Word: acridly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tasted of some heavy, acrid East European woe. Beside the woman, a Serbian political journalist -- a dandy in houndstooth jacket, wearing Jean- Paul Sartre glasses -- nodded angry agreement and flicked ashes onto the fish carcass on his plate...
Mostly love -- or lust, since Leo is 12 and increasingly preoccupied with "the tail that swelled between my legs." The two scents, sweet and acrid, mingle whenever he sees his dream girl, Bianca (Giuditta Del Vecchio), a dark- haired waif who lives nearby. He has visions of Bianca standing in a Sicilian glade, singing Italian love songs in her thin, pure voice. Through the bathroom keyhole he has other views of Bianca. He watches her adjust her underclothes, then sees she is not alone. Grandfather is in the tub, naked, handing her money. "Sex," Leo writes, "I discovered between ignorance...
Fires quickly broke out, launching thick, acrid smoke up hundreds of stairwells and elevator banks. In both towers the electricity went out, including emergency backup systems. Even on the highest floors, workers were stunned by the speed at which smoke flew upward. David Deshane, 25, was on the 105th floor when he felt the explosion. "All the computers shut down, then all the phones shut down," he said. "Then all of a sudden we saw smoke ( everywhere." He ran to hit the fire-emergency button. "Nothing happened." In a panic, some people broke windows to admit air, sending daggers...
...doses, and novelist King generally benches herself after a hyperbolic airball or two. Wisely she sidesteps the artificiality (author's choice, after all) of pivoting her story on winning or losing the big games. Her teenagers of both sexes are believably psychotic, and both locker rooms have the edgy, acrid smell of a zoo just before feeding time...
...conventional wisdom during and after the Gulf War was that it was among the worst environmental disasters in history. After all, hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil leaked into the sands of Kuwait and the waters of the Persian Gulf or burned off into acrid clouds of choking pollution. But a newly published study has reached a surprising conclusion: while some stretches of the Saudi coastline were indeed fouled with oil, the hydrocarbons had largely degraded just four months after the war was over. Even more startling: parts of the gulf were actually cleaner after the war than...