Bright red shirt. Big belly. Thick black suspenders. Open Hawaiian shirt. Hands me a two-faced nickel and explains how a friend of his makes them. Then asks:

"Do you think you'll use it as a conversation piece?"

Image: coincommunity.com

Today, news sources across North America are watching as Hurricane Sandy bears down on the eastern seaboard.

Mexico, which has been spared the brunt of the storm, "se solidariza con afectados por hurácan Sandy."

And according to Canada's Globe and Mail, our neighbors to the north are gearing up for "a bit of a mess."

Image: Jay Karr, startribune.com

If brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's a selection of our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.

A weekly series that explores a featured theme by pairing classic quotations with urgent images. What recent news items inspired these textual/visual sets? Leave your guesses in the comments, and check back next Wednesday for the answers.

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along."

—Annie Dillard

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

—Mark Twain

"Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser's passion, not the thief's."

—William Blake

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

“We speak of the masculine and the feminine, but they are the wrong labels.”

—Anais Nin

See the connections? Write your guesses in the comments — and feel free to leave your own "pants" quotes — and check in next Wednesday to find the headlines that inspired these pairings.

Images: Newser, Emotistyle, Perez Hilton, Slate, Hollywood Reporter

Answers to last week's installment:

• "Alessandra Ambrosio reveals Victoria’s Secret $2.5M Fantasy Bra Gift set" (New York Daily News)
• "The Next Chapter of Trapped in the Closet Is Here Early" (Vulture)
• "Michelle Obama and Ann Romney’s Matching Pink Debate Outfits: An Analysis [Update]" (New York)
• "Internet goes wild over 'Binders full of women'" (CNN/politicalticker)
• "Ralph Nader: President Obama’s a ‘war criminal’" (Politico)

Disusage presents the contradictions and foibles of usage manuals, style guides, and the quirky folks who love them. This week: making use of “usage.”

usage, use, user. Those who write usage or user when they mean no more than use must be presumed to do so for one of two bad reasons: that they prefer either the longer word to the shorter (see LONG VARIANTS) or the unusual one to the common (see WORKING AND STYLISH WORDS). Usage implies a manner of using (e.g. harsh usage), especially of habitual or customary practice creating a right or standard (modern English usage). An example of its misuse is There is a serious shortage of X-ray films due to increasing usage in all countries. User is a legal word for use (exercise of a right) and should be left to the lawyers.
—Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd edition, 1965

Definition of USAGE

1 a : firmly established and generally accepted practice or procedure

   b : a uniform certain reasonable lawful practice existing in a particular locality or occupation and binding persons entering into transactions chiefly on the basis of presumed familiarity

   c : the way in which words and phrases are actually used (as in a particular form or sense) in a language community

2 a : the action, amount, or mode of using <a decreased usage of electricity>
   b : manner of treating

—Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition 

“No matter what Merriam-Webster says I will continue to keen histrionically about ‘usage.’ Just say use, I say.”
—Internet user Olli Baker, commenting on “When Words Were Worth Fighting Over,” an article by Geoff Nunberg on NPR’s website.

Have an aspect of usage you want examined? Email me.

Image: historic photo from the New York City Municipal Archive, via the Atlantic