Word: portentousness
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...George Harrison, who really did know he was dying when he wrote his last album, Brainwashed (Capitol), it's unavoidable. During his lifetime, Harrison tested the limits of human patience with his fetish for Zen homilies, and in his final act as a songwriter he has left mystical portent in every rhyme. On Any Road, Harrison rasps, "I keep traveling around the bend/There was no beginning, there is no end." On Stuck Inside a Cloud he takes the mike with him to the great beyond: "Talking to myself/Crying out loud/Only I can hear me/I'm stuck inside a cloud...
...unemployment remains stalled at 6%, close to its eight-year high. The economy is growing, but the stock market isn't. The bubble in tech stocks has popped, but some are worried another is swelling in the housing market. It's been that kind of economy, where each hopeful portent comes wrapped in anxiety...
...chilly evening in this land of yellow earth and the matrimonial bed for Liu Dehai and Hai Hongmei is laid with a quilt embroidered with the characters for "double happiness." The words are also pasted on the wall, a bright-red portent of good fortune for just-married Chinese. Next to the bed sits a new pleather sofa, plastic wrap still hanging from its arms. This should be a place of contentment and hope, but Liu's mother doesn't want anyone observing too closely. "Please," she says, hands frantically kneading the quilt, "do not speak of this room." Indeed...
Cole’s finish should not have shocked spectators, though, because in the morning heat, he had beaten Keller and came within three-hundreths of a second of beating Vendt. Despite the portent of things to come, no one was prepared for Cole’s most impressive showing...
...Neither side makes any secret of the fact that they'd rather not be dealing with the leaders on the other side - and that's a grim portent for the prospects of the Mitchell proposals, whose starting premise is that "each party again be willing to regard the other as a partner." Instead, Sharon and Arafat have spent the past three months engaged in efforts to remove the other from his seat of power...