According to this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=482691&page=16, the Straight dope is like:
[ul]
[li]a Persian restaurant[/li][li]a convention centre[/li][li]a garden[/li][li]a sporting event[/li][li]a porno movie[/li][li]a party at someone’s house[/li][/ul]
What do you think it is like?
similar to a small Persian garden that hosts sporting events that eventually turn into porno movies at somebody’s house.
of course ymmv.
But it is nothing like a convention center…so get that outta your head now.
The Straight Dope is like an analogy.
The Straight Dope is like totally cool, dude!
The Straight Dope is like a yak, with tangled, matted fur, bones weak with old age and hooves ground to the quick from rocky mountain trails, struggling to climb up a mountain pass while loaded down with fourteen men on its back, holding on for dear life. Every now and then, the yak falters and stumbles, and one of the men falls off of its back and tumbles down the mountain to his exceptionally painful death, but the rest of them hold fast and hope - no, pray - that they will not be met by the same fate.
The yak soldiers on up the mountainside, valiantly, dutifully, but nonetheless, lives are lost again and again as the passengers’ grip fails and they slide down steep trails lined with rocks sharp as knives, bash their heads open on arêtes and roches moutonnées, break their spines after falling down hundred-foot-deep crevasses, or fry to a crisp in underground thermal vents. And yet - every day - still more unsuspecting souls flag down that old yak for a ride up the mountain, climb aboard, and constantly replenish the ill-fated crew.
That’s the Straight Dope.
I gave up on that thread somewhere around page 9 (did it get amusing again?), so I apologize if this has been oft’ repeated already. But of all the many analogies used to describe the Dope, I think the most accurate is the corner bar, or, probably even more accurately, a real pub. You go in, you see if there’s anyone there you know, or you can walk through the tables and eavesdrop on conversations until you feel like joining a conversation. We’ve got bouncers (mods) for the people who get out of hand, and someone’s usually in one corner crying into a beer over a breakup while other people stand around patting him/her on the back. There’s a game on in the other room, and people are arguing politics in the back. There’s always someone shouting about how much this place sucks and the beer sucks and the bartenders suck and he’s never coming back, and we all go, “uh-huh” and know we’ll see him again before the weekend’s out. There’s a wall of photos, and every so often we reminice about people who used to come here but don’t anymore, and constant whining that the place isn’t like it used to be before the neighborhood went to the dogs.
I like to think of it as Callahan’s Place, only weirder. Argent’s post is my cite.
The Straight Dope is a little bird tweeting in a meadow.
The Straight Dope is a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.
Are your circuits registering correctly?
The Straight Dope is like when you don’t have a home phone, but you have a cell phone. No, wait, the Straight Dope is like when your cell phone is your home phone. No, scratch that, it’s like when you’re banned. No, suspended. Wait…
What was the question again?
Chicken
The Straight Dope is like…
The Straight Dope is like a complete non-sequitur. Either that, or it’s just like a bottle of rancid ketchup.
The Straight Dope is amusing, yet tragic.
Like a poodle with only three legs.
It’s like a wall.
…No, wait…
It’s like a rope.
Marley23:
Or it’s like a simile. But it’s not a metaphor.
It’s an online thought depository ( or is that ‘suppository’?) with cites. Unfortunately, I have no cite for that.
It’s like that feeling you get right before a bolt of lightning hits the ground next to you, causing you to forget your family and move to a far away land to be the harbor master for a small fleet of Chinese Junks.
More or less.
[/quote]
That’s just ATMB. The Straight Dope is kinda like a Mensa orgy at the monkey house, with extra poo flinging.
The Straight Dope is like a woman.
Fill in the rest yourself.
The Straight Dope is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.