Word: cactus
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...South America. Settlers in the Ayacucho region of the Andes had domesticated guinea pigs and llamas by the time Iceman lived, and farmed potatoes, squash, beans and corn. Along the coastal desert of what is now northern Chile, the Chinchorro used woven fishing nets and hooks made of cactus thorns, shell and bone to harvest a rich diet from the sea. The Chinchorro, who were savvy hunters, developed elaborate mummification techniques some 2,500 years before the Egyptians, probably as a sacrament in ancestor worship. After removing internal organs and drying the cavf mdavers, they stuffed the remains with feathers...
...escaped its boundaries but not its nostalgic magnetic pull. So their lovable ex-con Johnny (Al Pacino) may come on to rumpled beauty Frankie (Michelle Pfeiffer) in a workplace seduction straight out of Anita Hill's nightmares, but he's really a sweet guy who can make a cactus bloom. Pacino plays Johnny as if he is New York: pushy, forlorn, indomitable. And Pfeiffer, laying claim to the title of Hollywood's most accomplished stunner, is every skeptic who tried vainly to fight off the city's spell...
...into a very thirsty place should something go wrong with the river: almost 70% of the water its citizens use every day is piped in from the Colorado. And what of California's Imperial Valley, which grows a major portion of the nation's vegetables? Goodbye Colorado River, hello cactus and mesquite...
...vice presidency calls up its rueful folklore. "Cactus Jack" Garner of Texas, F.D.R.'s Vice President from 1933 to 1941, did not say the office was "not worth a pitcher of warm spit." He said it was "not worth a pitcher of warm piss." The line is almost always cleaned up for the civics class. No one has improved on Mr. Dooley's formulation: "Th' Prisidincy is th' highest office in th' gift iv th' people. Th' Vice-Prisidincy is th' next highest an' th' lowest. It isn't a crime exactly. Ye can't be sint to jail...
...waltz to the supple beat of a five-piece band that displays its name, Desert Varnish, on maroon baseball caps. The dance floor is made of plywood panels, and the ceiling is the blue Arizona sky. DANCE AT YOUR OWN RISK reads the sign posted near a huge cactus. Couples dance in the desert, romance hovering like heat haze; some dress in matching colors. Stuck in the ground around them are plastic hyacinths, windmills, ducks. "I can't help it if I'm still in love with you," sings a man to himself, staring off at the mountains...