Faint praise is better than no praise at all dept.

“Dinner at the Huntercombes possessed only two dramatic features. The wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.” Anthony Powell

Those clever high school students!

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes 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.

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.

Things you never see in the news Department:

Butte, Montana November 5, 2007

Two illegal aliens, Raphael Resides, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home.

It seems the two crooks never learned two things: they were in Montana and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine.

Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father's room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.

Resides was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the 11-year-old's  knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals.

When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive.

It was found out later that Resides was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. That victim, 50-year-old David Burien, was not so lucky. He died from stab wounds to the chest.

Ever wonder why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or ABC news……..an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her home, and herself……against two murderous, illegal immigrants…….and she wins, she is still alive.

You won’t see this either.

A new study in 830 workplaces of how effective mandatory diversity training was indicates that sensitivity seminars led to 12% declines of women and minorities in management.

Makes makes me realize just how sheltered my life has been.

A New York stockbroker sued a Manhattan Gentleman’s club claiming he was injured by a stripper during a lap dance. The married man in his 30’s said he was relaxing at the Hot Lap Dance Club when the dancer struck him in the eye with the heel of her shoe. For the life of me, I can’t figure out where the rest of her was if the heel of her shoe was in his eye.

Where lying is legal.

The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that Italians cannot be punished for lying about their love affairs. The case was about a woman who lent her cell phone to her lover so he could make harassing calls to her husband. During the police interrogation she told police she didn’t know who the caller was and she was indicted for obstructing justice. The court ruled that lying in cases like this is a matter of self-protection.

I have led a sheltered life.

Beware of who your organ donor is.

An English woman who had a kidney transplant acquired the donor’s highbrow tastes. The former nightclub bouncer used to read thrillers and movie magazines. Now she reads Austen and Dostoyevsky. She used to watch the soaps but now she prefers documentaries on the Egyptian pyramids. She says she can’t get enough of them and its weird.

George Orwell said:

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.”

George Carlin said:

“It’s never just a game when you’re winning.”

The real estate crisis is real!

In Kingman Arizona you can buy a three-bedroom adobe home with skylights, a patio, a pool table and a three-car garage overlooking the 16th hole of a golf course for $369,000.00.

Must have jet ski

It can roll 360 degrees, plunge underwater and leap to the surface and mimic dolphins swimming. You can get yourself a 250-hp Innespace Seabreacher for a mere $70,000.00.

Be yourself.

French essayist Ls Rochefoucauld said disguising your true personality is counterproductive and could damage your health. He says that keeping up the act is inefficient and uses extra energy. It’s better to be yourself than try to be what you think your family, friends, your co-workers and your boss expects you to be. “Just be yourself,” is his advice.

I like some people better when they are not being themselves. You probably know a few of them too.

Newark NJ

Newark averages two murders per week. In February they had a 33-day stretch without a killing. The last time they went that long was in 1963.

Robert Orben on illegal immigration

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”

Samuel Butler

“Humans are the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victim he intends to eat.”

Sign of the times

Man to his pregnant wife, “Honey, it’s the ob-gyn. Do we want to know if it’s mine or not?”

Drunk Poet

Li Po, the most imaginative of the 8th century Chinese poets was a notorious lush. He was once called to the emperor’s palace when he was too drunk to walk and had to be carried in on a chair. The emperor ordered him to compose on the spot a poem to the emperor’s favorite concubine, the plump and devious Lady Yang. Li dashed off the following verses on the spot. They were set to music and sung by the emperor playing a jade lute.

To drown the ancient sorrows,
we drank a hundred jugs of wine
there in the beautiful night.
We couldn't go to bed with the moon so bright.

The finally the wine overcame us
and we lay down on the empty mountain–
the earth for a pillow,
and a blanket made of heaven.
Lovely now together, his lady and his flowers.
Lighten forever the Emperor’s eye.

Li T’ai Po
701-762AD

Not bad for a drunken man I think.

Gene Alston