It must be true… I read it in the tabloids
January 15th, 2007 by matt
The Week has a section entitled “It must be true… I read it in the tabloids”. It’s hilarious. Most of them have a ring of truth about them. Take this entry for example:
An American publisher has compiled a list of “the worst analogies ever written by pupils at US high schools”. They include:
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who has also never met.
The hailstones leapt from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. (Don’t see what’s wrong with this one –ed)
The most literal-minded entry reads:
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 6.35pm travelling at 55mph, the other from Topeka at 4.19pm at a speed of 35 mph”.
Too funny to be made up.
For some reason they remind me of the Douglas Adams line:
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.
On the subject of analogies my friend Hugo recites:-
“A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver”.
Those are actually entries to the Annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (in honor of the man who started a book with “It was a dark and stormy night.”). They’re written as parodies from the start. Still funny, though.
Here’s the website: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/