16. (Like Las Vegas' water supply.)

Today's tirade is about metaphors.

The metaphor above (specifically, like: "There's a toilet that won't stop flushing out, like, all of Las Vegas' water supply.") was actually used not more than a few minutes ago. Okay. If you're going to make a metaphor, that's fine. Really. Just be sure that it makes sense.

For one thing, what the hell does Las Vegas have to do with the library, the library located in Oklahoma, several states away from Nevada? Secondly, does Las Vegas even have a notable water supply? I mean, it's in the middle of the desert. Sure, they've got a supply, but it couldn't be that large, compared to, say, some of the places I'll use in a minute.

So, what would be a better metaphor for use with a constantly-flushing toilet? There are several options available to you.

There's the snobby Euro-traveler metaphor: "It's flushing out enough water to fill the canals in Venice."

Or the politically incorrect, attention-grabbing metaphor: "It's flushing out enough water to drain Thailand after that tsunami flooded it."

Or the perverted, (also) attention-grabbing metaphor: "It's flushing out water like a loose girl gushing after a great lay."

Or you could just dead-pan and say: "It's flushing out a lot of water."

My point is this: metaphoring isn't hard. At all. An idiot can do it. So why do people insist on using these utterly ridiculous examples? Because people are stupid, of course.