Speaking of tortured comparisons did anyone notice this from today's NYT article "Slump Moves From Wall St. to Main St.":
"To be sure, there are many places where talk of recession still seems as out of place as a diner trying to score a table at a trendy Los Angeles restaurant without reservations on a Saturday night."
I think there should be a law about the ratio of syllables in the two terms of a simile, with increasingly severe punishments for ratios less than 1:2.
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Agreed,
But, due to my sinister nature, I often long to see these fussy, journalist-wielded similes careen totally out of control, like a heroin addicted Grizzly bear put behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car whose wheels haven't been securely torqued (See how easy it is?).
Let's re-imagine that NYT article's opening sentence:
To be sure, there are many places where talk of recession still seems as out of place as sure footing on the melting polar ice caps which are rapidly turning to mere frigid water as the Earth's average temperature climbs due to increased levels of atmospheric C02 (a process known as anthropogenic warming) and, where was I?
or
To be sure, there are many places where talk of recession still seems as out of place as a clown at a goth convention: because, see, he's really colorful and theoretically cheerful while everyone else is dressed in black (or, maybe Grey) and sad.
or
To be sure, there are many places where talk of recession still seems as out of place as a surfer on the methane seas of Titan, Saturn's planet-sized moon. Titan is a strange world; so is talk of recession...in some places.
.d.