Word: squirm
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...climax of a comic novel, the scene seems a touch strenuous. Here are 13 young women, some of them naked and lubricated with soap, desperately trying to squirm to salvation through a tiny bathroom window in a burning London house. Happily, no one excels Scots-born Novelist Muriel Spark at the satiric art of making the outrageous seem natural-and the natural outrageous. In The Girls of Slender Means she not only gets away with trial by hip-size in the bathroom but thriftily makes it a moment of religious crisis. After witnessing the scene, a male character joins...
Once upon a movie screen, semiliterate blondes could make U.S. men oooo, whistle, and squirm. Childlike smiles and bulging blouses suggested an irresistible, infantile heaven. But those were only growth pains. Now that the country has matured into world leadership, American men go to the movies to see not girls but women. This has even become the epoch of the opulent jade, all the Melina Mercouris and Jeanne Moreaus, whose frank stares suggest a fully ripened hell and provoke an uncontrollable urge to total ruin...
Scanning the latest electrocardiogram readings on the heart of the U.S. economy, Commerce Department Economist Irving Rottenberg quipped: "The optimists are beginning to firm, and the pessimists are beginning to squirm." Items...
...clawing desperation. Martha is drunk, vituperative-she brays "Screw you" at George at the precise moment that the door opens on her guest couple, invited in at 2 a.m. for a nightcap after a faculty party. By rights, Nick, the young biology professor, and his wife Honey ought to squirm and leave, but Honey is a remarkably opaque ninny who promptly proceeds to get throwing-up drunk on brandy, and Nick proves to be made of sneakily ambitious stuff that will not permit him to turn his back on a hostess who happens also to be the daughter...
...would have been worse. As for the hazard of being trapped by a belt in a burning or submerged car, the National Safety Council says: "The belt greatly improves your chances of survival. It helps to keep you conscious, so you can get clear of the car." Free to Squirm. Doctors, who are among the first to see the gory results of road accidents, have been leaders in the drive for belt safety. Says the A.M.A.'s past president, Leonard W. Larson: "About one of every five physicians has seat belts in his car. Besides being a safety measure...