. He would come out of this day alive. If he didn't, it wouldn't matter anymore anyway...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: John Hardly
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 04:37 PM

now justa doggone minnit.

Amos, that's not bad. That's wordy but accurate, and about the only cliche' is the horses' name. And it's compelling. Am I missing something?

Funny, but that's sorta why I posted the "Guitar" thing above. I had written it some time ago as part of a short story. Then I started reading more about writing (things like "Never use adjectives!....well almost never".). I've started to second guess myself, and I guess I'm not confident that I know good from bad anymore. I knew that, in a sorta good/sorta brutal way, if it was bad the mudcat would let me know -- and what better vehicle to find out than a thread that's supposed to be bad writing.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 07:48 PM

Well...I dunno, John...I kinda think of it as well-executed badnessm, if you know what I mean, being windy, somewhat romanticized, and above all, unreal. Sorry if I violated the Standards of the Thread!! :>)

The guitar piece? -- so good that the first time I read it, I roundly thanked the person who had sent it to me. Months and months later I sent it back as a reminder. It is downright good, no mistake. This thread is funny that way, it seems. It doesn't belong here, though!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 10:30 PM

All of the above named individuals have been striving with great effort to write badly. However, for a truly bad writer, such as myself, writing badly is completely effortless. I trained in it diligently over the course of 30 years in social work with public agencies, including three years as a policy specialist for a state Department of Welfare in which my primary job was to write state policy manuals based on federal regulations. In addition, I returned to graduate school when I was 40 years old, spending two years learning to write APA style so that I would know how to write a professional paper, perhaps for publication in a social work or public policy journal. Although my final drafts are no longer always perfect, as they were in the days when all of my writing was reviewed in team meetings prior to statewide distribution to field staff, my sentence structure, grammer and punctuation still tend to be quite good in the sense of being correct according to the Harbrace College Handbook that I used in those days. However, as I am sure is apparent to all who read this, my writing is very dry, cumbersome and uneccessarily wordy, and my spelling is not as good as it used to be.

And that's the truth!

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:10 PM

The aforementioned participant is acknowledged for her lon dedication to the obscure and genteel art of bad writing, with meritorious honors added in the Division of Bureaucratic Indirection, Subdivision of Polysyllabic Euphemisms. It remains to be seen however whether she is, herself, in contradistinction to the wide array of mechanical circuits aimed at administrative obfuscation, capable of writing badly without the aid of the aforementioned mechanisms. Although she is highly qualified as a Bad Writer within the hallowed ranks of Adminstrata, if she were to cast off those artifices and stand before us in all of her disencumbered glory, speaking as the private individual she has always been deep within, the distinct possibility raises itself for our due consideration that she might, by default and innate nature, find herself writing in a manner which can only be characterized as excellent. This, however, remains to be determined. We can only suggest in light of the positive potential so obviously apparent in the subject participant, that said determination should be scheduled at the earliest possible roundabout opportunity.

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:20 PM

Hah!

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 03 - 11:24 PM

Janie, you're being succinct. How do you expect to prove yourself as a bad writer if you go around saying in one word what should properly be said in eleven?

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 11:06 AM

What I meant to say was "Huh?" However, I do see that would be unacceptably brief. In addition, after rereading my first effort, I can see several areas in which I could do much better at writing badly, even poorly. For the present, let it suffice for me to rewrite the last sentence in the following manner:

"However, as I am sure is apparent to all who read this, my writing is very dry, cumbersome and uneccessarily wordy, even, perhaps, obtuse. Additionally, my ability to spell correctly without a spell-checker has diminished over the course of time, as my age has increased and I have gotten older."

If this is not bad enough to win the contest, please feel free to read nearly any post I have made to any thread. Surely one of them will qualify.

Now, when do I collect my prize?

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 01:23 PM

Ya know, I really spoke too fast. After going back and rereading the entire thread, I realize just how awful many of the submissions are.

It really kinda makes me mad, ya know? Here I am, a naturally bad writer, thinking I finally have a chance to shine at something, show my true talent, and make a name for myself on Mudcat. I mean, even though I read nearly all of the music threads, I rarely have anything to contribute to the threads (other than "Thanks, I didn't know that!") So I always feel like such a mudcat nobody.Well-that's not entirely true. I did once draw down a couple of very sick and nasty responses from our misogynistic Sincerely, Mr. G. and for a few glowing moments felt like I was really somebody in this community. Alas, the feeling soon faded as I observed thread after thread recede into obscurity after I posted to them. Well anyway, so here comes this thread, which I had avoided reading until now , because the subject is so very near and dear to me. Then I sez to myself, I sez "Aw shucks, Janie. Why not give it a try? This is after all, an area in which you really are quite talented. You might not win, but you have a good shot at placing." So I impulsively jumped in before I carefully analyzed the competition. Having done so, I now see that the really good, creative writers here are also better at being bad than am I. Life is just not fair. *sob*

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 02:25 PM

Janie:

Wow!! You really have a flair for this stuff!! I especially think your self-pitying inferiority rap is as bad as any I have seen on these threads. You are definitely a Contendah!! :>)

I dunno -- I feel I am losing perspective with this "bad stuff wins" spin on things. I'm feeling kinda torqued and disoriented. It is unnerving! On the other hand, I feel more comfortable writing for bad than I do writing for good. Maybe I was just boirn bad, eh? I dunno. All I can twell ya is it feels really weird.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 11:24 PM

Now Amos, you'll make me blush with all that praise.

It feels weird because it IS weird.

J>

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 03 - 11:57 PM

That makes a lot of sense, Janie!! Mebbe too much sense for a "bad writing" thread! Maybe it is just a curve which approaches weirdness asymptotically. Ya think?

This really is spinny stuff! LOL!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Janet Desmond-Hiller
Date: 14 Jun 03 - 05:42 PM

She awakened in the muggy heat of the darkened teepee, her head throbbing and fuzzy as a ball of cotton. Outside the muggy confines of the wigwam, primitive drums beat out an exotic rhythm. She heard heavy male voices speaking the native tongue of the Apache, loudly, as if in argument. Suddenly, the flap of the tent was torn open and the dark interior flooded with intense light. Instinctively, Rebecca gathered the shredded calico bodice to cover her ample bosom. Before her stood a tall, muscular Indian in full headdress. The hungry eyes in his dusky, handsome face seemed to devour her. "No...please!" She pleaded as he stealthily crept toward her, her heart beating like a thousand triphammers inside her. His hand reached out, slowly, gently taking her golden hair into the fingers. "Oom bato!" He said, a smile slowly disclosing his perfect teeth, which were set off by the darkness of his skin and his raven hair. She saw the large muscles bulging in his forearm like rippling cables beneath the skin. Taking her by her delicate hands, soft and fragrant from the many days she had spent luxuriating at her father's antebellum mansion in Baton Rouge, the dangerously handsome savage clasped her to his brawny chest. A chorus of angels sang to her to yield to his fiery indigenous embrace, while a gang of devils demanded that she fight! Fight like a wildcat!

Then his lips were on hers, his mouth surprisingly tender, and she felt her fears being forged into desire by the white hot fires of her passion. Without a word, he swept her up into his arms, and out through the teepee flap they went. In silence, he mounted his great white steed, covered in warpaint, fringe and feathers, and placed her before him. "Wah tonka!" he cried, and the horse wheeled and sped across the great buffalo plain to the top of a high crest, where the mighty herd lay before them, and far away stretched the great purple line of the Bighorn Range. Taking his beaded hunting knife, he cut a small mark into his arm. Then, taking her by the wrist, he pushed the knife tip into her flesh, nearly causing her to swoon. He pressed his cut against hers and spoke the word, gently, "me ton coota". When he kissed her again, she knew, somehow without understanding his rude language, that they had been married in the Indian fashion. Her hand found his as she whispered "my heart soars like a hawk!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 12:50 PM

My gawd -- I think we've reached a new ebb!! :>) Well done--hmmmm....er, badly done well!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 03:17 PM

WOW, Janet! I think you've retired the trophy!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 04:34 PM

I respectfully withdraw my name from nomination. This old beaurocrat can't even fantasize that luridly, Janet. It's enough to make Janet Daley (Dailey?) blush!!!

Peter T., end this contest and send her the prize money real quick like. I'm afraid if someone tries to top her the 'Cat will be shut down for pure purience:-0!!! (Or Amos will get too excited and have a coronary.)

Janie

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 09:58 PM

Oh yeah -- I just get so carriewd away by this kind of stuff the old ticker gets put at risk -- right--- actually I think I am more likely to bust a gut laughing!!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Crazy Little Woman
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 10:52 PM

Would y'all quit preening?

Nothing here is nearly as bad as research papers in psychology or sociology. They should be marketed as insomnia aids.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 11:16 PM

I have a theory that insomnia drives people to become psychologists in the hopes of finding out why they can't sleep, and they discover the remedy in graduate studies. It has nothing to do with helping others.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 08:00 AM

As a representive of the Prudential Insurance Company in Heckmanthorpe for forty-eight years(the last three years as area manager until my enforced retirement at the not unsprightly age of fifty seven years) and as co-founder of the Heckmanthorpe Folk Club which ran from its exciting beginnings in 1963 (the year in which sex was invented as Philip Larkin so amusingly observed in a famous poem) until its sad closure in 1993 due to falling attendance, my life has been not without incident which I feel may of some small interest to the general public, and now as I have time to reflect on the intervening years I must perforce take up my pen and record some of the rich tapestry of Yorkshire life before age inevitably clouds the clear colours and richer sounds of memory.
   But to begin at(or perhaps I should qualify that "at" and say a little more precisely"near") the beginning. A small boy, shorts-clad and grazed of knee, strode down the hill to Grimdike Bottom, swinging his satchel and whistling a gay tune of the day, heard perhaps that very morning on the newly-acquired wirelss which graced the sideboard in our front parlour. The factory chimney at Hackbone Mill belched(or perhaps I should rather say "gently emitted") a plume of black smoke, and the hooter emitted its mornful hoot, breaking the calm of that idyllic morning, the sunlit sky however showing signs of impending rain, or least an overcast day, from the west. I whistled blithely enough in all conscience, unware that at Bog Lane School that day a momentous encounter was to take place that would forever turn my life into pathways as yet unforeseen by the enquiring though perhaps sheltered mind of an eight-year old......

