Part III: It was a dark and stormy night...

Okay, I promise this is the last entry using these words. First written by Victorian novelist, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, they have become an icon of florid, tumescent language. So much so, that the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest awards prizes each year to deliciously excruciatingly bad opening lines. Here are a couple past winners:

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, NJ'"

"The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarous tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal'"

This will be my last post for a while as I am off for some R&R. To quote John Huston in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, "...from now on you'll have to make your way through life without my assistance." Or, at least until I return - as ever BB