WORLD’S BEST HACK

It’s time once again for the only literary contest that matters, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (also known as the Dark and Story Night contest) which challenges writers to create the worst possible opening sentence to an imaginary novel. This year’s winner is Garrison Spik of Washington, D.C., who came up with this piece of crap: “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, N.J.’” Check out Bulwer-Lytton.com for a list of finalists in several categories, including this winner from the detective genre: “Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears.”