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 10:12 AM

Gee, Greg, a definite contender. I',m glad you stopped when you did!!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 11:20 AM

Greg: Please, sir, I wan' some m-o-r-e?! in my best "Oliver" imitation! **bg**

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 11:49 AM

GLutton for punishment, KL??

:>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 11:55 AM

katlaughing: I am flattered you want to hear more of the story, but I have to say that the previous "indigenous embrace" of the Red Indian chief looks more promising for interesting developments.,

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 12:58 PM

Maybe, Greg, but yours is so finely on the razor's edge that I can stomach it...:-)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 02:13 PM

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can surpass "the indigenous embrace"! My God, it was so utterly awful that it ought to get a Pulitzer Prize. I was away in Ottawa (our nation's capital...and a very nice city too) for the last 4 days, attending various spiritually oriented gatherings and elevating my consciousness. Little did I expect upon returning to be dragged into the very depths of inanity and mundanity, the nadir of tendentious and absolutely terrible fiction. OwQ! The dreadful generic idiocy of it all! The grabbag of bogus Native scenes and supposed language! Never, never, have Apaches been so mangled in modern fiction as in that one short piece of unredeemable crap.

Congratulations, Janet Desmond-Hiller! You have a lucrative career in Romance fiction ahead of you. And Greg...your tale was pretty mind-numbing too. Well done.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 06:18 PM

By the way, Kat, your little opus about the internet-linked lovers reunited after all those past-life encounters was also gut-wrenchingly dreadful. Nice work! There may be a place for you at the WSSBA's new section, the WSSBW (William Shatner School of BAAAAAD Writing).

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 09:01 AM

It was a wild night, a dark night darker than the rest. The wind blew sharp and cold. Like a knife it cut through Gil,s cloak of velvet. It chilled him to the bone .Gil pressed on head bowed in reverence to the wind. He must go on, the others depended on him. He was chosen and it was now up to him. What little training he had in the few short days beforehand served no purpose here. He was alone . Or so he thought. All around they were watching his slow steady progress along the valley. They were waiting, waiting and watching, and soon would make their presence known to him and then it would be too late.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:06 AM

Why thank yew, LH, trooley!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:20 AM

Good start, Noddy... Run it into an 8,000-word epic and you will be sure to receive a generous grant from the WSSBW, sufficient to allow you to acquire those two vital tools of every budding writer...a live hamster and a little pair of scissors for clipping off nose hairs.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST, heric
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:58 AM

I don't just trim his nose hairs -- last week I gave him a teeny tiny mohawk haircut, too.

Now, back to the typewriter

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 04:28 AM

OUCH!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 05:26 AM

A solitary dinner sat in the corner gazing at his coffee and then into the cold of the dawn. A thin wisp of misty cloud lay low on the horizon. He lifted his cup and swallowed the remaining dregs threw a few dollars on the table and left. As his car disappeared into the the distance the waitress cleared the table her eyes watching the car and customer. Only another five hours of the shift to go. "Hope business picks up" she thought. Her thoughts and hopes were raised when the flash of the early sun on crome. Another car perhaps it will pull in. It did.
He was tall his lean frame covered by a heavy leather coat bent awkwardly to one side. He lurched inside. Looking around and seeing only the waitress the tense expression on his face eased slightly.
"Coffee. Black." he called as he slumped heavily into a booth with a gasp.
The waitress was at the table pouring a thick black nectar into the cup. As she went to leave he grabbed her hand tightly. He stared into her eyes "Sit down " he commanded. A wave of fear hit her she tried to release her hand from his grip. No luck. He held it "SIT DOWN" he repeated putting a small badly creased photo on the table and pointing with his other hand.
She looked with surprise, no shock at the photo and sat down. The photo was her some twenty years ago. A crumpled envelope came next "Read this" he said "its for you."
She recognised the hand writng from the past and smiled as the grip on her hand relaxed. As she read her tears fell.
"I have carried that with me for twenty years. He gave it to me on his death bed in Vietnam. He saved my life and died as a result. I promised to take it to you but... well things didnt work out for me. I have been on the run from the law. But this is the only thing thats kept me sane. I knew I had to bring it tonight. I hoped you were here.
He gasped again clutching at his side.He opened the dirty coat to reveal a gapping bullet wound and blood soaked clothing. Ive driven through three states to get here, cops on my trail the whole way. There is this as well and he put a tiny gold ring with a simple stone on the table then slumped to one side breathing no more.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 08:50 AM

Noddy:

Keep it up and you'll have more hamsters than you know what to do with,,,,

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 11:57 AM

Thwack. Thwack. He swung hard and with each blow the axes cut deep into the ice. Gently at first he pulls on them testing if they would hold. Then harder until all his bodyweight, rucksack and all were supported on the axes. Gazing down at his feet he moved first his right kicking the sharpened steel of the crampons into the blue green ice. Now the left same as the right but slightly higher. now it was time to put the weight back on the four front points of the crampons imbeded only half an inch if that.
Thwack thwack
Step step
Thwack thwack.
Step step.
Each time he moved higher and higher, ever upward on the waterfall A blue green pillar of solid stationary water,now frozen in time, frozen in space. His world consists of his movement only .Nothing else matters nothing else should matter .It all comes down to him and his skill as he climbs on. No rope tethers him to a partner . No rope for security. It is him ,his axes and the ice.
Thwack... crash .The ice shattered on contacted .Large sheets the size of dinner plates hurtled ever quickening into the void below. He swung again with measured force. Thwack it bit deep again. The tension
in his mind eased as it bit home. It happens every now and then but each time it is energy spent, time spent. Hanging, waiting, hoping the next swing is true. Yes, this is fun .This is what he wants. That little bit of the expected unexpected. The thrill of the climb. A tiny dot in this frozen world he moves on un-noticed happy in his world.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 12:13 PM

Does that mean the hamsters are a breeding pair.
Do you send them in the post.
Do you send them together.
NO NO NO. I dont want to know.

As you might guess it is a bit quite at work... now the students have gone YEAH!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 01:39 PM

Magnificent effort, Noddy! What I really like is that you are taking us into new, fresh approaches here, new themes in the ever-expanding field of BAAAAAD writing. The possibilities just keep expanding.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 04:50 PM

hey Little Hawk take a look at my post on "ants", realy in my pants.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 08:28 PM

It was dark. Stygian blackness unrelieved by star or moon or man-made illumination. As dark as you think that it would be if you had no candle, or lacked the wit to light the one you had.

It came from afar, the sound. A gentle whizzing up into the air and then a glorious burst of actinic light, brighter than the sun, as the flare gently wafted to earth on its parachute, leaving afterimages on the retina where the visual purple had been depleted.

CRACK-thump and the bullet imbedded itself in the sandbags on the far side of the trench.

"Blimey! Missed again. The Hun is a lousy shot," thought Carlyle, his last thought, as the second bullet spattered his brains into the mud and slime of the trench bottom.

"Told the stupid blighter to keep his head down," muttered Fordyke. "Now we'll have to police the trench again. Bloody Sergeant-Major."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 10:00 PM

He more and more had the feeling that he had always been at war, always been mired in this stinking foxhole on this godforsaken piece of mosquito-infested rat trap ten cent cannibal-infested island, listening to hysterical little yellow Nip bastards yelling "Babe Ruth sucks!" from across the river. The little slant-eyed fanatics had already made fifteen fullscale assaults since dusk, leaving the ground strewn with hundreds of corpses. They hung on the barbed wire in front of his position, grotesque and silent now in death, but their shrill battlecries still rang in his aching ears. "American you dai-eeee!!! Ban-zaa-eeee!!! Death to Woolworth's!!!" He couldn't get those voices out of his head. Why did they keep coming? What could impell that sort of suicidal yen for self-destruction. Why did they dislike the greatest country on Earth? Why were they denigrating the World's finest baseball player? Why did they say unprintable things about Eleanour Roosevelt's sex life and culinary proclivities?

"They're dirty, stinkin' Japs, that's why!" he cursed aloud, answering his own mental question. "The little fuckers ain't human!"

"What's that, Sarge?" asked the Kid, edging closer. The Kid looked scared. Real scared. He was only nineteen. Any minute now he might shit his pants.

"I said the little fuckers ain't human!" spat the Sergeant, chomping down viciously on his unlit and somewhat sodden Cuban cigar. "Ace! Gimme a light."

Ace let go of the ammo belt and struck a match.

300 feet away private Nishimura squinted down the sights of his sniper rifle and gently squeezed the trigger...

The report seemed to arrive just after the bullet, which went in the left side of Ace's head and exited under his right eye. Ace dropped like a sack of flour.

"Shit!!!" yelled the Sergeant. "I told you guys once, I told you a thousand times...DON'T SHOW A LIGHT TO THE ENEMY AT NIGHT!!! Ace, for that you're on point tomorrow, you simple-minded sack of shit!"

