Word: optional
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Movie soundtracks inevitably suffer from the limitations of the genre. One option is to pack your album full of tried and true, catchy tunes that have little to do with the film in question. On the other extreme, a filmmaker could commission a more tailored fit, usually VIA original instrumental compositions. The results in either case can vary from the extraordinary (the apropos songs of Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction, or the haunting instrumentals of Twin Peaks) to the banal (most others...
...Wang announces that she is ready to get going. We pack up in about three minutes and are on our way to the airport. She has apparently had a number of travel mishaps during her short time as a business analyst, one of which left her no option but the very undergraduate Greyhound bus. As she steps out of the cab, there is no doubt that the bus is fresh in her mind...
...Madeira from Thomas Jefferson's collection at the Rio Suites Hotel and Casino wine party for $2,050 or lease the half-size Eiffel Tower at the Paris for a party of 40 to 50--including chef, butler and host's suite--for a mere $200,000. The stock-option challenged can find Strip accommodations for a (relatively) less exorbitant $400 a night, and those are selling more briskly. But hotel rooms, which the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority predicted would sell out by fall, are still going begging, and major resorts are slashing their inflated rates by hundreds...
Next I tried Callwave, a "free" service that--big surprise--isn't. Like all the other software-only services, it requires you to sign up for a little-known option provided by most local phone companies called call forward on busy. This means that if your phone is busy, an incoming call is automatically forwarded to another number--for $1 to $3 a month, plus a one-time activation fee. (In Manhattan it's $16 plus $1.60 a month--hardly free.) With Callwave, callers are forwarded to an 800 number that plays a canned greeting telling people you're online...
Industry representatives support uniform regulation but hope officials don't go too far in their zeal to crack down. "It's a critical option that every terminally ill person should have," says Valerie Cooper, executive director of the NVA, who claims scam artists don't represent the bulk of law-abiding viatical providers, like Page & Associates and the Ardan Group. Gloria Wolk, chief consumer advocate for viaticals www.viatical-expert.net) is worried that money for legitimate viatical settlements could disappear: "Fraud can destroy this industry and leave patients high...