Lippard.Multics 1985-11-19 16:07:06 mst Tue Subject: Bulwer-Litton contest Date: Sat 16 Nov 85 18:12:04-EST From: /* thunderbunny */ To: info-cobol@MIT-MC.ARPA@MIT-MULTICS.MAILNET Here are some samples from the Bulwer-Lytton writing contest: [Some of these and some others appeared in the issue of Misc now in the archives as v4#2. I didn't remove duplicates as the older message did not give credit (blame?) to the individual writers. -jjl] A sky the color of old bruises hung over the dry, ever-reaching stretches of the Australian outback. -Christine Veith Girard, Pennsylvania Dawn broke like a crusty suet pudding, leaving greasy colorless clouds stuck like cotton balls on the gunmetal gray sky. -Joan B. Cotta San Jose, California It was a singular day at Chez Maurice, a chichi resteraunt in a not so chichi part of the city, when Miranda clutched madly at her throat, gurgled those impossible words, and expired, while John, not yet in the position of sleuthing, but an intuitive sort, unbuttoned her blouse and found the letters--well, it's not at a point in the story where they can be revealed--engraved in permanent ink upon her chest. -Susan Harrow San Francisco, California To say that she was beautiful would be so inadequate as to constitute damnation by faint praise; to say that she was dead, her once-lovely neck snapped like a twig in the hands of some rampaging Goliath, would be to state the appallingly obvious; to say that the gendarmes of the Twenty-first Precinct were curious as to how her nude body got into my bed would be this year's contender for understatement of the decade (I was rather curious myself, having never seen her before in my life, but knowing at a single glance that she was my kid sister). -Art Hill Stoughton, Wisconsin The conjunction of a hangover, that lunar-synchronous spot of unpleasantness that Woman is heir to, and a bout of stomach trouble that would have cleared the dysentery ward at Delhi General made Ophelia's wedding night less romantic than she had always imagined it would be. -Rex De Winton Bristol, England Writhing in the elemental and furious rush of that scalding shower spray, Lucy thrilled to the memory of Jean-Luc's eager response handling and contour seats. -Terrence H. Seamon New Brunswick, New Jersey It had been three days since Torfongu had eaten Los Angeles, and now he sat staring down at Bakersfield...a tasty little morsel, indeed. -Patrick L. Shepard Eagan, Minnesota It came to him in a cocaine rush as he took the Langley exit that if Aldrich had told Filipov about Hancock only Tulfengian could have known that the photograph which Wagner had shown to Maximov on the jolting S-bahn was not the photograph of Kessler that Bradford had found at the dark, sinster house in Schillerstrasse the day that Straub told Percival that the man on the bridge had not been Aksakov but Paustovsky, which meant that it was not Kleist but Kruger that Cherensky had met in the bleak wintry Grunewald and that, therefore, only Frau Epp could have known that muller had followed Droysen to the steamy, aromatic cafe in the Beethovenstrasse where he told Buerger the Todorov had known since the Leibermann affair that McIntyre had not met Stoltz at the Gorlitzer Bahnoff but instead had met Sommer at the cavernous Anhalter Bahnhof. -Richard Winkler Brighton, England Winner, Spy Fiction category After a long kiss, her nostrils flaring both from passion and from lack of oxygen, Velma pulled back slowly from Lloyd and, with her violet eyes ablaze, her quivering moist lips slightly parted, her breasts, firm as Delicious apples, heaving convulsively, she moaned, cracked her gum, and said, "Geez, I sure could go for a hamburger!" -Lynn S. Black Massapequa, New York The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and green, much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid says it is all right to buy it. -Scott Davis Jones Sausalito, California Winner, Sci-Fi category Staring glumly at the corpse, so carelessly, so insultingly, so nakedly tossed on the trash pile behing the administration building, President Henrietta--Mother Hen to her students--wondered painfully what this contretemps would do to her plans for funding advanced training in computer programming. -Richard E. Haswell Springfield, Missouri Old man Lewis sat bolt upright in his bed at precisely 3:16 a.m. on the night of the Academy Awards ceremony, when most of the celebrities were back in their own or each other's posh homes, sampling exotic pharmeceutical concoctions, and screamed, "Mandy, the duck! The duck!" as his heart shuddered to a long-overdue halt. -James McGuire Worthington, Massachusetts A cowboy should know his horse, but it seemed to the podners at the Triple Q Ranch that Vernon McChew had gotten too close. -Beloved Remington Newport Beach, California Sister Mary Agnes coughed, spit a gobbet of blood, and tossed the severed goat's udder over the rim of the canyon. -Charles F. Mason, Ph.D. North Bend, Oregon Marvin gazed fonly after Meribel, her marvelously mobile parts filling her clothes the way milk fills a bucket, and sloshing seductively down the rosy hall, which glowed like a maid on a sailor's lap. -Sharon V Brown Los Gatos, California "It could well be that you will not leave here alive," I suggested, as I slipped back the action on my Vikki-Weber 38-06, spilling all six bullets onto the floor. -Ralph Holmstad Sausalito, California "My God!!! It's ALIVE!!!!" cried the nubile young lab assistant, whose sensitive baby-blues cast a knowing glance away from the microscope to the grotesque hunchback drooling darkly in the corner, so overwhelmed with searing passion she didn't hear the shot ring out or the maid scream, or notice the delicate scent of magnolia blossoms drifting in through the portholes of the saucer hovering over the plantation, think only of the previous night, when Harry Hungstud had thrown her naked on the bed and forced--yes, FORCED!!!--her to caress his motorcycle boots with her tongue, for in her consuming ambition to be chairman of the board of Intergalactic Perfumes, Inc., there was no depravity, no perversity, no unspeakable descent into untter animal self-degradation that Harriet would not endure. -John J. Pollock San Jose, California I pounded down the crap-slick alleyway, clutching the Luger as it belched out its last hunk of white-hot metal, which tore at the elusive sonuvabitch sidestepping at full speed ahead of me, while screeching, marauding cats scattered and clattering garbage cans spilled their guts, missed the bastard, and slammed into the brick wall. (from I, The Fury) -G. B. Johnson Walnut Creek, California