"He's dead, Sarge," stammered the Kid.

"Fer Chrissake, I know that!" yelled the Sergeant. "I been in this stinkin' war long enough to know a dead body when I see one. Now get down in that slit trench where they can't see ya and light me up this damn cigar."

"But Sarge..." protested the Kid feebly, "You might get shot if you smoke that there cigar. A cigar ain't worth dyin' for..."

"Listen, Kid, and listen good," growled the Sarge. "The Jap ain't been born, and the bullet ain't been made that has my name on it."

The kid crawled into the trench and reached for the cigar with shaking fingers. He lit it. Nothing happened. The kid shook the match out hastily and tossed the cigar to the sergeant, who caught it handily and jammed it in his mouth, sitting down with his back to the sandbagged parapet, just as calm as if he was on the beach at Coney Island.

He took a long draw. That was good. He could almost imagine he was back in Fresno, playing pool and seducing bargirls. Almost.

Three miles away, out in Ironbottom Bay, Lieutenant Sato squinted through the high-powered rangefinder in his position high atop the towering bridge of the battleship Kirishima. "I have a fix on a light, sir," he hissed excitedly. "It looks like a cigarette! Ranging in now..."

The great long-barreled gun turrets on the Kirishima swung around, like the noses of questing bloodhounds, searching out their prey. An octet of huge 14-inch diameter high explosive shells nestled in their steely chambers, waiting like greyhounds for the moment of release. Those shells could go straight through a heavy cruiser ten miles away like it was made of butter, and open it up like a tin can.

"Go ahead, you little bastards," snarled Sergeant Calhoun, taking one more drag at his glowing cigar, and directing a contemptous glance over his shoulder toward the unseen Japanese troops hunkered down in the bushes on the far side of the line. "Show us what ya got, ya little heathen slopeheads. You want a piece of Jack Calhoun? I dare ya. Gimme yer best shot..."

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 11:38 PM

You guys are REALLY bad!! I am awed with the TRANSCENDENT MEDIOCRITY of your masterful decompositions!!

Like, wow, man!! That sums it all up in a nutshell.

Like, wow.


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 05:08 AM

The sun beat down relentlessly on Pete's back. It had been two hours or constant effort,blood pumping,energy sapping muscle cramping effort. His clothes which gave little protection to the suns rays were salt caked from his dried sweat.He tasted salt on his lips. He tasted salt when he wipped his brow. On and on and on he went. Feet pounding on the ground ,a machine in motion but only just. Around him he heard noises. The sounds of people, distant discordant music, the sound of pounding feet following him. They must not get closer he thought and strained his lean frame for one final effort. The pain surged through every sinue. His heart thumped in his head faster and faster, harder and harder. He must go on faster . The noise grew louder and louder. He knew it would all end soon. One way or the other . For better or worse. But he had to try for there was so much at stake. For a moment he thought he would make it could make it. It would be close, very very close. Now or never and he threw himself forward, collapsing in a heap. He looked back. They were not far behind. The noise seemed to have stopped ,time stopped .He gazed upward "NO. NO. No". he screamed. All his effort was in vain he had missed the record by point 2 of a second. His trainer came over and picked him up "Never mind Pete. Back in training. There is another Marathon at the end of next month.I am sure you will break the record then."

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 09:32 AM

I love these sweat-drenched, moronic forays into masculine stupidity... (Sergeant Calhound is still trying to extract that 14-inch shell out of his big fat mouth.)

More, Noddy, more!

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 10:40 AM

As we walked down the corridors of the hallowed Instiute a famed scientist was coming to the end of his life's work...........


KAABOOOMM!


Sorry I cannot claim credit for that one.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 10:47 AM

LH, you obviously have some overblown masochism in your own makeup, deep down. Hope you're well supplied with hamsters. Have you considered a vasectomy?

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 04:36 PM

From another, similar contest:

1.) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the
greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window,
revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!'"

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 06:48 PM

Ha! Ha! Poor, naive princess.

I think my having a vasectomy at this point would be a redundant exercise, Amos. I've gotten to the age of 54 without leaving any progeny (legitimate or otherwise) in this world, so why bother now? Besides, I'm not really inclined to seek such liasons anymore...it's too much emotional complication and gets seriously in the way of managing the rest of my life in a half reasonable fashion. I know this from hard experience. No pun intended.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 07:33 PM

Half reasonable, but only half fast living. Hmmmmmmm?

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 08:40 PM

She turned her head, her mouth slightly open and her eyes slightly closed. Her need was so great, it had been so long. Her hands reached out, guided by the warmth of the desire in her belly. She knew that this was the time, this would satiate the animal-like lust burning within her.

Spread before her like a sacrifice against creamy linen. Slowly, slowly she told herself. Savor it, let it flow through you. Her lips parted and she spoke, her mouth dry.

"Peas? I don't like peas! Waiter!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 12:29 AM

Oh, brother...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 10:10 AM

He'd always known that he'd conquer The Mountian.

He'd been born at its foot and raised partway up its slope. As a child he'd gazed up at its peak, knowing inside that someday, somehow, he'd stand there, his skin raw from the touch of the ice particles whipped against his face by the incessant wind.

And now he did so stand. Years had passed, but his dream had never died. Years of toil, years caged in the city, years chained to mere commerce, years spent a-massing, the world too much with him -- except for The Mountain and the dream.

And now he stood on the summit, bent with years and toil. He had perservered, and he had ultimately conquered The Mountain, the nay-sayers, himself. He gazed around him, turned, reentered, and as the helicopter blades bit into the air reflected that it wasn't at all what he had thought it would be.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 10:54 AM

Ha! I have always been puzzled by people who feel compelled to climb frigid mountains and battle giant fish. What do they do afterward, supposing they succeed in their objective? What then? Perhaps this was Ernest Hemingway's problem.

Seems to me like the mountain is the real winner in these confrontations.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 11:37 AM

You clearly don't understand the point LH. If you selected all your actions based on what next after that you'd be very dull -- the answer, of course, is to create yet another challenge.

Adventure gratis adventure, old boy!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 12:25 PM

No, no, Amos...the answer is to realize that you yourself are the challenge. If you mastered yourself you wouldn't need to climb mountains or battle giant fish any longer, and would only do it if there was some obvious, pressing reason to...rather than just that nagging sense of emptiness that bedevils most people and drives them to seek out adventures. Life would already be fully satisfying just as it is. And that is what life is like for the mountain, I suggest.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 12:42 PM

Nagging sense of emptiness?

Au contraire -- there is a vivid sense of engagement, of trial and test, of ineffable ambient Masculie Judgement, of the steely clanging harmony of testosterone molecules clashing, of rich adrenalin-filled hearts racing....but if youhave never been there, never mind. It's all right.

The kind of motionless self-inspection you are refering to is quite important, but for a different phase of life altogether............

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 12:51 PM

"Climb every mountain, ford every stream
Follow every BY-way, then you'll find you're creamed."

Steel testosterone molecules, Amos? Now, wouldn't it be ironic if your pointer always pointed North because of that? That could cause a man to run in circles -- a ferrous wheel, in fact.

Perhaps I'd better start cleaning up around here....

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Ernest Hamonrye
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 02:09 PM

The strong old man woke up from the dream about the penguins. It was always the same dream, with the old man drunk in the old way with the rum, and the boy holding the tether of the mule while the old man climbed through snow. In his waking life, he had only once seen snow. He had been in the merchant marine, and his ship had put in at Baltimore in a blizzard. The snow had been wet and cold and had formed a sort of skull cap on the old man's head as he walked through it. He had never seen penguins except in cartoons. This was the reason that the penguins in his dream all resembled Chilly Willy. In the dream he had a meeting with the Emperor Penguin, who had been dressed in a waistcoat and top hat and wearing a monocle, but when the penguin opened its beak to address him, he had awakened.

The old man sat quietly, feeling the wooden boat creak in the calm water. He smelled the odor of the decaying marlin before he saw the big fin sticking up above the gunwale of the fishing boat. During the night, the sharks had been very busy, and little was left of the marlin but the great fin, the snout, tail, and the ribs which held several empty tin cans and a rubber tire, part of the steering gear from a 39 Hudson, and an umbrella handle. The old man wept for the loss of the great fish, and wondered about the Hudson steering gear.

It was nearly dark when the old man entered the harbor at Nuestra Madonna de las Agonias Sacrosancta. The boy had been waiting for him, and had helped him to tie up the skiff. The boy did not mention the skeleton of the Great Fish, and once again the old man wondered what was wrong with the boy. Why he had not mentioned the fish, and why he had been waiting for 3 days in the same spot for the old man to return. He supposed the boy had never entirely recovered from the incident with the rabid cat. The old man had not bothered to remove his salt crusted clothing, but had fallen onto the wooden pallet where he slept for several hours. This time he dreamed about thumb wrestling with the arrogant Tunisian hardware merchant, which was not a significant dream, but at least was a welcome break from the penguins.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 03:12 PM

FERROUS wheel???

Jesus Rapire, you're having too much fun!! Tea from all orifii!!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 03 - 10:26 PM

Okay, Amos, I admit you have a point there. Indian warriors were very much into that kind of thing you describe, and I once was one (or maybe even twice or thrice or...). I suspect I got it all out of my system back then, having died violently more than a few times, and have moved on to other matters since...

Nice bit of writing there, Ernest.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Jun 03 - 04:34 PM

Cool. It was cool outside, there was ice on horse's troughs, but the sun had begun to cast a tentative crimson finger over the top of the hill and he knew that there were Things To Be Done before supper.

