Conference thebay::joyoflex

and flexibility is one of the cornerstones of program budgeting!

a virgin forest is a place where the hand of man has never set foot.

oh yeah, and it's amusing that the knee is the skiers' "Achille's Heel".
I guess that makes the Achilles Tendon the "Achilles' Heel" of jumpers!

My most recent favorite is "She blew the rug out from under his sails."

Jack Wickwire

I have a friend who is fond of saying, "You've buttered your bread, 
now sleep in it."

Dave C.

From Sally Bulford's, "How to Write Good"

"Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed".

A few favorites of mine:

It's too late to read the handwriting on the wall when your back is to it!

Other people read the handwriting on the wall but figure that they're reading
someone else's mail.

People who live in glass houses can't very well avoid answering the doorbell.

If you can't keep your shirt on you may be missing a few buttons.

    A colleague once said to me, after I had received a new assignment:
    "Well, the monkey is in your court now."
    
    I recently heard a businessman on the radio speak of the need for
    fast action by saying: "We have to take this thing by the horns
    and run with it."
    
    Bernie

    A recent memo of clarification was issued by a colleague in which
    he indicated he was writing to make known "...who was driving this
    piece of the pie."

"Grab this bull by the tail and face the problem."

Stephen

"The hand of the Lord stepped in."

-- Sam

    Take your heart in your hands, and look it in the face.
    
    Written, or at least reported by, Dorothy L. Sayers

    by Earl Temple (woefully, this series is now out of print)
    
    Angrily he tore his eyes from her face, and they fell on the letter
    at her feet.
    
    I'll be out this way shortly, shaking hands with old familiar faces.
    
    He looked decidedly uncomfortable, with one foot on the hearth and
    the other on the fireplace mantle.

    The arresting officer said the man was drunk.  The magistrate nodded
    and said he was, too.

    I am surprised no one has mentioned Archie Bunker who is responsible
    for such lines as ....
    
    You can lead a gift horse to water, but don't look him in the mouth.
                          
    
    

    My father frequently would say,
    
    "You can lead a horse to drink, but you can't make him water!"
    

    How about:  A fool and his money are a girl's best friend.

    
    I don't think this is quite a mixed metaphor but:
    
    	Where there's a will there's relatives.
    
    
    Chris.

    Jack Frost roasting on an open fire,
    Chestnuts nipping at your nose...


    Arrest those dirty gentlemen,
    For what they did display!


    God Rest Ye Merry Merchants,
    May Ye Make the Yuletide Pay!  (Tom Lehrer)

    "We have to stop shearing the wool from the lamb that lays
    the golden eggs or we're going to pump it dry."

    		-- From last year's Senate debate on tax reform

    I recently described an overambitious co-worker as having
    "one foot in each pie."
    
    
Lew Lasher

    
    There once was a column in the old _Assabet Valley Beacon_ many
    years ago whose author had an unusual writing style that bordered
    on mixed metaphors.
    
    My favorite was a certain item of political sensitivity being described
    thus: "...long a smoldering potato."
    
    I may start a new note.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    From a high school teacher I had:
    
    "It had all the earmarks of an eyesore."

    Heard this past weekend on a national ABC radio broadcast; someone
    associated with the New York theater was describing an idea:
    
    "It dawned on me like a bolt from the blue."
    
    Bernie

    Not exactly a mixed metaphor, but...
    
    An entrepeneur in the early 19th century did lots of public lectures
    (today we would call them "press releases") on his idea to light
    the streets of Europe with gas lamps.  "The idea", he said, "came
    to him like an electric spark."

    Suffering from drain bamage
    
    
    Ken

    "Suffering from drain bamage" isn't a mixed metaphor; it's a
    spoonerism.
    
    Bernie

    Senator John Warner (R, Virginia), on October 8, 1987, speaking
    about invoking the War Powers Act for what is occurring in the Persian
    Gulf, said that if we do invoke the act, we will "go into a Byzantine
    thicket of quicksand." 

    Thanks! I heard that on the radio but couldn't remember it exactly!

    
From the New Yorker's "Block that Metaphor" marginalia:
    
    (From the Los Angeles Times) To talk with Greenspan is to realize
    that he carries in his stomach a rumbling fear of recession, a visceral
    understanding that an economic slump would rip the already shredded
    band-aids from the world economy.
    
    (from the Wilmington Del Morning News) "If you have a Nuclear Safety
    Board, you would be able to, with a fine-tooth comb, spend a lot
    of time breathing down the neck of and over the shoulders of those
    who in fact make the plant function", Biden said.

Again, from the New Yorker's "Block that Metaphor" marginalia:

    [From the Portland (Maine) Press Herald] The alternative, Gunther argued 
    is the prospect of rampant civil disobediance spawning a leviathan
    of anarchy, a snake in the grass that would gnaw at the foundation
    of the ship of state.

