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Computer Analyst Wins Best Worst Writing Contest

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dark-and-stormy-nights dept.

pmadden writes "Dan McKay, a friend from years ago, has won a prestigious literary award. I've enjoyed technical manuals over the years, but never like this. Who would have guessed that such great writing would come from the grad of a small technical school."

18 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. I NEVER THOUGHT by cathouse · · Score: 5, Funny

    that anyone tried to write the way I was always criticized mfor.

    --
    Thelma, I'm not making ANY deals.
  2. Speaking to my wife by Rhoon · · Score: 3, Funny

    His entry, extolling a subject that has engaged poets for millennia, may have been inspired by Roxie Hart of the musical "Chicago." Complaining of her husband's ineptitude in the boudoir, Roxie laments, "Amos was . . . zero. I mean, he made love to me like he was fixing a carburetor or something."

    Nahh, he's just been speaking to my wife.

    --
    "If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
  3. Dear Dan McKay by Fastball · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am a literary agent. I recently read your novella, "Ample Bosom," and I think it is a smash! Your talent for the mammary gland-carburetor metaphor leaps off of the page! I want to represent you. Please call the number below at your earliest convenience...

  4. Oh, he's talented by WickedClean · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sure Hollywood is calling right now. I wonder if this is where the studios recruit some of their screenwriters.

    --
    ...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
  5. Thats by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

    Computer person badly writes? Unpossible.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  6. Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    And he works for Microsoft! Hello? Where've the MS bashers gone off to tonight?

    Oh, and if you scroll down the page with the other entries, you get this in the Sci-Fi category:
    Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, in General Hospital born I was, and quite happy were my parents, but when a youngling still I was, moved we did.

    D

  7. Exhaust by confusion · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wonder what he would have to say about the exhaust manifold?

    jerry
    http://www.cyvin.org/

  8. Can it be 'worst' if intentionally so? by guynorton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The competition's title should be changed to 'Best parody of bad literature'.

    Most of the entries I have read are funny, and intentionally so because they are parodying bad writing. Unless their parody fails in the most abysmal way I dont see how it qualifies as bad prose. For writing to qualify as bad, terrible or 'worst' it should be unwittingly so.

  9. Disappointing by kongjie · · Score: 4, Interesting
    As an English major from way back, I have been aware of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for some time but never looked into the complete results.

    My first reaction after seeing the 2005 results pages is that if the people who run this thing want to keep it going, they might invest a little more design thought into their work. Yes, even though they only do it out of love and don't get a nickel for it.

    My second feeling is, despite the burden of reading a lot more bad prose, they should go back to a paragraph rather than a sentence. Many of the entries of note were more silly than really horrible and I think requiring the writer to write a coherent paragraph would produce better (erm, I mean worse) results.

    By the way, if you want more info on the history of the contest, go to the the Bulwer-Lytton home page .

  10. Re:Dark and Stormy... by swilde23 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I was a little confused as well. Being in the Engineering department, I don't venture over to the English side of things. However, wikipedia seems to clear things up.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton, _1st_Baron_Lytton

    His name lives on in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which contestants have to supply the openings of terrible (imaginary) novels, inspired by his novel Paul Clifford, which opens with the famous words:
    "It was a dark and stormy night"
    or to give the sentence in its full glory:
    "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
    The shorter form of the opening sentence was popularized by the Peanuts comic strip. Snoopy's sessions with the typewriter usually began with it. Entrants in the contest seek to capture the rapid changes in point of view, the florid language, and the atmosphere of the full sentence.
    --
    There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand this sig, and those that beat up people who do.
  11. Uber geek? by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Funny

    As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

    As he read this brilliant description, in bright red letters against a background as white as the purest of snow, to make his eyes ache slightly from the strain, a creeping thought slowly approached him much like a stalker of Natalie Portman, and as the thought materialized in his head, it told him -- "wow, he thinks exactly like a Slashdotter".

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  12. Bulwer-Lytton by adam1101 · · Score: 4, Funny
    Ah, yes, the Bulwer-Lytton contest. The challenge is to write the worst novel opening line you can think of. As most entries tend to be rather long, there is also a Lyttle Lytton contest limited to 25 word, with classics as

    In 3010, the potatoes triumphed.

    and the latest winner

    John, surfing, said to his mother, surfing beside him, "How do you like surfing?"
  13. Re:And speaking of bad writing ... by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Headers are an appropriate follow-on to carburetors...

  14. Strange Thing About Writing by Rob+Carr · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Of all the engineers and scientists and doctors that I know, all find their writing skills to be far more important than their math skills. They all wind up writing documents to get funds and report findings; most barely use calculus in their jobs and only one uses numerical methods for solving partial differential equations -- and he only uses that in his high power rocketry hobby.

    A computer programmer I know wishes he'd skipped his Fortran and Cobol classes for a technical writing class, but that might be damning by faint praise.

    --
    This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
  15. Re:I take issue with the premise of this contest. by gowen · · Score: 3, Funny
    Bad writing is, well, bad: boring, tedious, incoherent.
    Yeah, but we can't have Ayn Rand winning every year.
    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  16. Re:Does he mean Strombergs, or SUs? by seanadams.com · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a pic of the SU carbs:

    http://www.vord.net/cars/mgb_mods/engine/weber500- carburetor.htm

  17. Re:Dark and Stormy... by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Cummings? you mean cummings.

  18. Re:Dark night redundant? by fbjon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

    --
    True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.