Word: odd
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Both these types, the one overactive and the other overpassive, are fashioning some odd new malformations of American character. The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms. In Freudian terms, the busybodies might be the superego of the American personality, the overbearing wardens. The crybabies are the messy id, all blubbering need and a virtually infantile irresponsibility. Hard pressed in between is the ego that is supposed to be healthy, tolerant and intelligent. It all adds up to what the Economist...
...extra month between June and July. Make every Thursday 19 hours long. Move television's prime time forward 60 minutes. Three equally odd ideas -- yet one is about to become reality for viewers of KCRA-TV, the Sacramento affiliate of NBC. For decades West and East Coast TV outlets have aired network prime-time programs from 8 to 11 p.m. -- but with the blessing of the Great Peacock, KCRA is planning an 8 1/2-month trial schedule that would run NBC offerings from 7 to 10, a common practice in the Central and Mountain time zones. Should the experiment succeed...
...novel, Somebody in Boots, that first gave Sayles the idea of becoming a professional writer. "Algren wrote from neck-deep in the trash of American culture, the only place I was ever likely to be," he says. After graduating from Williams College, Sayles supported himself with a series of odd jobs, ranging from nursing-home attendant to meat-packer in a sausage factory, while writing story after story. A sharp-eyed editor at the Atlantic Monthly suggested that one of Sayles' submissions -- already 50 pages long -- be expanded into a novel. It eventually became Pride of the Bimbos...
...months residents sensed that all was not right at the Oxford Apartments, a 49-unit low-rise building on Milwaukee's crime-infested west side. A power saw buzzed at odd hours. The putrid odor of rotting meat flooded the corridors. Occasionally, a tenant would hear a cry or the thump of a falling object on the second floor...
Today George Bush worries less about whether the U.S.S.R. will start World War III than whether it will slide into a civil war. Even the word superpower now has an odd ring when applied to the demoralized, disintegrating state that Mikhail Gorbachev leads. Bush is the first American President to spend most of his term more concerned about the Soviet Union's weaknesses than its strengths...