From the New Yorker's "Block that Metaphor" marginalia:

    [From the Journal of the American Society for Information Science]
    
    The piccolo accompaniment to the rolling thunder of these reports
    was provided by the perennial squabble about which office should
    have resonsibility for the hypothetical nascent national science
    information system, with the Executive Office of the President on
    one side of the net and the National Science Foundation on the other.
    When the ball finally died in NSF's court, the question became where
    in NSF to put (or bury) it.

    Does anyone remember the week or so when Berke Breathed was showing
    Opus as an extreme mixer of metaphors, in his strip Bloom County?
    
    The set ended with Opus saying, "Well, it just goes to show, you
    can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make
    a silk purse out of a pig in a poke!" 

                                                              -John.

    I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

     Up here in Massachusetts, it's
     
          I'll drive off that bridge when I come to it.
     
     Dan

    There are just too many bridges to cross on the eternal voyage of
    life!
    

    Don't cross bridges in mid-stream.

    
    And, don't play bridge in mid-stream. 

    And the ever-popular, don't count your bridges before they've hatched
    behind you.

    "A bridge in time says nine."

    A sitting hen gathers no moss.
    
    That's water over the bridge.  [My sister uses that one all the
                                    time.]
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Wate'r over the bridge is good for the gander
    

    My favorites are:
    
    "That's the way the cookie bounces."
    
    AND
    
    "That's the way the ball crumbles."
    
    Dave

     "That's the way the Mercendes bends."
     
     Dan

    G'day,
    
    Its a wise child that  spills its own milk!
    
    Look before you spoil the broth?
    
    djw
    

    My mother-in-law's favorite...
    
    "We've passed a lot of water since then"
    
    Bonnie

    You can lead a horse to drink, but you can't make him water.

    A fool and his money are soon married.
    

    
    'Tis better to have loved and lost --
    
    MUCH better!

    A watched pot gathers no moss.
    
    A rolling stone is worth two in the bush.  (This is not a political
                                                  message.)
    
    A bird in the hand can be icky.
                                                           
    Fools rush in.
    
    

    People who live in glass houses shouldn't.
    
    A bird in the hand can sometimes be embarrassing.  [Chicken-ranch
                                                         saying]
    
    Absence makes the heart grow longer.
    
    What's sauce for the goose is water under the bridge.
    
    The game's not over 'til the fat lady swings.
    
    Steve Kallis, jr.

    A fool and his money are a girl's best friend.

    There's more than one way to skin a dead horse.

    Yeah, have it go to a DEC meeting.

    A bird in the hand ain't worth nut'n when you'v gotta blow your
    nose.
    
    We can kill two stones with one bird.
    

    
             You can drag a horse to water
    
                 but a pencil must be lead
    
    
                (V. early Eric Morecombe)
    

    It was a grievous error, and now, having buttered my bread, 
    I must lie in it.
    
    

    			and face down, too.

    'cos it was buttered on both sides
    

    There's mor'n one way to skin a cat, but they tend to get riled
    after the third or fourth time.
    		-- Junior Samples ( on Hee-Haw )
    
    P.S. I really go for quality educational televised entertainment.

    
    You can pick your friends -
    You can pick your nose -
    But you can't pick your friend's nose.
    
    From my 12-year old son (sorry)

    You can pick your friends -
    You can pick your nose -
    But you can't wipe your friends off on the saddle.
    
    From Kinky Friedman

    And, when asked for a universal truth, Lenny Bruce replied: 
    
    	You can't get snot off a suede jacket.
    
    

    "Fish is Fish"
    
    Quote from my 4 year old girl

       
       
       One that I over heard this weekend 
       
       		"A bird in the hand is worth more than a Quale and a Bush"
       
       
       				-Jay

    You can lead a horse to water, but if you can make him float on his
    back, you've really got something.

    One of my co-workers, fretting over whether Digital would fully
    reimburse him for the trip he was planning, wondered this morning
    whether he was getting "the raw end of the stick."
    
Lew Lasher

    Keep your shoulder to the wheel ...
    
    your nose to the grindstone  ...
    
    your ear to the ground ...
    
    your eye on the sparrow ...
    
    Now try to get some work done!
    
    Bruce
    

    
    I was recently informed that "it doesn't really matter what time
    you arrive at and depart from the office , as long as we get our
    pound of blood" .
    
    John J

    From 'the Golden Girls'
    
    
    
    better late than pregnant....
    
    djw
    

    	From the latest Nice Matin - "Drogue : un r�seau �touff� dans
    l'�uf"
    
    	Roughly translated, "Drugs : a network stifled in the egg".
    

    From an article in today's Boston Globe about liquor smuggling from
    Vermont to Quebec:

	I think we're just scratching the tip of the iceberg.

    I once heard someone say in a fit of anger directed at someone:
    
    "If I had a gun, I'd cut his head off"

	Dave Barry, in his column in the Boston Globe for Sunday, Feb
    12:
    
    
        "No, we made our bed, and we can't rob Peter to
    pay the piper after the horse has escaped with the barn door."
    
    -- Glinch
    
    

To spread two turds with one bone.


