Word: offs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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I was caught completely off guard. "I'm in a hurry," I stated calmly, glancing at my bike to emphasize the point. "I was being completely safe. You just can't tell because you're stupid."
Certainly, there is a case to be made for this. Honorifics are basically dead. The idea of agonizing over "Ms." seems quaint because the idea of calling anybody "Mister" or "Missus" or indeed anything other than "Hey, you" has faded away. Go into Abercrombie & Fitch, and the teenage sales clerks...
Of course, the other sort of forced familiarity occurs at The Wrap, where the cashiers take your first name during the order, as if to imply a more "personal" connection to the customer, while staring down at the register during the entire transaction. I have encountered another type of rudeness...
Maybe today's rudeness is an off-shoot of the culture of protest and action that is a characteristic of the Harvard Square scene. What worked so well for the Vietnam War or civil rights is now applied to everyone's own peccadilloes and fixations. The female pedestrian obviously felt...
Machinal's flirtation with experimental theater achieves its completion in the last scene. The costuming is radical; both Parris and Agresta, executioners, are dressed in metallic-punk-dominatrix suits, and Gunn, the priest, wears a silver robe. The sense that all dialogue is a voice-over creates the impression that...