MIXED BAG...

Beginning with another Clarke and Dawe from down under.  Much more from them on YouTube and all great. 

I never Metaphor I didn't like...

...is a lie, but can't resist the headline. And seems much has been said and written about our capacity for creative comparatives including one that couldn't resist the headline either...


... haven't read any of these--though I may peer into a few that offer free sample chapters online.

In  Buried on Avenue B, author Peter De Jonge sprinkles in quite a few good ones including one comparing a librarian placing books on the shelves to: "... a farmer unpicking fruit and returning it to the tree." 

Wandering through various online orchards, I picked a few that looked ripe

“The past is a pebble in my shoe.”― Edgar Allan Poe

“If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.”
― Dorothy Gambrell,
“Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a
red flag to a bull. ..  like putting something very annoying in front of
someone who was annoyed by it.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Who was it that said, “Men are but wheat, and the government is the bread”? Ah yes, that was my grandfather, who shouted that shortly before hurling a loaf of bread at President Hoover during the great depression.”
― Jarod Kintz
“Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.”
― Werner Heisenberg
“unless you're the lead dog the view never changes...
― Bob Mitchley
“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.”
― Wallace Stevens
“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
― Sigmund Freud

Where did expression: "That gets my goat!" originate? 

One theory:  from a formerly common practice in horse racing where the owners would stable their horses with goats to calm them down. Thus, to get someones goat would anger the horses and render them ineffective.
Another theory: 

“goat”  was word from prison slang meaning “anger.” 

And third theory: It originated with the word goad not goat. 

- to goad someone into doing something, to urge   into action or obedience.  the Bible provides very early references to a “goad” as something one could “get.”.  Jesus said to Paul “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”  

Jury is still out.

...and while on the subject, I neglected to include this  from Molly Ivins  in my recent post featuring many of her other gleeful "goat getters".  

"Then there’s Bush’s slightly alarming claim to the Amish on July 9 that God speaks through him. That’s what he said, God speaks through him. This raises some troubling prospects. First of all, I think God has a better grasp of subject-verb agreement than George W. Bush do."

Many a time I have boarded a crowded train (usually leaving the city) and encountered a  person sitting with bag(s) (often large) on seat next to them.  I say/gesture that I would like to sit in seat the bag is occupying and even offer to put the bag on overhead rack.  Person declines offer and  reluctantly takes the bag and puts it on lap to show me how uncomfortable and inconvenienced he/she now is.  Perhaps I should :

a.  Try harder to find a seat unoccupied 

by inanimate passengers.

b. Just stand like everyone else who neglected to board early enough to secure a seat for themselves and/or their possessions.

b.Offer to put the bag owner on overhead rack.