July 9, 2009


First sentence in an article from the Houston Chronicle about jails with no a/c

Glowing like an atomic peach, the summer sun vaulted from Lake Livingston and hung in the cloudless sky like a thousand heat lamps from hell.

(thanks, Aaron)

posted by Deron Bauman in journalism, language 

comments

5 Responses to “First sentence in an article from the Houston Chronicle about jails with no a/c”

  1. Sheila Ryan on July 9th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    James and the Atomic Peach.

  2. Sheila Ryan on July 9th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    The world’s going to hell under a thousand heat lamps.

  3. Daryl Scroggins on July 9th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    Somebody has a promising future with the Bulwer-Lytton contest.

  4. Sheila Ryan on July 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    My friend Lee pointed out that an editor should have blue-pencilled “from hell”. “Heat lamps from hell” is both excessive and silly.

  5. Patrick Burleson on July 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    What does it say that I actually enjoyed the creativity of that sentence? Decent intro line for a feature story. Certainly it had me wanting the rest of the article.

    Although I do agree with Daryl, that has some promise for Bulwer-Lytton.

Leave a Reply