Word: leper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Teresa was a living saint, drawing both rich and poor to her side and to the message of God. She could, wrote Malcolm Muggeridge in his 1971 book Something Beautiful for God, "hear in the cry of every abandoned child the cry of the Bethlehem child; recognize in every leper's stumps the hands which once touched sightless eyes and made them...
There are, for example, the character Paul Theroux's comic misadventures with women. Visiting a leper colony in Malawi, he meets a nurse who is not a nun but who dresses in a nun's habit. "This stuff's cooler," she says, when he asks her why. "I mean, I'm naked underneath." Their attempt at a tryst--she has a room in the nuns' quarters--is not a success...
Even the tracks which don't project the guitar-heavy brashness of corn-belt rock'n'roll heroes fit neatly into other cliches of popular music. The third track, "New Test Leper," is a low key ballad complete with the type of jangly acoustic guitar which seems to typify radio candy marketed towards teenage girls. On this track, and on the ballad "Be Mine," Stipe's voice takes on the sticky sweetness one would expect from Evan Dando, and his lyrics the groveling desperation of Matthew Sweet: "I want to be your Christmas tree...
...R.E.M.'s lyrics is usually enigmatic, and the songs are often constructed in an offbeat manner. On the new album, for example, Leave begins with an acoustic guitar dancing slowly with an accordion-like sound, before a blaring synthesizer, sounding almost like a police siren, kicks in. New Test Leper finds the band in a gentler mood. It's a soothing, meditative song that's tunefully and tastefully sweetened by a mandolin. A big rock number, Undertow, is an expansive and expressive crowd pleaser that the band played on its last concert tour...
...rosy glow emanating from our healthy Harvard cheeks has dissipated. If you skied or beached over break, you probably look like a leper at this point. If you happened to be among the unlucky half of campus accustomed to taking ill the instant school gets out, just be sure to "please use the utensils provided" in certain public arenas, OK? Is it not enough that you blow your noses in the dining hall? Must you also contaminate us by using your Peter Rabbit silverware set and your Waffle House...