Fun with English

My, but there seems to be such a plethora of comically bad English available to the public these days. I was just browsing over a few of my favorite websites of yesteryear, and, happening upon the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, noticed to my delight that the long-awaited results of the 2004 competition have been posted. In case you are not familiar with it, Bulwer-Lytton is an annual contest to which enterprising prosaists send in the worst opening lines to a work of fiction which they can devise. If you want to check it out for yourself, the webpage is http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

On a related but side note, I was reading through my old e-mails when I found a beautifully terrible piece of real-world writing, which I thought was worth sharing:

(From Great Britain's 1989 National minimum wage regulations)
"The hours of non-hours work worked by a worker in a pay reference period shall be the total of the number of hours spent by him during the pay reference period in carrying out the duties required of him under his contract to do non-hours work."

Finally, here's what my mom got in her fortune cookie a few days ago:
"With consistency and integrity your credits are piling up."

Which, combined with our previous favorite ("You should be able to make money and hold on to it."), Does not bode excellent well.

Song o' the moment: None. I'm writing this from my mom's office computer which, while much faster than the one at home, is woefully lacking in the audio department.