Having read too many student papers over the year, I find this list of student metaphors from Funny Emails exquisite -- because like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

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

* His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

* The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldnÂ’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

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

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

* 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.

* The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.

* 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.

* Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

* The plan was simple, like my mate Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

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

* 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 wifeÂ’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.

Some day I'll have to tell you folks about some of my most memorable papers -- the ones that, years later, I still remember and talk about because of the insights they gave me into students (or myself).

Posted by: Greg at 01:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Seems like an exercise in futility to me.

Posted by: Greg at 07:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I would have figured it was ALL of the French.

Lance Armstrong renewed his verbal attack on the French, bashing their World Cup team during an American awards show and using a derogatory word to describe the players.

"All their players (France) tested positive ... for being a** holes," the seven-time Tour de France winner Armstrong was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Daily News on Friday.

The French World Cup team immediately offered their unconditional surrender to Armstrong.

Posted by: Greg at 11:59 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Even better than the Helen Thomas joke.

A big tip of the hat to BobG at Sweet Spirits of Ammonia.

Posted by: Greg at 07:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Rusty has posted what Keller and Baquet really wanted to say in the joint Treason Times East/Treason Times West piece that they published justifying the exposure of vital national security information to our nation's enemies.

Here's a taste.

How do we, as editors, reconcile the obligation to inform with the instinct to protect?

Sometimes the judgments are easy. Our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, take great care not to divulge operational intelligence in their news reports. Especially the ones that are working with insurgents, like Bilal Hussein. No way we'd ever reveal his contacts or al Qaeda's secrets!

Often the judgments are painfully hard. Just kidding. It's pretty easy. If we believe the secrets we reveal will hurt Bushitler and co., then we reveal them. If they will help, we don't. In case of a tie--one thinking it will help Bush, the other thinking it will hurt--we do rock paper scissors.

Believe me -- this essential reading, well-worth your time.

And I don't doubt that the next DDOS directed at that essential-read blog will come from the jihadis-sympathizers at the New York Times or LA Times, instead of Turkish Islamofascists. After all, they are all on the same team.

Posted by: Greg at 01:40 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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