Since Sept. 11 I haven’t been as scared of what the world was
coming to as I’ve been in the last week. Is there any limit to how
ugly this all could become?
Iraqis are demonstrating new levels of capacity for brutality
towards one another, as exploding sectarian violence imposes its
own definition of civil war on our disputatious commentariat. The
country is spiraling out of control, and no amount of happy talk
about the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or the latest security
crackdown can disguise the fact that neither has made a dime’s
worth of difference.
Since Sept. 11 I haven’t been as scared of what the world was coming to as I’ve been in the last week. Is there any limit to how ugly this all could become?
Iraqis are demonstrating new levels of capacity for brutality towards one another, as exploding sectarian violence imposes its own definition of civil war on our disputatious commentariat. The country is spiraling out of control, and no amount of happy talk about the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or the latest security crackdown can disguise the fact that neither has made a dime’s worth of difference.
Israel is embarked on a new Middle East war, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah joining Hamas in Gaza in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Will Syria, which supports Hezbollah and borders both Iraq and Lebanon, get drawn in? The U.S. used to be the only country that could mediate this mess. Now we’re in the middle of it. Watch oil prices go through the roof.
Tehran plunges ahead with its nuclear (weapons?) program, even as that country’s support for the spiraling violence in the region becomes too obvious to ignore.
Will North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il go beyond testing rockets to testing nukes? Maybe in the cartoon-fantasy world of this reckless, Daffy Duck-loving tyrant, bombs don’t really kill people.
And last but not least, will France invade Italy over racial insults and the loss of the World Cup? The last time the two tangled, in 1918, they called it the Joke Front.
We all needed a good joke. Thankfully, there was one to beat the band.
Almost lost in the unremittingly bad news last week was the announcement of the “winners” of the 2006, and 25th annual, Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the bad writing contest sponsored by the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.
If you’ve never heard of it, the contest was started in 1982 by Prof. Scott Ross and named after the English writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), whose most famous line (from the opening of his novel “Paul Clifford”) was “It was a dark and story night .”
The goal is a kind of glorious literary atrocity written by, in the words of the BLFC Web site, “writers with a little talent but no taste.” Thousands of over-qualified writers enter each year.
My submission must have gotten lost in the mail, because this year’s champion was Jim Guigli of Carmichael, Calif., who submitted some 60 entries. “My motivation for entering the contest,” he said, “was to find a constructive outlet for my dementia.”
Here’s Guigli’s winning effort:
“Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.”
Now that’s pretty good, or bad, stuff, but for my money, and maybe because I’m an editor, I would have voted for the runner-up. Here’s the second-place effort by Stuart Vasepuru of Edinburgh, Scotland:
“I know what you’re thinking, punk,” hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, “you’re thinking, ‘Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?’ – and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel loquacious?’ – well do you, punk?”
The contest also has several sub-categories (such as “purple prose”), special awards (this year there is a “salute to breasts”), and many “dishonorable mention” awards.
What it doesn’t have, and perhaps doesn’t need, is a political category. I think I know why: Because Ann Coulter would run away with all the awards.
Still, most political writing is a form of fiction, so this year I would like to propose a special, emaciated statuette be awarded to Coulter for this line about the 9-11 widows from her book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism”:
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”
Such deathless pomposity should not go unrewarded.
