Watergate era left us the gem, "At this point in time.." (as opposed to this point in space? In depth? In what else, exactly?) My husband loves the expressions "pound the pavement" and "take a dim view", they're both kind of ridiculous. He frequently say, "I'm taking a hard look and a dim view of things" -- in the fridge, say, or in the mailbox. And a few years back when it seemed as though NATO's sole function was to threaten air strikes that never happened, we started using "threatened NATO air strikes" to mean "didn't like what was going on but couldn't do much about it" -- as in, his response to dinner being late twice in a row was to threaten NATO air strikes, or a kid's reaction to the end of summer vacation was to threaten NATO air strikes -- although with the grievous history of school shootings in recent years, that last one isn't as light-hearted as it should be. "If you don't get your feet off the coffee table I'm going to threaten NATO air strikes."