Writers spend much of our time agonizing over this word or that word, grammar and punctuation, all in an attempt to turn out a beautiful piece of work. But there’s a special category of writers who use their talents for a different, you might say evil, reason: to create truly awful writing.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrates that talent, and I’m pleased to say that Molly Ringle of Seattle, Washington is its 28th grand prize winner with this gem:

“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

The contest is the brainchild of the amusing Professor Scott Rice (scroll down and read History of the BLFC at the link above) at San Jose State University. He challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels, paying tribute to the famous “It was a dark and stormy night” opening of the novel Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. The line is also plagiarized repeatedly by Snoopy in the Peanuts comics.

The entries can be any length, but most people seem to cram as much detail as possible into as many words as possible. The judges recommend not going beyond 50 or 60 words, but last year’s winner, David McKenzie, managed 88 words.

The one that made me laugh the most out of this year’s winners was the winner of the Purple Prose category, by Scott Davis Jones of Valley Village, California:

“The dark, drafty old house was lopsided and decrepit, leaning in on itself, the way an aging possum carrying a very heavy, overcooked drumstick in his mouth might list to one side if he were also favoring a torn Achilles tendon, assuming possums have them.”

The official deadline each year is April 15, with the winner announced mid-June. But don’t despair; the contest accepts submissions “every day of the livelong year.” If you’ve got a truly awful one to share, send it any time to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, Department of English, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0090, or to srice AT pacbell.net.

Many thanks to my friend Gloria Hildebrandt for reminding me about the contest!

Here are some of the interesting and funny words I’ve run across recently. Most are from Buzzwhack and urbandictionary.com:

• Academic junk food: College courses with no value other than being an easy way to get an A.
• Anticipointment: The feeling you get when a product or event doesn’t live up to its own hype.
• Ghost work: The workload absorbed by the surviving staff after a layoff, generally with little notice or proper training.
• Golfmail: The result of forwarding your office phone, email etc. to your cellphone, allowing you to play 18 holes while maintaining the illusion that you’re at your desk.
• Premature officiation: When the hockey referee loses sight of the puck momentarily and mistakenly blows the whistle to stop play.
• Rebound job: A job you take, often due to the loss of your old job, knowing it isn’t long-term.
• Reinventing the flat tire: To make the same mistake already made before, despite extended debate and a formal vote.
• Scooby snacks: Token compensation, usually non-monetary, given as an award. From the cartoon Scooby-Doo.
• Urban Amish: A city dweller with no cellphone, no laptop, no iPod, no BlackBerry…

What fun words have you seen lately?

In case you missed it, the winner of the prestigious Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has been chosen. Drumroll, please. It is Daina Taimina’s Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes. No doubt you are as surprised as I that Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots and Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter did not even make the top three.

The odd Oddest prize goes back more than 30 years, when Bruce Robertson, founder of The Diagram Group (a “publishing solutions firm”), came up with the idea as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The prize is administered by The Bookseller, a leading business magazine for the book industry and web site that provides daily news and comment about the book business.

Bookseller “diarist” Horace Bent had worried that oddly-titled books would suffer in tough economic times, but was delighted that “oddity endured.”

I find the whole contest amusing, especially the part about it being conceived as a way to avoid boredom!

Phew. It’s been all Olympics, all the time for the past two weeks, and I’m ready to say goodbye to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. But first, my own gold medals go to the things I loved about these Winter Olympics:

Patriotic feelings. Canadians are normally shy about this, at least compared to Americans, but put us in the Olympics, especially on home turf, and watch out for the flags, red & white clothing, Canadian flag tattoos and spontaneous outbursts of our national anthem. Come to think of it, it’s kind of like the Canadian hospitality suite at the IABC World Conferences.

The feeling of goodwill that seemed to permeate the games. Well, until it came down to the big Canada vs. USA hockey game, when it was all GO CANADA on our part. (Thank you, Team Canada and Sidney Crosby, for letting Canada win gold and USA silver 3-2 in overtime. We may have lots of Americans on our Canadian teams, but we consider it Our Game.)

The unusual medals, a collaboration between artist Corrine Hunt and designer Omer Arbel. Each medal is unique; find out how here.

