Worst analogies ever

Ok, so it's been a little while since I've posted. I'm trying, ok? Shamelessly copied and pasted from a funny email my mom sent me, highlighting the worst analogies from stories submitted  in creative writing classes (if they wanted credit, they should have attached an MLA citation. Jeez.)

Some of these are actually really clever, whether by mistake or otherwise. Enjoy:

• 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.

• They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

• 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.

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

• McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.

• 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 p.m. instead of 7:30.
• 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 center.

• Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.

• 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.

• Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

• 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.

• The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period 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.

• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

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

Nobel Prize fight

I hate Horace Engdahl. The nobel judge of literature from Sweden announced a week before the award was to be given that American writers are too ignorant to compete for writing's top prize, effectively dashing in advance any hopes U.S. authors had of winning this year's award. And after the top U.S. literary authorities were predictably insulted and fired back, Engdahl did the most loathsome - and typically European - thing possible - he said he was surprised by the "violent" reaction from America and he didn't see what the big deal was about.

They ended up giving it to French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who no doubt writes in a rigid, romantic style that suits Engdahl's narrow-minded definition of literature.

So our best move as Americans right now? Perhaps it's to point out that the U.S. has won more Nobel prizes in literature than Engdahl's native Sweden (8-6.5)? Or mention, as The New Yorker editor David Remnick did, the historic overlooking of Proust, Joyce and Nabokov for the prize, three huge gaffes in hindsight? Or maybe bring up the fact that by his own admission, one of the top Nobel judges is a bigot and allows his personal beliefs to affect his opinion of the literature he judges, severely damaging the credibility of the Nobel Prize for Literature?

What a butthole.

New theme

After taking inventory of things that I 1. care about, 2. know about and 3, see a need for, I've decided to steer the theme of this blog toward writing. 

I know what you're thinking: Another blog encouraging bad writers to write and get their bad writing published. Far from the truth. I am far more interested in turns of phrase, wit, diction, words, brevity, recognizing good writing and lambasting bad prose. Most messages on earth are communicated through words, and most of those messages need serious editing. Enter Jonathan. He's here to help.

If you want to review my credentials, check out my resume or writing samples. 

Jonathan: The Complete Works 2002-08

In response to several writing sample requests I have received over my most recent job hunt, I have linked to nearly everything I have ever written on the website. Still lacking are most of my press releases that never made it online, a few works from Hawks.com, freelanced stories from the Cary News and all of 2003 from the Chautauquan Daily. But if you still can't tell if you like my writing after reviewing all the posted articles, you probably can't read.