Black Midnight

Yesterday as I stepped out of my door, I found that the organic produce fairy had left me a little package. Since the fruit flies have been going a bit hog wild lately, I decided the best course of action was to take the box inside and empty it, before they set their beady little red eyes on my fruit. Inside the box: the usual assortment of leafy greens that I always mean to eat and never manage to in time, a couple of zucchini, a pineapple, and a bunch of black midnight grapes. The fruit flies were all a twitter. I thought, "Cool. Maybe if I don't get to these in time, I can make wine from them," as I so frequently think when I encounter fruit these days. Then I tasted one.

They will not last long.

Today, Sam alerted me to the fact that the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest results are in. Named for Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), who coined the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night," the contest sets itself the goal of coming up with the worst possible opening paragraph for a novel. The first place winner this year:

"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."

Of those that I have read, however (and the list does go on and on and on), my favorite so far is:

It was high noon in the jungles of South India when I began to recognize that if we didn't find water for our emus soon, it wouldn't be long before we would be traveling by foot; and with the guerilla warriors fast on our heals, I was starting to regret my decision to use poultry for transportation.

But there's pages and pages to be read.

In other news, I bought a computer yesterday. It comes with a printer and a four-year warranty, which should prevent it from crapping out like all the other computers I've bought in the past couple of years.