The crazy sports like ski cross that have athletes flinging themselves down steep slopes and runs with seemingly reckless abandon, although I know it’s only hard training that makes it look easy. And the snowboard races! And wild ski tricks!

CTV ran a great series called “How tough are these sports?” In it, various athletes tried a different sport than usual to see just how difficult it really was. So figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier discovered working with speed skater Denny Morrison that the skates and the method used for speed skating are quite different. Ditto for hockey player Georges Laraque, who had fun with short track skater Olivier Jean learning that racing isn’t as easy as it looks, and hockey player Wendel Clark, who strapped himself in to play sledge hockey with the Canadian Sledge Hockey team.

CTV ran another great series called “Difference Makers,” hosted by Rick Hansen, himself a difference maker. Hansen is the “Man in Motion” who pushed his wheelchair through 34 countries in 1985, raising funds for spinal cord injury research and awareness of the potential of people with disabilities. The series pays tribute to the extraordinary people who have helped Canada’s Olympians and Paralympians overcome their personal and athletic challenges.

Norway’s men’s curling team and their crazy pants. I didn’t exactly love the pants themselves, originally made famous by golfer John Daly, but I sure did appreciate the sense of humour the team had wearing them.

Here are some of the things that don’t get a medal:

The use of “medal” as a verb, as in, “She’s expected to medal in this sport.” I think I also heard “to podium” as a verb. Ughhhh.

How it so often seems to be all about winning gold, and seldom is a silver or bronze medal won; instead, it’s “settled for.” I think any medal is a real achievement, especially when you look at timed sports where athletes set personal records and finish mere fractions of a second apart.

The “I believe in the power of you and I” line  in the stirring song, I Believe, sung by 16-year-old Nikki Yanofsky. Grammatically speaking (word nerd alert!), it should be “you and me,” since “of” is a preposition and takes an object, as pointed out by grammarian Joanne Buckley.

CTV’s official Olympic coverage site, which wanted to make me “upgrade my browser with the latest version of Microsoft Silverlight” to watch the Canadian gold medal performance of ice dancing, and any other videos on the site.

What did you like or not like about the Olympics?

If you pay close attention to words and love clever word play, you’ll enjoy The Bookseller, a British trade magazine, and its quirky “oddest book title” contest. I first ran across this contest in 2008 and have looked forward to reading about it ever since.

The shortlist of books (hilarious itself for the content descriptions) vying for the latest Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year was just announced last week. The contestants are:

• The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Marla Dubinsky (who made it to third place last year with Curbside Consultation of the Colon)
• Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich by James A. Yannes
• Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina
• Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots by Ronald C. Arkin
• What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua? by Tara Jansen-Meyer
• Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton.

Horace Bent, custodian of the prestigious prize, says he received a record number of entries this year, many via Twitter (find him at @HoraceBent). I don’t find the entries are nearly as funny as in previous years, but maybe that’s just me.

Vote for your favourite title (scroll down to the poll on the left side), and watch for news of the winning title on Friday, March 26.

It took a while, but I encountered the first instance of “holiday season” in a client’s newsletter I edited yesterday. This phrase drives me crazy, whether or not it is accented by unnecessary capitalization as Holiday Season. Winter is a season; so is spring. Christmas (and the ensuing holiday) is not a season, even though advertising that starts before the Halloween decorations are put away makes it seem so. So please, can we just say “holidays” rather than “holiday season”?

By coincidence, I recently ran across humorist Dave Barry’s funny take on the holiday season (thanks to Wendy Marlow), from Christmas Shopping: A Survivor’s Guide:

“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’ or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!’”

While trying unsuccessfully to find an online link to it, I came across this one, which reminds me of attempting to shop at a mall near me anywhere near Christmas:

“Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around a parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.”

I hope you enjoy the laugh, and the “season”!

If you used Google today, you will have noticed the “l” looks a little different. In fact, it looks like a pair of legs — those bright orange legs belonging to Big Bird. The “doodle” celebrates the fact that Sesame Street is 40 this month.

I’ve blogged before about how much I have enjoyed Sesame Street over the years, and how its writers rule at clever word play, especially in the songs. A number of them are found in the 50 best Sesame Street moments.

And I have to give Google’s graphic designers props, too. They do the most clever and engaging things with a seemingly static logo!

