81–90 of 154 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it doesn't leave much room for the rest of the novel, but maybe that's the point.
Maybe the novel's about the bears?
I think I have a taste for absurdist humor, because a lot of these read like openings to fantastically funny satire. At least to me. With the exception of the Sci-Fi category -- those all read like high school pornographic fan fic. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed in the sci-fi category. Seems like low hanging fruit. Surely they could have done better!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it doesn't leave much room for the rest of the novel, but maybe that's the point.
Maybe the novel's about the bears?
> “Hoist the mainsail ye accursed swine” shouted the Captain over the roar of the waves as the ship was tossed like a cork dropped from a wine bottle into a jacuzzi when the faucet is wide open and the jets are running full blast and one has just settled into the water with a glass of red wine to ease the aches and pains after a day of hard labor raking leaves from the front yard. > Sir Reginald Brimwater, Guardian o…
> THE BEET IS THE MOST INTENSE of vegetables.
> The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
> Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.
> The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...
> The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.
> The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.
> In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in Rasputin. Certainly there is mangel-wurzel in the music of Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-e-t——.
> Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually, there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic asshole—and when you aren't sitting on it, you can use it as a bowl for borscht.)
> An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil."
> That is a risk we have to take.
Don't forget to check the Lyttle Lytton, which is funnier (as it's shorter) and also makes you wonder how he got that domain name. http://adamcadre.ac/22lyttle.html
To anyone reading them and wondering why the funniest entries aren't necessarily the winners: Lyttle Lytton tends to prefer sentences that read like a bad first sentence of a serious novel, not a good first sentence of a comedic or otherwise intentionally-absurd novel. The latter sort often make the list to some degree, but rarely end up at or near the top.
> All I can say is that I have never been so insulted (even by the likes of my moronic sister (who seems to delight in making me uncomfortable (and she is so good at it, knowing just how to push my buttons (which I think is a skill that all siblings possess to some extent (which I believe proves some sort of genetic link (despite the fact that I really enjoyed genetics in school (relating on so many levels to Gregor…
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Langua...
> All I can say is that I have never been so insulted (even by the likes of my moronic sister (who seems to delight in making me uncomfortable (and she is so good at it, knowing just how to push my buttons (which I think is a skill that all siblings possess to some extent (which I believe proves some sort of genetic link (despite the fact that I really enjoyed genetics in school (relating on so many levels to Gregor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very post-modern. You start with the ending, and then the rest of the book is how everything that happened led to her untimely demise.
it’s barely post-modern. it’s a boring and overused tv plot technique that makes me groan whenever I come across it. build up excitement, tension, drama, create an interesting scene, then throw it all away with a “how did we get here” and a roll back in time
The link currently points to the 2019 winners, the correct one is: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
lol Honestly i think the 2019 grand winner is the best still >2019 Grand Prize >Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.
The structure is clunky, but the payoff at the end is actually really good! Also the dumbness of the name is funny enough to work in the right context. With a little bit of editing this would make a great piece of flash sci-fi on something like nanoism.
Dishonorable Mention (2019): > As they sprinted together down the echoing, looping ramp of the deserted Guggenheim Museum, closely pursued by three swarthy members of the resolutely vicious Cannelloni gang, square-jawed British Royal Marine art historian/world's deadliest sniper John Savage and his voluptuous young modern art critic/Navajo linguist Samantha Silver cursed architect/interior designer/writer/educator Fr…
That is a) SUPERB, and b) a perfect example of the Dan Brown Code[1]. [1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.h...