(The following story appeared on The Oregonian website on July 30. Scott Palmer is Chairman of the BLET’s Oregon State Legislative Board.)
PORTLAND, Ore. — A Wisconsin man’s blend of awkward syntax, imminent disaster and bathroom humor won a salute to bad writing today, narrowly besting an Oregon man’s entry in the 25th annual contest to offend both good taste and the English language.
Jim Gleeson, 47, of Madison, Wis., beat thousands of other prose manglers in San Jose State University’s 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this opening to a nonexistent novel:
“Gerald began — but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them ‘permanently’ meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash — to pee.”
Scott Palmer, a 46-year-old locomotive engineer from Klamath Falls, good-naturedly accepted runner-up in the contest. “It means there’s a worse writer than me,” he said, speaking above the sound of a moving train.
His entry: “The Barents sea heaved and churned like a tortured animal in pain, the howling wind tearing packets of icy green water from the shuddering crests of the waves, atomizing it into mist that was again laid flat by the growing fury of the storm as Kevin Tucker switched off the bedside light in his Tuba City, Arizona, single-wide trailer and by the time the phone woke him at 7:38, had pretty much blown itself out with no damage.”
Next time, Palmer has his sights set lower still. “I’m gonna do my worst to get there,” he said with a laugh.