Word: bogus
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Each year bad-check passers fleece U.S. businesses of an estimated $4 billion-far more than bank robbers get with guns. Using stolen or bogus drivers' licenses and other faked identification, "paper hangers" have found merchants-who are naturally anxious to ring up sales and cannot easily verify such fakes-especially easy targets. And even if checkbook bilkers are later caught, convictions are hard to get because many suspects cannot be identified to the satisfaction of courts. Now two new devices on the market are enabling stores to record identification that even the cleverest forger cannot fake: his thumbprint...
Irving's easily daunted hero is Fred ("Bogus") Trumper, a monumental procrastinator with a talent for bungling. Bogus' hardscrabble effort to support his wife "Biggie" and infant son Colm by selling football pins and pennants is thwarted by a mob of fans who pick clean his display board. Seeing his existence threatened by "little things-errors of judgment, but never crimes" -Bogus begins identifying with Akthelt, the heroic warrior and lover in Akthelt and Gunnel-an absurd Old Low Norse epic he is translating for his doctoral thesis. And when Akthelt is told "Det henskit of krig...
Owls and Mice. But survival for Bogus is a haphazard undertaking at best. An unsuccessful attempt at infidelity becomes a mad, nude chase across the Iowa countryside that leaves Bogus with bleeding feet, if not a bleeding heart. Homeward bound, he falls off a bicycle in front of a barber shop and sardonically observes: "Several sheeted men raised their shaved skulls above the backs of their barber chairs, watching me writhe on the sidewalk as if they were owls-and me, a club-footed mouse...
...though, had more than his fair share of abuse by unscrupulous promoters in recent years. Being the unassuming (and somewhat thickheaded) bear that he is, he has not protested when snatched up by entrepreneurs to be their moneymaking lure. Sears salesmen palm off bogus Poohs on cups, cereal bowls and children's clothes. In his Pooh Perplex, Frederick C. Crewes uses Winnie as a straw bear to be analyzed in every way imaginable in a parody of literary criticism. Walt Disney latched onto the Pooh image in an hour-long cartoon, but substituted Hollywood caricatures for Shepard's illustrations...
...McGraw-Hill Book Co. for $750,000. In a federal court, Irving was given 30 months, Edith two months, with Edith going to jail first so that their two children will not be deprived of both parents at one time. Suskind, who helped with the research on the bogus manuscript, got six months in a state court. The trio has returned none of the money paid to them by McGraw-Hill, and are obligated to repay the $766,000, which includes expenses, that the company says is owed them. In addition, each of the Irvings was fined $10,000. Presumably...