When I posted the last of a dozen entries in the Bad Writing Contest two weeks ago, I didn’t believe the prose could get worse.
I was as wrong as a football bat. My readers have shown me there is no depth to which they cannot sink. I couldn’t be prouder.
I’m also calling this next entry the unlucky 13th, at least for the previous entrants. Because I have found that no other writer has bottomed the work of this man whose name and address is even fun to say: Michael F. Dufalla, of Monongahela.
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Quinn’s life oozed through his fingers like cheap mayonnaise sitting on the dashboard of an AMC Pacer basking in the Albuquerque midday sun.
But wait! Didn’t he once hear about an antidote for this toxin somewhere? But where? The Harvard Medical Journal? The Forensic Sciences Symposium? The Quincy Fan Club Convention debate on Differentiating Blood Spatter from Arterial versus Venous Sources between Dr. Cyril Wecht and Jack Klugman?
Suddenly the answer, in big, bright, energy-saving, solid-state lights (providing a much more “warm and natural” glow than those curly-fry florescent bulbs) flashed in front of his eyes, not once, not twice, not thrice, but whatever the word is that means four times. It was the June 1992 issue of Prevention Magazine! The one featuring Wilford Brimley’s all-natural beauty secrets. There, tucked between two cardboard inserts, one offering a 50% subscription discount, the other selling a musical pill organizer that played “Just a Spoonful of Sugar,” was an article entitled “Dying of a State Developed Neurotoxin? We have the Homeopathic Cure from Ingredients as Close as Your Own Kitchen Spice Rack.”
A blitzkrieg of questions skittered through Quinn’s semi-lucid mind. Where was that magazine? Would he find it in time? Did he have the antidote ingredients? Who are all these Democrats running for president? Will Harry and Meghan join the Canadian curling team? How the heck did Kylie Jenner become a billionaire?
Sadly, Quinn would have all the answers, had only the Post-Gazette allowed another 50 words to finish this story.
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Yes, I limited entries to 250 words. Mr. Dufalla ambled under the wire with all the nimbleness that the aforementioned Wilford Brimley showed in “Cocoon.’’ (I recently read that the bearish Brimley, who played a retiree in that 1985 movie, was five and six years younger than perennial heartthrobs Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are today. Should they all meet at Olive Garden for an early bird special? Discuss.)
Like Mr. Dufalla, Elizabeth Wiethorn, of Franklin Park, played off the line written by Jeremy Das, the 2019 winner in the crime/detective category of the storied Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (“Where ‘www’ means “wretched writers welcomed”): “Realising that his symptoms indicated a virtually undetectable, fast acting neurotoxin, CIA coroner Quinn Abner frantically wrote up the details, lay on the floor and, as a professional courtesy, did his best to draw a chalk outline of himself.”
Here’s how Ms. Wiethorn continued.
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As he laid/lied on the floor to/too complete the outline, Quinn began grimacing (the ugly, twisted expression, not the lovable yet seemingly asexual purple anthropomorphic creature from McDonald’s commercials of days gone by) from the pain — the wound on his ankle was still weeping — weeping like the willow tree from his grandmother’s farm, but without the nice leaves.
He staggered, fell backward on his enormously bulbous bottom, bounced back up, yelled “Boiing!” and stuck his landing perfectly. He raised his hands in the air and waved to the judges and audience a la Mary Lou Retton after a floor gymnastics routine, and admired his outline. A consummate, mildly flatulent and grossly overweight professional, Quinn’s temper and nostrils flared as he evaluated his work. He was furious. His outline was incomplete and he was out of chalk! He shook his fist, frightening himself with his own bravado. Suddenly, and without warning, his buttocks involuntarily quivered like two giant mounds of lime Jell-O, but in a surprisingly gentlemanly manner. That could only mean one thing: Quinn was hungry.
He reached into his vest pocket — not from the vest he was wearing, but a second, more fashionable vest that he carried around in case of a vest emergency — and pulled out a candy bar.
“ARGHAUGHAUGHHGHAHAUGH!” He screamed in his uselessly-legally-patented-high-pitched squeal. He cursed and bit into the nougat. It was all he could do. Catherine was gone. And no amount of delicious nougat would bring her back. Unless maybe it was magic nougat.
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That’s pretty bad. But Mr. Dufalla’s is so goodly bad that I’m ending the contest right here. You’re welcome to argue. This contest makes the Iowa caucuses seem deft. But I have found nothing more pleasurably awful among the previous entries, which I lowlighted in my columns of Jan. 16, 20 and 30.
If you saved those columns, what were you thinking? Find a fish to wrap with those newspapers. And if you entered the contest but did not see your entry appear, fret not. It only means you wrote not wisely but too well. Hey, if we were worried about anyone’s self-esteem, we’d never have revived this contest.
All 14 entrants featured these past four weeks should be receiving a PG coffee mug. It, and the ability to laugh at ourselves, should be useful on any dark and stormy Pittsburgh night.
Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill.
First Published: February 13, 2020, 9:45 a.m.
