Word: pile
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...pondering flush toilets, pay phones and a pace of life that seems breathtaking. "We must learn everything," says Kasfi Sheto, 28, who reacts to the sensory overload with a fixed smile. For now he seems content with the multicolored and ill-fitting outfit he plucked from a huge pile of donated clothing. "All we want is to be Israeli...
...there's anyone who should know how to guard against leaks, it's John Martin, chief of internal security at the Justice Department. Yet Martin went home from the office one night in April, leaving a thick pile of supersensitive documents on the Iran-contra affair sitting on his desk. A routine security sweep that night revealed his carelessness and earned Martin an immediate suspension. Justice insiders say Martin may receive further punishment for the accidental security breach but will probably be able to return...
...insist and insist again, by Vague Generalities. We abhor V.G.'s, we skim right past them, we start wondering what kind of C to give from the first V.G. we encounter; and as they pile up, we decide C: (Harvard being Harvard, one does not give D's. Consider C- a failure). Why? Not because they are a sign the student does not know the material, or hasn--t thought creatively, or any of that folly. They simply make tedious reading. "Locke is atransitional figure." "The whole thing boils down to human rights." Now I ask you, I have...
ARTFUL equivocations are even worse; lynx-eyed sly little rascals that we are, we see right through them. (Up to exam 40. Then you lynx eyes droop, and grading habits relax. Try to get on the bottom of the pile.) Again, it is not that A.E.'s are vicious or ludicrous as such; but in quantity they become sheer madness. Or induce it. "The 20th century has never recovered from the effects of Marx and Freud" (V.G.); "but whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is difficult to say." (A.E.) Now one such might be droll enough...
...orphan scripts and one Hollywood credit: Stacy's Knights (1981), starring an unknown Kevin Costner. One day Blake pitched the star this idea: cavalryman goes to new fort, finds no one there. Wouldn't that make a good screenplay? "Don't write a screenplay," Costner said, pointing to a pile of scripts on his living-room floor. "It'll just end up in that stack. Write a book instead." A book called Dances with Wolves...