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Metaphors are better than butterflies on a pickup truck full of beets

People who use understandable metaphors

People who say things that make you think they’ve been huffing acetone all weekend

I love metaphors.  I love them like a fat kid loves cake (thanks, Fitty, for that one).  Metaphors are the food that nourishes the soul of conversation.  They’re as precious as diamonds but can fail worse than Clay Aiken’s heterosexuality.  They can wrap bad news in Charmin and make the most boring concepts leap to life.  Ok, you get it.  Metaphor central.

But something’s been bothering me lately.  I think the metaphor is too in-style.  People use them excessively, improperly, and in place of simple statements.  At best, people are taking about 100 words to say what could be said in 4 words (”It feels like a steaming lava sauna outside” vs. “It’s hot”), and at worst, it completely undermines an otherwise intelligent statement (”Using these colors on your web site is like eating leftover pizza with the tin foil still on.”).  If you’re a bad metaphor architect, I implore you to realize that just saying something isn’t a bad thing.  Just tell me it’s cold out, not that Chewbacca’s nipples could cut glass.  Tell me you’re busy, not that you’re being, “mortared from all directions”.  Tell me this is a summary, not a 10,000 foot view, a heads-up-display, a global view, a big picture, a wide-angle, a zoom-out, a landscape or anything else photographic.

In tracing the roots of this wave of metaphor popularity, our good friend, Dr. Phil, came to mind.  This guy has come up with some of the greatest televised verbal nonsense in history.

“Tryin’ to lose weight when you’re going through a divorce is like tryin’ to teach a duck to speak Spanish in a Canadian hospital.  I mean c’mon, people!”

I think that Dr. Phil really popularized the nonsense metaphor in the last 5 years, or so, and is responsible for a lot of people mis-wordsmithing their way through life.  I can’t say that this is always a bad thing, though, because the awkwardness that happens when someone realizes they just said a whole bunch of nonsense is just wonderful.  As I’ve said before, I have a real taste for watching people deal with the reality of their own awkwardness, so while I’d like people to start making more sense, it’s okay by me to watch the struggle every now and then.

Metaphors are a powerful and important tool today.  They’ve existed for thousands of years and have been the signature of every great thinker ever published.  Almost every great quote ever recorded is a metaphor, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon, although I do think that almost every stupid quote recorded these days is also a metaphor.  I guess, metaphorically, metaphors are a double-edged sword.

Well, I’ve got to wrap this one up like a Chinese girl’s foot.  I hope your day is better than a badger on a see saw.

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