[xmca] Preparation for College

OK. So college teaching is not so great. This was forwarded by a colleague
who teaches at part of the
city university of new york, but the problem is pushed down to a prior
level, of course.

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.

> 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 otherlike 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.
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Received on Thu Apr 12 20:57 PDT 2007