Word: skewered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...vignettes skewer the shallowness of television programming, they also poke fun at the shallowness of television audiences. One commercial is for a best-selling novel about a prostitute who marries the president, called "First Lady of the Evening," featuring "large, easy-to-read print and no big words." Movie reviewers critique the life of one of their viewers as he watches, calling him a bore and describing his life (from which they show a clip) as uninvolving...
Together they skewer just about everyone and everything in sight, first by mocking the 1950s feminine ideal of the "pretty little thing," then by carrying the motif through the next three decades. The 50s woman parades before the audience in fashion-induced euphoria, troubled only by the urgent need to find a husband. But the 60s woman is not so superfluous: she's the "active pretty little thing," equipped with a "pretty little scarf" to keep out tear gas. The 70s bring the "independent pretty little thing," liberated to the point that she can say "fuck you" over and over...
...significance of the number 1,083? the narrator asks. After more guesses -- the number of games lost by the New Orleans Saints? the highest temperature this August? -- comes the Democratic answer: the average number of jobs Louisiana loses each week thanks to Republican policies. As candidates increasingly try to skewer their opponents, they can sometimes discover the joke is on them...
...always, however, seemingly supernatural events have rational explanations. The house is filled with conduits to other worlds. There's the closet, the medicine chest, and the swimming pool, all of which emit slimy ghoulies at the bewitching hour. These ghoulies then attempt to maul, skewer, and ventilate our poor beset upon hero...
Other changes are inconsistent. In the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, fardels is replaced, but the word bodkin remains. Why? "I expect all the ladies to know what a bodkin is," says Rowse in the general introduction to his edition. ("A long pin, or skewer," according to Rowse; "a short pointed weapon" like a dagger, according to the appropriate definition in the Oxford English Dictionary...