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This weekend, the Schott’s Vocab column in the New York Times is running a competition to come up with similes for our times. Trouble is, Schott’s sample similes are drab—
This weekend, co-vocabularists are invited to nominate new similes fit for the times in which we live. These can be adaptations of classic similes (as good as Goldmans) or novel comparisons (as generous as a stimulus package). It is hoped that co-vocabularists will take to this competition like a politician to pork but, please, keep ‘em as clean as a Prius.—and the entries in the comment thread are almost all dead lame (vide passim). I felt so bad for them that I posted a batch* of topical figures of speech there. I’ll link to it here if it ever gets out of moderation.
In the meantime, I’ll bet we can play this game a lot better than the NYTimes.
The one I left out of the list I posted at the NYT was "It was pointless and self-defeating, like trolling for Jesus."
As feminist as Rush Limbaugh.
With all the sanity of a Glenn Beck monologue.
He was eviscerated as neatly as if by Jon Stewart.
A Palinesque completion.
With all the kindness of a Cheney.
The speaker was as unruffled as Obama.
His heart was as if filled with the milk of human kindness, but someone had left the carton out of the fridge for too long before pouring it in.
Somehow 'another Enron' seems pale.
I suppose a new version of 'met your Waterloo' could be 'met your [Iraq|Afghanistan]'
'More tweets than wit' ?
I shouldn't read this so late. I'm weeping with ineptitude. (or laughter or something like that...)
I shouldn't read this so late. I'm weeping with ineptitude. (or laughter or something like that...)
When the bill comes, he's a regular bin Laden.
That Microsoft product uses more resources than a Hummer.
As dead as the midlist.
His death leaves us like the NY skyline after 9/11.
MP3s -- the Wal-Mart of music.
((Hey, nobody said they had to be tasteful!))
"As dead as the midlist" hits hard.
"I had to redo all of his work--he's such a Bush appointee."
"If you believe that, I've got some repackaged debt to sell you."
My favorite from your list is "He's such a drag he couldn't get friended by a spambot". heh.
How about "all tweet and no meat"? I'm not sure that's a real simile, though.
"He displayed the persistence of Coleman, but she really was not interested in him."
The 2004 election seemed particularly fertile for "showing as much self-interest as a hooker who knifes you for stopping her pimp from beating her."
His advice is like Microsoft tech support - 100% correct and 100% useless - and he's almost as competent as the CIA. That's why he's as popular as AIG these days.
As compassionate as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter visiting a home for unwed mothers.
As much growth potential as the Republican Party.
Wow, that engine is as enhanced as a Bush-era interrogation!
Hornier than a Christian Senator.
Funnier than a triple A CDO.
Broker than Lehman.
Kookier than a creationist on the campaign trail.
Slimier than a mortgage broker in Florida.
As welcome as the swine flu on Ramadan.
Jumpier than Palin's pet Turkey in November.
What a poseur. He's a graceless as a Chinese iPhone knockoff.
All the warmth and charm of a phone book on a Kindle.
non ironically, there's "As refreshing as a good drink of water."
Last year around this time, some villain or henchperson in the Dick Tracy strip was uttering a singularly inane and opaque simile, which at least had novelty on its side. I composed a brief list of other equally intelligible similes for their future use. As they have not used them, I feel free to pass them along here:
“Bonus! More similes for Dick Tracy villains! -
• Easy as chewing milk!
• Easy as shoveling wood!
• Smooth as a baby’s resume!
• Fungible as pie!
• Platitudinous as February 3rd!
• It was just like driving a train to the dentist!
• It was just like putting a rubber band around a lava lite!
• Like sand through the hourglass; these are the days of our lives!”
(Reprinted from The Comics Curmudgeon, July 2, 2008)
One senator short of a scandal.
As spontaneous as political convention applause.
As compassionate as a Purple Heart Band-aid.
As straight as the Appalachian Trail.
His mind was as broad as his stance.
Inevitable as death and sequels.
It would have been twice as funny with the addition of one crutch.
He's solving the world's problems, one Cheeto at a time.
Satisfying as vegetarian bacon.
Her next blind date was likely to be like a Skiffy Channel movie - promising-looking but ultimately a big bore.
As futile as online arguments.
As dated as Usenet.
As productive as blogging.
As literate as Viagra spam from the Ukraine.
...as contrite as calling an "unknown-unknown."
Kip, you have a real ear for these. All the warmth and charm of a phone book on a Kindle and He's solving the world's problems, one Cheeto at a time are great.
My contribution: X is the PC to Y's Mac.
As chewy as a nitro tequila shot.
