Word: meagerness
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...several minutes the audience sits in darkness listening to a techno-mix of answering machine messages. Following this is the illumination of a single neon light proclaiming that it is “open”—whatever “it” is. In the meager neon light are three simultaneous scenes: a young man reclining on a couch, a young couple in a restaurant booth and two friends in a movie theater. Then the light goes off, and the scenery is changed by comic book superheroes (the Incredible Hulk is the most recognizable...
...region, counseling facilities are scarce, and recovery is viewed as a matter of willpower and discipline rather than a tenuous and slow spiritual and psychological rebuilding process. Drug-treatment centers are usually run like a cross between boot camp and prison. Beds are scarce as addicts seek the meager resources available. In China, for example, the nearly 750 state-run rehab centers are filled to capacity; in Thailand the few recovery centers suffer from a chronic shortage of staff and beds. While the most powerful tools for fighting addiction in the West--12-step programs derived from Alcoholics Anonymous...
...should also tell her about the news of the obvious truth. That took me decades to learn. As a young writer, I was the dandiest, cleverest wit and wise guy--a cinch if one possesses the meager gifts. And then after witnessing enough pain and plain courage in the world, I simply reversed course and started writing about the life before my eyes. Eventually one understands that the world is largely made up of obvious truths, lying in the open, begging to be repeated...
...instead of waiting for the censors to approve their scripts and their films, they go out and do it themselves. Zhang financed Beijing Bastards with money he got directing music videos. Wang made The Days (1993), the harrowing story of a marriage on the rocks, for an astonishingly meager $10,000. Desperate circumstances create principled outlaws. The censors didn't intend this, but by their intransigence they helped spawn a truly independent film culture...
Still, for those of you who got creamed in the stock market last week, here's a little more comfort: you've got company. Lots of it. Such meager solace won't put Junior through college or send Cisco back to $82, but it sure helps the ego knowing that tens of thousands of people clung to their tech stocks as desperately as you did for the whole bloody decline. How could they not? For years tech stocks were magical. Unimagined wealth was yours simply for logging on to the New Economy mind-set, clicking three times and whispering, "There...