Dark and stormy

The Bulwer-Lytton awards for 2018 have been announced! Mr. Bulwer-Lytton is famous for his book that begins, “It was a dark and stormy night.” The contest named after him looks for worst possible opening sentences for stories. There is a grand winner every year plus winners in various categories, such as romance, western, science fiction, and vile puns. Here are the winners (or Dishonorable Mentions) that caught my attention.

Dreaded Pirate Larry was somewhat worried, as he looked down at his boot, where his first mate was stretched out, making whooshing sounds, attempting to blow him over, that despite having the fastest ship, the most eye patches, and the prettiest parrots, his crew may need a few lessons on the difference between literal and figurative, as evidenced by the rest of the crew applying ice to the timbers.

Shelley Siddall, West Kelowna, BC, Canada

Sufficiently numerous airborne water droplets struck various grounded objects at appreciable velocities, illuminated by ambient light from a sub-horizon sun such that fewer photons were absorbed by the retina of our protagonist’s eyes within a given interval of time than the number at which he would struggle to decide whether the amount of light he perceives should be considered “bright” or “dark”; in other words, it was a dark and stormy night.

Shea Charkowsky, Santa Clara, CA

And it came to pass that, in those days when the young and powerful Alexander, called The Great, boldly ventured forth on his mighty steed Bucephalus, leading a vast army to conquer, claim, and generally visit the more tourist-y areas outside his empire, there remained at home his lesser-known brother Demetrius the Mediocre, who kept the fires burning and, to everyone's surprise, produced a pretty decent BBQ.

Marsha Engelbrecht, Lafayette, LA

He was a bold man, thought Arial Calibri, the typesetter’s daughter, but he wouldn’t recognize a superscript if it was underlined, believed that “strikethrough” was a baseball term, thought italics were people from Italy, and that sans serif was a Caribbean island.

Sara Hough, Blacksburg, VA

In preparation for visits by African dignitaries, we had redecorated the West Wing of the White House in an African motif with numerous artificial plants and animals, but the President asked that we remove the papier-mache wildebeests, saying he was "tired of fake gnus."

Wm. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Snellville, GA

Once upon a time, there was a place where things happened; allow me to be more specific.

John Wallace, South Australia