Word: beak
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Better than testimonials from talking cats. "Read my beak!" says the feisty little spokesparrot for this premium cat chow. "No more birds!" He's out to convince cats that Whiskas is "a heck of a lot more nutritious than a teeny little guy" like himself. Best of all, thanks to brilliant editing, the little guy really appears to be speaking in that weird French accent...
...squid, tourism collapses. Whereupon an Ahabian fisherman, Whip Darling, clambers into a submarine and leads the hunt. All the old ingredients are present, from aqua horror ("the creature moved toward the unnatural thing") to Moby Dick denouement (" 'Here!' he shouted, and he drove the saw deep into the yawning beak"). In between are adrenal confrontations and detailed descriptions of marine life and death -- everything, in fact, but background music and special effects. Wait till next year...
...only really likable characters are the son Will, his best friend Wag and another youth named Spencer, who is obsessed with the disappearance of the dinosaurs. "In the boy's bedroom were hundreds of dinosaur models . . . An inflated Rhamphorhynchus dangled from the ceiling fixture. ('It means "prow beak," ' Spencer said.)" Spencer is showing his dinosaurs to a hungry-eyed art-gallery owner named Haveabud, who, in a truly sinister scene watched by Will, seduces him during a trip to Florida. There is quite a bit of sex in Beattieland, most of it adulterous and joyless...
...Italian physicians wore an elaborate garb to protect themselves from infection. The outfit extended from head to foot and was made entirely of leather. A wide-brimmed hat kept the physician from the patient, and the doctors never touched the patients by hand. The suit also included a protruding beak stuffed with herbs to "purify" the air and separate the physician and the patient...
Since the Ayatullah Khomeini came to power a decade ago, Iran's stampmakers have made a habit of tweaking the American eagle's beak. One issue depicted the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, another the abortive 1980 attempt by an American rescue team to free the hostages. Iran has a new addition to its philatelic collection: a stamp illustrating July's shootdown of an Iranian airliner by a U.S. warship. One such stamp came in the mail this month to International Pressure Service, a maker of high-tech aerospace equipment based in Urbana, Ohio. Inappropriately enough, the envelope...