Word: thingness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...those New York Times commercials? It could be the movie they're in, a bloated, criminally judgmental borderline-comedy about Burt and Verona and the friends they are loftily superior to. Virtually every supporting character in Away We Go is either a repellent caricature deserving contempt or a crippled thing cadging for our sympathy. To director Sam Mendes, they're nothing but point-provers, put on display to show the deviant behavior our two winsome leads, or any sentient member of the audience, would instantly reject. (Watch TIME's Video: 10 Questions for John Krasinski...
...most perplexing thing about this low-key but abrasive concoction is that it was scripted by two estimable writers: Dave Eggers, nonfiction author (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), novelist (You Shall Know Our Velocity), magazine editor (McSweeney's) and a Time 100 laureate; and Vendela Vida, nonfiction author (Girls on the Verge), novelist (And Now You Can Go) and magazine editor (The Believer). Their published work usually softens and complicates any sweeping judgment about people by honoring their eccentricities. Why, then, are they so dismissive of Lily and Lowell, L N and Rod, and so adoring of Burt...
What's the appeal of being a deejay? For one, the occupation can stroke your ego. "To see everyone having a good time, to get a reaction from them, that's the thing I like," says Sean Williams, 29, who lost his postal service job in July and now deejays in the Bay Area (stage name: DJ Padd). "You can control everyone.' You can also pick up the basics in a month or two, and schools aren't ridiculously expensive: Rankin, for example, charges $600 for a month-long class in Chicago. A five-month intensive course at New York...
...Whether or not the downward trend continues, though, is far from a sure thing. With scattered signs of economic rebound, consumers might soon feel confident enough to start spending more on everything from summer fashions to new cars and doing it with borrowed money. On June 4, an executive with MasterCard suggested that people were already starting to inch in that direction. Speaking at an investor conference, he said that thus-far unreleased results of the company's monthly spending survey indicate that while people were still spending less, the rate of decline has slowed. MasterCard runs the systems that...
...Many others were disappointed with Moussavi's performance. "He looked like he was in a total state of shock, like he didn't expect Ahmadinejad to hit so hard," said Ata Hosseinian, 25. "He could barely talk properly, he kept saying chiz" (a Persian equivalent of thing, which is used in the way "you know" is used in colloquial English...