Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda--to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

　　What we forget--what our economy depends on is forgetting--is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It’s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.

　　37. The word “bummer” (Line 5. paragraph 5) most probably means something

　　[A] religious

　　[B] unpleasant

　　[C] entertaining

　　[D] commercial

　　[答案] B

　　[解题思路]

　　本题要求猜测bummer这个词的意思，可以回到原文从上下文寻找线索。文章第五段第二句话提到了“the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms”(最有效的大众媒体是教堂，它提醒信徒们，他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们总有一天会成为蛆虫的食物)。在这一前提下，显而易见我们可以推出下一句话的意思应该是“因此，他们并不需要艺术再来表现这种失落感”，因此答案为B。

　　[题目译文]

　　“bummer”(第五段第五行)这个词最可能的意思是 。

　　[A] 宗教的

　　[B] 不愉快的

　　[C] 娱乐的

　　[D] 商业的

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