BS: College good for something

Subject: BS: College good for something
From: beardedbruce
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 11:54 AM

Winner: Bad writing learned in college

Story Highlights
Wisconsin man wins worst writing contest

Says he crammed two unrelated thoughts together

Winner writing book, "Self-Improvement Through Total Inactivity"
   
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A Wisconsin man whose blend of awkward syntax, imminent disaster and bathroom humor offends both good taste and the English language won an annual contest Monday that salutes bad writing.

Jim Gleeson, 47, of Madison, Wisconsin, beat out thousands of other prose manglers in San Jose State University's 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this convoluted opening sentence to a nonexistent novel:

"Gerald began -- but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash -- to pee," Gleeson wrote.

Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State, called Gleeson's entry a "syntactic atrocity" that displays "a peculiar set of standards or values." Rice has organized the contest since founding it in 1982. Read excerpts of top entries

Gleeson, who works at a Madison hospital setting up computer networks, said he submitted about 20 entries, and gave a little insight into what it takes to win the bad writing title and its $250 prize.

"It's like you take two thoughts that are not anything like each other and you cram them together by any means necessary," Gleeson said. He claimed he took time off from his current project, a self-help book for slackers entitled "Self-Improvement Through Total Inactivity," to pen his winning entry.

Gleeson credited his time in college with preparing him well. "There's a certain degree to which academia prepares you to write badly," Gleeson said wryly.

The contest takes its name from Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" famously begins "It was a dark and stormy night."

Entrants are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Citations are handed out for several categories, including "dishonorable mention" awards for "purple prose" and "vile puns."

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 12:04 PM

That seems to be one of the, if not the worst, then the most creative of the genré's egregiously concocted and awkwardly presented - in a field where these things have seen awesome examples since time immemorial, split infinitives.

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 12:13 PM

Hunh?

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: PoppaGator
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 12:44 PM

Bill D, I think if you put a dash rather than a comma before the final two words of your sentence, it would have been clearer, while still egregiously awkward.

I hesitate to suggest improved punctuation as necessary to complete a "worst writing" sentence, however.

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 12:49 PM

...but not bad for stream of typingness, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: pdq
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 12:52 PM

Methinks your stream of typingness has some dead fish floating in it.

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 01:08 PM

but I did close the brackets in my italics.

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 01:29 PM

Bill, I fear, which I sometimes do as a result of my childhood, which was otherwise very happy and by that I mean happy in the truest sense of the word, that your excellent and virtually flawless, which I can say is in reality flawless and not just virtually that I may have used incorrectly as I am prone to do in many cases such as this one, although I would not single out this effort as having any special signifying traits, response is superbly written and a winning performance on your part seen in glorious juxtaposition to the contest winner whose I found to be tedious just as life can be and sometimes is, although in this particular instance I don't believe but am willing to hear other opinions.......occasionally.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: gnu
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 01:39 PM

Bravo. Excellently well said, I must say, in my opinion, that is.

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 01:39 PM

Me too. Just like that.

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 01:43 PM

I think I am honored.....

(but fondly remembering my parody of Shambles a couple years ago, which I ought to polish and send in that contest.)

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 01:52 PM

Frankly I was thinking about simply sending a few of The Sham's originnal postings. If there were winnings involved we could keep half for the 'Cat and send him the other half.....and maybe we send him a Cornhole game as a bonus.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 05:01 PM

What a concept....banned, but drawing royalties!

Subject: RE: BS: College good for something
From: Sorcha
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 05:37 PM

Well, my college degree helps me win Trivia games! LOL...not tried bad writing yet for some time. At this point in time it seems time to start timing myself out for a lengthy stay reading Time Magazine.