[Hotfingrs]

These are the 10 winners of this year's Bulwer-Lytton
contest (run by the English Dept of San Jose State
University), wherein one writes only the first line of a
bad novel.

For those of you who do not know, Bulwer-Lytton wrote The
Last Days of Pompeii, which opens with the famous line "It
was a dark and stormy night." Hence the contest.

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were
ever to break wind in the echo chamber he would never hear
the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied,
a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick
brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black
lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a
small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied
description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his
mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep...
Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge
of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a
back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he
loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did
not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet
store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but
then penguins often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage
cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on
the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't
know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh
in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in
short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS...

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness,
crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers,
pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged
princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in
frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying
beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's
deception, screaming madly, 'You lied."
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