Word: surrealism
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...arrived at the Cap Sierra hotel to find an almost surreal scene at the bar. At one end, you had the mercenaries, some of them legendary figure from Africa's wars, back from a day of making war and downing beers and singing "Goodnight, Irene." At the other end were the government people, not sure if they'd live till morning. And in between, a tiny band of journalists. Outside, the city was on fire, and the few people that managed to straggle through the Nigerian lines that stood between us and the rebels bore horrific tales of torture...
...almost surreal dimension of the standoff, while rebels and government troops square off almost within spitting distance of one another, TV crews and photographers have had access to the hostages, showing images of the 10 captives from Europe, Lebanon, South Africa and Malaysia pleading for the Philippines army to back off and negotiate a solution. That might be difficult, however, since the Abu Sayyaf group holding the hostages hasn't made a clear set of demands, prompting the government's appointed mediator to threaten to withdraw...
Slowly comes the surreal sight of a green plastic toothbrush emerging from the bird's gullet. With her neck arched, the mother cannot fully pass the straight brush. She tries several times to disgorge it, but can't. Nancy and I can hardly bear this. The albatross reswallows and, with the brush stuck inside, wanders away...
...years - a quarter of a century - since April 1975, and the surreal days (long after the Americans had cravenly "Vietnamized" the struggle and said good-bye) when Hanoi's regular army came down from the North like a guillotine. I am trying to find the right image: The fall of South Vietnam at the end of April 1975, was like the demolition of Pruitt-Igo three years earlier, when that vast imbecility of social engineering (a huge high-rise housing project for the poor in St. Louis) was at last rigged up with dynamite and reduced to rubble, the ritual...
...Back across on the waters on his Island, the Satan-Prospero of long ago whipped up his own surreal theater of hysteria. In my dream I saw video closeups of the Dictator's famous beard, and I thought in the dream: "Ah, you know, the CIA tried years ago to make that beard fall out with depilatories, in order to make the Dictator look ridiculous and discredit him. And, by God, it looks now as if the depilatories are finally working! Forty years later! Get a load of that air-conditioned beard...