{"id":9475,"date":"2009-06-30T14:15:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T18:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9475"},"modified":"2022-03-21T08:45:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:45:42","slug":"davey-jones-be-damned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9475","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDavey Jones Be Damned\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boy did I need this today. The annual Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing has been awarded.<\/a> It’s one of my favorite times of the year (I also love the “bad sex writing” award – another fave). People are invited to submit opening lines to imaginary bad books (in honor of Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton – a longtime favorite of Lucy Maud Montgomery, who once was famous and beloved, and now is mainly known for his purple prose and perhaps the most famous opening line in history: “It was a dark and stormy night”.)<\/p>\n

This year’s winner (David McKenzie) goes off the damn deep end with so many truncated “ing’s” that you want to punch someone in the throat. It’s killing me, the ridiculousness of it, and the beauty of the insane mind who would think it up. Bravo.<\/p>\n

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

You can read the list of winners here <\/a>(they have a ton of different categories).<\/p>\n

For example, here’s the winner for “Historical Fiction”:<\/p>\n

The Cunard “Carinthia” glided through the starry waters of the Bering Sea, 843 passengers aboard, including Harriet Dobbs, resignedly single for over a decade, while a nautical mile due west slunk the K-18 submarine, under the command of lonely Ukrainian Captain First Rank Nikolai Shevchenko: ships that passed in the night (although the second technically a boat). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Others I love:<\/p>\n

“I want you to follow my husband,” said my newest client, the enigmatic Mrs Yogi, estranged wife of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know why that is so funny but it is.<\/p>\n

Or this:<\/p>\n

There were earthquakes in this land, terrible tsunamis that swirled flooding torrents of water throughout, and constant near-blizzard conditions, and not for the first time, Horatio Jones wished he did not live inside a snow globe. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then this:<\/p>\n

Lady Rowena, fresh from her bath, knew she had time to be ready to meet the Prince at 6:00 o’clock even though the mantle clock was striking six, because the brass escapement lever mechanism that engages the teeth of the large gear which drives the smaller gears that send the hour and minute hands on their circular paths, was worn. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here is one that made me laugh out loud. A true gift on this mainly rotten day.<\/p>\n

Category? Western.<\/p>\n

He was the desert nightmare whose name no one dared breathe, this deadly gun-slinger Garth Tedder, whose face struck terror in the hearts of man and beast, its macabre, round, maroon cheeks almost exactly like the pickled beets that farmers’ wives force-fed their horrified families. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have read that 10 times and I love it more each time.<\/p>\n

List of winners and runners-up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boy did I need this today. The annual Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing has been awarded. It’s one of my favorite times of the year (I also love the “bad sex writing” award – another fave). People are invited to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9475"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174543,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9475\/revisions\/174543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}