Porkopolis: Words of the Unwise

Sometimes I want to be able to make up some seriously outrageous stuff and publish it, just to see what the reaction is. Ethically, that isn't an option, but that doesn't mean I can't point you in the direction of some seriously hysterical stuff written by others that's all truth.

The following are from a collection of hideously bad analogies that were originally published in The Washington Post in 1999. Some things are simply worth repeating!

• Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two 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 machine.

• 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 p.m. instead of 7:30.

• Her hair glistened in the rain like a 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 neighborhood 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, Granddad 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.

• 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 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.

— Margo Pierce