Tuesday, September 16, 2008

THE ART OF ANALOGY?



Like a good rain on parched ground, a good analogy can bring an otherwise turgid discourse, sermon, lecture to life. On the other hand, a bad analogy can stick in one's brain like a bad song, or a really bad smell or taste in one's mouth. Here below are some analogies 'attempted' in high school term papers. You might want to put on your sunglasses before reading these, because some of them are so blindingly brilliant you may need to look for cover :) Let me know which is your favorite. BW3

Actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes witha pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame...maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, you can't pick just one. If pressed I might say 20, or 24.

-- Chuck

Jc_Freak: said...

I too agree that you can't just pick on. I'm stuck between 16 and 7.

Brian Small said...

LOL . . . LOL . . . LOL . . .

Dusty said...

Sooo Funny. 5 and 23 made my morning so much brighter

Spud said...

Reading this was like listening to an episode of Prairie Home Companion, although Garrison Keillor, I believe, does it on purpose. Let us hope so, at any rate!

Corpus Christi Outreach Ministries said...

I will have have to pick # 17 to be loyal [I am an Italian from Jersey!] but I also liked the elder who blinded himself with the eclipse.

Unknown said...

These are certainly very funny. If pressed, I think I would say my favorite is number 21.

However, they are not "actual", they are intentional; see Snopes.

In other intentionally-bad writing news, the 2008 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest were announced recently. They are worth reading too.

bosner said...

good ones!

phil said...

Ben,

I would have to say 20 is my favorite; if you could think of another analogy for the Kingdom of heaven besides what Jesus mentions, what would you say? Just curious…

Ben Witherington said...

The kingdom of God is like gravity, which while it cannot be seen or smelled or tasted or heard, can none the less be recognized to be real because we see its effects on human beings and their changed lives.

BW3

Gary said...

These are funny, but I wish that forwarded emails were truth-checked a little more.

The Snopes article points out these were ALL intentional. You can read more of them at Washingtonpost.com http://tinyurl.com/5cygn7 and their style invitational is regularly a source of great humor. (As is the Bulwer-Lytton contest.)

Sarah Lewie said...

Those are amazing. Wow.

Thanks for sharing!

Mike said...

I loved #2 and I'm coming up on #18. My fave is #24 though. C'mon, let's build something!!

Christian said...

Number 9 is clearly written by someone who knows his Douglas Adams.

nelson moore said...

Oh, I can't believe that no one has nominated #6. That's just, well, you know, very funny or something.

Kelli Summers Sorg said...

After I graduated from seminary, I swore I would never laugh at one of your jokes again. :) Now I am sitting here wiping away huge tears of laughter after reading 28 of them!

5 and 6 are my favorites.. Kelli

ORHS CBC said...

Why is it that folks from North Carolina are so easily duped by Internet postings with counterfeit provenance, especially when said provenance is so obviously fraudulent? Come on, when you read the statement "these are ACTUAL metaphors found in high school essays," aren't you a bit surprised, given the quality of the writing from high schoolers?