First lines can say a lot

My good friend shared this with me today and now I'm passing on the favor.

Good stuff, this:

For you lovers of good writing, these are the 10 winners of this
year's Bulwer-Lytton contest --AKA Dark and Stormy Night Contest -
-
run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University, wherein one
writes only the first line of a bad novel.

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break
wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a
tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep
azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that
vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty
that defied description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he
crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep...? Andre
creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of
narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley
sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her
from eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then
penguins often do."

3) "Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese,
the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the
meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of
danger and spit in the eye of death-- in short, a moron with suicidal
tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS.....

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept
along
the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle
window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown
asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian
lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception,
screaming madly, 'You lied!

Thanks Steve!!