Word: patches
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...Japanese auto industry, which employs 10% of the country's work force and generates more than 20% of its exports, has driven into a similarly rough patch. For the fiscal year that ended in June, Toyota Motor, the country's largest car manufacturer, saw its profits fall 17%, to $1.6 billion. That marked Toyota's first decline in four years. For the six months that ended in September, Nissan Motor suffered a $122 million operating loss, its first since 1951. As a result, the company reassigned 2,500 employees to Nissan sales subsidiaries...
There seemed to be the ingredients for some old-time demagoguery in this fall's election. The economic strain was palpable, from the Texas oil patch through the heartland cornfields to the Piedmont textile mills. Toss in the problems of Rocky Mountain mining, the timber woes of the Northwest, and despair in the Rust Belt and there was plenty of material for a latter-day rawboned, loudmouthed populist. Thus invited, none came to the party. There was a good deal of personal mudslinging, but of such limited imagination and low quality as to be totally forgettable...
Clockwise, like Peter Seller's The Party, is a comedy of slow self-destruction. Mr. Simpson merely misses his train, and the inevitable chain of disasters begins, reaching a comic critical mass in a mud patch in the English countryside. On his journey into an ordinary man's heart of darkness, he incurs the wrath of wife, ex-lover, police, and hapless passersby, and attracts the affections of one of his older students. The climax at the headmasters' conference is a hilarious recreation of Simpson's schoolroom with adult students, bringing the plot into a neat full circle...
...overwhelmed by unexpectedly large losses from bad loans. Many of the shakiest institutions are in communities that rely on farming or energy production, which have been deeply depressed. About 31% of the savings associations in Iowa and 43% in Oklahoma are losing money. Just last month, a major oil-patch S and L, Western Savings Association of Dallas, was declared insolvent, and control of its $2 billion in assets was seized by the bank board. It was the third largest thrift industry failure in history...
...lonely time too. While your schoolchums are busy doing the Monster Mash at a Mather House bash, or mixing exotic witch's brews in 10-speed blenders and plasticoated cauldrons, you may find yourself all by your lonesome, with nothing to do but nurse a paltry patch of goosepimples...