What's your favourite mangled metaphor?

George Dubya has had some good ones, like “Sometimes it’s hard to put food on your family”.

I found the following poem on the internet at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,807587,00.html
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked? They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our
wings take dream. Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

I’ve been saying “That’s the way the cookie bounces” since high school, so… twenty years or so?

I’ve been using this one for years also. Just said it yesterday afternoon, in fact. Don’t recall where I first heard it. And like you, nobody ever actually calls me on it, but I sometimes get an odd look.

I know I’ve posted these before, but every opportunity I get, they make me giggle to pass on:

From my roommate:

“Never lick a gift horse in the mouth.”
“That’s an old wise tale.”
“She has to go through the whole rigor mortis [rigamarole].”
“I’ll kick his ass to next Tuesday. He’ll get there by Wednesday.”

Man. The mind wobbles.

I’ve no time for this drivel! I’ve got places to go and people to kill.

That’s a horse of a different garage.

And thanks to Zippy the Pinhead ©®™: If you can’t say something nice, at least say something surreal.

One of my favorites is from Frasier: Niles: “He’s not the brightest bulb in the bulb box.”

Ah, but a man’s grasp should exceed his reach, or else, what’s a metaphor.

I heard someone say yesterday, “I can kill two birds with one bush!” apparently mixing “Kill two birds with one stone” and “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

I’m always amused by people who refer to something as “the thin *edge * of the wedge”. It simply doesn’t make any sense. I think they mean “the thin *end * of the wedge”.

Maybe you’re thinking of a different meaning of the word wedge.link

I use “You can’t pull the wool out from under my nose!”

I think I made it up but some of the people who’ve heard me say it say that I probably absorbed it from a cartoon. What ever.

“This opens up a whole new kettle of worms”

I use this one now and again, fully cognisant of the mixed metaphor - invariably someone will try to correct (what they perceive to be) my mistake.

“He’s going to have to pull some socks out of the bag”

“That’s a fly in the pigment”

“That guy’s gay as a post”

All by (different!) flatmates I’ve had over the years

Remember, Rome wasn’t burned in a day.

“Wanna go see that new Tom Cruise movie?”
“I wouldn’t go to see that movie with a ten foot pole!”

Now that’s a Yogism

This sort of makes my head explode. Because it’s correct in its own right -

A bad analogy is like a pair of pants.

I always liked this one, which I think was from the old Bloom County comic strip:

“That’s no skin off my stiff upper lip.”