August 13, 2008
Go Home Already: Tired
- Local writer Garrison Spik has been awarded the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges entrants to submit terrible, cliche-filled opening sentences to imaginary novels. Spik's winner: "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'" That's pretty bad, indeed.
- Eight local law firms were named among the 50 best law firms for women, according to Working Mother magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers LLC. [Washington Business Journal]
- Mayor Fenty, wearing a tie, tested out a SmartBike today. He managed to somehow not look too dorky, according to photographic evidence. [City Desk]
- A 15-year-old Manassas boy burned his face while trying to make a homemade smoke bomb. Well done, smart guy. [NBC4]
- A 42-year-old man was seriously injured at a construction site in Southeast. [WTOP]
- One more guilty plea in the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement case. [WaPo]
- A woman in her 30s was found dead in an alley in Southeast this morning. [AP/WJLA]
Photo by afagen
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You do realize, don’t you, that Bulwer-Lytton was a highly successful novelist known for his florid style (not clichés) and (as part of that style) for long run on sentences – the type of which I am trying valiantly, but not succeeding very well, to imitate is the un-florid remark; thus arguing that many of the supposed runners up (but not the overall winner) violate the spirit of Lord Lytton’s prose, i.e., the entries are not overly embellished; they are simply bad (or bad attempts at puns).
FYI – he was also the author of the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” – which at the time he wrote it, was not a cliché.
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He's also famous for actually starting a novel with the sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night."
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"A 15-year-old Manassas boy burned his face while trying to make a homemade smoke bomb. Well done, smart guy."
Stay classy, DCist.
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I once had a glorious start to a supposed attempt at a a novel, or did I -- well, it all depends on whether you can count the time that I began to pen the turgid love affair of myself and Lady Oswald before that baroque facade at her spendid estate in that unusually cold summer's thunderstorm (oh, how lovely she seemed, standing before me as I faultingly versed her some weak lines) -- but if that's your rubric for love lived and lost then how did I ever have a chance for learning what I loved and lost, that dark and stormy night?
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The motorcycle wheel in the pic cracks me up. I think it's on 4th or 5th street near Judiciary Square. What really blows me away is I think it's off a DC police bike [honda rebel 250]. Also, it's MUCH easier to cut through the cheap cable it's locked up with than to remove the rear wheel from that kind of bike. Nothing about this makes sense.
Oh, and if Mayor Fenty can not look like a dork on a Smartbike then he should seriously consider modeling. Those bikes are goofy looking, but actually really fun to ride [went to the launch yesterday and rode one].
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Those bikes are a good idea I think. But please tell me they are not encouraging you to ride them on the sidewalk! As Mayor Fenty is doing in the photo. And he's also riding against traffic. That is a big pet peeve of mine -- cyclists wanting to be treated like car-equivalents, yet many also wanting to take up pedestrian space. Or not obeying traffic laws and almost hitting pedestrians who have a walk sign (ok obviously I almost got hit once in an intersection so I am a little sensitive, and obviously there are many law-abiding cyclists).
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"A 15-year-old Manassas boy burned his face while trying to make a homemade smoke bomb. Well done, smart guy."
That's an asshole thing to say.
But then, you never grew up with burn scars on your face.
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I think I would explode if I came back to my bike and all that was left was the wheel. KABOOM!
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Are you seriously making fun of a kid who just suffered facial burns? Shame on you.
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wow... interesting outpouring here. Is this the same blog that demonizes homemade fireworks displays? And yet, some kid hurts himself doing what he shouldn't and we're all suddenly his best friend. I don't personally think it's that bad a thing to say that he was clearly doing a dumb thing. It's a shame he was hurt, true. but then if he wasn't hurt, there'd be no discussion.
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Yes, the motorcycle wheel pictures is on 5th Street, NW in front of the Chinatown firehouse.