Word: meaninglessness
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...seen as something systemic, institutional and structural, as well as personal." Laments William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist: "The devil has been soft-pedaled and de- emphasized by the church." Absent the notion of a personal devil, of course, exorcism becomes an obsolete, in fact meaningless, exercise...
...answer the phone with a crowded, tender, almost cuddling, quick- whispered mushi-mushi. The Russians say slushaiyu (I'm listening). The hipper Russians say allo. Italians say pronto (ready). The Chinese say wei, wei (with a pause between the words, unlike the Japanese mushi-mushi). Wei, wei is meaningless, except as a formula to answer the phone...
...cell, time became slow and meaningless. It was impossible to tell the time; there was no ouside light and we had no watches. Our cellmates had developed an acute sense of time; at an apparently random point, Dennis announced "lunch time". Shortly thereafter an orderly arrived bearing a bucket. The scene that followed was almost Dickensian; prisoners came to life all around, clamouring at the bars, thrusting out their food pots for lunch. Zac and I had no pots, but Blacka and Paul shared their food with us. Four years of boarding school food had not prepared...
This exemplified a general pattern at the reception. While politicians talked about meaningless topics such as their latest pay raise, the wives frantically tried to give out (and receive) real information. Their prime function was to tell as many people as possible about their husband's latest achievement...
...also recognize, however, that "perfect democracy" is a contradiction in terms. Larew's statement that the occupation of the territories undermines "Israel's claim to democratic perfection," seems meaningless. Israel has never claimed democratic perfection; nor has the United States. To do so would undermine the very foundation of democracy, by implying that equality has finite limits...