Writing metaphors gone horribly wrong Options

[Imogen]

This arrived in my email this morning and made me laugh. Anyone else got any good ones?

QUOTE

For writers at a loss for a metaphor or simile, you should try out some of these, actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays: Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. 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. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. 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. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. 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. Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. 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. They lived in a typical suburban neighbourhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River. 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. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. "Oh, Jason, take me!"; she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night. 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 The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee(D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

[Zamnaii]

QUOTE

It's the last one that worries me. How exactly do you find out how painful it is to staple your tongue to the wall?   And why would you want to do that in the first place?

How - You make sure the wall is that of a card board box.

Why - You're trying to commit suicide, but you realise that something like that is highly unlikely to kill you!