Update: the doodles went on all week with different characters. My favourite: Cookie Monster’s googly eyes as the OO!

Yesterday was a big day for those of you (us) who notice and cringe at signs with extra or missing apostrophes. If people suggest that makes you a nitpicker, tell them you have nothing on former newspaperman Jeff Rubin, the founder of National Punctuation Day.

Jeff started it as a “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.”

Lest you think this is trivial, he points out:

“Casual shortcuts bred by e-mailing and text messaging have no place in school papers or professional business writing. In the business world, words have power and help decision-makers form impressions immediately. Careless punctuation mistakes cost time, money, and productivity.”

and

“It’s not the worst thing in the world if people don’t know how to properly use an apostrophe, but it does say something about them: that they don’t care to learn.”

Want some practice wielding your commas and your colons? Head over to E-WRITE’s 76 online opportunities to build your punctuation skills.

Meanwhile, Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty held a punctuation contest and has been sharing the entries in her newsletter and podcast. For instance, there were heartfelt odes to the semicolon (“I am in love with your very essence, purpose. / You join two sentences, / Which are independent, and make / Them stronger by bringing them together”) and the ellipsis (“I was putting ellipses where a comma would suffice…ellipses when an em dash would do the trick…ellipses when a yadayadayada would convey the same idea.”).

With that, go forth and use it’s in its proper place.

Here are some interesting items I came across this week:

• PostSecret.com: Frank Warren started PostSecret.com as a community art project. Since November 2004, he has received more than 150,000 postcards, each sent anonymously and containing that person’s secret. The web site receives more than six million visitors a month, viewing the shocking, soulful and laugh-out-loud funny thoughts and feelings shared by these secret donors. Warren has turned the postcards into five books, the most recent being PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God. “I feel like a kid waking up Christmas morning when I’m walking up to my mailbox,” he said in an interview.
• Six String Nation: One unusual guitar, 64 pieces, six strings and one Canada. This unusual guitar features pieces of Canadian history and heritage representing different cultures, communities and characters. For instance, there’s a caribou antler carving from Nunavut; a piece of gold from Maurice Richard’s 1955-56 Stanley Cup ring; and part of a seat from Massey Hall in Toronto. The guitar was conceived in 1995 by writer and broadcaster Jowi Taylor, inspired by the Quebec referendum looming that year. Taylor gathered the materials and had the guitar crafted by luthier George Rizsanyi. Nicknamed Voyageur, the guitar made its debut at the Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa in 2006. Since then, it has travelled thousands of kilometers across Canada, been played by hundreds of musicians and held by thousands of Canadians.
• Heathrow’s writer-in-residence: An article in the Aug. 27 Toronto Star (“A novel view of airport customs” by San Grewal) described the writer-in-residence program at Heathrow Airport. Swiss author Alain de Botton spent a week at Heathrow, observing travellers coming and going, and is now writing about his observations and experience. Publisher Profile Books will give 10,000 copies of the book, to be published Sept. 28, to Heathrow visitors.

What gems have you found in your online travels?

It has rained here most of the day, so what better time to share some of the web sites that never fail to bring a smile:

I can Has Cheezbuger, or LOL cats. Talk about creative writing! The silly captions to crazy pictures of cats (and occasionally other small pets) often make me laugh out loud. Like the two cats stretched up to get their heads into a garbage can (“did u finz the economee down der?”) or the cat inspecting the innards of a multi-hued pinata (“well u haz no polypz just sum skittlez”). There used to be a similar LOLsaur site featuring dinosaurs, but that seems to have disappeared.

Dooce. Well, clearly, Heather B. Armstrong doesn’t need any more link love, she of the hundreds of comments. But I just love her “Daily Chuck,” featuring photos of her two dogs, Chuck the mutt and Coco the miniature Australian Shepherd.

The Q.C. report. Quinn Cummings recently turned this blog into a book, Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life. And she’s doing a book tour by blog, with links on her blog to the sites where other bloggers ask questions. This comment of hers describes her style: “When I write my stories, in my mind I’m walking though Target with my friend Veronica telling her about my newest ghastly exploit.”  And this: “I’m pretty sure that if you start thinking of your loved ones as ‘material,’ you’re writing too often.”

Where do you go for a laugh online?