Award for Bad Writing

The winner of the 2008Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing is Garrison Spik. His entry, as the proposed worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel:
"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'"

The annual award is sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University. It is in "honor" of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins, "It was a dark and stormy night."