The True Stella Awards® were inspired by Stella Liebeck. In 1992, Stella, then 79, spilled a cup of McDonald’s coffee onto her own lap, burning herself. A New Mexico jury awarded her $2.9 million in damages, but that’s not the whole story. Ever since, the name “Stella Award” has been applied to any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits — including some infamous bogus cases!
And the winner of the 2005 True Stella Award: Christopher Roller of Burnsville, Minn. Roller is mystified by professional magicians, so he sued David Blaine and David Copperfield to demand they reveal their secrets to him — or else pay him 10 percent of their lifelong earnings, which he figures amounts to $50 million for Copperfield and $2 million for Blaine. The basis for his suit: Roller claims that the magicians defy the laws of physics, and thus must be using “godly powers” — and since Roller is god (according to him), they’re “somehow” stealing that power from him.
The Bent Spoon Award is presented annually to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle.
Please do not nominate people who do their woo outside Australia, even if they appear on Australian television doing it; the Bent Spoon is for local heroes only.
2007: Marena Manzoufas, Head of Programming at the ABC for her sterling work in authorising the television show Psychic Investigators, made worse by putting it to air in the Catalyst timeslot
2008: Prof Kerryn Phelps
1990: Mafu, multilifed entity, channelled by Penny Torres Rubin and who, despite millennia of experience, was remarkable for the banality of his/her pronouncements.
the idea of an award celebrating books with odd titles was proposed by Trevor Bounford of the Diagram Group in order to provide entertainment during the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978.
Bent did not offer a prize in 1987 and 1991, as he felt there was no title that was odd enough to deserve the prize.
| 1978 | Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice |
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| 1985 | Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts |
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| 1992 | How to Avoid Huge Ships |
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| 1994 | Highlights in the History of Concrete |
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| 2002 | Living with Crazy Buttocks |
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| 2004 | Bombproof Your Horse |
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| 2010 | Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer-Lytton_Fiction_Contest
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) is a tongue-in-cheek contest, held annually and sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited “to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels” – that is, deliberately bad.
The contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University and is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author o the much-quoted first line “It was a dark and stormy night“. This opening, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, continues[dubious ]
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Shortened versions of the Bulwer Lytton Contest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Cadre#Lyttle_Lytton_Contest
2001 – “Turning, I mentally digested all of what you, the reader, are about to find out heartbreakingly.” (Top Changwatchai)
Comedy Wildlife GALLERY! Oh, the pictures!