“These things must be handled delicately.”

The Movie: The Wizard of Oz, 1939 (Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, screenwriters, from the book by L. Frank Baum; Victor Fleming, dir.)
Who says it: Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West
The context: The Wicked Witch contemplates how to retrieve her dead sister’s ruby slippers, now on Dorothy’s feet.
How to use it: When beginning a plan, nefarious or otherwise.

On the T in Boston yesterday, I saw a placard seeking volunteers for a medical study about obsessive-compulsive disorder. The placard asked four screening questions for OCD, starting with something like, "Do you find yourself compulsively repeating the same behaviors over and over?"

I couldn't help thinking how much funnier and more effective -- though unquestionably less sensitive, and probably unkind -- it would have been if the placard simply repeated the first question four times:
Do you find yourself compulsively repeating the same behaviors over and over?
Do you find yourself compulsively repeating the same behaviors over and over?
Do you find yourself compulsively repeating the same behaviors over and over?
Do you find yourself...

Well, you get the idea. This is why no one asks me to help with campaigns like this.

Today I'm in Newport to visit my twin sister, Kathy, and her boys. They're about to move to Mississippi to join my brother-in-law, who's stationed on a ship out of Pascagoula. The chances of my getting to Pascagoula before that base closes (if that base closes) are slim, and in any case, it would be an awfully long drive.