The Annual Bulwer-Lytton writing contest is based upon the much stolen beginning line by Snoopy, “It was a dark and stormy night…” The contest is run each year by the Department of English at San Jose State University. The award is given to the worst lead-in to a wretched story. Many excellent puns were sent this year, something that defeats the purposes of the contest, but fits our purposes well.

She wallowed in splendor, her wondrous white-wide wholeness frolicking with the foam; as she smiled, a salt-bleached booted bone punctuated like a toothpick the purity of her pearlescent dentis; and as her buxom flukes saluted the sea, she winked her wave-washed eye and blubbered, “Call me, Ishmael.”