Word: bumpers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...last month by Boston magazine. And there is the ever more permeable barrier between public discourse and the upwardly churning tides of gossip. At the Washington headquarters of the gay G.O.P. organization Log Cabin Republicans, executive director Richard Tafel says the traffic these days in gay-sex rumors is bumper to bumper, especially on the not exactly authoritative Internet. "These names come out of nowhere," says Tafel. "Rumors have grown exponentially in cyberspace, where you don't have to be responsible for what...
...match. Its philosophy of continuous improvement--rethinking the thousands of steps that go into building each model-- allows Toyota to constantly trim material costs and production time. The company lowered the base price of its 1997 Camry by 4%, for example, after taking steps that included streamlining the front-bumper assembly from 20 parts to 13 and reducing the number of steel body fasteners from 53 to 15. Such improvements enable Toyota to assemble a car in 21 hours, vs. 25 for Ford, 27 for Chrysler...
...roller coaster. Maybe he's that football coach, Bill something. Bill Parcells? They aren't sure, and being Midwesterners, several greet him with a cautious "Hiya, coach." Bill Bennett just grins, nods and lets his son Joseph, 7, tow him away through the shimmering heat toward the bumper cars...
...Dublin youth, chatter on about postnuclear sunlight (Happy Days) or adulterous affairs (Play)--what's Gaelic for yenta? The men ponder the efficacy of torture (Rough for Theatre II, What Where), the memory of a mother's last days (Krapp's Last Tape, Footfalls). Their dialogue often sounds like bumper stickers for the clinically depressed: "Can there be misery loftier than mine?" asks Hamm in Endgame. But it is also savagely, and savingly, comic. As Beckett knew, all hope is comic. So is the search for meaning. So too, perhaps, is writing about hopelessness and meaninglessness...
Puzzled? Confused? Outraged? Maybe I can explain this by taking you back to the streets of New York City in the 1950s, where games of stickball were played on city streets with a lamppost for a foul line and the bumper of a '52 Ford for second base. When disputes broke out, as they did every three or four minutes, there was never an umpire to settle things. Instead we relied on an unwritten rule known as "Your own man says so!" If a player admitted that, yeah, his teammate was out, that...