Word: thickness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Farmington, New Hampshire they race cars on ice, every Sunday afternoon while the ice is thick enough. The beat-up station wagons and rusting Impalas, tire-chains cutting the ice, drift around the corners, tailing ice chips and snow. The high-pitched whine of asphalt racing is replaced by a muffled roar, the stands replaced by footstamping, flask-sipping locals retreating from the snowbanks to their cars for a little heat. The "stock" division--the cars nearest the junkyard--lines up for the start of the 15-lap feature. Jim in car #2 guarantees loudly that he will drive...
...descript double-knit vest and mute-grey suit, his shirt bulging conspicuously at the waistline, Filartiga looks more like the semi-retired family g.p., benevolent but dilapidated. Nearsighted bug eyes peered out of thick spectacles. His roly-poly, bumbling figure gives him the image of a jolly plump man, not one laden by the responsibilities of nursing 37,000 mestizos who depend on him alone for health care...
...often returns to this metaphor of his nation as dumping grounds for the world, observing that Nazi criminals flocked to Paraguay for refuge following World War II. Somoza likewise retreated to Paraguay temporarily last summer. "My country is the trash heap of the world," Filartiga states calmly, but his thick lenses magnify the pain in his eyes...
Over the next two hours, captives and captors exchanged pleasantries in French, and the newsmen learned that the Soviets are quite delighted to be in Afghanistan. A middle-aged private showed off his thick, standard-issue felt boots. "They are for Siberia," he said proudly. A lieutenant ventured that Soviet soldiers prefer liquid warmth, and are glad to receive "100 grams of spirits a day." Throughout, the smiling Soviets never lowered the Kalashnikovs...
...thick with devalued buzz words, including "buzz words." Behavioral science, always a leader in the euphemism derby, has cut some gems and polished some others: psychologists persistently refer to unresponsive women as "preorgasmic," and Masters and Johnson call foreplay a "stimulative approach opportunity," perhaps the most effective sexual turn-off since saltpeter. Therapists speak of "actualizing," to mean the fulfillment of potential. "I hear you" has descended from the aural to the banal; it means a total understanding of the speaker's temperament. "Lifing" is the effort to derive the utmost from every day; "Who are you screaming with...