She is hapless about household management, but always smiling — when she isn't sobbing.
So I found a terrific audio metaphor for all that was hapless about David I. Weprin's losing Democratic campaign, and for the somnolent state of politics in this city.
"I love the novel because there's something so deliciously hapless about William Boot [the nature writer who is confused with novelist John Boot and sent to Ishmaelia to cover a civil war]," she says.
When one minor character sniffs about poor, hapless Amelia Sedley, "We're all so fond of her" — and the narrator interjects, "Who can calculate the depth of affection expressed in that enthusiastic so?" — we might as well be watching "Mean Girls" (or a mean episode of "Girls").
While Mr. Dundas pushes the hapless Mr. Collins about with his voice, both are at the mercy of an unknown master with a remote control, who freezes, reverses and fast-forwards their motions, mutes them or dissolves them in hip-hop scratchings that hurl them into another track.
At the Roxy he sang about loneliness and defiance, about hapless outlaws and a somber convict on the way to execution, about the burdens of the past and about lovers who believe, "Love would hold no charm if it wasn't for the pain".
Dennis Dugan's "Saving Silverman" is about two hapless losers, Wayne Stevee Zahn and J. D. Jack Blackck), who conspire to prevent their best buddy, the title character, from marrying the wrong woman.
One of the most wrenching essays is about hapless non-combatants.
He enjoyed a steak with a nice Bordeaux, his hapless Mets, reading about obscure topics, and, most of all, his friends and family.
The bloody ribbons of the squirrel's entrails hang off the branch as the hawk eats the entire remains of the hapless rodent in about five minutes.
Or is Anatoly Kinakh really talking about hapless, impoverished Ukraine, plagued by cronyism, incompetence and authoritarianism, notorious for political murders, murky scandals and corruption?
