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When Similes Go Bad .....

Constable Lightspeed came across a rotting corpse that resembles one of those zombies from Michael Jackson's Thriller, except that it was lying down and not performing the electric slide' .

This issue's look at humour isn't going to give you wit or one-liners you can drop into a speech. Instead, it takes a humorous look at the use of simile and analogy, and gives some hilarious examples of what happens when people don't quite 'get' how to use them.

Just to refresh your memory, a simile compares two things in order to develop a line of reasoning, and usually uses the words 'like' or 'as', e.g. 'My love is like a red, red rose' (Robbie Burns) or ' tough as leather' , or 'he eats like a pig'.

An analogy does the same thing, but tends to be longer and explains a thought process, e.g. 'Knowledge is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself " (Samuel Johnson).

Now that the English lesson is over, let's look at some more hilarious examples of ' When similes go bad:'

• 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.

• For the entire weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their faeces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, only with access to an espresso machine.

• Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

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

• Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

• She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail

• Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre

• The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

• John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had never met.

• 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

• 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

• The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes

• The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

• "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night.

• 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.

• It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

• She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.

• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

• He was as tall as a six foot three man.

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