Miscellaneous

While athletes of all shapes, sizes, and colors strive to go higher, faster, and farther in the city that gave its name to Peking Duck (before they changed the name to Beijing),  the English scholars at San Jose State University quietly announced this year?s winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The rules are simple: write the opening sentence of the worst novel you can imagine. The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who, in a moment of delusion, once began a novel with the words, ?It was a dark and stormy night,? looked at those words on the page, and thought to himself, ?Damn, I?m good!?

Special congratulations to Jay Dardenne, Louisiana?s secretary of state, who won dishonorable mentions for two entries.