Word: kingdoms
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...first glance, the bombardier does appear to be unique in the animal kingdom. Its defense system is extraordinarily intricate, a cross between tear gas and a tommy gun. When the beetle senses danger, it internally mixes enzymes contained in one body chamber with concentrated solutions of some rather harmless compounds, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones, confined to a second chamber. This generates a noxious spray of caustic benzoquinones, which explodes from its body at a boiling 212 degreesF. What is more, the fluid is pumped through twin rear nozzles, which can be rotated, like a B-17's gun turret...
...themes of flight and pursuit, of innocence shading into culpability, are Hitchcockian. But John Landis' film is not a genre genuflection; it is a thoroughly modern, satanically entertaining night flight into the Zeitgeist city of the 1980s. This Los Angeles is a kingdom of chic sleaze, where every black soul gleams like Bakelite. In the Rodeo Drive boutiques, Iranian thugs and their bimbos are served champagne and caviar. Diana's brother (Bruce McGill) dresses himself and his apartment in Elvis memorabilia and drives a white Caddy bearing the legend THE KING LIVES. A shabby-genteel Brit (David Bowie) eases...
...Saudi Arabia's King Fahd paid a five-day state visit to Washington, the first by a monarch from the Desert Kingdom in 14 years. His principal message: the U.S. has a responsibility to use its influence in an effort aimed at achieving peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors...
Perhaps the most chilling image was the truck bomb, with its driver and vehicle wired to explode to kingdom come. In September, the rig came hurtling at the U.S. embassy annex in East Beirut, but a well-aimed shot by a bodyguard caused it to blow up short of its main target and kept casualties low. Religious fanaticism played a part in the hijacking of Kuwait Airways Flight 221, when gun-toting youths, their eyes staring coldly out of paper masks, riveted the world's attention on a Tehran tarmac for six days. Affiliations were never declared, but the hoodlums...
...This is, for all the world's unbelievers, the true account of Big Mama, absolute sovereign of the Kingdom of Macondo, who lived for 92 years, and died in the odor of sanctity one Tuesday last September, and whose funeral was attended by the Pope...