Word: numb
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R.E.M. has reached that zenith of supergroup super-ness that allows a band to create a completely new sound for each album, satisfying its by now numb zombie-fans and hooking in new ones. New Adventures in HiFi, R.E.M.'s latest, is millennia away from the hipness of Monster, substituting rock'n'roll swagger for the earlier album's cyber cool. The departure is so extreme, and the change in genre so overt, that one can't help sensing some irony in this flavor-of-the-week from everyone's favorite emperors of alternative ice cream...
Themes of fantasy and insincerity are evident on other tracks as well. A frustrated, angry defensiveness underscores these songs, which, like "E-bow," are among the more successful on the album. "So Fast, So Numb" projects a convincing exasperation with a deluded second person, imploring "This is now! This is here! This is me!" "Electrolite" snidely comments on the slippery and ultimately minimal value of fame: "I'm Steve McQueen/I'm Jimmy Dean/You are the star tonight." That this refusnik sensibility might be the expression of the band's own attitude is teasingly suggested by the song's final line...
...medical catastrophes that can befall a person, suffering a stroke is one of the most terrifying. Suddenly, your arm goes numb. You can't speak. Half your body becomes useless. Until recently, doctors could do little more than watch as their stroke patients either recovered on their own or became permanently paralyzed. Then researchers determined that a drug called tissue plasminogen activator, or TPA, which has been used for years to treat heart attacks, can also alter the course of a stroke. But many physicians wouldn't try the new treatment because there is also a chance that...
...same anesthetic dentists use to numb gums may also alleviate MIGRAINE pain. More than half of migraine sufferers who are given lidocaine in the form of nose drops experience headache relief, although for some the pounder returns within an hour...
...Pedro High particularly hard. Cyndy Lum, a psychiatric social worker who was part of the crisis-intervention team, describes the scene the first few days after the suicides hit the 6 o'clock news as "a large-scale psychiatric disaster." Students clustered in hallways weeping; classes sat numb and silent; teachers broke down at an after-school meeting. Says math teacher Crosby: "It was the roughest teaching day I've ever had." Because teenagers--impulsive and susceptible to fashion in all things--are considered particularly vulnerable to copycat behavior when it comes to suicide, counselors made a point of talking...