Analogies and metaphors

On the blogging front, I have felt a bit uninspired of late. From now on, whenever I go through a long, sterile period such as this one, I think I will just plan on making a lengthy visit to Julie at Happy Catholic. I don't know where she finds some of this stuff, but Bloggerdom is immeasurably better off because she does.

Today she offers us this, which she picked up from another source. (Where that source acquired them remains unknown.) It is a series of analogies and metaphors drawn from actual papers written by college students. Some of them might be particularly useful in parodies of Mickey Spillane novels. I have informed Julie that thanks to her, I incurred a serious risk of being thrown out of the public library, where I nearly exploded with laughter over some of these as I checked out her site this morning. It was not unlike what happened to me one day in Italy, when I stopped at a Feltrinelli bookstore in Florence and began browsing around, as I am wont to do. I picked up a "Calvin & Hobbes" book, translated into Italian, and started reading it. Within moments, I dissolved into helpless laughter, and I'm sure I drew some stares, but I was too hysterical at the moment to care. Suffice it to say that the strip translates very well into Italian.

Apropos of which, to put it in a way that might be worthy of some of these efforts: I am irresistibly drawn to bookstores and libraries, just as a fly on a hot, muggy summer day might be drawn to a smelly, overflowing garbage can, or a dog dropping left on someone's lawn and either neglected or unnoticed by anyone.

Among these offerings, by the way, my favorite is the one that refers to the East River, but the most creative one may be the line that refers to "my brother-in-law Phil." I won't say more about them here, so as not to spoil the fun when you find them yourselves.