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 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.
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.Pick one of these similes/metaphors. Explain to me, in one paragraph, why it is so ridiculously funny. What is wrong with the writer's thinking? What is the fallacy? You don't have to give me the specific name, but tell me what is wrong with the logic.To help you think, feel free to watch this video below. It's pretty entertaining and displays how we can say different things with the same techniques.
#5 compares two things that you wouldn't normally want to be put together. By saying someone has a "genuine laugh" you are pointing out that you like their laugh. So, why would you want to say that it sounds like a dog vomiting? Rather than comparing the girl’s laugh to something cute the analogy compares the sound to something that is repulsive. Describing the laugh as "throaty" is already a weird word to say since you can tell that the writer likes the sound. The whole sentence is just oddly written.
ReplyDeleteNumber twenty five,
ReplyDeleteI think this is so funny because it says that when she talked he heard bells, but the bells were like a trash truck backing up, so I don't know if he actually thought her speaking was beautiful, or if he thought it was the opposite. Some people might take this the wrong way. The writer obviously has a sense of humor, but it might be different from other peoples sense of humors.
#24 Yes, this is totaly absurd! The idea that a family tradition of father chasing the kids around with a power tool makes one think of the movie, " Chain Saw Massacre." When we think of tradition, we think of families being together in harmony, like the traditional, Thanksgiving Dinner. If some-one took this simile at face-value, they would think that American traditions are based on violence. Although, (after giving pause), watching the news these days, how far away from the truth is this?
ReplyDelete#15. I think this metaphor is so funny becasue the writer is comparing someones teeth to a picket fence which is normally considered long and having gaps between them. That's what I think of when I think of a picket fence. It seems like the writer is trying to explain how beautiful the fences are but when you compare that to a set of teeth I don't think a reader will see the beauty in the fence they see them to long and gaps between them. The writer was trying to compare a beautiful thing to another beautiful thing, but picket fences and teeth don't make a beautiful comparison together.
ReplyDeleteNumber twenty-one is an example of repetition. The first part states that the fighter looked “hungry,” while the second part simply restated the same thing by saying that he looked as though he had not eaten in a while. It is illogical because having a “hungry look” implies that the look can be associated with not eating. This re-use of the same idea becomes very funny to the reader and appears illogical.- McKayla Dafoe
ReplyDeleteNumber 23 compares a ballerina with a dog. If I did ballet, I wouldn't want to be said I look like a dog at a fire hydrant because they are professional dancers and are trained at what they do. It is funny though because when you think of ballerina's you usually think of gracefulness and poise, but dogs aren't poised when they are urinating on fire hydrants. Ballerina's are normally compared to swans or something graceful and beautiful, which makes it even funnier to be described as a dog raising its leg. If I had to guess, I would say the writer doesn't like ballet if that is the way they describe the dancers.
ReplyDelete21.)
ReplyDeleteI think this similie is funny because its putting together two oppisite things. Many fathers spank their children when they lie or do something bad. It makes it funny also because they are saying its a tradition only because lots of fathers in the U.S do it. The writters similie makes it sound like its an good tradition to spank or even scare your kids but its not ok. The logic is messed up making the reader think its a normal thing that American dads do to their kids and theres no punishment for it.
23 is very funny because when you think of a ballerina, you think of someone who is graceful. You think of ballets that are put on that make the most out of dance. But comparing it to a dog lifting its leg to pee, it totally changes the image you get when you hear about the ballerina. It makes her seem more ungraceful since you are referring her to an animal that you don't think of in an elegant way. If you were to change the dog to a flamingo or another more elegant animal, than you would have gotten a different vibe.
ReplyDelete23. “The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.” I choose this simile because it is contradictory. A ballerina being graceful is something appealing to look at. A dog peeing on a fire hydrant is not. The ballerina cannot rise gracefully like a peeing dog it just doesn’t work. The writer needs to think of two like things to be compared instead of complete opposites.
ReplyDelete#24
ReplyDeleteI think that it was also really funny because there is no American tradition where parents chase around there kids with power tools. I am pretty sure that if a parent is chasing around there kids with power tools it's called child abuse and child abuse is not an American tradition. This just does not make sense because it is almost to stupid to insult. And it is so random that it catches the reader off guard. this is why that saying is so wierd.
Number 16.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of a simile or a metaphor is to further describe a situation in a more appealing way, as well as further engage the reader’s intellect. I find that number sixteen is comical because the author’s simile backtracks instead of making the situation more understandable. The author compares two similar situations, instead to two unalike situations. All in all, the author’s attempt to make a connection actually just confused the reader even more.
1. I find this metaphor funny because the writer is comparing two totally different things that make it confusing to the reader. When you read the comparison you are left wondering if the girl they are talking about has a pretty face or not. The writer starts by saying that the girl’s “face was a perfect oval” which leads the reader to think that she is beautiful. Then the writer goes on to compare it to a circle that is “compressed by a Thigh Master,” this gives the reader the vision that she has a smashed face. I think that if the writer really did find her face pretty then they could have found something better to compare it to.
ReplyDeleteI find number 3 extremely humorous because of how drawn out the sentence gets. The author repeats the exact same phrase twice to explain their simile, but that adds to the humor. The sentence uses such an odd thing to express “wisdom that can only come from experience.” This is slightly illogical because when one thinks of someone who might have gone blind from looking at a solar eclipse they don’t automatically think of wisdom. However, thinking about someone going blind because they didn’t use “one of those boxes with a pinhole in it” almost takes away from the illogicality of using this in comparison with wisdom and experience because it’s so atypical.
ReplyDelete#20. This simile is funny because the writer is saying that the brother-in-law is simple. When in reality in-laws are never simple, the name itself is complicated. Plans are never simple either because there are always complications to every plan. The writer bluntly says that Phil does not work, that he has will not be successful. The writer says that the plan is going to work, which doesn't make a lot of sense because the plan is compared to an unsuccessful in-law.
ReplyDelete#17. I think this kid lives in a sketchy neighborhood in some big city. I can't imagine why someone would compare a man falling in love to a dead man being thrown into a river. It contradicts itself in a wierd sort of way. He brings dead into a seemingly loving simile.
ReplyDeleteI choose to write about sentence 16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
ReplyDeleteThese sentences don’t really run smoothly together. The hummingbirds were just put in there for no reason, and the simile is horrible. The person compared John and Mary to two hummingbirds, but what doesn’t make sense is that the hummingbirds are just randomly placed in the sentence. Also they basically just repeated themselves with how they never meet; this person does not know how to write a simile. This is so funny because of the simile, the only reason John and Mary are similar to the hummingbirds are because they both have never meet. The simile is just ridiculous, and it doesn’t make sense.
#5. Its funny because when you think of the sound a dog makes when hes throwing up its like a yakking noise. Who would be able to hear a girl do that, and not be tempted to laugh in her face. Sounding like shes chocking every time you tell a joke. This metaphor is very easy to get because everyone knows what it sounds like when a dog is coughing or trying to throw something up. When you think of it happening constantly and not just once, it make its hilarious. - dominic williams
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