HUMOR: Bad Analogs, or Something...

[Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- ENG -dot- SUN -dot- COM>]

Forwards removed...

(transcribed without permission from the Washington Post,
July 23,  1995)

Style Invitational Report from Week 120:

In which we asked you to come up with bad analogies. The
results were great, though we feel compelled to point out
that there is a  fine line between an analogy that is so bad it
is good and an analogy that is so good it is bad. See what
we mean.

4th Runner-Up: Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as
Calvin  Klein's Obsession would smell if it were called Enema
and was made  from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural
floral fragrances.  (Jennifer Frank, Washington, and Jimmy
Pontzer, Sterling)

3rd Runner-Up: The baseball player stepped out of the box
and spit  like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches
itself a lot  and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses
to sign autographs  for all the little Greek kids unless they
pay him lots of drachmas.  (Ken Krattenmaker, Landover
Hills)

2nd Runner-Up: I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably
is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or
something, but I  don't speak German. Anyway, it's a dread
that nobody knows the name  for, like those little square
plastic gizmos that close your bread  bags. I don't know the
name for those either. (Jack Bross, Chevy Chase)

1st Runner-Up: She was as unhappy as when someone puts
your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows
down and then you  lose the recipe, and on top of that you
can't sing worth a damn. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

And the winner of the framed Scarlet Fever sign: His fountain
pen  was so expensive it looked as if someone had grabbed
the pope,  turned him upside down and started writing with
the tip of his big  pointy hat. (Jeffrey Carl, Richmond)

Honorable Mentions:  - He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch
tree. (Jack Bross, Chevy  Chase)

- The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots
when  you fry them in hot grease. (Gary F. Hevel, Silver
Spring)

- The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after
the  Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. (Wayne Goode, Madison, Ala.)

- 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.  (Joseph
Romm, Washington)

- She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches
that  used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up
whenever you  banged the door open again. (Rich Murphy,
Fairfax Station)

- She was sending me more mixed signals than a dyslexic
third-base  coach. (Jack Bross, Chevy Chase)

- The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the
way a  bowling ball wouldn't. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

- McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty
Bag  filled with vegetable soup. (Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring)

- Having O.J. try on the bloody glove was a stroke of genius
unseen  since the debut of Goober on "Mayberry R.F.D".
(John Kammer,  Herndon)

- 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 p.m. instead of
7:30. (Roy Ashley,  Washington)

- Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
(Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

- Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in
the  center. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

- Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access
T:flw.quid>55328.com\aaakk/ch -at- ung but gets
T:\flw.quid>aaakk/ch -at- ung  by mistake (Ken Krattenmaker,
Landover Hills)

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

- Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life
was a  movie this guy would be buried in the credits as
something like  "Second Tall Man."  (Russell Beland,
Springfield)

- 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. (Jennifer Hart,  Arlington)

- Upon completing kindergarten, Lance felt the same sense
of  accomplishment the Unabomber feels every time he
successfully blows  up another college professor.
(Anonymous, no city please)

- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket
fences  that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth (Paul Kocak,
Syracuse, N.Y.)

- John and Mary had never met. They were like two
hummingbirds who  had also never met. (Russell Beland,
Springfield)

- The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of
a thin  sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the
storm scene in a  play. (Barbara Fetherolf, Alexandria)

- His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking
alliances  like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free
(Chuck Smith,  Woodbridge)

- The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola
crayon.  (Jennifer Frank and Jimmy Pontzer, Washington
and Sterling)

- After sending in my entries for the Style Invitational, I feel
relieved and apprehensive, like a little boy who has just wet
his  bed. (Wayne Goode, Madison, Ala.)

-----------

You made my day, even a day as gray as white cotton
sheets washed for decades in cold water without bleach like
no self-respecting woman who came of age in the 1940s
would allow in her house, much less on one of her beds, but
up with which she must put whenever she visits one of her
own daughters, just as if they had never been brought up
right.  (DEV, Madison, Wis)


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Janice Gelb                  | The only connection Sun has with this
janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com   | message is the return address.

"Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read"

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