He sauntered over to the corral and got a halter on Sukie, led her over to the barn and saddled her. There were miles to go before he'd lay in his rack tonight.

Breakfast had been okay, he mused. Biscuits, coffee, sausage, sausage gravy, honey, and lots of butter. Even had some peaches out of a can.

Sukie was ready. He tied her to the corral fence and went back inside the house.

"Sukie's ready," he told the Boss.

"Great. Thanks."

"You bet." He ambled down the hall, opened the door to his room, flicked on the light.

He reached out to the top of the desk, grabbing what was there. He reloaded, realized what he had to do.

With only a moment of hesitation he sat down in font of the computer, began to type. As he heard the Boss ride off on Sukie, he knew that he'd do his part to help the Mudcat Bad Writing Contest reach two hundred. Doing your part was, after all, was part of The Code Of The West.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 22 Jun 03 - 05:11 PM

She shuffled her weight from one foot to the other, craned her neck and peered into the distance. Nothing. Her twin brother had gone. He did not turn to look back. Her parents had called, coaxed screamed at her to leave . She remained ignoring their pleas. They too had gone .They had to. She knew she had to.
She moved her feet again and stared down into the valley and across to the hills .Nothing. The last of her food had long since been eaten. Every morsel she had scavanged. The last crumb she had eaten several days ago. Her only sustenance since then was the water that oozed from the vegetation hanging from the rocks. Even that had dried up two days ago. Feasts of lamb, of rabbit, of pigeon now memories which made her stomach ache for more.
She had to leave. She shuffled her feet closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the void. One deep breath filled her lungs and she jumped from the ledge.
The air rushed past her quicker ever quicker. Head first she plummeted legs tight together. "Wait" she thought "Not yet, not yet. Feel the force! YOU WILL FEEL THE FORCE!" she screamed.
She felt it .Sensed it "NOW NOW!" She tensed her shoulders flexed her muscles and opened her wings. She rose in the thermal, up above the nest, above the cliff .She was flying at last.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jun 03 - 07:17 PM

Good stuff, there, noddy!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Jun 03 - 08:19 PM

Like i think a couple of youse guys, there, um, fergot that this here's the three-ED for BAaaad ritin'...they never said nuttin' about anythang good bein' writ in here, now did they? So, letz watch them standards wots we got and keep 'em baaadd, eh?:-)

(nicely done, ernest, noddy, rapaire!**bg**)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 23 Jun 03 - 01:33 PM

>>>the steely clanging harmony of testosterone molecules clashing, of rich adrenalin-filled hearts racing....<<<

Shock and awe technique on the bad writing thread. Man, I could hear my own balls ringing out.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Jun 03 - 03:08 PM

It was in the paper this morning that a Real Man, steely testosterone just a-gushin' through him and hissin, happened to be walking by the junk yard when a crane operator switched on the electromagnet.

Guy swung there for 45 minutes, thirty feet above the ground, suspended by the container of his steely testosterone, before they could figger out how to get him safely down.

Like the old song says, he's nobody's sweetheart now....

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jun 03 - 04:30 PM

LMAOWROTF!!! Bravo, heric and Rapaire! Now, how'bout them Steel Magnolias!?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jun 03 - 04:36 PM

They been hung up from the git-go, KL -- 's why they act so funny! :>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Bardford
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 12:46 AM

My poetry is generally worse than my prose, so it's better for this thread, I think, so here goes:

Ode on an Instrument

What joy the violin brings
No mere box of wood with strings
No! Here is voice that talks, nay, sings!
Transports soul to the firmament on crimson wings!

What powerful beauty emanates from the fiddle!
It's thin at one end, less so in the middle
Lovingly carved from the trees of Cremona
Don't strangle a violin like you would Desdemona
If you were Othello
Same goes for the viola and cello.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 01:11 AM

Wow, Bardford -- that's as bad as I've seen in these parts!!

Almost, anyway!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 05:04 AM

The sweat began to run down his brow .Hot flushes surged through his veins.His eyes ran up and down and across the page like lightning Hands shaking in panic nay fear he tapped at the key board hoping beyond hope his search would be fruitful. Then the relief flooded back like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. He found it.
The "bad writng2 thread had slipped off the end of the page. Now refreshed it appears at the top where it belongs. Peace once more reigns.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Doktor Doktor
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 05:51 AM

He looked around the half-deserted bar, dusty in the slanting evening sunlight, filered through the uncleaned cutains at the uncleaned windows. Adopting the correct attitude of slightly hesitant keeness he bought his pint and set the box on the little round table in the corner. The instrument sat before him, its black case and tell-tale butterfly logo looking almst indistinguishable from the real thing. He breathed deep, lest he give a hint of the excitement within. Sipping his beer, Suggers peered over the cleverly disguised Mk IX anti-bodrhan death-ray. Patience, patience ..... They would come .... they would come ....

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 10:50 AM

They slunk toward the half-deserted bar (soon to be only a quarter deserted), dusty in the slanting evening sunlight, filtered through the filthy curtains at the less than pristine windows. Adopting the correct attitude of puissant but slightly diffident incoherence required in moments proceeding total mayhem they shucked off their rancid ponchos, revealing an array of deadly weapons...nostril amputators, rectal blasters, atom rifles, and blood boiling poont phasers shone metallic and menacing, like the plated bodies of Denebian giant wasps glistening in the sickly sunlight of Nedra, the star of Despair. It was only a few steps to the door, and they knew that he would be in there...waiting.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 11:17 AM

I am still waiting.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 05:40 PM

...Elmer raised his bald head and said, quite plainly, "Oh, the howwow! The howwow!"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 09:29 PM

As Bugs raised the shotgun, and said "Ehh...What's up, Doc?" for the last time and pressed both triggers...there was a single echoing blast that fell away into infinity, like a nun vanishing down a spiral staircase into the stygian bowels of a nameless catacomb. Then silence.

It was time for a carrot. Bugs put the gun down and walked out into the garden as a single shaft of sunlight broke suddenly, unexpectedly through the heavy, lowering clouds.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:46 AM

I just knew at a gut level that this thread was worth checking into as long as it kept growing. The Death of Elmer Fudd is a major literary accomplishment. It has purged my childhood psyche of nightmares and confusions long dormant. Thank you so much, Little Hawk!! Have a carrot on me. If you don't eat carrots, have one anyway -- I am sure you'll figure something out.

:>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 11:42 AM

"All Rise" Sludgebuckets voice carried across the crowded court-room and all rose as one. It was not a voice of authority simply one which gave notice and to which the response was automatic.
Judge Tread dressed in long wig and gown entered and slowly sluggishly sat in his chair of office. The assembly returned to their seats and waited in silence.
Nancy mopped at her tearful eyes as she stared at her husband David in the dock, a uniformed policeman either side of him. David had the look of a man who new the outcome, who new the verdict and waited only for the term of sentance.
The Judge spoke slowly and clearly outlinning the charge, that of murder of John, his wife's love. A brutal and callous act with both barrels of a shotgun at close range. He continued that the evidence was substantial and that no other verdict could be reached . David was guilty and would serve 15 years.
David chocked, "15 years" he thought "I might be out in 10. Could be worse"
"Take him down" commanded the Judge and he was led away.
Nancy was still dabbing at her face as she watched him go. He turned and waved, then was gone.
Nancy got up to leave the courtroom and passed a glance at a young well built blond-headed youth of 19 years or perhaps 20. He returned a knowing smile. Nancy tried not to smile she had to see her act out until she was at least clear of the courtroom and the waiting press. She must be seen as the weeping woman who had lost a husband AND her lover. Her other lover would have to wait a day or two before they could celebrate their well thought out and perfectly executed plan.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 02:19 PM

Thanks, Amos. I love carrots. Even more, I love carrot juice.

noddy - That was pretty awful. Are your misspellings accidental or are they intentional? They do add something to the effect.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 10:32 PM

So, after all these years of violent mood swings, up and down, calm to enraged, loving to solitary, happy to... well not happy really, but just kind of a little happier than no emotion at all to rather bored and depressed, he finds out that it is mostly all due to problems with his blood sugar. Which should have been apparent all along since both of his grandfathers were insulin dependent, as well as his father. And just in the past year his mother became diabetic and had to start taking her blood sugar reading every morning with that little sticking needle thing that shoots out even though you can't ever see it but still hurts like a dickens even though you never really get enough blood and have to do it all over again. Oh, and two uncles and a cousin, too. So he really should have thought about blood sugar all these years and had that checked to see if that was what was causing the mood swings.

So once he realized it was problems with blood sugar causing the emotional rollercoaster, day in and day out, he started himself on a self-controlled regime of diet and exercise to help control the mood swings. Having never been a person who much appreciated exercise for execise's sake, thinking that lifting weights was a whole lot of effort spent on doing nothing and would have much preferred to take a sickle out to an overgrown field to level all the overgrown weeds, not that that couldn't have been done with a lot less effort using a gasoline powered weedeater, but at least all the manual labor would have been accomplishing something, the thoughts of going to the gymnasium just kind of irked him. And it didn't really help that once he got down to the gymnasium that it was full of school kids in their extracurricular sporting events such as basketball, volleyball (I thought that was supposed to be played on the beach?), or track events such as the discus, hurdles, shot put, and that round ball on a rope that they throw after spinning around and around and around. Not that they really throw it - it's more like just letting go after so much spinning. And I never understood how they kept from throwing up right after throwing the ball. But the worst of all was when they were having some kind of tournament, which what pretty often given all the different sports that they played at that place, and had that insipid popular music playing at earsplitting levels that made your chest vibrate and eardrums hurt and head pound, since he really preferred acoustic blues.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 12:55 AM

Right...

