Here's the winning line:

"Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten per cent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee," --Jim Gleeson

PS. I wasn't sure if this should go in the published hooks area, but it seemed out of place there.

Very Douglas Adams...I understand why it is bad writing, but honestly I've seen many a sentence like that from Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and even Neil Gaiman.