Word: ax
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...next session. Allowing temporary legal residents to remain in the country until Congress reconsiders their status hurts no one--no one, that is, except nativists. In enforcing what it sees as the letter of the law, the INS contemptuously flouts its spirit and demonstrates that it has an ax to grind...
...book displays all the author's patented tics and tropes. The Beautiful Losers: a black, a homosexual, and -- among others persecuted in adolescence and now called home to disinter a buried memory -- a stutterer and an abused girl. The Validated Nightmare: "At the last instant, as the ax slowed to its apogee and balanced there, Richie understood that this wasn't a dream at all . . ." The Disgusting Colloquialism: "She drew in a great, hitching breath and hocked a remarkably large looey onto the top of his head." The Brand-Name Maneuver: "Here sits a man with Bass Weejuns...
Deanna's story was the most unusual incident in a week of intensifying antidrug activity around the country. Not since the early days of the temperance movement, when Carry Nation took ax in hand and went about hacking up saloons, has the U.S. public seemed so determined to do something about substance abuse. There were church vigils and street-corner rallies, marches through dope-infested neighborhoods, and TV spots filmed to urge young people to resist the temptation to experiment with drugs. Showing the Administration's support for drug testing, the President and his Cabinet submitted to urinalysis...
...until he was satisfied, throwing out whole sequences or starting over when he wasn't. There are tantalizing scenes of the director at work (Chaplin getting exasperated with a bit player who has trouble shuffling cards) and some admirable detective work (a dangerous-looking sight gag in which an ax barely misses Charlie's foot was, it turns out, actually shot backward...
...choked him with a steel chain and handcuffed him in the cockpit. Flight Engineer Chiu Ming-chih said that at one point the plane swerved out of control as he knelt before Wang, begging him to change his mind. The captain, however, reportedly threatened his crewmates with an ax and muttered, "I'm sorry. I've been planning this for a long time...