Like A Leopard In A Leotard

I think I'm beginning to understand why people hate cliches. I'm not just talking about cliched things (I've despised those for years), I'm really talking about phrases that are cliches. I realized this as I drove home from work into the depths of a foggy night. No, it wasn't London Fog, it wasn't even Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Josh Fogg or the old band Foghat and the fog definitely wasn't thicker than split pea soup. Cliches are like verbal crutches for unoriginal bastards. I think I know why my teachers didn't want me to use cliches because they wanted me to be unique in my eloquence. I'd take a cliche, add sarcasm and spin it on its head. It's easy to understand verbally, but as written word, there lies the degree of difficulty.

I could dive off the high board (who am I kidding, I would never dive off the high board, my nerves would prevent me from even getting that high, I'd have to be on drugs. No, I'm not currently on any drugs (at least any hard ones...and by hard, I mean cake icing)) and do the triple lindy like Dangerfield did in Back To School (if you've never seen it, go and watch it at your leisure (it features Robert Downey Jr. - if you ever thought he was anything more than a mediocre actor, you get your jollies from getting off to an elbow macaroni sculpture of him you made while watching Zodiac). Sidebar: I don't have enough parentheses to contain my abundance of thought filled tangents.

But with difficulty comes misunderstanding. I'll stick to diving into shallow hotel pools. That's a risk I'm willing to take. I will actively seek out what it would feel like to be 'your brain on drugs'. Just don't bang my head with a skillet any time soon. That's just stupid. Which comes to the lesson of this tale (I originally typed the word tail instead - as a result I know have two lessons)....

a) spellcheck doesn't prevent homonym misusage
b) don't get into fights on the Internet - it's one thing to have a healthy debate about topical matter (Tabasco sauce, fieldturf, underwire, cold remedies, etc.), but when tempers Flair (intentional) up for real, you need to put down the weapon and step away from the computer.

I'm spent like Parker Brothers loot (although I've seen ads for a version of Monopoly without the colored money notes anymore instead they have debit cards that are stuck into mini-computers that keep track of your totals - technology trumps nostalgia - I was never a big Monopoly guy, I was never greedy enough to win).