Life is a potato on the submarine of Mt. Everest.

Today my little brother was having trouble with his lit homework.  He was supposed to find 3 metaphors in Percy Byyshtfgjyst Shelley's poem, Ode to the West Wind, which anyone who has read the poem will know, is not actually written in English.

Being the exceptionally helpful big sister that I am, I decided to send him some examples of metaphors to whet his brain.  Unfortunately, metaphors are not, and never were, my strong point.  In fact, I'm quite dismal at them.  There was one time a friend of mine talked about how love was like leaves in the autumn, and every word that came out of his mouth was pure and tender poetry.  I envied his ability to think in metaphors.  For after that moment, I determined that MY love life was a ... um... a... an... well... um... it's a... *20 minutes later* ... well, a something that was really cool that I'd think of later when I was feeling more inspired.

But, today I was feeling slightly more inspired, so I sent Kamaron some of my metaphors.  He wrote me back and told me they were actually similes.  Whatever.  Just delete the word "like" and it becomes a metaphor so HA!

Now that I have been so inspired, I'd like to make a list of some of the more brilliant metaphors (and similes!) I have come up with throughout my life.

*Defining a romantic relationship is like farting: You know when you need to do it, you can sure feel it, and the longer you wait the more the pressure builds.  When you finally get everything out, it is SUCH a relief.

*Studying philosophy is leaning your head gently against a brick wall, then running full speed, dragging your face along.

*Perfect pickup-line metaphor: "Thou art like unto a patch of moss!  Soft to the touch and vibrantly colorful.  There never was such a pleasant plant to feel against the skin of my feet."  Yep.  That'll get her every time.

*Election years are like a broken-window convention for nine year olds.

*A simile is the valley girl of metaphors.

*Calculus is a pooping goose: over my head.

*My dating history is a blind narcissist in a house of mirrors.


*Looking for the meaning of metaphors is like trying to reach that booger at the back of your nose.  The deeper you dig, the more likely you are to make your face bleed.

What an epic night...

Every now and then I like to blog about my subconscious's latest escapades while I sleep.  This last one was too weird not to record somewhere.

So, last night I was wandering around the church building where I attended church from the ages 9-18... or 19.  Can't remember how old I was.  Anyway, it was night, and totally dark, and there were these "demons" running around that actually looked like the creatures from the movie Bridge to Terabithia, and were really gross.  I discovered that you could slay the demons by getting them wet or burning them, so I went looking for them to try to rid the world of them.

That part was quite creepy.  There was this woman with demons in her minivan, and she looked like she was purely enjoying having them around.

Then I ran into one of the guys I work with.  I told him, "Man!  What's with all these demons?"  And he was like, "I know, right?"  And we talked about it for a bit.  Then he walked away, stopped, turned around and said, "By the way..." and morphed into a demon right there.  I was like, "Ooooooh, shoot..."

Then I was upstairs on some balcony thing that doesn't exist in real life, and there were demons all over the place with Harry Potter wands.  I whipped out my own wand and tried to cast some spells!  Unfortunately, I could only remember like 2 of them, and they weren't working very well.  But, never fear!  My wand had a button on it that shot water!  So, I walked around shooting water on people who were actually demons.

I passed the guy I worked with again.  I said, "Sorry, Tyler," and blasted his face with water.  As he was shriveling up he said, "That's okay.  I deserve it."

And yes, I felt kinda bad for killing him.  And then all the demons started running away, and I noticed there were two that looked like Michael Jackson.

Then, everything was suddenly daytime!  This guy came in and chewed me out for killing the demons, because apparently when you kill them the way I'd been killing them, they reproduce... like Hydra... but not exactly like hydra because they only triple instead of septipling (yes, that's a word.  I just added it to my personal dictionary.  Eat that, Scrabble).  You can only defeat demons using karate.

We knew there was a war coming!  It was going to be bad!  But then the ninja turtles came running in, complete with slow motion and cheesy music, led by that rat thing that trains them.  Except, these were "ninja turtle baby" plush toys, and there were only three of them.  But that's okay.  Baby ninja turtles grow up into BIG ninja turtle plush toys.

And that was the end of my dream.

But wait!  That was only my FIRST dream!

The second dream was a little shorter.  You know how in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there's that black night that won't let anybody pass?  Well, in my dream, there was a bleach-blond beach bum guy who wouldn't let anybody pass this little shack on the road unless they fought and defeated him first.

Person after person got their butt kicked.  We all agreed he was a real jerk.  Finally, I stepped up to the challenge.

I stuffed him in one of those gallon and a quart ice cream buckets and started banging him against the windows, being sure to shatter the windows of his shack while I was at it.

With every bang, I yelled at him. 

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE - bang! - BLOCKING PEOPLE'S PATHS - bang! - LIKE THAT?  WHAT GIVE YOU - bang! - THE RIGHT TO BE SUCH - bang! - A  - bang! - JERK - bang! - TO EVERYBODY YOU MEET?"
etc. etc. etc.

As I was thwacking him against the windows, I had this random, mildly sexist thought that only a woman would chew him out while beating him up.

Then, I flung him out the window and into the tops of the trees.  The bucket fell down, followed by a shower of cuts of meat.

I realized I'd killed him.

Oops.

My little brother looked through one of the shack windows and said, "You'll be getting an invoice for that."

A fax machine in the corner beeped and printed out an invoice that said, "You have purchased one beach bum.  Would you like to return this product?"

You think?

And that was that dream.

It's not just my conscious self.  Even my subconscious is weird.