Let's hear it for bad writing

The winners of San Jose State University's 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. The grand prize, given for the worst example of an opening sentence of an imaginary novel, went to Garrison Spik of Washington, D.C. for

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."

My favorite division of the competition is for "Vile Puns." The winner:

Vowing revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas.

An opening sentence doesn't have to be long to be bad. There was this in the "Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions:"

She had the kind of body that made a man want to have sex with her.