There Is Nothing Like A Good Bdelygmia!

Early in 2007, disturbed by reports of John Edwards' $400 Beverly Hills haircut, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts expressed his exasperation at the "fake authenticity" practiced by today's politicians:

I do know a con when I see one. And in politics, I see them all the time.

We are courted by blow-dried, focus-grouped, stage-managed, photo-opped, sloganeering, false-smiling, hand-clasping, back-slapping would-be leaders who say they feel our pain and understand our concerns and maybe sometimes they do, but all too often, it seems they feel little and understand less.

Superficiality gleams in their perfect teeth and scripted lines. They work hard to make style look just like substance.

That's good, vigorous writing: a pair of short, direct sentences on either side of a classic bdelygmia.

A classic what? Pronounced "de-LIG-me-uh" and derived from the Greek word for "abuse," this rhetorical device is a form of invective: an exuberant rant, a litany of disparaging remarks, a string of stinging criticisms.

Back in 1604, King James I of England employed bdelygmia in the conclusion to his "Counterblaste to Tobacco": A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the Nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

What may be the best known modern specimen of bdelygmia falls well outside the realms of politics and social commentary. It's a song, composed 40 years ago by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) for the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. An extended litany of abuse, the song concludes:

You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch,
You're a nasty wasty skunk,
Your heart is full of unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch.
The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote,
"Stink, stank, stunk"!

"You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" may not be the most sophisticated lyric ever composed, but then bdelygmia is not a particularly sophisticated rhetorical device. It's up front and in your face.

And while it may be ignited by anger or frustration, the sheer excess (or hyperbole) of bdelygmia--of insults and aspersions piled sky high--often creates a comic effect in the end. So take a deep breath before letting it all out with bdelygmia--and proceed with caution.

Just Wondering...

English is a marvelous and rich language. Yet native speakers seldom pause to consider its weird vocabulary. Coming from different countries and cultures and meandering the halls of history, many English words now seem to have paradoxical definitions. These are amazing words because they make you wonder…

Did you ever wonder why funeral starts with the word fun?

Would church music be considered organic?

What are you vacating when you go on vacation?

Should someone with guests act hostile? Or take them hostage?

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call a fireman a waterman?

Can you enjoy a party fully?

In the navy, is a portly person left-handed?

Is a precaution something you get before a caution?

Do undertakers actually undertake when it comes to fees for service?

Could we call an abstract painting an artificial artifice?

At sundown wouldn’t you expect nightrise instead of nightfall?

Would you expect a high-rise of flats to be very tall?

Isn’t kidnapping normal in kindergartens?

Are overjoyed people too happy?

Isn’t the center of register the gist of the word?

Can lay people be upstanding citizens?

Why do they call marriage matrimony instead of patrimony?

Like the wheel, wasn’t the lazy Susan a revolutionary idea?

Just before an artist’s model takes a break, is she predisposed?

Would the ugly truth be called the lowdown lowdown?

How come lipstick doesn’t do what it says?

If money doesn’t grow on trees, then why do banks have branches?

If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

If you run errands, aren’t you a go-getter?

Why don’t we say farrer instead of farther, or nearther instead of nearer?

Isn’t a good steak rarely well done?

Didn’t rearing children once have something to do with spanking their butts?

Wouldn’t it be more correct to call a butterfly a flowerfly? butterfly

If you pull the wings off a fly, does it become a walk?

If somebody is armed to the teeth, does he have a neck?

If you cease to be, then come alive, are you deceased?

How come you are still sitting after you sat.

Isn’t it amazing that anyone can stand sitting?

Instead of a personality, does a dog have a dogality?

How come someone can be canny and uncanny at the same time?

What’s the point of flattery?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Exactly what is so fast about quicksand?

Aren’t half-baked ideas rare?

How do you get off a non-stop flight?

When you cash a check, do you check the cash?

What is so proper about property?

Isn’t anything underwater also over water?

Are outstanding pay checks good or bad?

