TigerHawk

TigerHawk (ti*ger*hawk): n. 1. The title of this blog and the nom de plume of its founding blogger; 2. A deep bow to the Princeton Tigers and the Iowa Hawkeyes; 3. The nickname for Iowa's Hawkeye logo. Posts include thoughts of the day on international affairs, politics, things that strike us as hilarious and personal observations. The opinions we express are our own, and not those of each other, our employers, our relatives, our dead ancestors, or unrelated people of similar ethnicity.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Fun with similes: "All over it like..."

By TigerHawk at 5/19/2004 07:35:00 PM

"...the Bush twins on a six pack."

I heard that a few years ago -- September 10, 2001, to be precise -- at a Mailboxes, Etc. in Austin. My mother-in-law had died suddenly in June, and Mrs. TigerHawk and I were out there cleaning up her house and getting it ready for an estate sale (yes, we were stranded the next morning and had to drive home, but that is another story).

In any case, my wife charged me with shipping home various cherished items, so I took them to Mailboxes and neurotically hectored the very polite clerk about the packaging and the timing of the shipment (it took longer than predicted, not surprisingly). At some point, having repeated myself, the poor fellow looked up and drawled: "All over it like the Bush twins on a six pack."

If generalizations about entire states are permitted -- and they most certainly are within the friendly confines of TigerHawk -- then it should be said that Texans do great things with metaphors. Is there any other place in the United States where one hears such things routinely from shopkeepers?

I have long used a couple of similar similes, which I learned from one of my law school roommates: "All over it like ugly on an ape," which one must never use in front of ugly people, and "All over it like white on rice."

I have found that "Bush twins," "ugly" and "white on rice" get me through the day, but my colleagues are burning out on them so I thought to Google up some new material. Here we go, in no particular order:

"All over it like the hair on my back."

"All over it like flies on a big, steaming, turd loaf."

"All over it like a cat on a mouse."

"All over it like a fat kid on a cake."

"All over it like a chimp on the jack-knifed big rig spilling bananas all over the freeway."

"All over it like a rash."

"All over it like Trent Lott on a plate o' grits."

"All over it like the UN on an anti-Isreal resolution."

"All over it like flies on pieces of a Hamas bomber."

"All over it like alligator shoes in a Gold Coast trattoria."

"All over it like Jaws on a group of swimming kindergartners."

"All over it like the NYPD on a bomb threat."

"All over it like flies on an egg salad."

"All over it like a hobo on a ham sandwich."

"All over it like it's the last drop of beer on earth."

"All over it like snakes on eggs."

"All over it like a politician with an area code exemption." ?

"All over it like a cheap suit."

"All over it like hair on the floor of a barber shop."

"All over it like a cheap hooker"

"All over it like honey on a hot biscuit."

? = I don't get it.