Word: kudzu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...elevation surrounded by gravel and blacktop roads. It was near here that Mitch and Drew found a site to park the van. They had a clear view of the school's playground, enclosed by chain-link fence, a few hundred feet up the road. Three feet of sage grass, kudzu vines and an array of sapling oaks, sweet gums and acorn trees provided cover. For Mitch and Drew, the spot was perfect...
...Jones v. Clinton. Just 25 years ago, sexual harassment was considered a radical-fringe by-product of feminist theory. Today it's embedded in multiple Supreme Court decisions (three more are expected before July), thousands of corporate policies and a host of lower-court cases that have spread like kudzu across the legal landscape. The result is a thicket of rulings. Since 1991, juries have returned well over 500 verdicts on sexual harassment--decisions that often contradict one another and send mixed signals about how we should behave anytime we meet a co-worker we'd like to see after...
Consider: in just a couple of decades, sports have metastasized from one of life's small, innocent pleasures into a kind of cultural kudzu, filling our cable channels with games and game "analysis," our urban centers with stadiums and our brains with forgettable factoids about Terrell Davis' shoulder and Brett Favre's third-down conversions. Once there were two seasons and two sports, with a decent interval between, during which courtships occurred and family members became reacquainted. In that distant era, bars were appropriately morose settings for the serious contemplation of fate and its ironies, not frenetic assemblages of monitors...
Popular culture is pretty much the only culture we have left. like kudzu, it grows over everything in its path. One of the few things that can confound it, if only for a while, is genuine tragedy. Consider the following exchange...
...find any of those factors. Each morning the paper brings such encouraging news about inflation or crime or unemployment that I almost expect to see the headline GOOD PEOPLE REWARDED; EVIL ONES TO SUFFER. The worry monger in me finds no satisfaction in the international pages either. The democracy kudzu spreads relentlessly, and while there are troubles, none compares with the risk of imminent global incineration. Then: the Cuban missile crisis. Now: the Caribbean summit. After so carefully developing the habit of pessimism, is it any wonder I feel bereft...