Why do they call dwellings stuck together apartments?

Can you orient yourself out west?

Why are there interstates in Hawaii?

Why do caregiver and caretaker mean the same thing?

If you are just kidding, isn’t that childish?

At the drive-in theaters, was there a lot of autoeroticism?

Isn’t it odd that sweetmeat is basically bread while sweetbread is meat?

Why do we hear music from speakers and dial talk-shows on tuners?

Why is brassiere singular and panties plural?

How come people recite at a play and play at a recital?

Why do we iron our clothes and paper our walls?

Why are goods sent by ship called cargo and those sent by truck shipment?

Why does worthless mean the opposite of priceless?

Why are the bigheaded usually also small-minded?

In court, how come you can’t swear except under oath?

Doesn’t it seem the opposite of ability should be nobility?

If you get a scratch on your car, can you make something from it?

Is it all right to put cups in the dishwasher and dishes in the cupboard?

Isn’t it odd that to tell time, you look at the hands on the face on the wrist?

If you are assassinated instead of just murdered, are you important?

Shouldn’t guests leave a banquest fed up?

In a stadium, why do they call a place where you sit the stands?

How come cook and kook aren’t pronounced the same?

Would you rather have your bank account frozen, liquidated, or evaporated?

Can you comprehend the language of a comprehensive insurance policy?

If you have a temper, can you give it away? Or get another?

Why does a tugboat mostly push things in the harbor?

Did you ever have a comb you couldn’t part with?

Is it good if a vacuum cleaner really sucks?

What does it mean when the odds are even against you?

Dis'ed

You probably know by now that I am a big fan of the pun. Adjectives beginning with the prefix “dis” seem to be especially vulnerable to puns. Have you heard about the…

…disappointed chairman?

…disbanded rock group?

…discarded communist?

…discharged cavalry?

…disclosed doors?

…disconcerted orchestra leader?

…discounted blessings?

…discouraged hero?

…discredited shopper?

…discriminating convict?

…discussed blasphemer?

…disenchanted witch?

…disfigured mathematician?

…disillusioned magician?

…disintegrated school?

…disinterested bond holder?

…disjointed marijuana smoker?

…dislodged Elk member?

…dismantled moose head?

…dismayed year?

…dismembered committee?

…dismissed bride?

…disorderly salesman?

…disoriented Chinese?

…dispatched trousers?

…displayed stage manager?

…disposed model?

Students failing because of Twitter, texting

TORONTO - Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can't write properly.

For years there's been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.

Now there seems to be some solid evidence.

Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills.

Almost a third of those students are failing.

"Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level," says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo University.

"We would certainly like it to be a lot lower."

Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.

"What has happened in high school that they cannot pass our simple test of written English, at a minimum?" she asks.

Even those with good marks out of Grade 12, so-called elite students, "still can't pass our simple test," she says.

Poor grammar is the major reason students fail, says Barrett.

"If a student has problems with articles, prepositions, verb tenses, that's a problem."

Some students in public schools are no longer being taught grammar, she believes.

"Are they (really) preparing students for university studies?"

At Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, one in 10 new students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses required for graduation.

That 10 per cent must take so-called "foundational" writing courses first.

Simon Fraser is reviewing its entrance requirements for English language.

"There has been this general sense in the last two or three years that we are finding more students are struggling in terms of language proficiency," says Rummana Khan Hemani, the university's director of academic advising.

Emoticons, happy faces, sad faces, cuz, are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser.

"Little happy faces ... or a sad face ... little abbreviations," show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani.

"Instead of 'because', it's 'cuz'. That's one I see fairly frequently," she says, and these are new in the past five years.

Khan Hemani sends appeal submissions with emoticons in them back to students to be re-written "because a committee will immediately get their backs up when they see that kind of written style."

Professors are seeing their share of bad grammar in essays as well.

"The words 'a lot' have become one word, for everyone, as far as I can tell. 'Definitely' is always spelled with an 'a' -'definitely'. I don't know why," says Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser.

"Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none."

He is floored by some of what he sees.

"I get their essays and I go 'You obviously don't know what a sentence fragment is. You think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words'," said Budra.

Then he's reduced to teaching basic grammar to them himself.

He says this has been going on now for the 20 years he's taught college and university in B.C. and Ontario-only the mistakes have changed.

He too blames poor - or no - grammar instruction in lower schools.

"When I went to high school in the '70s I was never taught grammar in English. I learned grammar from Latin classes."

Budra was taught to read and write using whole language rather than phonetics - not a good way to go in his books.

"We haven't taught grammar for 30-40 years...(and it) hasn't worked."

"It's not that hard to teach basic grammar," he says.

Ontario's Ministry of Education says grammar is a part of both its elementary and high school curriculum.

Cellphone texting and social networking on Internet sites are degrading writing skills, say even experts in the field.

"I think it has," says Joel Postman, author of "SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate," who has taught Fortune 500 companies how to use social networking.

The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an email to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.

"It would say to me ... 'well, this person doesn't think very clearly, and they're not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they're not very good at expressing themselves, or at worse, they can't spell, they can't punctuate,' " he says.

"These folks are going to short-change themselves, and right or wrong, they're looked down upon in traditional corporations," notes Postman.

But "spelling is getting better because of Spellcheck," says Margaret Proctor, University of Toronto writing support co-ordinator.

James Turk of the Association of University Teachers takes all the complaints about student literacy with a grain of salt.

"There's a notion of a golden age in the past that students were wonderful, unlike now. I'm not sure that golden age ever existed," he says.

"You can go back and read Plato and see Socrates talking about the allegations that this generation isn't as not as good as previous ones," he notes.

By Susanna Kelley, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Five Quick Rules

1. If it “goes without saying” then don’t say it. If it doesn’t, in fact, go without saying, then don’t say it does.

“Obviously, the sky is blue.” Putting the “obviously” doesn’t suddenly make the statement insightful.

2. True or false: a comma must precede any use of the word “and”?

FALSE. Commas should only precede and, but, for, or, nor, so, or yet when they introduce an independent clause. For example, “We laid out our music and snacks, and began to study.” Placing a comma after “snacks” is incorrect. The subject of the sentence has not changed, “we” still “began to study.”

An example of correct comma use: “The game was over, and the crowd began to leave.” The game and the crowd are different subjects and the clauses are independent. The crowd could still be leaving regardless of what is happening with the game.

A comma can also precede “and” when it is used in a list of three or more items. However, in a list it is entirely optional and called an “oxford comma”.

3. Once upon a time, the English language had a way to modify both nouns and verbs. Adjectives did the trick on the former and adverbs on the latter. You didn’t just have to walk, you could walk quickly!

Adverbs modify verbs. For example, you accomplish a task with ease. What do you say?

WRONG: I can do that easy!
RIGHT: I can do that easily!

You accomplish a task with more ease than your colleagues. What do you say?

WRONG: I can do that easier than they can.
RIGHT: I can do that more easily than they can.

4. Et cetera: a useful Latin-derived tool for shortening lists. However, unless you are a lawyer, using it (and especially overusing it) can make you sound unprofessional.

If you must, use it once. A second or third occurrence in the same document essentially says, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll just jam etc. on the end and try to pretend I do!”

Another et cetera mistake is using it when you should use “et al.” Listing a set of objects? Use etc. Listing a group of people? Use et al. It also is derived from Latin and means “and others.”

5. Some people seem to think that throwing an “i.e.” into a paragraph makes them look smarter. Unfortunately, most of those people are using i.e. to mean “for example.”

WRONG: “I have sold many products, i.e. washing machines.” This doesn’t make any sense.

i.e. is an abbreviation of the Latin words id est, literally translated as “that is.” In English, i.e. is used synonymously with “namely.” It specifies and limits.

e.g. is also a Latin abbreviation but of the words exempli gratia, meaning “for example.” E.g. implies, “This is one of several possible options.”

