Word: decays
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Life is a stern professor: It teaches us how to say goodbye. We lose--or simply misplace--our youth, many of our dreams, the bounce in our step, the dewy dependence of our children. We grow, then decay; our kids grow up and grow away. For most of us the process is so gradual that we take it for granted. We accommodate ourselves to loss, as a rehearsal for the ultimate accommodation of dying. But what if you have this good life--the sweet husband, the three kids--and then it disappears from under you, like a magic carpet yanked...
Good thing there's a new chew in town--the Trident Advantage with Baking Soda. This time, Trident's product designers have packaged their goods in distinctly inedible plastic bubbles. While Trident Advantage may boast special powers--whitens teeth, reduces plaque and risk of gum decay--the rectangular gum pieces look and taste strikingly similar to peppermint Chiclets. And guess what--both gum products are manufactured by Warner-Lambert! But if these up-scale Chiclets cost $1.69 for a package of 12 pieces, consider taking a nibble at the packaging--you might get you're money's worth...
Considered that way, the nation's failure to rally around Starr is further proof of the general moral decay. It used to be an article of faith among conservatives that the natural goodness of the American people would be unleashed once we got the government off our backs. (Remember Newt Gingrich?) Lately, however, conservatives find themselves entertaining the opposite thought, that we have all become so heedless and self-regarding that we can no longer be relied upon to make moral judgments. This summer James Dobson, the Christian radio broadcaster, was all but calling for a new American people...
Indeed, the whole film is in a style we'll call contempo-retro. It is beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle, who turns the puky green of motel lighting into a circle of Hell, and it features a busy sound track of rattlesnakes and buzzing flies--moral decay in the desert. Everything else is defiantly same-old. This Psycho is radical because it has not only the dialogue but also the tempo of a film almost 40 years...
Still, there is something coolly mesmerizing and wonderfully disturbing about the CD. Beck's lyrics, though elusive, are not nonsense. They obsess about issues of death and decay, and they strike at something deep, evoking feelings of sadness, melancholy and regret. "A worm of hope/ a hangman's rope/ pulls me one way or the other," he sings on Cold Brains. On another track he sings, "Treated you like a rusty blade/ A throwaway from an open grave...