Sunday, December 9, 2007

A Piece of Hiker

From the Reader's Digest:

Every year, the organizers of the Bulwer-Lytton prize based at San Jose University, California, invite entrants from around the world to come up with terrible opening sentences to imaginary novels. Here are some of this year's best efforts:

Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before.

And this year's winner: 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.


I like the Reader's Digest. Besides liberal doses of humour, it also had great articles - from people's experiences to real-life dramas. The tagline pretty much sums it up - 'Stories about life, Advice about living'. In fact, I'd recommend that you go and get it now.



[To read the rest of the funnily terrible opening sentences, visit: http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2007.htm]

8 comments:

Kriti

ha! so u posted it after all..."piece of hiker" =D
oh and now I know where all the Digests went from my room...

The Keeper of the Keys

oh i know...u guys luv reader's digest no?

and i didnt get the 2nd one-it was way too long--i take that gerald began to pee, but couldnt finish it because he was rendered temporarily deaf?

blog.sahil.me

no no! he permanently lost 10 per cent of his hearing but "permanently" lasted only 10 minutes because he was killed by lava in the volcanic eruption!!

the icing on the cake...

@kriti: i'm sure you suspected where they went :P

Kriti

Nids, honestly, how dim are you? You spoilt the joke.

The Keeper of the Keys

I 'm not dim, u light bulb, and i didn't spoil...i just wanted to highlight the hilarity of the thing...

blog.sahil.me

Erm....how can you highlight the hilarity of something if you say you didn't get it?

The Keeper of the Keys

X(
fine...wont comment no more on ur blog if u dont like it...

blog.sahil.me

uffo! i obviously didnt mean it that way!!
i do want you to comment on my blog if you like it......

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