A funny quote from the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Yesterday, I was tooling around some web pages related to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which is sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University. For those unaware of this contest, the participants try to use convoluted language in their stories stylistically reminiscent of the 19th century novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton is most famous or perhaps infamous for his novel "Paul Clifford", published in 1830. The opening sentence of this novel has gained its fame due to being so unintentionally amusing. It reads, "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."

I found several quotes from different winners over the years, but the quote from last year's winner was especially funny. The 2005 winner of the 23rd annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, was Dan McKay, a then 43-year-old quantitative analyst with Microsoft Great Plains, in Fargo, North Dakota, whose imaginative descriptive had me rolling on the floor:

"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."