Although he assured himself a second straight Ballon d'Or with three goals in the semi-final and final of last year's Champions League, all of them were mere pile-ons.
And these mounds are not mere piles of earth.
Their oversized nests are mere piles of rotting seaweed, but seem luxurious compared with those of the kittiwakes and razorbills on the precipitous rockface above – mere toeholds in the cliff, streaked with guano.
A minute's walk from the wreckage of the grocery store, television news trucks shine their spotlights and point their cameras at houses on southwest Sixth Street that are now mere piles of wood.
This impression is reinforced by the lengthy set pieces -- like the descriptions of the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d'Orsay and St. Peter's Square -- that at their least controlled degenerate into a mere piling of detail upon detail.
Luhrmann and his script collaborator, Craig Pearce, must have thought that the mere piling up of sources would produce a thick-textured referential masterpiece, as if one could forge a jewelled dagger out of a bunch of plastic reproductions.
"Is it unreasonable to ask for organization and simplicity of purpose to all that concrete and glass?" he asked of airports, calling for smarter "big picture" planning focused on a "fully integrated model" incorporating the "entire surrounding transportation infrastructure," rather than the mere "piling on" of more runways.
Since then, she's made the most of her time living among us mere mortals by piling up nine No. 1 hits on the Billboard Dance Chart, playing shows around the world and instructing her fans on the finer points of approaching life with unapologetic self-love ― not to mention how to properly "pat the puss".
Thus, the Redskins mortgaged their future to draft either Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III, who haven't played a snap of NFL football; the Seahawks gave Matt Flynn, who's started a mere two games, a pile of money; and the Broncos gave Peyton Manning, a 36-year-old who just had his third neck surgery and hasn't played in a year, an even bigger pile of money.
It's a living puzzle," he exclaimed, mere feet from a literal pile of half-done jigsaw puzzles.
You can also chop a pile of almonds in mere seconds without having to wash three parts plus a blade.
