Word: absurdity
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...Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814), signer of the Declaration of Independence, fierce antiFederalist, ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts four times, was elected on his fifth try, subsequently reelected. He approved a bill which carved a state senatorial district in Essex County into an absurd shape, but gave the Federalists no chance of winning. At a Federalist rally, an artist (legend says it was Gilbert Stuart) drew a head, wings and claws on a map of the district, shouted: "That will do for a salamander." Cried a voice in the crowd: "Gerrymander...
What's in a Name? On the grounds that parents had no right to give their children absurd names, Judge Tobal of the Buenos Aires Criminal Court fined two parents who named theirs Zoroaster and Jupiter, let off two who named theirs Floreal and Oreste...
...after a rumored family wrangle succeeded his cousin John Ringling North-and a new attitude. Gone were the Stravinsky ballet music, the Balanchine choreography, the blue tanbark and all the rest of the modernistic decor which had raised complaints and possibly cut the profits. Once again everything was traditional, absurd and gaudy as a gypsy's jewels...
Each of the three Prozorov sisters, living in a provincial Russian town of the last century, suffers from disappointment and disillusion. Masha, wed to an absurd pedagogue, finds, only to lose, her true love, Colonel Vershinin; Olga, the eldest, is doomed to spend the dreary minutes of her existence as a high-school superintendent; and Irina, the youngest, hating her provincial life, no longer able to "remember the Italian for window or ceiling," sees her last chance for escape disappear when her fiance is killed in a duel...
...Moscow in February, 1901. The play itself is a beautifully executed bit of national portraiture as well as a discriminating study of individual frustration. Each of the three Prozorov sisters, living in a provincial Russian town of the last century, suffers from disappointment and disillusion. Masha, wed to an absurd pedagogue, finds, only to lose, her true love, Colonel Vershmin; Olga the eldest, is doomed to spend the dreary minutes of her existence as a high-school superintendent; and Irina, the youngest, hating her provincial life, no longer able to "remember the Italian for window or ceiling," sees her last...