I've been in gyms like that one.

So...are you suggesting that a fluctuating blood sugar level can lead to bad writing?

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 04:30 AM

Little Hawk I am sorry to say that my misspelling are mistakes. My wife who is training to be a proof reader always nags me rotten for not checking things properly.

Me I tend to blame the computer....Why not???

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 06:56 AM

Just to let folks know I have just read this thread from start to finnish. I think it is better than Harry Potter and almost as long!

I am off on hols for a week Rock climbing in the French Alps. Hope to be back later.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Homeless
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 09:05 AM

Oops. That was me. Dang computer.
Sure, LH, I'd be thrilled to blame bad writing on blood sugar.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 09:50 AM

It could be the key to bad acting too. I'll see if I can get confirmation on that from Bill Shatner or Ricardo Montalban.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 03 - 10:16 AM

The fog is rising slowly over the Samantha Curry Park, where I fell in love, so long ago, and the commuters are beginning to clump up on the freeway running along the park's generous borders. Elsewhere in the world, unbeknownst to the commuters, three evil schemes are being pushed forward with a maniacal and frenzied focus fueld by deep hatred and deeper muisunderstanding; and along the shores of the long Western shore, a gray while is escorting its calf, less than a year in age but timeless in its marine perfection, northward, ever northward. In a small coffee shop in Venice, a tired drifter nurses a small espresso, and sees, far across the beach and the wide blue bay, the traces of the mother whale's passage; but the calf knows nothing of the drifter, and the drifter knows nothing of the calf. NEither of them think about the difficulties being encvountered by the commuters. As the wisps of fog lace their tendrils around the windshields of the anxious commuters making their way into the morning traffic, many of them are unaware that even as they fight their way to work, their fates are hanging on a single telephone call being made from a skyscraper in central San Francisco, far to the north. But like many things, this hinge-point of their futures is a fact, whether they are aware of it or not. Jason Dintham hung up the phone and leaned back in his extravagant executive seat, almost shaking with satisfaction.

(To be continued)....

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Buck Shinbiter
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 04:47 PM

He was 6 ft three in his stockinged feet, 200 pounds of muscle, and a crew cut so thick and stiff it could have insulated his head from a dropped bowling ball. He wore faded jeans, work boots, a white tee shirt with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in the sleeve. The vehicle he drove was a rusted Ford Bronco with a bumper sticker that said "Don't like my driving? Call 1-800-eatshit". He punched the clock ten minutes late in the morning and ten minutes early in the afternoon, but the Foreman said nothing because he was afraid he'd get the crap kicked out of him. He ate lunch with Ferd and Banger, two scrawny nerds who viewed him both as a protector and a repressor. His diatribes could be heard from 100 yards away, because shouting was his normal tone of voice. Nobody argued with his boneheaded opinions about blacks, Jews, liberals, tree-huggers and homosexuals, because they were tired of leaving work to find their tires slashed.

On the way home to his mother's house, he usually stopped at Big Mike's Bar, where he would play pool, taunting his opponent if he won, accusing him of cheating if he lost. Some women found his style attractive, the kind of women with low self-esteem and blue marks on their faces. He sometimes took them out to the parking lot for grim sweaty sessions in the back of his truck, sessions which ended with growled threats and the sound of footsteps fleeing through the gravel.

Most people who knew him hated him, and were darkly pleased to hear that he had hung himself by a bra strap in a jail cell early one Sunday morning. They were, however, genuinely shocked to hear he had been arrested for shoplifting exotic undergarments while dressed as a woman. Some of the neighbors brought hot dishes to his mother in an attempt at consolation. She accepted them wordlessly and ate them at the kitchen table in the yellow haze shed by a naked 35 watt bulb. Two days after his funeral, his truck was seen parked by the front curb with a sign that read "$400 or Best Offer", and a Room to Let sign was placed in his bedroom window.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 05:44 PM

Too good for this contest, Buck. You could make a living doing this stuff!! LOL!

Good dog.


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 06 Jul 03 - 08:06 AM

Her soft olive skin shimmered in the moonlight. Grains of sand on her skin sparkled like jewels as she moved at his touch.Her ample bossoms rose and fell the beating of her heart now faster could be seen pulsing . He kissed her again and again, his tongue probing, his hands wandering carressing her.
Harry's eyes flitted quickly across and down the page stopping every now and then at the interesting bits and he read them with glea. Turning the pages slowly methodically quitely he viewed the pictures in every detail. His heart was beating fast, his skin flushed and warm his breathing low. He continued in his act as quitely as he could. He heard her murmur, then she moaned then she screamed "Harry! Hurry up and get down these stairs . You will be late for school" she cried.
Harry contininued faster. " Coming " he replied.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Jul 03 - 01:01 PM

I feel one coming on. Or maybe it's something I ate. Have to wait and see, I guess.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Jul 03 - 10:53 PM

He remembered her. It had been long ago and far away, yes, but still he remembered those four nights when they had shared life, and love, and lust, and liberty.

The cold rain of November whipped his face, freezing in his beard and eyelashes. Gripping his rifle tighter he wondered where she was now. The Facists had bombed the village, so she was probably dead.

They were all dead. Juan, Ascencion, Mac. Mac had caught it while using the latrine. He didn't want to go that way or that badly. He was all that was left.

There was a motorcycle on the road below. Screw it, he thought, let him go. Why bother anymore? Franco was going to win anyway, and the International Brigade was finished.

He got to his feet, slowly, his bones aching in the cold, slashing, rain. It was going to turn to sleet any time now, he mused. Had to get to Pedro's before then or spend the night in the cold.

From Pedro's to the border, from the border to Bordeaux, from Bordeaux to London, from London back to New York. Probably have to shovel coal the whole way. Parents would be glad to see him, though. Probably a good thing that he'd enlisted under a false name, too.

Too bad about her, he thought again. And he disappeared into the rain.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 12:23 AM

Lovely.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 08:55 AM

Thanks, LH, but it was something I ate.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 10:01 AM

YEah, right, R. -- all bad writing has one excuse or another!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 10:33 AM

OOPS just looked over my last piece. Still cannot spell.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 08 Jul 03 - 01:51 AM

A Short Summer Romance

As I lay on my bed thinking about you, I feel this strong urge to grab you and squeeze you, because I can't forget last night. You came to me unexpectedly during the balmy and calm night and what happened in my bed still leaves me with a tingling sensation.

You appeared from nowhere and shamelessly, and without any reservations, approached my naked body. You sensed my indifference so you applied your hungry mouth to me without any guilt or humiliation. And you drove me nearly crazy while you drained me. Finally I collapsed in sleep.

Today when I woke up, you were gone. I searched for you but to no avail; only the sheets bore witness to last nights events. My body still bears the faint marks of your enthusiastic ravishing, making it still harder to forget you.

But tonight I will remain awake waiting for you...........................   you damn mosquito.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 04:30 AM

did you get a buzz out of writing that one Cluin?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 05:08 AM

The sun shone in our eyes over the fierce whiteness of the plains. The Comapnions stood round me.some laughing , some quiet. Six leagues away we could see the thin black line of the Cycladic hoplites coming over the pass from Delphi. Across the Athens road, in the Grove of the Mother, the Crones continued their shuffling dance, ululating despondently. I drained my goblet and cast it to the ground.
   A chariot dragging a plume of dust approached, wheeled and stopped by me. The driver leapt down, saluted me in the Eleusinian manner.his right fist against his left breast, and panted "My Lord, I am Apretion, your new charioteer". I looked at him, eyes narrowed by the fierce sun. He was naked from the waist up,save for gold arm bands in the Phrygian style. He wore the short soft leather kilt of the Oestrogynians, and golden buckled sandals with cross-gartering in leather to just below the knee. he looked me straight in the eye: I, who am Hellene, have the fair hair and blue eyes of the Men of the North, but he seemed one from the Shores, slight but but well-muscled and dark of hair and eye, the colouring of Those Who Came Before Us.
    "The High King bids me serve you as you wish" he said, and brushed a dark ringlet from his eye. He knelt down and buckled on my bronze greaves, his delicate fingers adjusting the lie of leather to my calves. Then,standing behind me he placed over my head the gold-and amethyst embossed cuirass, only to be worn by the Dolphin,heir to the land of Mykonos, and carefully adjusted the cross-trapping across my back, still scarred and smarting from my encounter with the the Sporadic pirates. As he leaned in, arms around my neck,he murmured "Lord, I will be your cuirass",
    I narrowed my eyes: across the broiling plain of Marathon the Cycladic army wound slowly on, but were still five leagues hence. I thought back: the night I took the High Priestess of Minos by force, lying on the bloody lion's pelt I had strangled. I thought of the tavern girl I had bedded yesternight by the quay at Troizen, and scattered gold coins by her in the stinking bed in her hovel.
    "Come, Apretion" I smiled, and smote him on the shoulder, "I have a goatskin of wine cooling in my tent, and it wants an hour till the Sons of the Cycladic Python are upon us". We strode together through the Companions, ignoring the ribald grins of some. I held open the tent flap: he bent to enter, looked up and said "You honour me, my Lord".

