And so on, and so on, until, one day, you glance up from your device, depleted and desperate, wishing only to quiet, contain, or excise the whole debacle like a cancer.
But many Western diplomats say they doubt their governments would have either the stamina for or the interest in a continued large-scale operation in Bosnia if they are handed a serious debacle like a political comeback by hard-line Serbs.
A debacle like Porter Ranch should be an automatic windfall for those who've put their butts on the line to create environmental assets and a bane to those who've created environmental liabilities.
American bribery, he said, ranges from huge debacles, like when a tile manufacturer bought a $300,000 house for a Home Depot buyer a few years ago to more common occurrences like a buyer saying, "Hey, I'll let you put television sets into all my stores to promote your product but give me five extra in case they break".
Swift emerged from that debacle seeming like a two-faced operator, willing to play the victim and the naïf for her own reputational gain.
Their deep-dish debacle sounds like a series of honest mistakes, right up to the moment they refused to return what was left of the pies, or pay anything for what they had eaten.
Burnham told friends that the welfare bill debacle was like "a slow-motion car crash" and privately put the blame at the door of Harriet Harman who, he believed, had been responsible for the decision to abstain on the bill, with Yvette Cooper.
The ongoing NSA debacle is like a Breugel painting, with more and more detail emerging every time you look at it anew.
Meanwhile, many Democrats and progressives smirk, complacent in their belief that Trump would suffer a presidential election loss so huge it would make Goldwater's 1964 debacle look like a triumph.
"Ruinous", "disastrous", "a total write-off", "a debacle like the old days," "the year's worst".
David Wagner, a UC Berkeley professor of computer science who served as an unpaid technical advisor to the county, said a staged rollout is wise to avoid a debacle like the rollout of Healthcare.gov.gov
