A Dark and Stormy Night

We've had a few dark and stormy nights here lately.  Always reminds me of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, out of San Jose State University's Dept. of English and Comparative Literature.  Bulwer-Lytton is the man responsible for the phrase, 'It was a dark and stormy night', just the beginning of quite the sentence:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

To what end such a contest?

The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.

Submissions are divided into several categories, e.g., romance, detective, western, etc., plus an overall, general category.  For 2005, the overall winner is Dan McKay, of Fargo, ND, a 43 year old quantitative analyst.  His winning entry:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

I admit, I'm jealous.  I've often thought, 'One of these days...' about this contest.  One of these days I'll settle down to writing something so awful, yet so good as to merit submission to this contest.  Of course, I hope to write something this bad on purpose.  Hmmm.  What genre should I try?  Being a mystery fan, I could probably come up with a few good mystery/detective entries.  The Purple Prose category is quite tempting.  The 2005 winner:

Horatio Keelhaul sailed buoyantly up Cutter Street ironclad in his resolve to torpedo the reviewer of his literary launches who threatened his Titanic reputation with accusations of relying solely on nautical parlance to propel his gondolaic characters through the sinuous canals of his plots.  - Rick Holinger
Geneva, IL

Sure, you may think anybody can write that bad.  But is that really so?  I'll guess that such bad writing appears deceptively simple.  I'll bet it's not so easy to write badly well.  Well, if I do try to work up a few entries, I will certainly post them.