Simile

...or simiLIE

Without my mother in-law helping around the house the first week of our daughter being born I would probably look like Christian Bale in the Machinist. She cooked exorbitant meals, helped us with laundry and cleaning, and made sure my wife was taking her “Moltrin” every six hours. The amount of Brooklynese sayings I was privy to helped cut the natural tension that arises when bringing a new family member home. But there was one thing my mother in-law did around the house that I usually don’t – watch the news.

I don’t watch the news for obvious reasons. If I want to be lied to I’ll just ask my two-year-old if she shit in her diaper.

“Hunny, did you go poopie in your dipey?” I’ll ask.

“No daddy,” she says with supreme confidence.

“Okay, let me look.”

“No.” she says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Cause. No poopie.”

When I finally get to the back of her like a jiujitsu master and pry open her pull up…you guessed it, shit! I imagine this would be the same merry-go-round if I asked CNN or FOX to confirm their conspicuously biased sources.

When I walked downstairs one morning to the news being on the television I had the urge to shut it off. Instead, I was immediately engrossed in the stories of the day. My mother in-law had accidentally (she has no idea how to work Youtube TV) selected a new option that rotates between local and national news channels, right-leaning, left-leaning, each talking about the same topics but with each channel’s spin. I was pleasantly surprised to know that this option existed, that maybe some people still wanted to hear both sides of a story and weren’t entrenched in the opinion of a specific channel. But this post really has nothing to do with the “mainstream media” or how our society feels like it’s getting pulled to each extreme every day because of biased news outlets. What this one is about is a specific anchor and a specific sentence that I cannot get out of my head.

The topic of conversation was the terrorist attack in Russia. There was a split screen with two talking heads. The head on the left was the interviewer and the head on the right was the interviewee. The question was straight forward – who perpetrated the terrorist attacks in Russia? The answer started simple – a terrorist faction called Isis-K was responsible. The talking head on the left asked who is Isis-K? The head on the right said something so outlandish coffee fell out of my open mouth.

“Let me put it in terms you might understand. With March Madness currently going on, Isis-K is like a number one seed of terrorist organizations.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Comparing terrorist organizations to college basketball tournament seeding is laugh out loud funny. If the mainstream media is pulling out similes like this then I might tune in more often. Whoever had UConn, Purdue, Alabama, and Isis-K in their Final Four is quite the handicapper.

There are plenty of times where the use of a good simile can really hammer a point home. This wasn’t one of them. Which got me thinking about one particular simile, and then a host of others that I can’t get behind. The one that’s hitting home right now is…

1. Sleep like a baby

Whoever made this one up had no kids, I can assure you of that. If by “sleep like a baby” you mean yelling and screaming mixed with a couple hour “nap” then sure, in that two-hour window, babies sleep peacefully. Otherwise, they are eating, shitting, and yelling at you in ear piercing wails of which you cannot distinguish what it is the baby wants. This saying was probably made up by the friend who didn’t have kids and thinks raising one is like taking care of a dog. Unfortunately, you cannot simply lock the kid in a cage and continue living your life like you did before kids.

The main problem I have with “sleep like a baby” is that no adult has ever achieved this ridiculous saying. What “sleep like a baby” really means is that you slept without a single worry or care. This is an impossibility as an adult. If you aren’t racked with nightmares about the horrors of the world or don’t wake up in a cold sweat thinking you forgot to turn the stove off, then you are not really an adult. Adult actually comes from the Latin word for worry (I assume). Being an adult is just a constant fucking panic attack of things you didn’t do, should have done, forgot to do, or want to do but won’t get to do.

If you want to say you slept well (relatively, you are an adult after all) then go with – I was out like a light or slept like a rock. Because if you have babies you will never sleep like one again.

2. Sick as a dog

I have a six-year-old Australian Sheppard. I drove all the way to Atlanta Georgia to pick him up because I didn’t want him to feel the fear of flying on an airplane to New Jersey. I also didn’t want him to acquire any illnesses like kennel cough while riding in the cargo compartment of a United flight. But over the last six years the worry I once had for my dog has waned. Not because I love him less (or because I now have kids) but because I’ve never seen him sick or worried. He’s a fucking dog.

