Genii Weblog

If Bulwer-Lytton worked for IBM...

Thu 4 Aug 2005, 11:24 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Three different people have written to mention that a Microsoft employee has won the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Writing Contest with the wonderful entry:
As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
but I think that we are not to be outdone by some Microsoft weenie.  Therefore, I propose our own contest, loosely called "If Bulwer-Lytton worked for IBM...".  The rules are simple, make up the opening sentence of a truly bad advertising campaign for an IBM/Lotus product.  To ensure that there is no bias in the judging, there will be no judging, except for what you do for yourself.

Here is my submission for WCS:
Microsoft Exchange has been described as three thousand parts flying in formation, but  IBM's Workplace Collaboration Services could better be described as a combination of IBM J2EE solutions integrated together, integrated not like an inner city school with buses driving disadvantaged children to impose their cultural values on other disadvantaged children, but more like a field full of swaying, aging, racially diverse hippies singing "We Shall Overcome!" while holding hands with other swaying, aging, racially diverse hippies, all moving in unison, this unison being the unison provided by IBM Global Services.
Feel free to enter your submission here or on your own blog.  Just don't be surprised if IBM adopts your entry.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


349.1. jonvon (08/04/2005 08:50 PM)

i feel a great disturbance in the force, as though a thousand flying parts were suddenly crying out and then were suddenly silenced...

;-)


349.2. Richard Schwartz (08/05/2005 12:38 PM)

As he stared at her ample budget, he daydreamed of products as functionally elegant as the twin columns of her ledger, yet as delicately complex as her systems for supporting the accounting tricks that she loved to play, and of how he would entice her with service offerings to complement the products, of how he would love to support them and to spend billable hour upon billable hours working with them, doting on their every need, and he knew that after he stripped away all her security systems and exposed all her assets and all her secrets to analysis, as he so, so longed to do, he would never let her install any 3rd party packages, he would dress her machine room and all her screens, those windows into all her operations, to match the blue windows into her soul that were her eyes.