I always liked this one by Billy Connolly:
"as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit"
All the scientific rigor of an Oprah segment
All the moral clarity and incisive rhetoric of a Republican Governor
All the cogence of Pat Buchanan on race
All the nuance of a Minuteman on meth
As subtle as Iranian election fraud
As trustworthy as a dollar bill is green
As useful as a screen door on a submarine.
- a former co-worker about his manager
He was gone in an instant, like the contents of a hard drive.
As spontaneous as a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
She was cynical and precise, as if butter would not only melt in her mouth but would probably go on to clarify.
(I've been wanting to do something with that for ages.)
candle @34 wins, as far as I'm concerned.
As frank as the national media talking about torture.
As solid as an Obama campaign promise.
As comforting as an airport security check.
As honest as a movie studio accountant.
As impressive, in its way, as a wall of laser disks.
A real marksman, provided the target is at the end of his leg.
His brain has a cold solder joint to ground.
A co-worker of mine was once described as "A ROM-style brain in a RAM-style business."
That's probably dated already, though.
As believable as a SciFi Original Movie.
All the durability of am exotic hadron.
That's a Paris Hilton kind of genius.
Don't worry; another bus'll be along sooner than the next Windows upgrade.
There're more pigeons here than cell phone dealers at the mall!
Michael Roberts@35 - thanks!
Bill Greenwell once won an Oldie competition for up-to-date proverbs with:
"You can't put a jack in a SCART socket."
That one has stuck to the point that I have started genuinely using it.
A couple of tweets short of a blog.
A couple of Cheetos short of a position paper.
A few betas short of a release.
As trustworthy as spam.
As reliable as Version 1.0.
As subtle as the Klingon ambassador.
As subtle as a Limbaugh routine.
As subtle as a slasher flick.
As honest as a mortgage broker.
As honest as an Iranian election.
Makes as much sense as a Palin speech.
As practical as a war on drugs.
Aging is like XP. Every day a new "upgrade."
Maybe some recycled ones, with a new meaning:
Safe as houses.
You can take that to the bank.
As smooth as a breakdancer's bald patch.
With all the literacy of a college student on deadline.
He was surrounded by a force field of indestructible ignorance.
Listen, I say, listen to what I'm sayin', son! I keep energizin', but nothin's transportin'!
(...He's a good kid, but his intellect ain't exactly set to "stunning.")
Not the flashiest bling on the block
sea-level property in a global-warming world
as practical as an urban Hummer
the Nigerian spammer business model
the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and the paperless office
If we're going to have so many Palin similies, can we please be a bit more specific or somehow make it clear that, on the Palin scale, we mean that the person referred to is more Sarah than Michael?
The difference between Michael Palin and Sarah Palin is the difference between "laughing with" and "laughing at."
All the permanence of Orwell on a Kindle.
As dirty as a Hummer. (Have you ever seen a dirty one?)
As quiet as a teenager's ringtone.
As permanent as a Wikipedia page.
As relevant as last week's Wall Street Journal.
He's Exhibit A for what's the matter with Kansas.
As crowded as an unemployment line in Detroit.
As phony as a vegan in a leather jacket.
The job security of a drummer from Spinal Tap.
Has anybody else noticed that by the standard of these "similes for our times," our times are pretty uniformly bleak? There are lots of cynical twists and putdowns. Where are today's equivalents of "a heart as big as all outdoors" or "excited as a kid in a candy shop" or most anything with a positive spin to the comparison?
Not that I'm doing any better, mind you. If I could think of any, I would add them.
OtterB @ 55:
Being cynical is more fun, but here are a few for you.
As boundless as the internet.
Excited as a geek with an unlocked iPhone.
Happier than a hobbyist in a Chinese electronics market.
I assure you, "satisfying as a good drink of water" is meant in a positive way. In fact, I'm going to have one now.
It was as if an electronics store had unquestioningly granted my warranty claim.
I was as pleased as if missionaries on my walk had left without ringing my bell.
It was like dropping an iPod in the street without any harm.
(It's harder to keep these pithy.)
Spiffy like boing-boing
trenchant as xkcd
Wonderful as "boom de yadda"
They went together like Olbermann and O'Reilly.
Louder than Mythbusters.
With as bright a future as the newspaper industry.
As unflappable as Jim Cantore in a hurricane. (Yeah, I watch waaaay to much basic cable.)
Dead as a Dumbledore.
As asexual as Captain Jack. (Harkness or Sparrow, take your pick. Or both, even better.)
As egalitarian as Prop. 8.
As repetitive as the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.
As cunning as a Klingon.