What happens when a dog vomits? They vomit and move along with their day. What happens when a dog twists an ankle? They limp for about five seconds and then move along with their day. What happens when a dog gets a stick stuck in their mouth? They violently panic and drool, but once the stick is removed, they…you guessed it…move along with their day!

This is the opposite of what happens to me when I get sick. I’ve never gotten sick and just gone on living my life. Absolutely not. The first thing I do when I’m sick is let everyone know how sick I am. I make it known to every family member that I may die at any second. I accept visitation at my bedside as if I were about to take my last breath. I’ve asked for a priest on multiple occasions to read me my last rights. The common cold for me is equal to stage four cancer. I have a little bell that I ring whenever I need something (just kidding, I’m never sick enough to forget how to work a cell phone) and I moan in bed all day to make sure no one forgets just how sick I really am. What I’m trying to say is that I’m a pussy when it comes to being sick, my dog is not.

The saying “I’m in the doghouse” makes sense. I’ve been there a few times. When the wife is mad at you because you peed in the house she makes you feel like the only place you are fit to sleep is outside. She is correct. “Hair of the dog” makes sense too. In the olden days when someone was bitten by a rabid dog they thought that taking the hair of said dog and rubbing it in the wound would cure it. So just like having a drink in the morning after a rabid night out, this is a useless remedy. But I’ve never been “sick as a dog”.

3. Israel is like Nazi Germany

You didn’t think I was done touching the touchiest subject of all time did you? C’mon. The amount of material that keeps popping up on this particular subject is just too easy. Look at this tweet for example:

For any of you grammar Nazi’s out there (see what I did?), I know this isn’t a simile. It’s even worse. It’s an equation. Israel = Nazi. I took this screen shot about a month ago. The post was up for 1 single day and had 59,000 likes. The comparison of a first world liberal country to the worst perpetrator of horrific crimes and actual genocide the world has ever known is insanity. You have to be bat shit looney to concur with this above tweet. Those 59,000 likers and 25,000 retweeters need to take a hard look at themselves in the mirror. You can say a lot of things about governments across the globe (Israel and America are far from perfect) but Jesus Christ – lay off the psycho pills for just one day. Israel has a gay pride parade for fucks sake. Throw those 5 variables into the equation and the whole premise of the tweet falls apart.

Israel + LGBTQ+ = Nazi ?

I’m not buying it.

There is obviously the worst kind of irony here. Nazi Germany is known for its crimes against Jews. Israel is a Jewish nation. Everyone knows this. Which is what makes the above tweet so insane. It’s like saying Chickens = Perdue. Retweet if you agree! The total IQ in that tweet is -100000.

I know I’ve been beating this subject like a dead horse (there’s a saying that makes sense), but maybe if people stopped saying such dumb shit I’d be able to stop writing about it. At this rate there will be a Hell or Hangover fatwa in no time. Saying Israel = Nazi is the opposite of “calling a spade a spade.” It’s like calling a spade a diamond and expecting everyone to just go along with it. Israel is Israel. It’s not perfect, no country is, but it damn sure isn’t Nazi Germany.

4. Happy as a clam

Okay, let’s lighten this thing back up. This one makes no sense as it currently stands. Mollusks are incapable of showing emotion, that much is clear. I always thought the saying came from how clams look when they are opened. Like a big happy smile. But if a clam is opened it can only mean one thing – the clam is being eaten. Not so happy for the clam.

But after doing some research I learned that “Happy as a clam” is cut off right when the saying gets good. The full saying goes “happy as a clam at high tide”. Now that makes sense. You see, when it’s high tide you can’t get to clams, hence they are happy.

Going forward I am going to start saying this one, including the hightide part, in a southern accent. Almost every saying or simile or metaphor sounds better with a nice drawl on it. I wish I was southern so I could continue this blog for another million sayings.

“Madder than a wet hen.”

“Pretty as a peach.”

“Busy as a cat on a hot tin roof.”

“Funny as all get out.”

The south has the simile game on lock, and clearly so does the news I no longer watch. So today I’ll be celebrating easter by crushing two dozen deviled eggs, searching for my daughter’s missing binkys like Easter eggs, and, instead of the news, I’ll be watching the last round of the Elite 8 – Isis K vs. Duke in a showdown that I’m sure will “blow the doors off the place.”  Hiyo!