Word: comparisons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sound fresh in each track. The subtlety of variation is completely overshadowed by the overall predictability, despite the intensity and suddenness of the rhythm changes and the unconventional use of sound distortions and samples instead of vocals. At times, the tracks are almost indistinguishable from one another, even in comparison to the most repetitive techno or punk; Hovercraft often makes The Ramones look ingenious. The band must have painstakingly tried to think of new, fresh elements to add to each successive song, but these efforts were unsuccessful...
...agenda" is actually against homosexuals themselves. In fighting to limit AIDS funding and battling gay adoption and marriage, some Republicans have characterized gays as less deserving of basic rights and as a sinful, diseased threat to the American way of life. There was, of course, Senator Trent Lott's comparison of homosexuality to kleptomania. Now a coalition of Christian-right groups is running full-page ads in newspapers with the message that homosexuals are so lost it will take divine intervention for them to become normal. With plans to put the ads on TV just before the election, an entire...
...Boyhood by William Pollack (Random House). It is boys who are in serious trouble, says Pollack, including many who appear at first glance to be doing just fine. Writes Pollack: "New research shows that boys are faring less well in school than they did in the past and in comparison to girls, that many boys have remarkably fragile self-esteem, and that the rates of both depression and suicide in boys are frighteningly on the rise...
This is not genre writing, agreeable trash to be pigeonholed. If salt-soaked comparison is required, O'Brian's adventures suggest Joseph Conrad's sea tales more than those of C.S. Forester and his Horatio Hornblower. Conrad's prevailing mood is darker; though O'Brian can summon darkness and defeat, he is more arch and owlish. But as Forester did, O'Brian novelizes serially. The precarious lives of two memorable characters, friends and shipmates, thread through his books...
Then again, some people long ago learned to live with the burdensome sense of a distant, cloaked observer. They call the observer God. It would be easy to ridicule this comparison. After all, God is nice, whereas prying hackers aren't. But actually, depending on the denomination, God can be wrathful and dish out punishment unpredictably. It really keeps you on your toes...