Nowhere to go but up...

The 2003 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest (a/k/a the "Dark and Stormy Night" contest) have been announced. The goal is to write the very worst opening sentence for a (non-existent) novel. Some of this year's entries:

Dishonorable Mention: Vile Pun Category

Sarah felt bored and unsatisfied, even though her job as a nurse's aide included helping patients and keeping track of the billiards equipment in the recreation room at the Venereal Disease Treatment Center, and she wondered what her mother had been thinking all those years when she repeatedly told her that a young lady should mind herpes and cues.

Dishonorable Mention: Detective Category

He knew that, at most, he had five seconds left to live, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, the gun barrel pointing at his face like a scolding finger, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, the hired assassin Ricardo¹s grip tightening on the trigger, five white elephantsS SIX white elephants, and then a bright blast of light as he wondered which was really the most accurate way to count five seconds.

Winner: Detective Category

Detective Inspector Mike Norman slipped six fingers into his overcoat pocket, five of them clad in a latex glove and attached to his palm, while the sixth was wrapped in a plastic evidence bag and apparently belonged to the kidnapped pianist Ricardo Moore, or, as it now seemed likely, the kidnapped ex-pianist Ricardo Moore.

Winning entries from previous year available here.

(via GirlHacker)