(Throwing rocks at the gulls, so as to) leave no tern unstoned.

(And while we're at the beach, sun yourselves naked, face down, so as
to) leave no stern untoned.

Dave C.

	Referring to a situation at her office, my wife said that she 
	couldn't work "with that dead albatross hanging over my head."

Stephen

    I just heard this one:
    
    	Happy as a lamb at high tide.

    One I heard last night (from Ken Livingstone):
    
    "These people are counting their chickens long before they come
    home to roost".
    
    b

    One between an interviewer and her victim. These mixed metaphors
    involving several people in one conversation are so hard to avoid 
    that maybe it's not fair to pick on them. But this one really 
    grabbed my attention (on the "Today" programme, this morning):
    
    		`So why did you put your head over the parapet?'
    
    		`Just to test the water.'
    
    b

    This is an extract from today's VNS. I'm not sure what's going on here,
    but it sounds painful.
    
    "
    Digital - Analysts' comments on quarterly results. Rumors of new machines.
	{The Boston Globe, 21-Apr-89, p. 25}
    .
    .
    .
     expected. But he said there appeared to be "a deluge of personal computers
     eating into the VAX customer base," slowing demand for Digital's flagship
    .
    .
    .
    "   

Mr. Barry, writing about the 1929 stockmarket crash:
"...on that fateful day, the
nation's seemingly prosperous economy was revealed to be
merely a paper tiger with feet of clay living in a straw house
of cards that had cried "wolf" once too often.  

John....
PS: buy that book!

    Is this a mixed metaphor?  It sounds like one, I'm not familiar with
    either phrase.  It's from an much-forwarded anonymous mail message:

	"I think it's time to break the curve and start working the other
	side of the equation in parallel."

    Surely someone in England has seen 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald
    Perrin'?  Reginald's boss had a wonderful line in mixed metaphors,
    including my favourite:
    
    'It's never too late for a leopard to change its spots in midstream'                                                    

    "Out on a limb without a paddle."

    "He's gone over the deep end."
    
    						Ann B.

        Yes, our elected leaders are "feeling the heat," but is this
    really fair?  Should the public tar all of the apples in the
    political barrel with the same broad brush just because a few
    rotten eggs are crying over spilt milk?  

    A quote from a victorious Congressional candidate (I forget which):
    
    "We're going to take the future by the horns and wrestle it to the
    mat."
    
    					Val

> "We're going to take the future by the horns and wrestle it to the mat."
    
    I thought the future already has been wrestled to the mat.

  That's reminiscent of the W.C. Fields line:

    "It is time to take the bull by the tail and face the situation."

  JP

    And from Dave Barry's 1991 presidential platform:
    
     If you're not going to grab the bull by the horns while the iron is in
     the fire, then get off the pot!
    

    
    I've got a beef to pick with you.

After Boston Magazine gave Boston Herald columnist Leonard Greene one of
its "worst" awards, The Herald revoked a longstanding policy which allowed
magazine staffers to use its library.  "I don't see any reason to feed the
hand that bites us," says Kevin Convey, a Herald executive city editor.

    	In the spirit of .0, and also from Digital upper management, you
    should know that Digital is currently flying in a tough sea.

    A "straw horse"
    
    which I suppose is led to water by a "stalking man."

    "Water under the dam"
    
    which is as ominous as "water over the bridge."

    "a lot of water has been passed under this bridge"

	Many years ago, my sister came in from a long day of waitressing
	at a busy restaurant.  I asked her if she'd had a rough day, and
	she said, "Yeah, it was busy as a doornail."

	I said, "Well, at least it wasn't dead as a bee."


	One of my other favorites is "Wake up and smell the roses."

	Di

    This isn't really a metaphor, but there's a radio commercial that's
    been on lately where the announcer says "When I went back to school
    all you needed was a pencil box, a couple of pencils, and one of
    those tiny but ineffective pencil sharpeners."
    
    Given that commercials tend to be ironic anyway, I'm not sure whether
    this is on purpose or not; clearly it really should be "tiny but
    (nevertheless) effective"...
    
    Doug.

    ... it's pathetic phallacy.
    
    ... NOT!
    
    :-)
    

    >"tiny but ineffective pencil sharpeners."
    >clearly it really should be "tiny but (nevertheless) effective"...
    
    I sure couldn't write clearly after using one of those.  I'd have to
    say "tiny AND ineffective pencil sharpeners."

re .99

>    ... it's pathetic phallacy.

Fallacy.  At least it wasn't ph....no, I better not write that.

Dave C.
(with apology to Tom Lehrer)

    ... it was a pun, intentional, from the word "go," and I claim as proof
    the reference to Freud in the title, and the :-) in the text...
    
    So, nyaah.  And furthermore :-) for good measure!
    
    Dan_who_doesn't_make_ph/f_typos_unintentionally_ever_(well_hardly_ever:-)
    

re .102 (my own)

I've been informed that 'phallacy' is a legitimate spelling.  So sorry,
everyone.

Dave C.