After 42 years the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is coming to a close. It is an annual contest for the worst opening sentence to a work of fiction.
My favorite is from 2004:
She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight…summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp’s tail…though the term “love affair” now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism…not unlike “sand vein,” which is after all an intestine, not a vein…and that tarry substance inside certainly isn’t sand…and that brought her back to Ramon.
And from 1985:
The countdown had stalled at T minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably—the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career.
DB2