The first bullet entered and exited Ed's abdomen, penetrated his elbow,
reentered his body and exited his buttocks, severing a tendon there; the
second entered through the right side of his neck, missing all of the major
structures and exiting through the front; the third entered an inch to the
right of the midline of the back and below the seventh cervical vertebra,
exiting at the inner third of the left clavicle; and their impact caused him
to wonder (as the smoke cleared to reveal to him a ring of his fellow
commuters standing agog over his prostrate form just before he fell
unconscious), whether he should have talked more quietly on his cell phone
in the crowded train or perhaps stayed off of it (the train or the phone,
one or the other) altogether.
-- Ted Stroll's entry to the 2001 annual Bulwer-Lytton contest
Quote #550
"I could tell you stories about this road we shall be traveling he old
man told his young companions as he leaned on his staff and stroked his
silver beard, "of how it was built by Dwarves of the Barad-dur in the days
of Thranduil the Great, numberless years before the Elves of the Ered Luin
left their silver woods in Lindon, sailed their ships over the Western Sea,
and passed from the knowledge of men, but what would you learn from these
tales, except that I squandered my college years reading far too much
Tolkien instead of meeting girls....
Quote #552
Kirk's mind raced as he quickly assessed his situatio he shields were
down, the warp drive and impulse engines were dead, life support was failing
fast, and the Enterprise was plummeting out of control toward the surface of
Epsilon VI and, as Scotty and Spock searched frantically through the manuals
trying to find a way to save them all, Kirk vowed, as he stared at the solid
blue image filling the main view screen, that never again would he allow a
Microsoft operating system to control his ship....
Quote #560
Unwittingly, Bob pressed the Enter key ending a stream of zeros and ones
in electronic form across the computer's bus, through the processor, out the
serial cable, through the 56K modem, and into the seamy and unfathomable
world of the Internet where his MasterCard number became as ubiquitous as
the cute chord that plays when you boot up a Windows based computer....
Quote #564
With wild gesticulations and loud, gutteral shou Father Steve" jerked
the desperately ill patient back and forth while pelting him with oil,
dousing him with holy water, and beating him vigorously about the head with
a pocket New Testament (the words of Jesus being written in red) in his own
unique version of Xtreme Unction....
Quote #565
Virgule gazed across the vast, cold eel expanse past his inquisitor to
witness the full consequence of his previous decision - feral, withered
children, in tattered, filthy garments, toiled mindlessly at his command in
a single chamber which reeked of oil and burning animal flesh - his time had
come to deliver the final instructio...