Word: abattoirs
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...Abattoir (French): a slaughterhouse
...concentration camp: Aug. 3, 1944. He and his family had just been transported to Nazi-occupied Poland from their home on the Italian-occupied island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean - a 14-day journey by boat and by train in a stifling cattle car. "We knew it was an abattoir when we arrived. We could smell the melting flesh," he recalls during a return visit to the death camp 65 years later, his eyes welling up with tears. "We got there at 10 in the morning, and by 2 in the afternoon, my mother and father had been gassed...
...plague has turned 90% of the world into vampires. The upside: immortality. Then again, with the vast majority of the population now bloodsuckers, there's a significant shortage of bloodsuckees: the few remaining humans, most of whom are imprisoned and "farmed" in a vast, multi-tiered, Matrix-like abattoir where their blood is systematically drained. Still, it's not enough. As I learn from a fellow reviewer of Daybreakers, Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle, "the average human body holds approximately 1.5 gallons of blood." That's less than 11 bottles of beer, which your average jock vampire could...
...Right from the start, Paul's arrangement has more hooks than a Chicago abattoir. ("We used to start our gigs with the opening riffs from 'How High the Moon,' " said another Paul, the one with the Beatles. "Everybody was trying to be a Les Paul clone in those days.") Do you remember that descending pattern (C, C7, F, F-minor, G) that concluded primal rock-'n'-roll numbers like Billy Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"? Here, Paul begins with that lick; he also anticipates and reverses the fade-out ending of so many early rock-'n'-roll songs...
...There are several nice touches here, such as the clever pun of “lightening.” Most of all, however, its exquisite juxtaposition of those timeless poetic partners, the ugly and the beautiful, makes it surprising and memorable. Much as with the word “abattoir,” it is an ugly thing beautifully described. And Nilsson is at her best when is she is restrained, unassuming, even quiet. If only she was these things more often...