Why do so many jewelry stores have ads that sound like those for used car lots? "Are you ready to rock?!? On sale now: 4 carat diamonds and brilliant emeralds! Tuesday! Tuesday! Tuesday!"
I always end up thinking that I'd better trade in my mother's wedding ring for a tennis bracelet, jump on a Ski-doo (with a lifejacket, of course), and ride off to the horsey farm across the lake. Once there, I'd be the sensitive bad ass who has to put the broken-legged down. The sunlight would catch the twenty-one diamonds at my wrist and the tear in my eye as I took careful aim.
(Uh oh. I think I might be mixing my metaphors. Grammar! Grammar! Grammar!)
Posted by Ida at May 7, 2003 10:47 AMThank you for remembering to use your Personal Flotation Device!
I think your metaphor usage is just fine. I always thought of mixed metaphors as being along the lines of for example, "beating a dead horse with a broken record", or something similar.
Posted by: THE COMTE at May 7, 2003 01:39 PMACTUALLY Gillian, your metaphors suck.
Posted by: ian at May 7, 2003 02:56 PMIan, please come to my house for your gold star.
Posted by: Ida at May 7, 2003 03:36 PMI think you should trade your mothers wedding ring in for a '74 Ford F-450. (the brown one with the gun rack)
Posted by: sven at May 7, 2003 05:44 PMReally? The jewelry ads I've seen are all "If you don't buy her a big friggin' rock that'd choke a python, then you don't really love her and next thing you know she'll leave you for the pool guy."
It's nice of the diamond merchants to give us the opportunity to have lasting relationships AND support any of various African civil wars. Maybe that's what the ads should say: "Buy a diamond, support the troops -- in Sierra Leone!"
Posted by: flamingbanjo at May 8, 2003 08:08 AMHooray for equal-opportunity sexism. Hooray.
Posted by: Mol at May 8, 2003 08:57 AMYeah, I think the whole "Diamonds Are Forever" thing started early in the 20th Century, when Debeers realized that the monarchical system of government was pretty much toast, and it occured to them that there would be a lot fewer rich aristocrats around to make diamond-encrusted tiaras and watch chains and such for. "Hm, what are we going to do with all these diamonds?" somebody probably said. To which some marketing whiz probably replied, "Well, if there won't be as many rich people around, what about poor-to-moderate income people? After all, there are so many more of them!" And for that, he probably got a big, fat raise.
And thus was born the "tradition" of billions of males getting down on one knee to offer their affianced a hugely overpriced shiney thing as a token of their love and fidelity.
Posted by: THE COMTE at May 8, 2003 11:17 AMThats right boys! Down on your knees and give me something shiny!
Posted by: sjet at May 8, 2003 04:58 PMLet's see: I've got paper clips, my Floor Warden's whistle, a ball-point pen, a Seattle Seahawks cloissonne pin, movie-theatre sized chocolate bars -- are those shiney enough?
Posted by: THE COMTE at May 8, 2003 05:03 PMI can give you a shiner.
Posted by: Ida at May 8, 2003 05:30 PMDibs on the whistle!
Posted by: jet at May 9, 2003 08:18 AMYou're floor warden? That's so cool. Do you get to wear the hard hat and carry the first aid kit?
Posted by: Mol at May 9, 2003 10:19 AMp.s.
Ida, that's a *hummer*, not a *shiner*.
p.p.s.
(um, feel free to delete that last comment if I've rocketed straight past "funny" landed smack-dab on "what the fuck?")
Nope, no hard hat & no orange flourescent vest, either just the whistle. And while I don't actually get to carry the first aid kit, I do know where all the first aid kits, fire extinguishers, emergency exits, protein bars and shut-off valves are.
None of this will be of any use to my co-workers however, as part of my job as floor warden is to help escort the arthritic, elderly A/P person with the walker down the stairwell to the assembly point, which of course means there's a very good chance both of us will die horrible deaths either by the flames or the building collapse, and my knowledge of where all the important things are will be lost. Oh, darn -- that must be why we have more than one floor warden! I'm such a S-U-C-K-E-R!
Posted by: THE COMTE at May 9, 2003 11:56 AMSorry, Mols, it's black eyes all around.
Posted by: Ida at May 9, 2003 01:10 PM