Blow hoots with laughter all the time, I discover, even when she is feeling dismal and talking about depression and her recent nervous collapse, the pressures of fashion and her broken heart, which she also does a lot.
Alan Pardew is confident he will be granted time to turn around Crystal Palace's dismal form after talks with the club's major shareholders in New York over the international break.
Whenever dismal percentages are talked about in any context, the fallback is always: "You know, in baseball, if a batter is batting.300, he's doing pretty good".
It's no wonder Obama could talk about dismal main drags and shuttered factories in his State of the Union speech but couldn't bear to mention the boarded up homes and "Bank Owned" signs that line the streets of many American neighborhoods.
Europe 1 radio reported that the prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, had wanted to resign on Sunday night in response to his party's dismal showing but was talked out of going by aides.
Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas has reacted angrily to suggestions that influential forward Didier Drogba gave a half-time team talk in their dismal home FA Cup draw against Birmingham.
Given this dismal track record, a breakthrough in the new negotiations now under way will require a bold move to prevent the talks from again ending in stalemate.
The CNN-IBN website, in another piece, talks about the dismal performance of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP or Common Man's Party), which was making its debut in this election.
They're trying to distance themselves from their dismal leadership, clinging only to talking show hosts and those with a moral code low enough to pander to their deluded notions that somehow, this isn't their fault.
Rimington hasn't yet seen the new film of Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but to hear her talk, the film's dismal mise-en-scene nails it perfectly.