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 09:27 AM

LOL! Masterful, greg!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 04:59 PM

Ugh! I hate those sweat-drenched epics of classic Greek warrior manhood. Bleaugh! Ewww! Gack! Brilliantly done, greg. I read that stuff and I just can't wait for them all to die miserably. Buncha goddamn, egocentric, self-satisfied pigs. They make me sick.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 06:20 PM

Well, thanks you for those kind words, Amos and LH. I was rather enjoying myself actaually, know any publishers who might like that sort of thing?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 06:27 PM

If you can add another 30,000 words you are on your way to an acceptance slip, greg, but I can't name you a suitable publisher just at the moment.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 07:05 PM

Actually, I didn't write that one, noddy. Someone sent it to me in an e-mail. Okay, I rewrote a few words of it to make it slightly better (worse). A few grammatical errors, etc. But I see I still forgot an apostrophe.

Well done, Greg. Reminds me of a lot of the dreck I read as a gawky, spotty teenager. I think Conan the Librarian still needs to be written. Have a bash.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: greg stephens
Date: 10 Jul 03 - 08:25 AM

Little Hawk: ah, you have to write 30,000 words do you? I knew there must be a catch. Tell you what, you finish it off for me and we'll split the proceeds 50/50. You might think that is a little unfair, but I think the "original(?) idea" ought to carry a bit of extra weight.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 16 Jul 03 - 05:13 AM

if I put in "the" "and" "if" "he" "she" and "buts" That should account for say 5,000 words and I get 10%.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jul 03 - 12:53 PM

Dylan has been in trouble lately for plaigarizing those very words in his last 758 songs....

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 27 Jul 03 - 01:54 PM

Scott Rice, a San Jose State English teacher, who really does like to teach writing, sat there thinking, alone on a dark night in 1981, and as the nights were then and are now even without storms, which are dark too, he pondered how to get students writing more and thinking about good writing and bad writing, although spoken language is good too, the professor would have hastened to add if were asked that night, which he wasn't.

BOTTOM LINE - the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrates the best of bad writing - and this year's results are in:

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2003.htm

It promises to provide laughter.

Sincerely,

Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 03 - 06:09 PM

Thanks, gargoyle! That link leads to some of the most gloriously bad opening paragraphs to novels that I have ever read in my life. The drek just goes on and on. Bloody marvelous! I urge everyone to read it and find out just how bad BAAAAAAD writing can get.

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jul 03 - 07:17 PM

LH, The O'MEara mentioned it about 2 months ago in this thread.:-)

Anyway, you might also enjoy Mudcat's own answer to the Bulwer-Lytton contest a few years ago. Like this thread, it was a lot of fun.

kat

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 27 Jul 03 - 08:07 PM

THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT SITES ! Read PLEASE!!

OMeara = http://www.bulwer-lytton.com

Gargoyle = http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2003.htm

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 03 - 11:19 PM

On hot summer nights, when the mosquitoes buzzed incessantly and the air hung like a wet, smothering sheet, they would sit on the front stoop and hope for a breath of breeze. Almost always they were rewarded only with the cloying scent of honeysuckle, which hung around them like miasma.

Sometimes a car would speed by, rubber tires crunching gravel, sometimes flinging it like shrapnel towards them. It never reached them, ending up in the lawn, waiting to chip the mower blade.

There they would sit, he in his underwear and she in her slip, feet bare and bodies glistening with with sweat. No lights to attract the insects, but the mosquitoes found them anyway.

Eventually they would go inside and would be immediately slammed by the temperature inside the house.

"Goddamn," he would say, "it's right nice in here since we got the air conditionin'."

"Yup, shore is," she'd agree and then they would shower and go to bed.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 04:45 AM

Rapaire why stop there .. it was just getting interesting?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: JennyO
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 10:51 AM

Actually Gargoyle, they are different pages on the same site. Very funny, anyway.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 11:45 PM

30 Actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city where Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River .

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do..

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. "Oh, Jason, take me!"; she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

23. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

24. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

25. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

26. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

27. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

28. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

29. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

30. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 12:02 AM

Ha! Ha! Ha! Gasp! Omigod! I do believe that was the best (worst) stuff yet! Even Bill Shatner would grin in helpless resignation reading those, knowing full well he could not outdo that degree of literary ineptitude no matter how hard he tried, not even if his tongue was planted so firmly in his cheek that it would make Monica Lewinsky look like a rank amateur in comparison, cigar or no cigar. That stuff was as brilliant as, like, whatever...know what I'm sayin'?

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 10:58 PM

In the morning they would awaken, eat their toast and eggs, drink their coffee, and he would drive to his job. She would stay at home until noon or so, and then go out shopping until three. At exactly three-thirty she'd begin dinner, and when he arrived home at five-thirty it would be ready. No matter how hot and humid the day was, they would have hot coffee.

In cold weather they would stay inside and watch television. Because she could stay home all day and watch television, he always got to pick the show to watch. Whenever possible he would watch wrestling or reruns of Lawrence Welk, because he said that both were slices of real life.

Sometimes, when they watched television, she would make popcorn. She would smother it in butter and salt. Afterwards, she would gently suck on her fingers so that she could enjoy the butter and salt that had stayed on them

On hot summer nights, when the mosquitoes buzzed incessantly and the air hung like a wet, smothering sheet, they would sit on the front stoop and hope for a breath of breeze. Almost always they were rewarded only with the cloying scent of honeysuckle, which hung around them like miasma.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 30 Jul 03 - 08:19 AM

GO Rapaire ..GO.

Please GO!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 02:43 PM

I don't understand your rules for the game a much as you think some people do

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 05:38 PM

Brilliantly put, GUEST, but could you expand a bit on that thought?

Let's put it this way. Simply look up any of teribus's political harangues (especially those justifying Bush's war in Iraq) and you will find splendid examples of a certain form of bad writing: the kind that kills nonexistent gnats with a sledgehammer...over and over and over again...relentlessly...supplying lots of pertinent details and "factoids" that you certainly will not find the time to wade through or analyze. The stupefying effect (on the reader) is amplified by the author not providing any paragraph breaks whatsoever.

I guarantee that if you do that for a few hours you will understand at least one kind of bad writing quite well.

And that is just the beginning.... :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 05:45 PM

There are more forms of bad writing, Horatio, than in all the books in the library where you go to see if there is a new Clive Cussler book out yet or maybe a Stephen King or one of those spy things like Robert Mitchum could act in -- something, at any rate, that was more exciting than your own life, more vital than your own mind, and at least breathing faster than an emphysema patient in a near-death experience. That's the point. The rules become kind of self evident as soon as that is clear. You'll see -- just think about.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 03:22 AM

Well, I was going to say, just try any of my posts, but I was beaten to the punch on that.

For an example of my best work try this one
Toby Day Afternoon, or Babel in a Miner Quay.

I once read this out in a writer's workshop evening, and they asked me to please stop.

The guy with the strange eyes said that it reminded him of LSD flashbacks from his earlier wild days of his drug-sodden youth, which is the reason that he was now under treatment for schizophrenia.

Then you could try my humourous writing...

Robin
Author of The Fooles Troupe
The Virtual Fooles Troupe

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 09:51 AM

Toby-guy:

It's brill in its way, certes, but not as a communication to others. It would wqualify as a serious contender here, though.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 11:05 AM

just to let you all know I survived my trip to Kyrgystan. Made the first ascent of 4 mountains all of which were over 4000metres with my wife.
We all had a great time.
Only one slip of note ,one of the group fell about 80 or 90 feet and took a chunk out of his shin.Otherwise apart from a few big bruises he was OK.
P.S.
There is now a mountain called Peak Angela ,after my wife. AAHHHH!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 11:28 AM

We lay huddled together for warmth and comfort. The tent fabric collapses against our faces leaving trails of cold wet condesation and as the wind eases it spings back flicking droplets of ice cold water everywhere. As the hours pass the snow fell steadily building up a layer on the tiny tent. You hear each flake hit. Pit pit pit pit and then ...quiet. The first time you think its stopped snowing. But no the tent is fully covered with snow. Quickly you shake the tent vigourously and hear the snow slowly slide down and light comes once more into your tiny space. Hours and hours go buy. Shake the tent... shake the tent... keep it clear. It is possible to be entombed and suffocate and wake up dead. Not the best of nights. Fitful sleep. Shaking the tent. Dripping condensation. Soggy sleeping bag.The roar of rocks falling then the smell of sulphur. That was big .That was Close! Nerves are on edge. Is there more . Oh yes. another and another crash and another smell .And all for that moment of glory when you stand on the summit for the first time. The first time for anyone on the summit. I awake its quiet! I must have been asleep? I shake the tent. No sound if sliding snow .No Pit pit pit. I struggle to unzip the door .Its frozen the tent fabric crisp and stiff like carboard. I peer out into the night. What light the full moon sheds is amplified and reflected on the snowscape. The glacier clearly visible below shimmers. Beautiful. Our summit bid is put off. The threat of avalanche is very high with 9 inches of fresh snow. We should have started hours ago to have had any chance. But not in that storm. I close the tent zip and snuggle down into my pit and try for some sleep. Angie lies there breathing softly. Great holiday.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 05:00 AM

I hope there's no typos, or this becomes gibberish. But It DOES make perfect sense...

"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"

Robin

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,tbm
Date: 01 Nov 03 - 03:24 PM

henry where bill had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval

Henry, where Bill had had 'had had', had had 'had'. 'Had had' had had the teacher's approval.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Nov 03 - 04:36 PM

Well, I don't have any room for leeway.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Noddy
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 04:53 PM

Cluin, Who is this guy "Leeway" ? I never seen anything posted by him

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 01:14 PM

FoolesTroupe: Flush curtains? Love the images that conjures up!

noddy, wow!! Now, please go start a thread and tell us how it really went! Sounds like quite an adventure.

