"I'll be brief."

When someone announces this, you may as well make yourself comfortable, put your feet up, get out your knitting, and take a couple of Valium because you are in for a saga. People truly economical with words never say things like, "I'll be brief" or "To make a long story short." First of all, saying those phrases takes an extra 2 or 3 seconds right there. You know what I really hate? When speakers spend the first 5 minutes of their speeches telling you what they're going to tell you. Just tell me! Then they run out of time at the end, before they get to the point--if there was one--because they spent so much time on the "and then I'll briefly go into a little bit about..." Aaaarrrggh. Oh, and if you ever answer the phone and someone asks, "Do you have a minute?", you can be sure you'll be on that phone until the battery is in rigor mortis. Which I suppose is why caller ID was invented.