Monday, February 18, 2008

GOTTA LOVE A GOOD HIGH SCHOOL ESSAY

I got this from Steve O (no, not Steve O from the MTV show Jackass, but Steve O, a good friend of the snark troupe). Enjoy!

Peace,
BMP
(PS: I may throw in a snarky remark or two here and there.)

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Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. (More like Stewie Griffin, of Family Guy fame)

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. (More like your typical houseguest on Big Brother)

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. (What the hell is that box with a pinhole in it anyways?)

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef. (How about the 143 million pounds of American beef that's being recalled?)

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. (or my good-for-nothing cat)

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. (Oh, what-EVAHH!)

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree. (But shorter than the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center)

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. (That's because the Quick-E-Mart people took it over)

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. (Does wood sink in water? No! No! It floats! Throw her into the pond! - Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. (Now a dollar store brand of garbage bag filled with vegetable soup might have a better effect. Those Hefty's are pretty dang strong, ya know!)

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. (Like when the kids from Barney and Friends start singing Song of the Body of Christ - This makes for a good edition of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the near future!)

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze. (or a layer of shiny yellow snow)

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. (Speaking of maggots, how does a Planned Parenthood big wig look fried 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. (and the one leaving Cleveland derails in Indianapolis)

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth. (Before or after Tanya Harding's friends fixed her?)

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. (Now that I think of it, they were like two hippies that never met. However, they did share a doobie together.)

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River. (But the rest of his body was tossed in the West 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. (I knew he was a bit rusty, but holy bat$&!+!)

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. (OK, now I scratch my head like a monkey with dandruff!)

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. (LMAO! Now if that ain't some good-old-fashioned slam-o-rama, what is?)

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. (BTW, you know that fighter's a cannibal, right?)

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. (That duck's getting quite the disability package, I've heard!)

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. (or at a tree, or another ballerina's leg)

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools. (Violent sons of b!+c&3$)

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. (and emptying out)

4 comments:

The Sheepcat said...

Hi Brian,
I came by via Spirit's Sword.

Alas, these stinkers are funny, but high school students probably didn't write most of them. They came from The Style Invitational's analogy contest in the Washington Post in 1995.

Brian Michael Page said...

Welcome aboard, Sheepcat.

I was just reading some of the ones from the link you left. The ones there that didn't make the list I posted are just as funny. I particularly liked this one:

Winning the Style Invitational is sort of like finding a flaming bag of dog poop on your porch. In fact, some weeks it's EXACTLY like that.

Obviously, someone's been watching Billy Madison a few times. :)

BMP

DimBulb said...

(What the hell is that box with a pinhole in it anyways?)

Funny you should ask. I just recently wrote an essay on the subject for my science class; here's an explanation:

It's a box with a pinhole in it that you use for looking at solar eclipses; except you don't really look at the eclipse with it. You know how some people wear tin-foil hats to protect their brains from the influence of aliens? Well, the box with a pinhole in it is sort of a tin-foil hat for optometrists, except you wear it to protect the eyes. Here's a diagram:
http://andrewcarnegie2.tripod.com/SolarEclipseSafetyCanali.GIF

Now, how do I get on that list for amusing teachers?

Gabby said...

I don't care where they came from, those tears running down my cheeks are real and so is the stitch in my side -- of course the snarky comments had a great deal to do with it.