Word: offhand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have visited Earth; of those, 65% believe a UFO crash-landed near Roswell, and 80% believe the U.S. government knows more about extraterrestrials than it chooses to let on. But those numbers don't quite capture Roswell's current hot-button status. "Five years ago, if you made an offhand reference to Roswell, nobody would know what you meant. Now everybody does." So says Kevin Randle, a UFOlogist who, as co-author of the seminal UFO Crash at Roswell and its follow-up, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, is one of the Incident's heartiest champions...
...Mosley's other novels, the plot is mostly incidental, a prop for his rich characterizations and astute social observations. In Fishin', Easy emerges as an Everyman of the segregated pre-World War II rural South: semiliterate, marginally employed, the victim of numerous acts of offhand racism. He inhabits a blues-toned, all-black world of juke joints, odd jobs and broken people wrestling with the same dilemma: "If all you got is two po'k chops an' ten chirren, what you gonna do?" The answer: improvise and live with the consequences...
...movie business used to work. In 1929 Walt Disney was approached in a New York City hotel lobby by a man offering $300 for the right to put Mickey Mouse's image on writing tablets. Disney, who needed the money, accepted on the spot. And thus in an altogether offhand manner was born the first officially licensed piece of Mickey Mouse junk...
...face up to what I might have wrought. It was possible that some completely innocent sales rep, flying from New York to Chicago as part of an unsung but fundamentally noble effort to support his deserving family, was suffering agonizing hunger pangs because I had made an offhand remark in an uncharacteristic moment of revulsion...
...that I don't specifically remember saying that I'd prefer no food at all to airline grub. I'd also like to say that these days a huge American corporation such as an airline would be expected to base its decisions on extensive customer surveys rather than an offhand remark by one disgruntled passenger--particularly a disgruntled passenger who has a history of complaining about the food served on airplanes...