We have an accidentally very animal-heavy week of sentences, which is pretty nice.
Some shameless (well, actually pretty ashamed) commerce self-promotion: between unexpected life expenses and taxes I am doing some extra hustling this week. Do you like beautiful plotter art? There's some small work for as low as $20 and some more fancy work for more than that. (20% discount code for subscribers available upon request.)
Subscription and tip jar links at the bottom are always appreciated of course, but I do really like these little plotter drawings so sharing them is nice.
If all this sounds off-putting, you might ask yourself why you expect clownfish to reaffirm your notions of father-son relationships in the first place.
"The Sex Lives of Sea Creatures", Colin Dickey for The New Republic
From 2016, still a banger. A runner-up sentence, made even better by being the lede:
First, it’s important to ruin Finding Nemo for you.
Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane.
"Total Eclipse", Annie Dillard
I first read this essay in 2017 before the eclipse that passed through the Pacific Northwest. Charlie, Rahawa, Allen, and I did a road trip from California to see that one in Peter's dad's backyard. I was in an extremely messy period of my adult life then; the eclipse probably didn't contribute directly but I'm not sure it helped the situation either.
One wouldn’t want a therapist to betray too much vanity, self-destructiveness, or delusion, but in a writer, over-sanity can be hard to take.
"Good Enough", Sam Adler-Bell for The Baffler
Submitted by Anne.
Booger’s original was stolen from an animal shelter by a former beauty queen, Joyce McKinney, who had been convicted of kidnapping a Mormon man she was in love with, then escaped authorities in disguise as a mime, and later persuaded a teen to steal money to buy a prosthetic leg for her horse.
Submitted by Bill with the following: "I felt this sentence deserved honor for so effectively drawing me to click on the link next to it."
She acknowledged that marketing, not lobstering, was her forte.
Obituary of Linda Bean, Trip Gabriel for the New York Times
Some wacky details in this obituary, including the term "lobster cuddlers."
Shane Williams is always on the lookout for dead kangaroos.
"Carmakers give up on software that avoids kangaroos", Sophia Hartley for Ars Technica
Submitted by Travis.
Logline: in the Swiss town of Interlaken, a love triangle forms between an avalanche survivor, a newly broke oil industrialist’s son, and a mysterious influencer who might be a spy.
"It's Not What The World Needs Right Now", Andrew Norman Wilson for The Baffler
Some of this essay is pretty brutal, but not entirely incorrect. Another contender:
New York increasingly feels like a sexy jail or a 9/11-themed Sbarro, so I use the money to buy a 2000 Volvo S70 with 250,000 miles on it for $500 from my dad, who likes to fix up totaled jalopies with his friend.
"sexy jail or a 9/11-themed Sbarro" is a wild dichotomy that sort of makes the rest of the sentence immaterial.
It was Saturday night in the Bronx, and as a lively, colorful crowd sipped vodka cocktails underneath dramatic palm fronds, the word people kept whispering was “phalaenopsis.”
"he Orchid Show After Dark, Where Green Thumbs and Plant Killers Mingle", Dodai Stewart for The New York Times
I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.”
"Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever", Gary Shteyngart for The Atlantic
Submitted by Bill.