“Be clear, concise, correct.”

Bob Sheppard, whose elegant intonation as the public-address announcer at Yankee Stadium for more than half a century personified the image of Yankees grandeur, died Sunday at his home in Baldwin, on Long Island. He was 99.

I am a Yankee fan and on the few occasions I have been to Yankee Stadium I was struck by Bob Sheppard's voice. It was fascinating how the crowd grew quiet as he announced the starting line-ups. It was wonderful as the most mundane of announcements took on a majesty as Mr. Sheppard read them.

"Would the owner of the car with New York license plate 123ABC please report to your car. It is on fire."

From the New York Times -


Simple Intonation, a Lasting Impression
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: July 11, 2010


Ten summers ago, when Bob Sheppard was not yet 90, I stepped into his tiny booth at Yankee Stadium and asked him for his first memory of being at the ballpark.

He looked up from the book he was reading — he read before games and between batters — and asked in that amazing voice of his: “Would you like my memory of the first game I attended or my memory of my first game as the public-address announcer?”

“Both,” I said. He could have narrated his first jaunt for a hot dog for all I cared.

His first reminiscence placed his visit in the early 1920s, perhaps when he was in his early teens. It was a general memory, not a box score recitation, but he offered it with excitement and a touch of historical perspective.

“I was a young lad sitting in right field in the bleachers and watched people like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and a fellow named Williams, not Ted Williams, but Ken Williams, of the St. Louis Browns,” he said, with his characteristic precision and slow cadence. “My idol was George Sisler, who was a perfect first baseman in my mind.”

Then came his memory from 1951, his first as the Yankees public-address announcer.

“The Yankees lineup had Johnny Mize at first, Jerry Coleman at second, Phil Rizzuto at short, Billy Johnson at third,” he said. “Jackie Jensen played left, DiMaggio played center and Mickey Mantle played right. Yogi Berra was the catcher and a fellow named Vic Raschi was the pitcher, and we beat the Boston Red Sox. And five of those starting nine are in the Hall of Fame.”

No doubt that the story of his rookie game, really not much more than a defensive alignment, was frequently requested by those who met him, much the way fans asked Sinatra to sing “My Way.” But he delivered his lines as if he were telling them for the first time.

Sheppard’s death Sunday is a reminder of how much he transcended his role as a public-address announcer. How many famous public-address announcers are there? How many are renowned like Sheppard? How many prompted imitations the way Sheppard did?

His fame rivaled, and even exceeded, that of many of the men who occupied the broadcast booth for the Yankees. That is not an insult, it’s just a fact. He did not have to speak for three hours to become famous. He said very little but he became known as the Voice of God, whose intonations sent chills through players and fans. If the Yankees were arrogant, Sheppard was elegant. In the Yankees’ down years, he offered up his class.

Does anyone recall who preceded him?

Sheppard’s role was a simple one: he greeted us, announced the lineups, told us who was at the plate and who was pitching, and told us to drive home safely.

He once joked that all he had was longevity, but longevity, mixed with his clarity, restraint from any silliness and that marvelous voice made him a star.

He was not inspired to a speech career by any sports voice, but by two Vincentian priests, one a “fiery orator,” and the other a “semantic craftsman,” he once said.

The Sheppard style was founded on several principles.

He thought that a man’s name was a personal treasure. So he lingered over names. He respected them. He especially loved the mellifluous ones (“Mick-ey Man-tle”) and the foreign ones (“Al-va-ro Es-pi-no-za”). He once fretted in the 1950s that he would mispronounce infielder Wayne Terwilliger’s name as “Ter-wigg-ler.” But he did not err.

Two, he thought that people spoke too quickly. So he spoke slowly. His cadence at home, in his high school and college speech classes, at a local bar or at Mass was the same as it was when he was announcing at the stadium. Ve-ry de-li-ber-ate-ly.

