The first ever “Dark & Stormy Night” contest on HubPages is over, and we have a grand winner! Congratulations to Teresa McGurk, who wowed us with this awesomely bad gem of sweet, sweet literary torture:
- Years later—four, or maybe five, if not six or seven, but really, now that she thought about it carefully, no more than nine, or nine and a half, anyway—she would remember that day (however many years previously) as being the first (or if not the first, then nearly the first; perhaps it was the second) time she had ever known the silent pangs of envy—those creeping, soul-destroying, rampantly pernicious tendrils of despair—at knowing that she stood outside the plated palaces of all that she had longed for and had believed herself worthy of attaining, or, if not attaining, of having thrust upon her by an outward force of destined opulence and outright entitlement to majesty that she now realized was not to be, was never to be, could never have been, and all she could then envision for her future was the bleakest of attainments: the second-rate perch of a tawdry, failed presumptive; an armoire of the cast-off robes of superannuated ministration; and the mealy, dun-colored appurtenances of shadow-dwelling officiates in the sequestered gloom of servile, downward-gazing, lick-spittle lackeys who know nothing of the amenities, indulgences, and superfluities of success.
Could it get any better… ahem, worse… than that? There are no prizes, other than the official title of the Best Worst Writer on HubPages, and this fabulous virtual trophy, forged by the contest’s host, lmmartin:
To see Teresa’s moving acceptance speech, visit the Awards Ceremony hub, and be sure to offer her (as well as the other finalists) your congratulations.
With all the community support, it looks like we’ll be running a Dark & Stormy Night contest annually. So start practicing your awfullest, terriblest writings… if the competition is anything like this year, it’s going to be stiff!
HubPages Blog 
Okay, now let’s have a contest to see how many of the English teachers out there can successfully diagram that sentence.
Better yet, can anyone find the subject of that sentence?
I FOUND IT!
Dang it if the thing doesn’t have a subject and predicate. William Faulkner would be impressed.
I FOUND IT!
Dang it if the thing DOES* have a subject and predicate. William Faulkner would be impressed.
*I wrote “doesn’t” the first time i commented, which was a mistake for certain, though I probably did it because I wasn’t, given the circumstances, completely (or entirely might be a better way to express it) certain to a degree that would have satisfied my Socratic logics professor back in college — I mean the man was a complete terror for accuracy of word usage (I think it had something to do with a long running argument, that even spilled over into the professional journals and eventually cost one of them his job, that my logics professor once had with a Freudian psychiatry professor over whether the term “desired” could ever be used as an adjective without drawing sexual connotations inadvertently to the mind of the person on the receiving end the communication) — that I would ever be likely to find anything even faintly resembling an authentic subject or predicate, even given the bread crumb (a’ la’ Hansel and Gretel) trail of adjectives, adverbs, articles and modifying clauses that Maddie left us to lead the way back to said subject and predicate, so I probably suffered a so-called “Freudian” slip, thereby revealing my predisposition to proving the author had left out the core of the sentence, thereby presenting us with a sentence fragment, which, however lengthy and erudite, still did not fully qualify as a sentence and arguably would have made this piece a mere fragment used as a label and not a fully formed story at all as called for in the contest rules, which, although I am certain it was the author’s intent to follow the rules in toto, would have disqualified the piece and thereby prevented the issuing of the virtual trophy above (which, might I add is quite fetching for a virtual trophy), although I really think she deserved it just for her audacity in using the word, appurtenances, in a story written for a modern audiences – a feat, for which, she has my undying admiration.
Tom
Sorry, I said Maddie and I meant Theresa, so wherever I said, Maddie, just replace it with Theresa (or Teresa as it is apparently more accurately spelled) in any place where it is appropriate to do so given the position and intent of the sentence to refer to the author of the blog or the piece ;alkrjnwetidddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd…………………………….
THIS IS TOM’S WIFE. HE’S HAVING A LITTLE NAP NOW. HE TALKS OUT LOUD WHEN HE TYPES AND I COULDN’T STAND IT ANYMORE. I’VE STRETCHED HIM OUT ON THE FLOOR WITH A PILLOW UNDER THE LUMP ON HIS HEAD. YA’LL HAVE A NICE DAY. I’VE GOT TO GO FINISH SEASONING THIS SKILLET.
MRS. KING
This was a funny contest and lots of good idea’s were presented in the postings each writer offered here. Loved It!
That was the most boring project I think hubpages ever did! I’m glad its over. Like a bad record, would the staff please stop talking about it!! Oh, I’m sure I’ll have hell to pay for being honest about my thoughts on that!
Oh, my lands! Tom and Teresa make quite a pair, if you ask me – though no one, in fact, has asked, but that is no reason to not offer one’s opinion, and, after all, how can one not bow before the august eminence, the undeniable, overwhelming, yet blindingly blatant maunderings of such master wordsmiths – wordsmiths who are not only capable of creating such driveling masterpieces of inanity, but go far, far beyond the simply fatuous to launch their prose into the hitherto under-explored realms of sublimely pellucid opacity that only a true wordsmith can ever hope, nay, aspire, to attain, were such a thing ever to become even remotely attainable.