Bulwer Lyton

Bulwer Lyton 2007

Da se bacimo na malo neozbiljnije teme od politike i ekonomije. Negdje početkom srpnja završen je ovogodišnji krug Bulwer Lyton natječaja (o kojem sam pisao u srpnju 2006 godine).

Pa eto nekoliko odabranih citata:

Pobjednik Bulwer Lyton 2007:

Gerald began–but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash–to pee.

Grand Panjandrumnagrada (štogod to bilo):

LaVerne was undeniably underdressed for this frigid weather; her black, rain-soaked tank top offered no protection and seemed to cling to her torso out of sheer rage, while her tie-dyed boa scarf hung lifeless around her neck like a giant, exhausted, pipe cleaner recently discarded after near-criminal overuse by an obviously sadistic (and rather flamboyant) plumber.

Adventure (nečasno spomenuti natjecatelj):

Agent 53986262.9 was strapped precariously to a giant Chinese firework, the fuse slowly shortening like a noodle getting slurped into someone’s pursed lips, and although he knew he was running out of time and still had no plan for escape, all he could think of was the song about the Muffin Man and how the word “polyurethane” made it sound like the material was made out of multiple urethras.

Dječja litaratura (nečasno spomenuti natjecatelj):

Out of a hole in the ground popped a bunny rabbit which had a long thick orange carrot between its teeth and a big splotch of mud on its back that had dried into a dirt clump the size of a tumor.

Roza proza:

Professor Radzinsky wove his fingers together in a tweed-like fabric, pinched his lips together like a blowfish, and began his lecture on simile and metaphor, which are, like, similar to one another, except that similes are almost always preceded by the word ‘like’ while metaphors are more like words that make you think of something else beside what you are describing.

Roza proza (nečasno spomenuti natjecatelj):

Marilyn’s main feature was her mountainous breasts, with an associated sharp ravine of cleavage–the breasts not awesome like Everest, but like one of the Highland peaks near Balquhidder, where the notorious outlaw Rob Roy spent his last days.

Znanstvena fantastika:

What a pity Dave was too young to have seen “2001: A Space Odyssey,” for he might have been able to predict what would happen next, when the ape standing next to the big black slab picked up the tapir bone.

Zločesti štosevi (vile puns u originalu, nečasno spomenuti natjecatelji):

Upon discovering that his chief executioner Dr. Szekely had been secretly releasing prisoners, Vlad the Impaler ordered him to be skewered on one of the good doctor’s own fiendish spears, when suddenly, not recognizing the type of wood that was slowly advancing through the screaming victim, the nutty Romanian ruler quipped “What’s up doc?”

Nečasno spomenuti natjecatelj (ostalo):

It was a dark and stormy night, although according to meteorologists since the lightning density on the satellite imagery for the area was only about 0.5 strikes per square mile, it wasn’t stormy, and according to members of the American Society of Cinematographers because the lights from the city reflected off the clouds and created about 13 lumens of light, it didn’t really fit the technical definition of dark.

Bulwer Lytton natječaj

Bulwer Lytton literarni je međunarodni natječaj u čast i sjećanje na viktorijanskog pisca Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lyttona (1803-1873). Cilj natjecanja je vrlo jednostavan – pronalaženje najjednostavnije i najlošije rečenice koja otvara zamišljenu/nepostojeću novelu. Iako je Lytton dobro poznat po svojoj noveli “Posljednji dani Pompeja” (objavljene 1834 godine) i iz koje nam dolazi glasovita tvrdnja kako: “Pero je jače od mača!”, njegova najpoznatija je u stvari rečenica kojom je 1834 godine započeo roman Paul Clifford a koju je bezobrazno godinama zloupotrebljavao Snoopy i koja glasi “It was a dark and stormy night”.

Rezultati natječaja za 2006 godinu su ovdje i besramno kopiram neke od najboljih:

Pobjednik natječaja za 2006:
Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Skoro pa pobjednik za 2006:
“I know what you’re thinking, punk,” hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, “you’re thinking, ‘Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?’ – and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel loquacious?’ – well do you, punk?”

Kategorija “Avantura”, nečasni spomen:
It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he’d been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream.

Kategorija “Detektivsta fikcija”, pobjednik:
It was a dreary Monday in September when Constable Lightspeed came across the rotting corpse that resembled one of those zombies from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” except that it was lying down and not performing the electric slide.

Kategorija “Ružičasta proza”, pobjednik:
A single sparkling tear fell from Little Mary’s cheek onto the sidewalk, then slid into the storm drain, there to join in its course the mighty waters of the Los Angeles River and, eventually, Long Beach Harbor, with its state-of-the-art container-freight processing facilities.

Kategorija “Romansa”, pobjednik:
Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.

Kategorija “Kaubojski”, pobjednik:
His mistake, Shut-eye McBlamaway reflected, was not in standing up to a gang of desperadoes and rustlers on the high country, but in standing up to a gang of desperadoes and rustlers who had just left the set of a Sergio Leone shoot, and were thus equipped with those guns that never run out of ammunition.

Kategorija “Nekategorizirano”, časni spomen:
Kathy, who had bound her breasts and cropped her hair, and lied about her gender to join a monastery of Jesuits in northern Kentucky, until she was discovered one night in the shower, winced as the dentist pulled her tooth.

Kategorija “Nekategorizirano”, časni spomen:
Withdrawing his hand from her knee, the English professor stormed, “Ending a sentence with a preposition is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put,” although she had merely looked at his hand and asked, “What are you doing that for?” in a sentence intended to end the proposition.

Kategorija “Nekategorizirano”, časni spomen:
I saw her from across the room and knew I had to meet her, not because of her ample bosom, or her full lips, or her beautiful creamy skin, or the way her hair was twisted into a nice tight bun, or the buttoned-up blouse that begged to be torn off her body, or the skirt that was perhaps a size too small, but because she was my kid’s teacher and I was here for the parent-teacher conference.