November 9, 2002

2:32 PM

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you The Sexiest Sentence Alive.
posted by willnot (29 comments total)

Saw this last week on BookSlut..... I really enjoyed this one-
"Both cupcakes are free."
posted by bradth27 at 2:50 PM on November 9, 2002

I think there must be something wrong with their algorithm. I can't imagine how the winner could have been anything but this:

"Wildly shouting unintelligible nonsense and shaking her head, she continued to spit at me from her tree branch; I couldn't help thinking, 'Is she coming on to me?'"

Source: Ben Cronin
Submitted by: Dugan Hayes, friend of Ben Cronin
posted by willnot at 2:53 PM on November 9, 2002

Come on, nothing can beat Tom Jarvis' entry:

"Most girls reach their sexual peak sometime around the age of whenever they're near me."
posted by plemeljr at 2:56 PM on November 9, 2002

I, for one, am a puddle of lexical jelly.
posted by jonmc at 3:03 PM on November 9, 2002

i'm too sexy for my grammar.
posted by quonsar at 3:07 PM on November 9, 2002

a puddle of lexical jelly
<don pardo>
"Available everywhere fine lubricants are sold!"
</don pardo>
posted by quonsar at 3:10 PM on November 9, 2002

I'm disappointed. Where's Graham's entry, "We are pleased to offer you a tenure track position"?
Seriously, I wasn't that impressed by the list--it doesn't seem that people thought too hard or too seriously about the question (not that I don't appreciate the funny ones).
posted by jokeefe at 3:16 PM on November 9, 2002

Hey, I worked hard on my entry! Even though I LOST somehow. Rig! Rig!
posted by RJ Reynolds at 3:31 PM on November 9, 2002

Did I dream you dreamt about me?
posted by yonderboy at 3:48 PM on November 9, 2002

I'm disappointed. Where's Graham's entry

Heh. I was DQ'd for authoring the Formula. Annoying, but fair.

I did like Rex's submission from Levi-Strauss, but I probably would have gone with something from Pynchon:

In silence, hidden from her, the camera follows as she moves deliberately nowhere longlegged about the rooms, an adolescent wideness and hunching to the shoulders, her hair not bluntly Dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an old, tarnished silver crown, yesterday's new perm leaving her very blonde hair frozen on top in a hundred vortices, shining through the darkest fiigree.

'Course, that's a whole different kind of sexy.
posted by gleuschk at 4:01 PM on November 9, 2002

And wow, thanks for the BookSlut link, bradth27. Dunno how I managed never to see that one.
posted by gleuschk at 4:09 PM on November 9, 2002

yes, the winner was really unappealing to me. Seemed kind of gross really, in both senses, yucky but also just big and oversimplified in sexiness. The Levi-Strauss wasn't bad and the last one (all language is a drunk goddess in my mouth) kind of worked for me, but most were disappointingly bleh.

Lovely site though & cool algorithm. Too bad the entries weren't more in tune with the site's author.
posted by mdn at 4:15 PM on November 9, 2002

I can't believe that no one's commented on the fact that sentences aren't actually alive.

They live, of course, but it's not the same thing.
posted by SoftRain at 4:36 PM on November 9, 2002

"Yes, yes I will marry you. But hurry up, or we're going to be late for bowling."

I believe that one's from one of our own guys. You know him, he's the guy who posts about geography all the time.
posted by Samsonov14 at 5:03 PM on November 9, 2002

And wow, thanks for the BookSlut link, bradth27. Dunno how I managed never to see that one.

Thanks go to our own Jessamyn, who listed it on one of her sites a while back. She mentioned something about it also slipping past her, until someone else pointed it out.... I too had never heard of it.
Librarians rule.
posted by bradth27 at 5:17 PM on November 9, 2002

"Excuse me ma'am, I'm Mel Gibson - did you see a dingo dog run by with my shirt?"
posted by yhbc at 6:01 PM on November 9, 2002

I believe that one's from one of our own guys. You know him, he's the guy who posts about geography all the time.

Am I never safe from the all-seeing MetaFilter!?
posted by oissubke at 6:55 PM on November 9, 2002

I nominate a sentence from pious John Donne's beautiful To His Mistress Going To Bed:

"Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below."

Which goes on:

"O, my America, my Newfoundland,
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery ;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee !
To enter in these bonds, is to be free ;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be."

This, in turn, reminds me of Cole Porter's All Of You:

"I love the look of you, and the lure of you,
The sweet of you, and the pure of you,
The eyes, the arms, and the mouth of you
The east, west, north, and the south of you.

I'd love to gain complete control of you,
Handle even the heart and soul of you,
Love at least a small percent of me do:
'Cause I love all of you."

