Bulwer-Lytton failure

Alerted by Margaret Soltan, I found the winners of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Alas, I did not earn any recognition for this scintillating entry:

Leaning backwards over the balcony after three glasses of Merlot, the dean suddenly found himself dropping into the courtyard like a delinquent duck shot by a vigilante Supreme Court justice, landing squarely on students about to be honored for making the Provost’s List and finally realizing his public ambition of impacting college students in a lifelong way.

My congratulations (or condolences) to Dan McKay, the winner of this year’s (dis)honor. In other news, I chug along recovering from the summer course and chipping away at small things while engaging my son in high academic pursuits such as a 13-mile ride on the Tampa Bay trail, something that readers of the Michael Bérubé column on summer projects will recognize.