IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

I pride myself as a Bizarro James Joyce. This is to say, an excruciatingly bad writer of Irish extraction. I am at my best (read: worst) when waves crash, winds howl, Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers are in full cry, and there’s a plentiful supply of Two-Buck Chuck on hand. Bear with me as we steer unsteadily into the raging torrent, full ahead, and unmindful of the shoals of mediocrity! Please note that this was originally penned on 7 December, some years back. Yoiks and aweigh!

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“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

So starts the epic, timeless prose of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s archetypal 1830 paragon of bad writing to which we are all indebted for inspiring innumerable annual contests (the purpose of which is to encourage us mortal word-hacks to aspire to similarly stunted parody opening paragraphs). The most well-known of these competitions is, of course, the original Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Immediately below appears another such classic specimen offered to the world by internet guru Dave Taylor.