The Orin–Hal phone call — "As for me, I’ve swotted and…"
As for me, I’ve swotted and wakked all morning, cranking up your Uncle Charles’s videophone and trying to cajole the editors of various supermarket trade publications to run M.G.M.’s latest plea for amending Less to Fewer in those !#!# Express Check-Out lanes. One old editorial codger said that he’d dearly love to help me out but that his newsletter was devoted exclusively to issues of promotional display. When I suggested that a little comic relief in the form of the L——>F bulletin might not be amiss, he chortled. Chortling is good. We like chortling. However, I did manage to twist the arms (harder to do telephonically than one might think) of Produce Weekly, Star Market’s Quarterly Register, and PriceChopper’s Shelf and Cart, so the wheels of adjectival justice continue, albeit creakily, to turn.
Context
The Less→Fewer crusade in Avril's own voice, from her chirpy "Dear Filbert" letter to the son who won't answer her: a full morning on the videophone lobbying supermarket trade publications over Express-Checkout signage, scored to "the wheels of adjectival justice." This is the M.G.M. as daily practice — and the "Chortling is good. We like chortling" formula becomes a family idiom Orin later speaks without noticing (see Texture, p. 1015).