posted
Hi everyone- This was something I saw on digg, and I knew it was just the right thing for the hatrack treatment. Supposedly they are collected from High School English teachers. I dunno, they're pretty good.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster. 2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. 3. 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. 4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. 5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. 6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. 7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree. 8. 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. 9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t. 10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. 11. 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. 12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze. 13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. 14. 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. 15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth. 16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. 17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River. 18. 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. 19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. 20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. 21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. 22. 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. 23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. 24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools. 25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Happy Camper: Hmmm, I think the author of number 9 was a Douglas Adams fan.
I thought EXACTLY the same thing.
It brings to mind "exactly the shade of green that Michaelangelo would have gnawed his hand off at the wrist rather than use."
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posted
Heh, I was thinking actually of the line "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." Very distinctive kind of imagery that Adams used.
Posts: 609 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Yeah, with Adams it was often the startling transposition of the analogy into the negative. Very cool.
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posted
I am still laughing over these! I'm totally printing this out and giving it to everyone I know. I think my fav. is #20 but that might change when I reread the rest of them.
Posts: 143 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I imagined all of these in a gritty detective movie voice when I read them. Or maybe it's closer to whoever does the voice at the beginning of the Twilight Zone. Something along those lines.
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posted
These are great! Some of the imagery is really well done;they are just odd choices. Like perhaps it would be best not to describe someone's hair and use nose hairs after a sneeze as an example of the shine.
The lovers running towards each other like two trains made me laugh. I had to wonder if someone else was doing their creative writing assignments in math class. :X
Posts: 10 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I was definately imagining Jim Dale's voice reading these. Possibly cause I've been relistening to the Jim Dale Harry Potter audio books of late.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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