He'd had tickets to Old Trafford in the English summer, and been at the wet and futile middle days of The Oval, too, earning him the title of the unluckiest England fan of the year.
Even after Mr. Kyl said last month that there was not enough time to deal with the treaty before the end of the year, the White House kept trying to win him over, an effort that appeared increasingly futile in recent days.
Evelyn Waugh observed, "The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana cigar" and George Sand called them "the perfect complement to an elegant life".
How much will security ratchet up in peaceable communities, in a futile bid to "harden" day-to-day activities against terrorist attack?
I wasn't at the demo because it all seems so futile and hopeless these days.
It was the signal from her cellphone that finally led investigators to Ms. Rider on Thursday, after what her husband of eight years, Tom, said Friday were days of futile efforts to have her disappearance investigated as a missing person case.
Although most of us claim no desire to die with a tube down our throat and on a ventilator, the fact is, as Katy Butler reminds us in "Knocking on Heaven's Door," a fifth of American deaths now take place in intensive care, where 10 days of futile flailing can cost as much as $323,000, as it did for one California man.
The fight to separate arts and technology is a futile, restless effort these days, so much so that it makes more sense to stop complaining and simply embrace it which is exactly the conceit behind the exhibit Olimpia's Eyes.
A note of urgent anger enters his fluid, crisp recitation when he speaks of the dubious treatments marketed to the desperately ill, who then spend the last of their days in a "futile search for a cure".