Three, he felt that his role required him to be “be clear, concise, correct.”

Sheppard’s passing feels like the loss of a significant representative of civility in the world. That quality, in addition to his remarkable voice, will be greatly missed.

Sheppard announced his final game Sept. 5, 2007, never visiting the new Yankee Stadium. But his voice will live on, in Jeter’s at-bats, and in an animated baseball movie called “Henry and Me.” It is an adaptation of a children’s book written by Ray Negron, a Yankees adviser. Negron realized the film would not be complete without the voice of Sheppard, who agreed to help. A studio was set up in his bedroom, but three months ago, Sheppard backed out because he was feeling too weak.

“At the last minute, he called and said he wanted to try to do it,” Negron said Sunday afternoon. “We sent a crew over there, and on his bed, he did all of his lines. It was classic Bob Sheppard. He sounded weak, but when the sound machines went on, he was powerful. He was powerful one last time.”


Your attention, please - Ladies and gentlemen - Now entering eternity - Public Address Announcer - Number 1 - Bob Sheppard - Number1.

True Newspaper Headlines

Presented for your enjoyment...

4-H Girls Win Prizes for Fat Calves

After Detour to California Shuttle Returns to Earth

Bank Drive-in Window Blocked by Board

British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

British Union Finds Dwarfs in Short Supply

Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case

Include your Children When Baking Cookies

Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years

L.A. Voters Approve Urban Renewal By Landslide

Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing (from The Sun)

Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge

March Planned For Next August

Milk Drinkers are Turning to Powder

Miners Refuse to Work After Death

Old School Pillars are Replaced by Alumni

Don't Dangle Your Modified Sentences With Prepositions At The End Of Them!

Sentences Ending With Prepositions

A traditional rule of grammar is that one should never end a sentence with a preposition. Facetiously stated, the rule is, "A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with." Although it is generally advisable to structure sentences so that they do not end in prepositions, as this makes for more elegant writing, many dispute that ending a sentence with a preposition is incorrect, especially when there is no convenient way to reword the sentence.

Sometimes the "correct" wording is humorously awkward, as in, "Mr. Hunter cursed his memory of the milkman, away with which his wife ran."

Winston Churchill once put a preposition at the end of a sentence and was called to task for it. As the story goes, Churchill replied, "That's the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."

Another interesting sentence that plays with sentence-end prepositions is, "Aw, Mom, what'd you bring that book I don't like to be read to out of up for?" If the book in question was about Australia, the number of prepositions at the end can be increased from five to eight: "Aw, Mom, what'd you bring that book I don't like to be read to out of about Down Under up for?" "Down Under" is used in this sentence as a single noun rather than as two prepositions, but we needn't let a technicality like that ruin our fun.

Misplaced or Dangling Modifiers

Descriptive phrases, such as gerund phrases or prepositional phrases, modify the nearest noun. Misplacing them by putting them nearer another noun can cause some humorous unintended confusion. Sometimes the appropriate noun isn't even in the sentence at all, in which case the modifier is said to dangle. There are countless examples of misplaced and dangling modifiers, given in the form of jokes, that are in circulation. Here are some examples of interesting ones:

* "Lost: A watch by a lady with a cracked face."
* "Lost: A shirt by a boy with green and blue stripes."
* "While driving around town, a tree fell and hit my car."
* "Running quickly in the winter air, my nose got cold."

Obviously there are countless amusing variations. This particular point of grammar is easy to commit in ignorance, so speakers and writers should be vigilant about avoiding misplaced and dangling modifiers. The following are some more examples, these from actual college essays:

* "At the beginning of the novel, Tom Joad comes across a turtle on his way home from spending four years in prison."
* "Only people with cars that live in dorms should be allowed to park in those lots."
* "Where one parent would be quiet, polite and conservative the other parent would drive up on a black Trans Am full of arrogance and conceit."
* "Gertrude and Claudius have broken a couple of values which anger Hamlet."

