Them words, them words…them bad words

I have to work on the 4th of July! That is definitely a change from the past. But more importantly, I won’t have any BBQ. I really don’t know how I’ll survive the holiday.

I’ve also bookmarked a ton of interesting reading and language stories but this school and work thing has been a challenge. For the first time in two months I’ve actually cleaned my apartment (don’t vomit, please. It really wasn’t that bad.) I thought I’d celebrate this feat by honoring a celebration of bad writing. San Jose State University’s annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a contest of bad writing at it’s best. The winner this year honed up on cliches, runons, and other things to make grammarians and English teachers cringe. Enjoy the opening words of a tale I like call, “Ellie, May I have a Ghost Story?”

“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

You can read more about the contest and the winner, David McKenzie, at Yahoo! News.