(They had Whorf actually say that on ST-TNG.)
As brutal as Big Brother.
As beautiful as a well-tuned algorithm.
As cold as cryo.
As clear as undocumented code.
As red as retreating starlight.
It's not a simile, but a modern riff on a piece of conventional wisdom:
"The traffic always moves faster in the other lane."
pat 60: As asexual as Captain Jack. (Harkness or Sparrow, take your pick. Or both, even better.)
I'm confused. Jack Sparrow is fairly asexual, but to the extent he's at all susceptible it's to feminine wiles, never masculine ones. At least in the two movies I've seen, while he's certainly not butch by any stretch of the imagination, he's never shown any signs of interest in walking on the wild side, as it were.
I mean, it is Disney.
Jack Harkness, on the other hand, is very butch, very highly sexed, and interested in every vaguely-humanoid being that crosses his path. Gender doesn't much matter to him, but he's far from asexual.
Did you mean these to be opposites?
Xopher,
It's interesting, and it may just be my hyperactive imagination, but I do not see Jack Sparrow as asexual. Although, given that it is Disney, it is mostly implied. And it has been a while since I've seen the movies.
So I see them as being both sexual, but with differing orientations.
Although, to tell you the truth, I was thinking of Harkness when I first wrote the comment (which was meant to be sarcastic) and Jack Sparrow just inserted himself in my consciousness. Johnny Depp does that sometimes.
I guess I was simply as confusing as Sarah Palin talking to Katie Couric.
As closeted as an Idaho senator.
As cold as Cheney's heart.
Kip W @58: I was as pleased as if missionaries on my walk had left without ringing my bell.
If they're giving you up as a lost cause before they even ring the bell... I want to know what's on your porch (or on your door, or in your yard... whatever).
Rob...I've always wanted to get one of those little Mary bathtubs, and put Kali-Durga in it, dancing on the corpse of her enemy. Or maybe Aphrodite rising from the ocean.
I know someone who came home to find that her apartment had been broken into. The thieves had been into her bedroom and taken a bunch of her jewelry, into the kitchen and taken this and that...but she found everything they'd taken from those rooms just inside the door of the other bedroom.
The other bedroom was in use as a temple. It had an altar to Kali-ji in it, with a size-XL image, offerings, and associated materials. I guess they decided she was not a lady to mess with.
As deep as Bush's brain.
As reassuring as Cheney's smile.
As clear as a Sarah Palin policy statement.
As tasteful as Michael Jackson's funeral.
As chilly as a look from Ann Coulter.
As safe as derivatives.
As even-handed as Bill O'Reilly.
As loving as Lou Dobbs.
As welcome as a letter from Nigeria. Or the IRS. Or your POA.
As excited as a kid in an electronics store.
"How did the kids like that new casserole?" "Oh, they gobbled it up like bailout money."
As repetitious as CNN Headline News.
A critic of the space program, on Colbert:
Until you've seen a toilet back up in zero gravity, you don't know what 'ugly' means.I'm not going to go there.
I've seen a basement sump back up in one gee, and that was more than enough.
LMB MacAlister @69: As repetitious as CNN Headline News.
As schizo as the news crawl.
Xopher (#68) Slightly mystified by "one of those little Mary bathtubs", I found these blogs: Our Lady of the Bathtub Appreciation Society (with description); bathtub mary. I've seen slightly similar shrines in Sydney suburbs, but never remember bathtubs being involved — perhaps they were all taken for water troughs, OTOH my observations were very limited. Now, however, I can visualize your idea much better.
Mez @ 73 -- One of the local SCAdians (TSivia bas Tamara, MKA Shelley Rabinovitch) completed a Ph.D. thesis about "bathtub Marys" a few years ago. She'd done a lot of travelling to collect information. And she was surprised when I mentioned that there was one right across the street from my house.
You can't walk two blocks in a residential neighborhood in Hoboken without seeing one. The bathtub is to keep the rain off the statue, I figure, and it also (usually) gives her a sky-blue background to stand against.
Images of Kali-ji are relatively hard to come by, I'm led to understand. She's not generally considered auspicious to have in your house. I don't have that kind of yard anyway, but someday...man I like that idea. I'd paint the inside of the bathtub blood red, along with Kali-ji's tongue; other than that she'd be coal black except for her necklace of skulls (and her needle-sharp teeth).
Teresa may remember Stephanie Pearl-McPhee/The Yarn Harlot criticizing a yarn by saying it was as splitty as J-Lo.
As honest as a chyron on Fox News.
Esprit de l'escalier here...
As naturally potent as Rush Limbaugh.
