Word: strainingly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...play begins with Marler ambling on stage and announcing casually that he is going to talk about his recent life. His preoccupation has been his impending oral exam in English, which would test all of his knowledge about literature. The strain of this make-or-break test induced constant nausea and what he calls "social phobia," a fear of performing in social situations. Things were only made worse by roommate Oswald, an anti-social computer programmer with a bad habit of urinating in a glass jar in various parts of the apartment. Oswald is both comic relief and a warning...
...huge Midwestern agricultural college of 37,000 students, where professors are funded by "Mid-America Pork By-Products," conduct research on plant pathology and soils science and read papers on "The Use of Strain-Specific Monoclonal Antibodies to Model the Field Spread of Soybean Mosaic Virus...
...Blues is a series of episodes in the lives of photographer Jarred (Jay Heath) and his vapid girlfriend Flee (Angelina Zappia), who have travelled to a remote rat-trap hotel in the desert so that Jarred can complete a project. It quickly becomes clear, however, that their relationship is strained and distrustful; the ugly monotony of their surroundings matches the emptiness of their bizarre conversations The strain is increased by Jarred's evident contempt for Flee's favorite activities, reading fashion magazines and eating junk food...
...creating the atmosphere of alienation and strain, Matteau initially relies on a kind of Beckett-like taciturnity that is only occasionally successful. The way the characters repeat and echo one another's short, cryptic statements--"I'm tapped out," "I can't"--is intended to be disturbing but the rhythm of these sections is off, often falling into a singsong that destroys the intended effect. The style is further undermined by the fact that Flee's valley-girl drawl, while effective for the character, is to mindless and unsympathetic to carry the evocative overtones that this kind of dialogue obviously...
Adding to the strain of the housing lottery, agroup of upperclassmen decided to have some funwith the stressed-out first-years awaiting theirresults...