Word: bastardly
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Shaffer's Pizarro is a 20th century existentialist in the body of a 16th century swineherd. Born a bastard, he is too poor to count as human in the society of Spain. At 59, he scorns any ideal of military chivalry he once held. Love is a mockery and faith a nagging memory of trust betrayed. Even the gold is "only a metal" to him, but he pursues it as Ahab pursued the white whale. Just as Ahab was obsessed with the mystery of existence, Pizarro is haunted by the emptiness of being. Both are horrified by the blank...
...Leader Everett Dirksen, whose forces had become reasonably confident that they could scuttle Morrissey's nomination. After crossing the Senate floor to give Teddy an avuncular handclasp, old Ev rumbled: "It takes something for a young man to subdue his pride. It doesn't bother an old bastard like me. But in a young man it takes courage...
Nonetheless, in Scenarist James Poe's gritty adaptation of the cold war thriller by Mark Rascovich, Bedford appears to be powered by superpatriotism. Captain Richard Widmark is a right-wing fanatic whose hot head simmers harmlessly ("It's a lot of work being a mean bastard") until his ship sights a Soviet sub prowling territorial waters off Greenland. The captain can scarcely restrain his thirst for the kill as he trails his prey, determined to force the snoopy sub to surface for air and identify itself. The clear thinking is done for the Good Guys by a former...
...again! Yes, again the booming Monroe industry has brought forth a book about the star-crossed star. This one, for a change, is quite well written, but Biographer Edwin Hoyt (The Vanderbilts and Their Fortunes) tells the same sick story everybody tells: bastard birth, maternal insanity, preschool rape, foster-family neglect, casting-couch apprenticeship, fanny-flipping fame, dismal marriages, barbiturate addiction, overdosed death. And he reaches the same solemn conclusion: Marilyn was the "innocent" victim of a corrupt society. Now really...
...brief, the dating rests on two major pieces of physical evidence. First, the scribe who drew the map and copied the text used a writing style known as Oberrheinische Bastarda, or Upper Rhineland bastard (or cursive) book hand, which is confined to the period 1415-1460. Since the handwriting is in fully developed form and free of accretions from styles that developed later, a date in the 1440s seems most likely. Second, the parchment and paper used can be traced to the same period, and a unique spectacled head of a bull used as a watermark on the paper shows...