"Worth its weight in gold" takes on an entirely different meaning when used to describe an intangible thing...
Xopher @ #75: You know that I've been a design/build contractor for 37 years, don't you? Now you've done it. When you get ready to build that shrine, indoors or outdoors, just let me know. Mmmmm, what fun!
Xopher @ #75: You know that I've been a design/build contractor for 37 years, don't you? Now you've done it. When you get ready to build that shrine, indoors or outdoors, just let me know. Mmmmm, what fun!
The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Erik Nelson @ 85... Heck, go for it. Noir has great similes.
Her mouth was filled with broken promises.
He was so low-key that the doorknob was in the morgue's sub-basement.
Erik @ 83: I don't know about yours but when my television is tuned to a dead channel it goes bright blue. I don't think a clear, sunny day is what Gibson was going for.
As smart as a bag of bricked iPhones.
Lee #80: "Worth its weight in gold" takes on an entirely different meaning when used to describe an intangible thing...
"Worth its weight in WoW gold" or maybe "As rich as a Chinese gold farmer". heh.
Paul Duncanson@88: But it was what Neil Gaiman was going for in Neverwhere.
Paul Duncanson @ 88... Well, the book was written in 1984 and this is a case of technology changing so much that a metaphor isn't valid anymore.
Serge #92: Back in the 80s people were already pointing out that the high-end colour televisions of the time defaulted to blue rather than snow if there was no signal.
I was, though, much more taken with the Rastas-in-space...
93: the first time I came across the phrase "hydroponic ganja" was in Gibson; now it's a major law enforcement issue!
David @ 91: I've seen the TV version but not read the book. (Googles, finds and delights in actual quote.) Time to fix that I think... if I can find my copy. Thanks for reminding me that Neil Gaiman makes me happy and that I should read him more.
Serge @ 92: Well, yes... and that's why is really isn't a simile of our times.
KeithS @56 and Kip W @58
Thanks for those. It is harder to make the non-ironic ones pithy.
Fragano #93:
Dead digital channels, otoh ... look like those 2-d bar code squares--and they move/cycle, sort of like a game of Conway's "Life".
Her future looks about as bright as the polar bears'. (in bad taste, yes, but "of our times")
Came up in conversation: "sucks like hard vacuum"
Paul Duncanson @ 95... Humph. For some of us, 1984 was of our times. Now you kids get off my lawn!
abi, #99: My partner has an entire Scale of Suckage based on various brands. It runs, from least bad to most:
- Dustbuster
- Kirby
- Hoover
- Electrolux
- Dyson
- Shop-Vac
In practice, the only ones that get much actual use are Dustbuster, Hoover, and Shop-Vac.
Well, what do you know? When I went to the gym this morning, at some point I noticed that, not long after playing "Johhn B Goode", the monitors all wound up the color of a dead channel. Made me feel nostalgic.
I confess to a prejudice against the ones involving personalities, even when they're slams on people I don't like. They're facile and maybe feel good, but they're not built to last, and they don't mean the same thing to everyone.
When I was on the paper in junior high, there was a sort of recurring column/filler called "Can You Imagine...?" It was hilarious stuff like "...Dave Black with No hair?" "...Ricky Martinez standing up straight?" "...Sheryl Cobb not chewing gum?" (I made two of those up.) The fossil record may not bear me out on this, but I like to think I killed the genre, at least for a while, with one (that they printed) that basically said: "...any article that starts with 'Can You Imagine' being funny?"
So that's where I'm at on this. The one about Michael Jackson's funeral struck me as amusing. Another time on the same paper, I ran up against the deadline and turned in one that said
"THE MAD REPEATER STRIKES AGAINThey printed that one too.
"The Mad Repeater strikes again and again and again and again and again and again and..."
ps: The missionaries. As I imagined it, it was wholly inexplicable by any reference to objects on the porch or visible from the front. What those more reverent than I would call 'The grace of God.'
"... spiders so big they have health bars ..."
(swiped from a TV Tropes riff on Australia)
Lee @ 101, I'd put Kirby higher than Hoover on the list, because my vintage Kirby is the only vacuum I've ever owned that DID suck strongly enough to clean carpets. Low-end Hoover uprights of the 1990s were useless.
Kip @ 104: Occasionally, justice is served. I remember the time a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door of a Mormon high priest, as I was working nearby . . .
David Loovis tells a tale of when some Mormon missionaries came to his house (probably this happened in the late 60s or early 70s) and he said he'd hear them out about LDS if they'd hear him out about homosexuality. They accepted. Result: threesome.
Rikibeth @ 106... Jack Kirby would say "It's hoovering time!"
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