To most of Iran's Facebook generation, the 30-year-old rhetoric about America seems about as desiccated as the dreary talk-shows between bearded men that seem to dominate state television.
Ali's presentation included some of the Nation of Islam's dreary race-separation talking points (without anti-Semitic slurs), but when he turned to war, peace, and the law, his arguments -- amplified by the irresistible force of his personality -- electrified the crowd, me included.
The television is tuned to dreary game, cooking and talk shows, and you are uncomfortably aware of the sounds of appliances and of sliding doors and curtains.
We met with Tiga at Sonos Studios in east London on a dull and dreary Monday morning, to talk about where albums are heading as an artform, and Hull City's utility midfielder Robert Snodgrass.
If this limbo seems dreary, imagine spending the next decade talking about Dow 10,000.
So at 4 p.m., Manager Davey Johnson talked about the dreary weather forecast and the cautious pitching forecast.
He walked around Hull during the day and went on at this club that night and just talked about the dreary weather, about work, the wife and the mother-in-law... and the crowd clapped.
Churchill talked about the "dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone", an image and a locality given new force by the uncomfortable fact - relegated here to a closing-credits footnote - that Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone while on hunger strike.
This is, after all, the Brit Awards we're talking about, a reliably dreary bit of early evening ITV light entertainment, naff enough to have employed a spokesman who speaks like a presenter from the Six-Five Special.
His speeches tended to be long, rambling, dreary and often incoherent, including his final talk on April 21 , 1975 announcing his decision to resign.