So I cheated - sue me! (Btw, great post, willnot - and well done, gleuschk!)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:12 PM on November 9, 2002

"Let's tattoo bible quotes across both our hips." - Bonnie Raitt, "The Fundamental Things". I don't want to say too much, but this album seems to have some magical mood enhancement properties.
posted by planetkyoto at 8:28 PM on November 9, 2002

I don't want to say too much

Well that's sexy enough in it's own right, planetkyoto, if you'll forgive me. ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:32 PM on November 9, 2002

Miguel: The Donne line isn't "my Newfoundland." It's "my new found land." At least in the version I have. Great poem, though. Donne's wonderful.

And "All of You," while a lovely song, uses the metaphor of an agent - Fred Astaire is playing one in Silk Stockings and a client for a romance: when he says "handle even the heart and soul of you," he's talking about handling in the business sense of the word, and that's where the percent line comes from. Which makes the gain complete control part slightly less scary than when you first hear it, but still.

It is a lovely song though.
posted by SoftRain at 8:45 PM on November 9, 2002

Hey, thanks SoftRain!

Allow me to disagree, though. I'm Portuguese and the Portuguese called Newfoundland Terra Nova: New Earth; or New World. Whether or not Donne spelled it altogether (he probably didn't, I agree) the analogy is with the undiscovered (or recently discovered) parts of his mistress's body.

You're quite right about "All of You" but, again, there's the metaphor of military conquest, as a woman's (or probably man's) body is defined as a territory, the north being the mouth, the east and west the arms, and the south...

Oh , do I love MetaFilter! Where else would we be so indulged, I ask you?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:56 PM on November 9, 2002

It's about the geography of desire, I think - Cole Porter's "handle" might also, apart from your sense (I'd never thought of that!), be said to refer to wild animals; as in "handling a tiger", for instance.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:59 PM on November 9, 2002

well I can't seem to find a place to submit and entry so I'll post it here!

"Is fucking a sexually transmitted disease?"
posted by mcsweetie at 9:02 PM on November 9, 2002

"Sir, here are the keys to your new Porsche 911 Turbo" is a sentence that gives me wood that a cat couldn't scratch.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:48 PM on November 9, 2002

Huh. Someone submitted John Mayer's "I love the shape you take / When crawling towards the pillow case," but not the next lines: "You tell me where to go / Though I might leave to find it / I'll never let your head hit the bed / Without my hand behind it" ("Your Body is a Wonderland"). The unaminous decision among my female hallmates last year was that we would unhesitatingly have sex with any guy who sang that to us unprompted.
My top musical pick would probably be from Howlin' Wolf's "Backdoor Man": "I am a backdoor man / Well, the men don't know, but the little girls understand." Runnerup: "I don't want you to be no slave / I don't want you to wait on me / I don't want you to be true / I just want to make love to you" (Muddy Waters, "I Just Want to Make Love to You").
Almost anything by Nikki Giovanni is sexy as hell, but "I Wrote a Good Omelet" is my favorite.

I wrote a good omelet...and ate a hot poem...
after loving you

Buttoned my car...and drove my coat home...in the
rain...
after loving you

I goed on red...and stopped on green....floating
somewhere in between...
being here and being there...
after loving you

I rolled my bed...turned down my hair...slightly
confused but...I don't care...
Laid out my teeth...and gargled my gown...then I stood
...and laid me down...
to sleep...
after loving you
posted by hippugeek at 1:33 AM on November 10, 2002

The sexiest sentence for me is one that blurted out of my mouth last night at a concert. I led her to the dance floor then turned, looked her straight in the eye, and said: "You better have some cool moves, girl."

It's not the sentence but the reaction it got--half closed eyes, pursed lips. The look of someone rising to a challenge rocks my world.

(and together, we rocked the dance floor if I do say so myself)
posted by wobh at 10:40 AM on November 10, 2002

Well, it's a bit of a silly premise to start with: it's not specified whether the sentence should be literary or conversational... Written descriptions of arousal and longing are very difficult to do successfully, as the mechanics of sex quickly become absurd; and the most banal things can become wildly sexy depending on who is saying them. Lucinda Williams moaning "Oh, my baby" in Right in Time is the most moving and erotic thing ever, imho.
And Alice Munro wrote a piece of memoir in the New Yorker recently about her teenage self and her boyfriend, and how they "wanted to get at each other's skin". Worked for me.
posted by jokeefe at 11:47 AM on November 10, 2002

I nominate Tennyson's amazing seduction poem - it's actually five sentences, but who could bear to cut it?

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
  Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
  Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
  The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.

  Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
      And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

  Now lies the earth all Danaë to the stars,
    And all thy heart lies open unto me.

    Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
  A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

    Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

you could never say no.
posted by bibizee at 2:09 AM on November 12, 2002