A porron is a sort of glass bottle with a pointed spout from which a thin jet of wine spurts out whenever you tip it up; you can thus drink from a distance, without touching it with your lips, and it can be passed from hand to hand. I went on strike and demanded a drinking-cup as soon as I saw a porron in use.

Because of his disappearance over the final two months last season, Reyes has been the target of Shea boobirds, which, as Wright remarked, is almost a “rite of passage.”

Other indicators can be used to measure the performance of an NPP [nuclear power plant] including the number of scrams (emergency shutdowns of a nuclear reactor), the collective dose (a measure of the total amount of effective dose multiplied by the size of the exposed population), the amount of low-level waste generated, and the fuel reliability. The number of scrams dropped from the peak of 30 in 1984 to only one in 2004 and 2–3 in the last two years.

Ever since I was astrologized, bad luck has followed me like my shadow,