Word: buttoning
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...Yeah, I've walked around Paris with the pants on. I get some strange looks. Yesterday I was going to my publisher's office with them on and got into the elevator. There was just me and this woman in the elevator. She walked in and pressed the button for her floor, you know, and then the door closed. Then she took a look at my pants. And then she took another sly look. Man, as soon as she caught sight of those pants she pressed the button and got off at the very next floor...
...younger days, Gerardo Catena was convicted of eight felonies, ranging from hijacking to bribing a federal juror, but those inconveniences did not slow his steady rise through the Mafia hierarchy. By the late 1960s he was boss of 600 button men in northern New Jersey and heavily involved in gambling and loan-sharking. Thus it was only logical for the state commission of investigation to summon him in 1970 for questioning about organized-crime activities. Granted immunity from prosecution for his answers, Catena still refused to talk, so a superior court sent him to jail. Under civil contempt procedures common...
...rating had dropped to 45% in the Gallup poll and to 38% in the Harris, so he was intent on explaining his policies wherever he went: touring an oil-shale plant with a hard-hat on his head or mingling with crowds at the Iowa State Fair with a button saying HOGS ARE BEAUTIFUL in his lapel...
...officialese takes on a mindless life of its own, the words combining and recombining according to some notion in the bureaucratic inner ear of how public language ought to sound, regardless (or irregardless, as they say) of what it means. This is an aerosol English, released by pushing a button. Writer Jimmy Breslin describes what is perhaps the ultimate in this prose: a policeman, testifying in a homicide case, refers to "the alleged victim...
...remote-control field manager of the Oakland A's. was on a typical tear. "Get this crate rolling," he ordered. Chauffeur Howard Risner nosed the sleek black Cadillac into the moving traffic and headed toward Chicago's O'Hare Airport. "Shoot the works," said Finley. Risner hit a button, and downtown Chicago echoed to the Caddie's musical horn. "Now the siren," demanded Finley. A muted wail sent other cars skittering for the curb. Finley switched on a loudspeaker hidden beneath the hood and began broadcasting a stream of chatter to startled pedestrians. "Hey, Howard!" he exulted...