Skii's Junk: Rants

The Best of Bad Writing

It impresses me how utterly ridiculous people can be when writing. Some days it feels like I'm the only human being on earth with a brain...

What totally either makes me shake my head, or laugh my rear off is when people cross the line between poetic and colorful description to trying too hard.

Don't believe me? Look at these beauties:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other 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. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

4. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

5. McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

6. Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

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

8. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

9. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

10. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

11. 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.

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

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

14. 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.

15. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.


16. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

17. The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!"

18. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

19. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

20. 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.

21. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."

22. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

23. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

24. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

25. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

26. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

27. She was as easy as the "TV Guide" crossword.


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

29. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

30. Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first- generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

31. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

These are no doubt, the worst metaphors I have ever seen.

Sorry this isn't really much of a rant, more of like a display of human stupidity but, all the same, I hope you got a smile or two out of it.