I picked up a book at the used book store the other day. It was by a person born and raised in Wyoming, same person had been a journalist there, like me, so I figured I'd give it a try. I read the first paragraph (should have done before I decided to buy it, but jeez, Gerry Spence, one of the most famous Wyomingites said it was "compelling" right there on the cover!) and gave up. When I read it to my daughter over the phone, she said I should enter it in this thread, so....

Ralphie Skates was a nasty, leather-necked son of an oil-patch whore who once served ten years in the state pen in Rawlins for beating his wife's lover to death with a lead-weighted baseball bat. But for all his mean and swagger, he wasn't tough enough to stop the bullet that had torn off the bottom half of his face and driven most of his teeth out the back of his neck.

Lying on his side in the dust of Tess McAfferty's corral, the fingers of his right hand rested in a pile of cow shit. His left arm, pinned beneath his heavy body when he crashed to the packed ground was twisted at an unnatural angle. His pants bagged around his knees, and a couple of shiny green bottle flies snacked on his flaccid penis. A puddle of black blood congealed beneath his shattered head.

Gregory Bean: No Comfort in Victory published by St. Martin's Press in their "Dead Letter Mystery" series.

Yuck! Apparently a first and only novel of his.

kat

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 01:33 PM

Shore does conjure up a picture, don't it??? :>)

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 01:56 AM

"Been busy?" asked Luke.

"Busy?" Tracy replied. "Been busier than the toilets at an all-you-can-eat Buffet on the day the social security checks come out."

"Hmmm," grinned Luke, spitting into the red dust at the toe of his cowboy boots. "Busy as that huh?"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 08:52 AM

LOL! Nice to hear from ya, LEJ!!

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Rosalind
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 02:37 PM

And so, to put him out of his agony, he smited that wooly booger of a dragon. Henceworth being known as Carl, the wooly booger slayer. The End. LOL

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 03:21 PM

Sometimes, in the evening light along the strand, she would walk for hours contemplating the white fingers of surf coming in from the Atlantic, clawing the shore, and she would feel the essence of endlessness in her waiting, as though she was an actress in the longest possible movie, and it would never end.

Other times it seemed more pleasant, somehow, such as when she was getting her hair done at the beauty parlor, listening to the low-pitched gossip among the beauticians. It always made her feel better to get her hair done, but she could not say why, exactly.

She wondered almost every evening and almost every morning whether he would write, or even magically appear unexpectedly that day. She could always hope, after all. Couldn't she?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 07:37 AM

Gaud. She's got it bad. Don't she know he ain't never comin back. I tol her so that night way back when ...well it were long time now but I knew he would go. She'd find another if she stopped her moppin an whining. Hell everybody knew he'd go when he did. Why din,t she. He was always foolin around behind her back with that floozie in the bar for all to see. Hell she wouldn't believe me. I tried tellin her. Ol Jake he tried an he don't mess in anybody's business. He just sits on the porch and sips his beer.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,frogprince
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 04:40 PM

What this country really needs is more men with real two-fisted guts on their shoulders...

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Literal genius
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 06:59 PM

Georgiansilver could not believe that a woman of such beauty could be in his Hotel room, in his arms and allowing him to delicately stroke her ample breasts. He slid his hand down over her slightly oversized abdomen and inside her underwear. "What's this"? he shouted as he quickly removed his hand. "You are not a woman at all" he uttered
"No" she/he replied "you have been deceived as have many others, I am the legendary Martin Gibson". Once again Martys deception had almost paid of. S'pose you cant win em all!!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 10:59 PM

There is no question about it, this is some of the worst writing it has ever been my sorrow to read.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 03:54 AM

Oh No was it really me?....No way!!! but very amusing.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 07:01 AM

"But I tell you what Georgiansilver" says Martin "if you do it again and only half as good I wont tell anyone. Honest!".
Marty thought for a while......




"Oh all right then but just once!" He replied, beads of sweat running down his balding head and across his ruddy cheeks.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 10:07 AM

O.K so we don't want a soap opera here do we? ROFLOL

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 01:04 PM

Hope Martin has read this. I did PM him to enlighten him as to its existence.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 01:16 PM

wow;like it's really great to see like just how many really bad writers have like joined up to the mudcat since this thread was last refreshed-like and brought upwards to the top recently in the very short past.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 01:46 PM

To continue with the story by literal genius:-
Realising what a pathetic character Martin was under that hard, Chicago business man exterior, Georgiansilver(GS) decided to give him a break. He showed Martin pity and asked if there was any way he could help him to come to terms with the reality of life in the modern world. Martin broke down! the tears rolling down his sad little cheeks. "Everyone on the Cat seemed to know that I was only acting a role on those threads" he sobbed. "They all knew I was different in reality but if they had seen the truth they would have mentally destroyed me"
"Now, now" said GS, "If only you had been a little more honest with people on the Cat in the first place, they would have been far more charitable with you. They may have liked, nay even loved you".
Poor Martin wept even more as he considered his plight. What could he possibly do now??????
Well Martin..over to you my friend for some of your literal genius.. Best wishes.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 07:34 PM

Still waiting!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 08:40 PM

there is a horrid story around here about a dog who eats alot. i wish that idiot who wrote it would rethink writing a piece of trash like that or at least rethink posting it and sparing us the inanity of it all. like who gives a fuck.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 12:07 AM

Marty has arrived???!!!!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Peace
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 12:17 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC - PM
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 11:50 AM

Fuck you brucie.


She missed the comma.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 07:40 AM

Still waiting Martin.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 09:10 AM

Spam is a great source, but I can't be bothered reading it all. Note that improper punctuation, spelling and spacing are important. The last part of the message appears to lack proper grammar as well, but it just could be really bad modern poetry...
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey there sExy,L00king for A d a t e?
search out women from all across the US F O R free
Waiting to talk to you now. Thousands of babes to choose from
Your 0ne click away from finding that right some one special tonight

sincerley


tease alley start carom tails abbot cream madam knead abort as until lover

storm alias knife aspen inner ulcer alias abide the angry proof panic abuzz



craze lives jolly as as paint an covet niece digit thing noble

james was egypt break spray madam craze jiffy was north hands where safes stuck wispy,

craze a the keeps spent riots eight where radar tough laugh chose abbey.

dives also dream woods brain worry sleep white brain

the white wiser occur blush kinds xylem pacts joins apart.

basic jolly goals liked cream worth.



leave races camel ashes craze cacti story pants tenth march modal hauls

eerie a abeam heads lower kayak files kings table abyss judge was weigh these paste,

merit major hello asked china wants popup pools creep goose pages mouse begin.

juicy means abide shall sound plain grill vivid plain

abort macro racer entry waldo wilde digit the quota helps.

jolly allow broth fresh video store



as water named tears mount lunch falls jolly stirs mouse,

obese salsa oscar cadet bluey world.



death

canon paper.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 11:16 AM

Have a nice holiday Martin..you and your family and come back refreshed...to meet the challenge on those two threads....I will keep them refreshed till your triumphant return. Best wishes.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:10 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:32 PM

So the saga continues.
Martin in his wisdom, decided that he needed a holiday to escape the hostility on the Mudcat, so he took himself and his family away for a while. He told the Mudcatters that he was away on holiday but secretly they all knew he would be in the first internet cafe to find out what was happening on the Cat, if indeed he was really on holiday at all. Holidays do not keep people from the internet. Besides, Martin would so miss Georgiansilver that he could not resist coming into the arena to insult/wind up/shout expletives at him. Tough guys from Chicago would never wimp out when dealing with retired guys who are published writers...or would they?
Martin...the challenge is still on.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amergin
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:41 PM

I thought you were staying out of the bs threads? If that's the case why are you trolling?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:44 PM

Amergin...after the PM's I received and support on certain threads, I decided to stay. You have a problem with that?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:51 PM

I don't see myself as trolling..I have responded to some trolling and have laid out a couple of literal challenges...In my mind that is the best way to deal with someone who rides others..a bully. What do you think?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amergin
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:07 PM

Gee what a surprise....

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:04 AM

Marty crept slowly up the path carefully carrying the limp body so none would see it. Then with a deft movement he dropped it on Sir jOhn from Hull's driveway. That should sort him out he thought. Now who is next on the list!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: el ted
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:10 AM

me

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: el ted
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:36 AM

The

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: el ted
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:37 AM

300th

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: el ted
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:37 AM

post

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: el ted
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 09:38 AM

is mine! Bat on darlings.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Aug 04 - 10:25 PM

So the Foul Mouth Martin Gibson is back!

(Those few days seem to have made no difference to his meds)

So is the writing challenge!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 12:43 AM

el ted, you are in the grip of an obsession...or an odd hobby...depending on how one looks at it. :-)

I would do some bad writing, but I need to go to sleep at this point.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,gladiator
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 12:03 PM

El ted you are obviously a "centurion"

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,Bob Kelly
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 12:00 AM

Twas the thirty third of May
when my Darling passed away
She had never died so suddendly before
She was sitting in a chair
and she didn't like it there
so she got up and died upon the floor

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 12:48 AM

Y'know, this WAS a clever and fun thread that Peter started. Too bad Joe O didn't close it about July 28.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 03:54 AM

Indeed, LeeJ...it's happened to so many good threads.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 Dec 06 - 11:26 PM

Maybe it could be made a permathread?

~S~

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,georgiansilver
Date: 26 Dec 06 - 05:35 AM

Woke up Christmas mornin'
My wife was dead.
Reindeer came down the chimney,
And stepped on her head.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 26 Dec 06 - 02:36 PM

Whooooo... Yeah, Mike!

