Word: blam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Guns have a sort of irresistible black magic about them. A good gun has such lovely heft, a densely sinister weight in the hand. The brain is wired to the trigger finger and fires on impulse. The finger twitches, and -- blam! -- the life across a distance -- poof! -- disintegrates: an existence powdered. The finger did it on a whim. The desacralization of life, a society of emotional disconnection: killing is a kind of dream-sequence video. Conscience is disconnected from trigger finger. Child is disconnected from future. Bullet is ; disconnected from gun muzzle and, once fired, can never be recalled...
...prison. Or this bitter college recollection about feeling as if he were in a test tube from an uncertain liberal experiment: "I was walking down the street with this cute little white coed, thinking we're minding our business, strolling to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee, and blam. Run right dead into the glass wall." To Wideman, the stares seemed to say "Wait a minute, boy . . . You still in the tube, nigger, and don't you forget...
...Well, first, he's named for the right state. Joe North Dakota, he'd probably be a bus driver. Then he's got those gunfighter's eyes. Deadly in publicity stills. Blam, blam, you're haddock pate." The observer wanted to ask this fine fish why this year everyone, even the players, seemed more bored with football than is usual at Super Bowl time. But the last of the snapper was gone...