The colloquial speech of the Pennsylvania Dutch is inclined toward this particular error. Two prototypical examples: "Throw Papa down the stairs his hat," and "Throw the horse over the fence some hay." For an incomprehensibly convoluted example, here's a real question, once asked of my grandmother: "Let's walk North Hampton street up side by each."

Crash Blossoms

A crash blossom is an ambiguous headline: a line of text in large type (usually in a newspaper or magazine) that conveys (often unintentionally) more than one meaning. Also known as a two-faced head. See the blog -

Crash Blossom.

"Last August [2009], . . . in the Testy Copy Editors online discussion forum . . ., Mike O’Connell, an American editor based in Sapporo, Japan, spotted the headline 'Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms' and wondered, 'What’s a crash blossom?' (The article, from the newspaper Japan Today, described the successful musical career of Diana Yukawa, whose father died in a 1985 Japan Airlines plane crash.) Another participant in the forum, Dan Bloom, suggested that 'crash blossoms' could be used as a label for such infelicitous headlines that encourage alternate readings, and news of the neologism quickly spread."

(Ben Zimmer, "Crash Blossoms." The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 31, 2010)

Some notable examples -

"Kids Make Nutritious Snacks"
"Miners Refuse to Work After Death"
"Teacher Strikes Idle Kids"
"US President Wins on Budget, but More Lies Ahead"
"Stolen Painting Found by Tree"
"Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge"
"Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half"
"Include Your Children When Baking Cookies"

("Sample Ambiguous Headlines" in Using Newspapers in the Classroom, by Paul Sanderson. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999)


"Doctor Testifies in Horse Suit"
"Stud Tires Out"
"American Ships Head to Libya"
"Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax"

Readers are invited to send in more examples.

The Results Are In!

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has announced hhe winner for 2010. This contest is where we ghet the famous line - "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)

Here are some of the notable winners this year.

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.

Molly Ringle
Seattle, WA

The winner of 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Molly Ringle of Seattle, Washington. The author of one published and two soon-to-be-published novels, Molly Ringle only writes bad fiction when she fails at good fiction. She'd rather not say how often this happens. She lives in Seattle with her family, and her vices include uncalled-for moments of sarcasm, excessive consumption of Nutella, and an unladylike avidity for the raunchy films of Mel Brooks

Molly Ringle is the 28th grand prize winner of the contest that that began at San Jose State University in 1982. She is also the second consecutive Washingtonian in a row to win the contest, last year’s being David McKenzie.

Runner-Up:

Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, "There goes the most noble among men" -- in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur.

Tom Wallace

Columbia, SC

Winner: Adventure

The blazing equatorial sun beat down on Simon’s head and shoulders as he dug feverishly in the hot sand with the ivory shoe-horn his mother had given him before the homecoming game with Taft, when the field was so wet that he’d lost his low-tops seven times in the cold sucking mud.

Adam McDonough

Reedsburgh, Wi

Winner: Children’s Literature

“Please Mr. Fox, don’t take your magic back to the forest, it is needed here in Twigsville!” pleaded little Isabel, but Mr. Fox was unconcerned as he smugly loped back into the woods without answering a word knowing well that his magic was only going to be used to make sure his forest would be annexed into the neighboring community of Leaftown where the property values were much higher.

Pete Watkins

Broken Arrow, OK

Winner: Detective

She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so.

Steve Lynch

San Marcos, CA

Winner: Fantasy Fiction

The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dower granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage – but that’s not our story; ours is about fairies!

Rick Cheeseman

Waconia, MN

Winner: Historical Fiction

In Southwestern Germany just east of the Luxemburg border and north of France where history pitted various related Hapsburg Royals against each other and the Archbishops of Trier, the Abbots of St. Maximin, various members of the nobility, and mobs of axe-bearing villagers, there stands a ruin whose building stones mostly were carted off to build other buildings.

Mary Ann R Unger

Ewing, NJ



More winners ans runners up can be found here - It Was A Dark And Stormy Night