Imaginative Analogies

[Haidee]

From
Mary Kay Wedum
Assistant Director
Intensive English Program
Colorado State University

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 with a 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 at 4:19
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.
_________________
>l in corset
Inside an intricately beaded twilight black suede corset with hot pink lacings you see a buttery nipple, a buttery nipple, a steaming pile of gamojab poop, a speckled red crab, a chocolate chip brownie, a map of Haelrahv, a huge blonde hair ball, a severed Haidee head, and your boobs.

[Kit]

<3 That was awesome.
_________________
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" -- Adam Savage

AIM: KitMurphyHR
Email: yojibalinese@hotmail.com
Technician Database: http://tech.haelrahv.net/

[SolitaryTurnip]

[maddie]

I thought a lot of them sounded like what Douglas Adams writes.

[Haidee]

Well one thing you have to keep in mind is the fact that there are not really any original ideas any more. In general, everything you write or think has been written or thought before. Just because something you write happens to sound like something else that has been written doesn't necessarily mean it's plagiarized. But then again, I don't know the kid or anything, so it could be.
_________________
>l in corset
Inside an intricately beaded twilight black suede corset with hot pink lacings you see a buttery nipple, a buttery nipple, a steaming pile of gamojab poop, a speckled red crab, a chocolate chip brownie, a map of Haelrahv, a huge blonde hair ball, a severed Haidee head, and your boobs.

[Kit]