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Really bad metaphors

2009 February 4

Metaphors that are as bad as bad similes

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.

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.

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

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

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

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

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

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.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr. Pepper can.

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.

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.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

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.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of “Jeopardy!”

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.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.”

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

It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

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.

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 dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

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

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

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-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.

Every minute without you feels like 60 seconds.

The horizon swallowed the setting sun like a dog sucking an egg, but not quite.

Really bad Suspense novel metaphores

Worn down at the edges like a Times Square hooker, the caretaker’s last tooth lay on the floor like a yellow Chiclet.

When she stepped out of her dress, she had the body of a 90-year-old nun, if the nun looked as young, attractive, and sexy as the dame standing in front of me.

The situation had become topsy-turvy — like Christmas in the summer, if you’re in Australia.

The information imbedded on the stolen computer chip was like an explosive so explosive it could explode, creating a massive explosion.

As I watched through the slatted shades, her bosom bounce like her suspicious husband’s first check.

The killer was a misplaced comma in the jaunty, happy sentence that made up the party crowd.

His face looked like an ice sculpture. Not one of those pretty ones in the middle of a cruise ship buffet, but the kind they do in a contest with a chainsaw — and it had been out in the heat too long.

Like any family, this house had its secrets, secrets it grimly refused to reveal, and would continue to refuse to reveal even if it could speak, which unlike a family, or at least most members of most families, it couldn’t.

The air of danger perversely made Nina’s nipples harden, like that Magic Shell stuff on a bowl of ice cream.

From his vantage point in the balcony, the would-be assassin looked down on the debating candidates like a webhead looking down on an AOL user.

The sudden darkness made the Countess tense, like Bobby Jerome that time with the bicycle in 7th grade, remember?

There was something funny about the kidnapping crime scene that Special Agent Frievald couldn’t quite place, and the thought stuck with him throughout the rest of the day, like those tiny little bits of the circumferent skin from the bologna slices on a foot-long Subway Cold Cut Trio that get stuck in between the last two molars on the upper left, on the tongue side where you can’t possibly reach them with a toothpick, your fingernails, or even a systematically straightened paper clip, they just sit there and make everything you eat at your next meal taste vaguely like vinegar and mayonnaise, and then somehow — quietly but miraculously — they disappear by themselves in the middle of the night while you’re asleep, just like the visiting Countess appeared to have done.

Her parting words lingered heavily inside me like last night’s Taco Bell.

The bullet burned Gilmore’s gut like the first piss after a long night in a Singapore brothel.

A single drop of sweat slowly inched down Chad’s brow — a tiny, glistening Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball of desperation.

His .38 barked fire, like John Goodman’s butt after a chili cookoff.

Her blazing eyes dance like Astaire and Rogers, but since they were crossed, it was an ocular tango, and my eyes had to foxtrot just to maintain eye contact.

She had a voice so husky it could have pulled a dogsled, and the gun she was holding gave me a bad case of barrel envy.

The neon sign reflected off his gun, like the moonlight reflects off my brother-in-law’s bald head after a night of beer drinking and cow-tipping.

Unable to contain his rage, he burst like a pimple of emotion, the pus of his fury streaking the mirror of calm in the bathroom of his life.

Really bad Romance novel metaphores

His body was hard, not hard like Milosevic, the Serbian strongman, but hard like the marble on your shower floor, when you fall and bang your knee.

Her shoulders heaved like the tiny sobs of Snuggles the cat being run through with a roasting spit.

Her embrace made his manhood swell like week old road-kill on hot asphalt in the Georgia sun.

Her petticoats dropped to the ground, rustling like a cockroach in a sugar bowl.

As she kissed her way down his manly chest, he felt his Amalgamated Crane Company stock increasing in value.

Beatrice was on him like a piranha on a corn dog.

…then he kissed her, like a butterfly kisses the windshield of a Porsche on the Autobahn.

Her breasts heaved like a stormy ocean, and her pointed nipples were like hypodermics washed up on the shore.

With his broad shoulders and slim waist, he was a yield sign — yet she could NOT!

He tore open her blouse like a Publisher’s Clearing House letter in which he, and some guy named Steven Bouber from Stockton, California, were potential finalists for the ten million dollar prize.

His manhood stood at full attention, stiff and stony like the vice president.

Sleekly malevolent, driven by a violent hunger, Donovan glided through the chum-filled waters of the singles bar, oblivious to the remora of Annabelle’s adoring gaze.

Like the wind, she ran, her breasts lurching like a motor boat over a wake, and then, as fluid as a fine imported transmission, she whipped out her man-organ and pissed away his dreams.

Her sun-glazed back formed a golden arch as he moved his face toward her happy meal.

With each breath, her chest heaved like a bulimic after Thanksgiving dinner.

He Beatty-ed her shamelessly, making her squeal like Ned and hallucinate like Warren.

He awoke my slumbering womanhood with his double tall loin latte. “Starbuck!” I cried.

His chest was her pillow, and oh, did she drool.

Claire felt swept away by this dark stranger, a helpless dust bunny in the roaring cacophony of his gas-powered leaf blower.

and the Number 1 Bad Romance Novel Metaphor or Simile…

His finger, weathered and rough from years on the ranch, danced in and out of his nose like a slimy ballerina.


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