Martha shares a couple of choice similes: “dry as a contribution box” and “plump as a partridge.” This is part of a complete episode.
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The current cartoon at xkcd is inspired by the simile as neglected as the nine button on the microwave. Discussion in their forums reveals that I’m far from the only person to use settings like 0:99 to heat things up.
XKCD is one of my favorite cartoon sites.
One of my favorite similes is: Her grammar was as careless as, well, like, you know … whatever.
Ha! When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought of this one:
Heimhenge, even before reading Gödel, Escher, Bach I enjoyed self-referential humor like your grammar simile. Most people enthuse over the Austin Powers movies more than I, but even I laughed aloud at “He has a certain quality, a certain…I don’t know what.”
Yeah, I’ve always been a fan of self-referential humor. Read GEB back in the 80s, and I have to say it’s one of the top 10 books on my list. When I was teaching, I used to post the usual stuff on my bulletin board, but also had a series of self-referential cartoons that cracked me up, and often garnered puzzled looks from students. Here’s a few of them …
Have you already in your collection the 1999-03-04 Dilbert? If not, I think it belongs there. If you can’t find it on the internet somewhere, let’s find a way to swap email addresses and I’ll send you my copy.
Email address sent via PM. Check your forum Inbox.
You know, I’ve always wondered if the adolescent brain is just not prepared to see the humor in self-referential content. My students’ reactions to those cartoons were always like “Why is that funny? I don’t get it.” I’m sure the psychs have some opinions on this. I can honestly say that, though I was a dyed-in-the-wool nerd back in high school, I didn’t get self-reference till somewhere late in college. And I didn’t really understand it until I read GEB.