So bad it’s good

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a literary parody competition sponsored by San Jose State University, has published its latest batch of winning/awful entries! Hooray! Here’s the winning entry:

“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.”

– Jim Gleeson, Madison, Wisconsin

You can view all the runners up at the official website. One of my faves, from the “Children’s Literature” section:

Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before.
Dave McKenzie
Federal Way, WA

Hee. Enjoy!

[Via CNN]