But from any vantage point, certain dire features of the proceedings are clear.
"Crawl," another song with dire undertones, features Mr. Followhill's lament for "the crucified U.S.A.," followed by a prediction: "As the hypocrisy unfolds/Ah, hell is surely on its way".
The book, about a traveling evangelist who fetches up in the fictional town of Enigma, Ga., and meets a dire fate, features characters of the sort that would people Mr. Crews's dozen later novels: sideshow freaks and an escaped lunatic.
This year we brought back Tyrannosaurus rex, but also had a new design featuring a dire wolf skull.
The first of his six features, the dire rap comedy, Who's The Man? (1993), worked as a Hollywood calling card, and Demme moved on to the bigger budget yuppie comedy The Ref (1994), starring Leary, Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey.
It sounds like a fair strategy – but how dire is its new ad featuring Welsh singer Duffy?
I reached saturation point with Barnyard, a dire farm-based effort which featured a bull with udders, when I made my eldest cry by complaining to the Odeon's blameless manager.
(See this year's hurricane season, which has featured virtually no storms after dire forecasts in the spring).
The rest of the top 10 featured Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, Hotel California by the Eagles and Child In Time by Deep Purple.
The French answer to Al Gore, environmental activist Nicolas Hulot, released his own feature-length film about the dire state of the planet today.