*holds up lit BIC lighter*

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: GUEST,GS
Date: 26 Dec 06 - 03:49 PM

I lit the barbecue one night last year,
The sun shone bright, the day was crystal clear.
That barbecue, put an end to all my strife,



Next line please?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Dec 06 - 04:16 PM

This was a great thread once. Go back to the beginning and see.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 26 Dec 06 - 06:44 PM

Ancient history. It wouldn't even be on the board now if it hadn't been refreshed by a porno spam post (since deleted).

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 01:30 PM

Well, I ain't no porno spam and I think this deserves another refresh, esp. the beginning posts of it!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 01:46 PM

Evening fell across the dark lagoon like Spaw-gas filling a crowded bus. The moon, gentle as a limp member, rose slowly over the horizon. Metilde quietly slipped out of her bikini, and slipped into the warm, placid waters, which welcomed her, absorbed her like a good sewer absorbs a flush -- uncomplaining, quiescent, flowing quietly.

A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Cluin
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 01:57 PM

It was a dark and stormy night. There was nothing much on TV so I just went to bed.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 02:20 PM

Oh, Amos, that was truly awrfull!

Okay then:

Turning her head, slightly, not all the way to the left, but just a bit off-centre, Mindy could see out of the window as she lay on the hospital bed. She wasn't sure how she got there, something about going down a drain kept flitting across the movie screen in her head, but if she tried too hard to remember it made her head hurt, so she looked out the window and tried not to remember.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: MMario
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 02:26 PM

The mal-odourous but almost sweet fumes rising like clouds from the dank foul-smelling liquid of the mist covered tarn that lay shrouded in darkness beneath the heavily shadowed mountains at the foot of the valley clung to his nasel membrenes as if they were wet velvet sleeves on a young maiden.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Alba
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 02:50 PM

Amos, Kat, Mmario...

Yes indeed, no doubt about it. Those are some fine examples of Bad Writing .... Can I have some more please...LOL

Jude :)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 04:04 PM

Everybody knows what lead feels like, when it tears open your shoulder like a puma opening a rabbit. When it burns like the end of a cigar going through a layer of white thigh. It can change your mind like a full bus barreling through a pedestrian crossing; ask anyone who has been hit by lead, and they'll tell you.

But the glittering-eyed Chinese hitman was not coming at me with lead. He was showing cold, thin steel, and he meant cold, hard business. Thinking of Rosemarie, I stepped toward him..,

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Seiri Omaar
Date: 23 Aug 07 - 05:36 PM

.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Adeline Rosa Maria Angelica Elizabeth Mint's head felt like it was going to explode like the pretty fountain in Mama's garden did when she turned on the water for the first time every year for the summertime. She needed Tylenol badly, and she was ready to beat the gardener with her write sock to get that divine, heavenly, pain-eliminating pill. She raised herself from her pink, frilly, Ikea-brand lawnchair and realized with heart-stopping, brain-melting panic that her write sock had dropped off the edge of the planet.
"ANDREW MORGANN GEORGE ROY VALERIAN ALEXANDRO SHOVEL! WHERE IN ALL THE HELLS IN HELL IS YOUR CLUMSY, IDIOTIC, PINK ASS?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!"
The good sir Mr. Shovel would not, and could not, and really should not have responded. His response was falling through the thin as a sheet of paper wall of the wreckity ol' gardening shed. With a woman. A stunningly amazingly gorgeous woman with hairy feet.
The woman screamed as sun poured over like honey over milky white skin. Monsieur Shovel howled in heart-retching agony as her skin lit on fire. He tried to put out the fire with his feet, which only made the retched female shriek in even more agony.
Adeline Rosa Maria Angelica Elizabeth Mint soon found a stake that belonged to her sister's ex-husband's mother's cousin's roommate's sister's girlfriend. You can guess where it ended up. She then decided to become a huntress of vampires, dedicated to eliminating FROM THIS GOOD UNIVERSE all those who bite people. And wear black. Why would you wear black when pink exists, you know?
The good sir Mr. Shovel gave Madame Adeline Rosa Maria Angelica Elizabeth Mint her Tylenol, and slunk like a skunk into the shadowy reck of a shed. And smiled snarkily, wondered whether she'd figure on him using rat poison on her frilly, cross-eyed ass.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hahahahahahaha.... long stupid names.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 09 Nov 07 - 12:42 PM

That qualifies.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Mr Happy
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 09:16 AM

........Laura felt his hot breath on her cheek as he ripped the thin silk from..............

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: bfdk
Date: 10 Nov 07 - 09:39 AM

Picked at random from a DVD player instruction manual that I had the bad fortune to be asked to translate once:

Change watch angle
While playing DVD press angle key screen show instruct title. DVD disc will change watch angle by pressing this key each time

Lock key (HOLD)
Turn according to the arrow in the button to hold all key in line controller no use, reverse is unlock to resume line controller function

Safety
The beam of unit is baneful. Do not disassemble unit, all correction must be processed by personnel
Pull out adaptor to switch off power supply while liquid dropped into unit

Long time no use unit please unload adaptor and rechargeable battery

Donot place unit under below position:
1) Place is shined by sun directly or heater around. Do not place unit on car panel or package shelf in airproof car to avoid unit malfunction
2) Dust, moist or high temperature place
3) Quaveringly place like car panel or shelf

And plenty of other "goodies" in the same manual, too..

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 30 Nov 07 - 07:22 PM

An entry from Harper's Magazine of February 7, 1863, during the Civil War. I have brought it forward because although it met the standards of its day as publishable fiction, it would be instanter rejected in our post-Hemingway era, as unspeakably unwieldy and overlong.

---

"A FEW days afterward Ellinor's father bethought himself that some further communication ought to take place between himself and his daughter's lover on the subject of the approval of the family of the latter to the young man's engagement, and he accordingly wrote a very gentlemanly letter, saying that of course he trusted that Ralph had informed his own father of his engagement; that Mr. Corbet was well known to Mr. Wilkins by reputation, holding the position he did in Shropshire, but that as Mr. Wilkins did not pretend to be in the same station of life, Mr. Corbet might possibly never even have heard of his name, although in his own county it was well known as having been for generations that of the principal conveyancer and land-agent of—shire; that his wife had been a member of the old knightly family of Holsters, and that he himself was descended from
a younger branch of the South Wales De Wintons or Wilkins; that Ellinor, as his only child, would naturally inherit all his property, but that in the mean time, of course, some settlement upon her would be made, the nature of which might be decided nearer the time of the marriage.

"It was a very good straightforward letter, and well fitted for the purpose to which Mr. Wilkins knew it would be applied—of being forwarded to Mr. Ralph Corbet's father. "

---

Note that the above text comprises only two sentences.



A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Nov 07 - 09:22 PM

Gaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!

I don't like Hemingway all that much, but perhaps his arrival on the scene was somewhat fortuitous after all.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Slag
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 04:44 AM

I put my mind on fluff and came down with this:

It was a stark and swarmy night. Soddenly a thought fell out, dribbled down the half empty fool and onto his otherwise blank versed page. Could it be A, a B novel beginning of a novel? Or B, a beginning of A, a noble naval novel? Irregardlessly of the past effects of his dilettantish affectations he heroically struggled on beating the keys of his Hapless 250 typewriter until his powerful thirst for another highball rolled up his gorge and poured over his opus magnusing endeavourment. "Damn I'm good", he thought.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 06:13 PM

clcik on donuel and select any post at random for a superlative example of bad writting.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 07:09 PM

Bill stared at his keyboard, trying to decide whether he could really devolve a hiatus and enter a bad writing contest, knowing that his usual eloquent prosody was hard to avoid, except by resorting to the sort of vacillating stream-of-conciousness that was usually construed by less discerning readers as emanating from inferior brains, and which, compared to his (Bill's) illustrious creativity, would neither evoke remonstrations of hilarity at his erudite contortions of nomenclature nor draw the casual peruser of such creativity into any seriously contemplative consideration: even with...or especially with, so many better examples of worseness preceding his pre-emptive attempt to demonstrate how flagrantly muddled it was to truly, in this day and age of practically universal weakness of literary construction, be able to express the essential miasma which delineates the required depths of ...you know... presumptuous verbosity necessary to even raise the eyebrows on the literary critic at the New York Times - much less the masses who congregate at Mudcat's barely reputable forum - so he assigned the task to his altered ego which, when released and not monitored closely, can be counted on to turn out turgid crap like this.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 07:45 PM

Most turgid indeed, Sir William!


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 08:11 PM

So, when do I get my prize? If it isn't forthcoming, I may have to write MORE of that stuff!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 08:12 PM

Well done, the Bad, Altered Ego! LMAO!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 09:50 PM

Wonderful, Bill, wonderful! I take it that that is the abridged version? A mere delicious fragment to whet our appetites? Well, I for one am champing at the bit to here the entirety of it. May I forward you an appropriately generous stipend and be the first to receive an autographed copy of the first edition when it comes out?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 11:23 PM

Oh, send it by PM.


A

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Janie
Date: 01 Dec 07 - 11:56 PM

Way to go, Bill. I knew you had it in you!

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Dec 07 - 11:20 AM

It's an absolutely deathless piece of prose. Bill has outdone himself. He must have been inspired by God when he wrote that. ;-)

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Dec 07 - 12:04 PM

"...inspired by God ..."

nope, Kierkegaard.

Well, we'll see, Little Hawk...after this last craft show ends tonight....but you may regret asking for the unabridged version.
Remember the one that Shambles got from me?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Bad Writing Contest (Enter Often)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Dec 07 - 05:07 PM

No....

But I bet it was good.