A grammatical question

[Aoi Magi]

[wiploc]

Since we are getting advice, I want to know comparatively which is worse, "worst of the worst" or "best of the worst"?

The worst of the worst is worse than the best of the worst. 

Example, sort of, or analogy:  Suppose we call 1, 2, and 3 are the low positive numbers.  1, the lowest of the low, is lower than 3, the highest of the low.

[mlmooney89]

Hijack okay?  Since this grammar thread seems to have run its course but for the wisecracking, I just wrote this:

Salt, and the sound of surf; I was near the ocean or some big lake.  Cold dark and silent; it was night, well before dawn, before the morning birds riot.  The smell of damp soil, predator scat, evergreens, blood (I assumed it was mine), and  urine (also mine?).

And I'm wondering about the punctuation at the end.  "?)."   I never saw that before.  Can anybody tell me whether it's good or bad, and what to do about it if it's bad? 

Having asked the question, I'll now try to answer it myself: 

If it's bad, then I have to recast the sentence somehow to avoid the problem.  But if it's good it's distracting.  That is, a lot of people will assume it is bad, and I should avoid causing them to have distracting thoughts about grammar when I want them to be involved in the story.  So I should recast the sentence to avoid inciting misguided grammarians.  Conclusion:  Either way, I should recast. 

But I'm still curious:  Is it actually wrong?

In story form writing the parentheses are not a usual thing. Most writers use italics for thoughts or comas. Such as; "The smell of damp soil, predator scat, evergreens, blood, which I assumed was mine, and urine, this also might have been mine." You didn't finish the sentence, you said the smell and mentioned them but you didn't have a verb. The smell suffocated the character? Nauseated him? Floated all around? I personally would say something like:

"The smell of damp soil, predator scat, evergreens, blood, that I assume is mine, and urine, this one I don't know if I can claim as my own, all hit me at once." or "... claim as my own, choked me." or "battered my senses."

[mlmooney89]

Since we are getting advice, I want to know comparatively which is worse, "worst of the worst" or "best of the worst"?

Worst of the worse is the very bottom. The last thing you would want. A devil in the midst of demons. The king of bad.

Best of the worse is like the saying lesser of two evils. You hate both chicken and beef but you can at least tolerate chicken so if forced to eat one you would eat the best of the worst, the chicken.

With these two definitions I would say being the worst of the worst is... well worse.

Some people could argue that the best of the worst could mean being the best at being bad. In order to be in that form it would need context clues and cannot be left alone as it is here.