This post is part of the July 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a bad opening sentence in the Bulwer-Lytton tradition.
The steam’d and sultry city immemorial was suffused with oppressive heat, the level of phlogiston in the aether reaching such levels that the guttering flames of the carriage-lamps threatened to burst forth and consume the tinder and kindling set forth by the slumbering metropole even as it moistened the brow of one Cecil Coulmore, the contusions and contours of whose skull made phrenologically clear his profession as gentleman detective and amateur pugilist.
Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
AuburnAssassin
dolores haze
xcomplex
Proach
BigWords
jkellerford
Ralph Pines
Euclid
Diana Rajchel
pezie
Guardian
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 
July 11, 2011 at 11:55 am
This sentence is aweful, terrible, disgusting and–wordy! Good job at doing a bad job:)
July 11, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Reminds me of the speech given by The Architect to Neo in the second Matrix movie. A whole lot of words and not much meaning.
Excellent!
July 21, 2011 at 11:22 am
Oh goodness, I hope it’s not that bad! At least I didn’t say “ergo,” right?
July 11, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Best part was this: “the contusions and contours of whose skull made phrenologically clear his profession as gentleman detective and amateur pugilist”. I had to laugh at that. Truly worthy of 1st Baron Lytton.
July 21, 2011 at 11:20 am
One could only be a gentleman detective when phrenology was in vogue, after all!
July 11, 2011 at 2:59 pm
I find myself suffused with oppressive hatred. That was truly awful. Well done!
July 13, 2011 at 10:23 am
LOL nice one! love the phrenology bit, hahaha.
July 21, 2011 at 11:17 am
“Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago!”
“Of course you’d say that. You have the brainpan of a stagecoatch-tilter!”
July 14, 2011 at 6:58 am
I think the mere mention of phlogiston condemns this piece from the start :O) Nice work!
July 21, 2011 at 11:15 am
I was trying to match the archaic phrasing with archaic terminology. And nothing beats phlogiston for being archaic and silly sounding!
July 14, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I am just swimming in that prose, it’s so thick!
July 16, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Nice! I loved, “the contusions and contours of whose skull made phrenologically clear his profession as gentleman detective and amateur pugilist.”
Do I say good job? Or bad job? Or good job at being bad? I know–nice execution of the exercise :).
July 21, 2011 at 11:19 am
Phrenology is just so much fun and at the same time it dates things so very badly 🙂
July 17, 2011 at 8:42 am
Loved it!! Very bad and wordy..HEHE..Cheers!
x
July 21, 2011 at 4:17 pm
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
July 21, 2011 at 4:56 pm
What does what mean?