Saturday, September 29, 2007

what english teachers do with pieces of writing that are not necessarily good, but are too funny to keep to one's self

(Taken from The English Blog, Brian's Multiply and an email)

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. 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 won't 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.

(Note to self: Avoid the temptation to put similar metaphors in essays, especially the rushed ones. LOL)

posted by Ocnarf @ 7:28 PM   3 have spoken

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Sorry, Sorry

I was trying to teach the Multiply blog to crosspost with my Blogger blog, and shit happened. The Multiply emailed all the Blogger's posts out.


My bad.


Sorry for spamming your inboxes. I feel so very humbled tonight that it's scaring me.

posted by Ocnarf @ 5:23 PM   0 have spoken

The Suspension Bridge Effect + The Bungling Bridgebuilder's Meditations

(Note: Manga is read right-to-left.)
...

If man was indeed an island, and you were an island that was fortunate enough to have lots of hemp and wood, what would you build? Would you build a fence around you, to be caulked with satyr beard and serpent tears and with KEEP OFF! and NO TRESPASSING! written all over it? Or will you build a long bridge adorned with mermaid locks and narwhal horns to the mainland, so that you can make all the crossing people feel like falling in love with you? Yes, it will partly depend on how woody and how wooden you are as an island, for more wood is needed to connect yourself with the mainland than to encircle your diameter. In the end, though, it will all depend more on how you look at the time you spent on pondering these and all the many more questions life poses, as life cannot possibly be a poser: a straight path like a bridge, or closing back into itself like a fence.

posted by Ocnarf @ 4:41 PM   0 have spoken

Saturday, September 08, 2007

from the last weekend to the coming of this one

Remind me to never go to the international bookfair with only eight hundred bucks to spend, especially when the world is currently obsessed with graphic novels.

Funny, the people you see when taking the trains.

On the way home from the World Trade Center, the all-male car (since it's rush hour, and they're separating the women, most likely to avoid frotteurism the Japanese are notorious for, among other things) is quiet. Then, Pussycat Dolls music filtering from somebody's earphones. Not just any Pussycat Dolls music, mind you, but the And only one was wearing earphones at the time, and he had to be this big, dark guy that looked like a nightclub bouncer. In a train car that smelled of laborer's sweat and clattered on old tracks as if it would fall apart at any moment, the guy made my afternoon.

And that was just the first train.

The second train had this group of students playing around at being coño (many coños would easily notice the difference between playing at being coño and actually meaning it, and since I do not deny that I've been there, done that...), probably since everybody knows that playing coño will make everybody except the most coño of coños laugh. On the other hand, one can't put too many "What are you saying?"s, "You're right, you're right"s and "Oopsie"s within the duration of one train ride without sounding like you want somebody to punch you in the face, even if you are a girl. Posers, but they made my night. I confess, I really felt like punching something right after that ride, even if it wasn't somebody's face.

LOL.

At least I was able to get a brand-new copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Strange Pilgrims" for two hundred bucks. Marquez + Lovecraft (I didn't know he was shelved in the "Classics" section nowadays) made my day.

...

I'd like to believe that there are few things in the world cheesier than a two-hour bus ride of nothing but Mariah Carey (the cheesy Mariah Carey and not the hiphop-ish one nowadays, mind you) and Celine Dion (CELINE-FRIGGIN'-DION!) music videos. "I Still Believe" and "To Love You More" are just pure cheese. I could be wrong, though.

...


Speaking of cheese, for some reason nostalgia's taking over my taste in music. Think about it, though: which would you prefer waking up to in the morning, a cheesy and melodramatic Air Supply song or something by Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance that just jolts you out of bed?
I miss the nineties, when not only Michael but everybody learned to rock, instead of trying to be emo.
...

Theater season is coming. Note the eyebags that have grown as large, if not larger than the eyes of everybody involved in a theater production these days. As for patrons like me (or at least I'd like to believe), it's "621, 987 Taon ng Paglilimot" in Diliman this week, "As You Like It" in Diliman again next week, and "Rashomon" in UPLB next-next week. Time to go see some legs break.

...

I don't know. For some reason, the world's been too depressing for anybody's good lately. And I've only recently found out that intellectualization is actually a defence mechanism. I cry for my brain.

Demotivating.

posted by Ocnarf @ 4:13 PM   2 have spoken

Saturday, September 01, 2007

the inescapability of drama


(Oh yeah, for those not used to reading the way the Japanese do, the page reads right to left.)

Never thought I'd see the day when even the characters from the Naruto comics would resort to saying things this emo, even with Jiraiya (the guy with the big hairdo) smiling and all, thus proving the fact that going into that sentimental phase when one just starts spouting things that would have them get laughed at is really that hard to avoid.

Want proof? Just ask anyone in the Comm Arts batch 2005, with the recent mania of (the Globe users, at least) spamming group messages containing every "realization" (note: random insights that may or may not be useful and may or may not make any sense to the reader) they come across.

Yes, I know, these random insights will probably have no use and will probably make no sense to you, unless you know exactly what I'm talking about.

This is what happens when real life gets in the way so many times that your thoughts can't catch up. Think about it: would a person who just spent the whole day seeing things happen and making things happen have enough time and energy left at the end of the day to crystallize the day's worth of experiences, thoughts and insights into words?

That's the hard part with writing, methinks: when nothing's happening to you, you have enough time and energy in your hands to think of and consequently write about a lot of things, but when a lot of things are happening to you, chances are your time and energy are too little to waste on thinking and writing about things, therefore you think about nothing, which is kinda like not thinking about anything...

*apologizes for the disjointed junk he just wrote and goes to sleep, since he's really starting to think he just wrote a piece of random crap into this blog for the sake of making a post, and seriously hopes that he can come up with something better soon*

posted by Ocnarf @ 4:55 AM   3 have spoken