Bad Analogies

[Proletariat]

http://strangeplaces.net/weirdthings/analogies.html

The following are actual winning analogies in the "worst
analogies ever written in a high school essay" contest

Some of these were pretty funny.

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

*McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

That hefty bag one is a keeper, I should use it in one of my 11 AP test essays!

[Big_John]

my fav:

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

[ajaxfetish]

Awesome. I don't know if "worst analogies . . ." was the best title for the competition, though.

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be burried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

Some of them are pretty darned creative, and some of them really get the point across. Most bizarre analogies . . ., perhaps?

Ajax

[Ice]

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other
sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

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.


Even in his last years, Grandpa 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 Family Fortunes.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.


The plan was simple, like my brother 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
student
on 31p-a-pint 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 ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.


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 cashpoint.


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


It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around
with their power tools.


He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as
if she were a dustcart reversing.

She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.


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

From a similar list I saw a while ago

[Kongamato]

Reminds me of the Bulwer-Lytton contest. "The opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels".

http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm

[Zalmoxis]

Horrible... I'm gonna go read happy things now.

[doc_bean]

Most are pretty bad, but funny however, the one ajaxfetish already pointed out:

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be burried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

is pretty awesome when used in the right context, the teacher who submitted that obviously has no love for creativity and probably rates anything a C are blow if it doesn't sound like Dickens or Shakespeare

[Duke Malcolm]

Some of them are damned imaginitive...

My favourite:

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 6:36pm traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19pm at a speed of 35 mph.

I don't get this one, though:

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

There shouldn't be a full stop after Dr on a Dr Pepper can, anyway...

[Proletariat]

A few of those are actually the mark of a funny writer, and not a complete idiot, as the list would imply. At least I hope those students aren't so intentionally stupid.

[English assassin]

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be burried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

This one isn't so much an analogy as a short story brilliantly compressed into one sentence.

Who was First Tall Man? Will there be a Third Tall man? What does she do with all these tall men? What's she got against medium sized men, anyway? Was she engaged to one, only to find he was seeing her younger, prettier sister on the side? Or, Oh my god, it was, wasn't it, her BROTHER?

I's got to know.

BTW your Grace, (1) I salute your (100% accurate) knowledge of the abuses of the full stop but (2) why are you not a King any more? has there been a revolution or did you decide Dukes have more fun?

[Louis VI the Fat]

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

Sheer brilliance, actually!

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..

This one too is either the work of a rather mediocre 15-year old, or the work of a literary genius.

[AntiochusIII]

Strange, I find most of them pretty creative. And funny.

The more outlandish an analogy is, the funnier. These things can't just stand alone; context indicates the intent, so leaving them out like that make many of them look either like really biting satire or excellent sarcarm.

A few, though, are just dumb.

[Avicenna]

A few of those are actually the mark of a funny writer, and not a complete idiot, as the list would imply. At least I hope those students aren't so intentionally stupid.

That would make them actually stupid.

[Ironside]

Weird, I've actually stumbled upon another site whom the first link is probably based on (could be the opposite, but this link actually refers to the persons sending it in, I think).
In Swedish though and they're probably taken from different places before that.
link

[Louis VI the Fat]

Weird.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr. Pepper can.
Politikern försvann omärkligt, som punkten efter Dr. på en Dr Pepper-burk.
(Viktor Good, Malung)


Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:\flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaak/ch@ng by mistake.
Bob var lika förbryllad som en hacker som velat komma åt T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung men som istället kom åt T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung.
(Kent Karlsson, Ängelholm)


Edit: meh, who cares where they originated from. They're fun.

[KukriKhan]

There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who can count, and those who can't.

Not really an analogy, but I wanted to join in the fun. :)

[ajaxfetish]

And here I always thought there were 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Ajax

[Avicenna]

Speaking about binary... it's funny how in some places in the world people only learn it halfway into secondary... (around year 10).

Where I come from you learn it in year 4.

[Kralizec]

HISTORY INSIGHTS from 6TH GRADERS

The following were answers provided by 6th graders during history tests. Watch the spelling! Some of the best humor is in the misspelling.

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.


2. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.


3. Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.


4. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.


5. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.


6. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."


7. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard Shaw.


8. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."


9. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking.


10. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.


11. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couple. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.


12. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.


13. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backward and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.


14. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.


15. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between, he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.


16. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.


17. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered the radio. Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

[Dutch_guy]

Those are Hilarious Kralizec !

Would have listed my favorites but they're all equally funny

[Avicenna]

This is the best by far. :D

10. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

[GoreBag]

8. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."

My stomach hurts.

[econ21]

16. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

I like that one.

[Upxl]

5. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline

Last time i send out advice

[BelgradeWar]

Those analogies are simply brilliant. Each and every one could have a place in "The Simpsons".

[Shaka_Khan]

College professors should be angry at the influence that high school is giving to the students.