This week I learned that "walking pneumonia" is a real diagnosis that you can get at an urgent care facility! I'm actually not sure if it's the correct diagnosis for what I have (or if it is less a formal viral/bacterial infection type and more just a shorthand for "hella sick but not as sick as you could be"), but I can say whatever I've got is a pretty shitty thing to have in the summer. Apologies if the selections this week have been diluted as a result.

The words they used were strange, odd souvenirs, tiny fragments that had been chipped off an alien business meteorite.

Apex Hides the Hurt, Colson Whitehead

We’re halfway through 2023 and I’ve managed to actually maintain doing this newsletter every week! This is not an impressive achievement for most people but for me it’s pretty good. Thanks for reading it!

I want to be able to know precisely how cruelly we have robbed ourselves.

“I don’t know how to write about all that hasn’t happened since the fall of Roe”, Alexandra Petri for The Washington Post

Trees are plants that people call trees—a term of dignity, not botany.

Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees, Jared Farmer

Submitted by Charlie via Liat.

What the machine has is the exotic, uncanny allure of its authorship.

“AI Writing Proves the Author is Very Much Alive”, Connor Wroe Southard for Blood Knife

Submitted last week by Kelsey but I have been very bad at email the last few weeks and I missed it.

he’s like a saltwater taffy store where the girls are all named kimberly

Tricia Lockwood posting on Bluesky

Sometimes I think about what kind of world we lived in if only poets were allowed to post. Also, this sentence is about reading Don DeLillo.

She wouldn't give you the time of day if she had two watches.

The Man I Love, dir. Raoul Walsh (link is to trailer)

Seen on one of those old movie clip Instagram accounts. I have no idea if the movie is any good, but I'm a real sucker for fast-talking, chain-smoking old-timey dialogue full of zingers like this. Also, this still from the trailer seems like a meme in the making:

Sullivan, a man notorious for having once chased a burglar out of his house with a gun while wearing nothing but his underwear and a cowboy hat, still despises Francis.

“Inside the Stunning Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild”, Sacchi Koul for (RIP) Buzzfeed News

This entire story is full of stories that must have been heartbreaking to edit into mere asides. Top-notch.

Now the lupine duel has finally resolved, and the cyberwolf of techno-optimism registers its final processes as it lies twitching in a pool of its own coolant.

"Doug Rushkoff is Ready to Renounce the Digital Revolution", Malcolm Harris for Wired

Malcolm never disappoints when it comes to gonzo perfect sentences.

This was also a real boom time for unsalted Legume Surprise and macrobiotically balanced grain mush that tasted like macrame owl.

"Blue skies over Mastodon", a blog post by Erin Kissane

This was the first sentence I added into the draft of this week's entries even before Miikka submitted it. All hail macrame owl.

Of course an amateur is simply a person / who loves, who brings love to bear / on a particular subject.

“Orpheus in Spring”, Jenny George

Via Courtney’s IG stories.

This bagel pulses with the blood of cream cheese, and the knowledge that God is dead.

"The Cream Cheese Stuffed ‘Tax-Free Bagel’ Is a Crime Against Nature, NYC", Christopher Robbins for Hell Gate

Hell Gate continues to be the best thing to happen to NYC media.

Good news: I successfully defended my master’s thesis on Friday and finished remaining revisions suggested by my committee. Because academia is obsessed with credentials and has slightly broken my brain in ways I don’t like, having achieved a master’s degree in geography mostly feels like hitting a midpoint marker on the way to a PhD rather than an accomplishment in and of itself. But I am still relieved to be through this particular hazing ritual.

Man, fuck this place, and by place I mean / The land lords.

“What We Do Every Day is Activism” by Vickie Vértiz in “Gold in the hills, but not for us” in March 1, 2023 issue of High Country News

The sexual outlaw sat alone in her room, considering her options.

Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock, Vere Chappell

Via a screenshot on Mari’s instagram stories. Could also work as the opening to a The Hold Steady song—imagine Craig Finn shouting this along the lines of “Charlemagne in Sweatpants.”

I’ll tell you right now: I’ve been a writer for most of my life, and we are about as important as a fart in the wind.

"How much money do we think Substack lost last year?", Elizabeth Lopatto for The Verge

Analysis slides off Prince Hat like water off a duck engendered from dark matter.

Good news everyone, I submitted my thesis to my committee last Friday. Hope they let me get my stupid master's degree so I can get my stupid doctorate. I'm so tired.

Powder metallurgy, though in its infancy, is a lusty and promising babe.

"Metal Sinews of Strength: This Is a War of Many Metals, for We Live in an Age of Alloys", Frederick G. Vosburgh for National Geographic (April 1942)

In the past week I’ve written some 9,000 words of my master’s thesis which is due to my committee this Friday. I have read and written a lot of not especially perfect but probably good enough to get a degree sentences in the process, and my brain is mostly soup. Many thanks to readers who submitted sentences this week—they buoyed my spirits and also mean this week was not kind of a wash sentences-wise.

Each one miniaturized an emotional world, matching TikTok’s hummingbird heartbeat.

“The Pulse of Pop Music Is Changing”, Spencer Kornhaber for The Atlantic

It was, by his account, a no-brainer, and it does seem as though the number of brains involved was narrowly circumscribed.

"Did Starbucks Really Put Olive Oil in Coffee?", Gideon Lewis-Kraus for The New Yorker

Submitted by v, with this runner-up that v claims is less funny out of context but it made me laugh before I actually read the story:

There was little to say but that it tasted like a large spoonful of olive oil in coffee.

It looks like a beard trimmer that plays Phil Collins songs.

"Get a Load of This Sorry Piece of Crap", Albert Burneko for Defector

While this sentence is perfect as a sick burn on the Tesla Cybertruck, it is a little harsh on Phil Collins.

A bunch of new subscribers signed up in the last week—welcome! A gentle reminder that if you enjoy this newsletter that I have a tip jar for one-time gestures of appreciation. (Apologies for crass acknowledgment of money but I am also a grad student piecing together freelancing and selling art to supplement a $22,000 research assistant stipend and my summer funding is in the air and in this economy, etc.)

DC-based readers: I'll be speaking with Malcolm Harris at Solid State Books on March 3 (this Friday!) about his recently published book Palo Alto. Some sentences from the advanced review copy of the book previously appeared in this newsletter.

OK, on to the sentences.

I wanted to write something someday with that kind of first sentence and I wanted that kind of first sentence to be written to me every day for the rest of my life.

Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon

Feels important to include the sentence Laymon’s writing about here, which is from the preface to Toni Cade Bambara’s short story collection Gorilla, My Love:

It does no good to write autobiographical fiction cause the minute the book hits the stand here comes your mama screamin how could you and sighin death where is thy sting and she snatches you up out your bed to grill you about what was going down back there in Brooklyn when she was working three jobs and trying to improve the quality of your life and come to find on this page that you were messin around with that nasty boy up the block and breaks into sobs and quite naturally your family strolls in all sleepy-eyed to catch the floor show at 5:00 A.M. but as far as your mama is concerned, it is nineteen-forty-and-something and you ain’t too grown to have your ass whipped.