Three Types of Simile

Here's something I wrote while deeply bored some time ago. As you can imagine, I'm still desperately bored - too bored even to blog propely, though I've started posting again over at CTS. I had a volume of Hardy and a cup of tea to hand when I wrote it.

The first type of simile simply tries to invoke some genuine quality of a real object through reference to another object. The relevant cliché is “as hot as an oven”. With these “concrete” similes, the danger for the writer is that cliché is difficult to avoid; exaggeration also creeps up on you. But the possibility is always there for a simple simile of this type to contain other, hidden meanings or connotations. Take this example from Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘The Clock Winder’: “It is as dark as a cave”. Nothing too complicated there, the image is clear, the reference, obvious. But think for a while on the nature of caves. Claustrophobic, tapering into ancient rocks, the home of unknown streams, stalactites and stalagmites, the origins of human civilisation, hidden realms. The darkness of the very ordinary night Hardy is explaining now takes on a more psychological aspect. The depth of similes such as these is, of course, entirely up to the writer. But writers and students should be encouraged to think very carefully about the objects they choose to place into their similes.

The second type does the same thing, but invokes non-existent objects that people are nonetheless familiar with. For example: “Quick feet as light/As the feet of a sprite” from the poem ‘Signs and Tokens’. It is easy to see the reference, even though there are (as far as we know) no such things as sprites. The word “sprite” itself has become almost a metaphor for quickness and lightness. With this kind of simile a writer can convey some sense of numinosity or give an ethereal atmosphere to a scene or idea. A clichéd example of this type would be something like, “She looked like an angel”. A better one would be this, from Hardy’s poem ‘Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune’, “..sweet as angels’ laughters”.

The third type of simile intends to reference the object or quality only vaguely or slightly to anything, and is instead a satire, or a play with language for its own sake. This is exceptionally difficult to write appropriately. Most usually it is done to make the reader question the writing process and think about the difficulty of communication. It is mainly associated with modernist and post-modernist writing. An example would be “The years were like the cries of children”, in which a sense of fear is invoked, but otherwise the similarities are slight or non-existent.

These types of simile can also be adapted, extended or cut. Often a writer will slide the usual expressions into “hot like an oven” or “oven-hot” or “with the heat of an oven” or some other phrase. To avoid cliché and extend the image – though this has to be done with caution – a writer might take a simile like “she looked like an angel” and change it to “she looked like an angel, full of its sadness for humankind” – the idea being to give the object of reference more detail in order to make the image more complex. In the following quotation Hardy doubles his simile to give it more shades of meaning:
From tides the lofty coastlands screen
Come smitings like the slam of doors
Or hammerings on hollow floors

(from ‘The Wind’s Prophecy’)

Oh Who Am I (The Susan Howatch Edition)

Well, clearly I'm not Charles Ashworth. Nor even Neville Aysgarth. It would be a minor blasphemy to put me as Jon Darrow.

I'd be massively offended if you called me Christian Aysgarth.

i'd be unbelievably gratified if you thought I was Lyle Ashworth (nee Christie).


Sadly, this is my destiny -

Eddie Hoffenburg, less the war-suffering. Oh how awful.

Bullshit Proof

Here's what I will never be trapped by again:

1) The "soulmate" crap. That's about control, guilt and the pretence of tender-heartedness. If someone says it to you, ignore it. Falling for it is irredeemably beta.

2) The relationship shit-tests like "were you looking at her?" to which all possible answers are wrong. The best thing to do is to respond in kind, ie: "Well, of course: she's as hot as fuck".

3) The absence of communication. If she doesn't text you, that's her fucking problem. *Never* get trapped into sending loads of texts to a silent woman. She will loathe you for your spinelessness.

4) Sexual intimacy. There ain't no such thing. You are just number n. So, to some extent is she. We don't communicate souls in sex, however much hand-wringing Christian clergyman think we do. We just fuck like animals. At last we're learning how to do it properly. Remember that kissing is absolutely nothing at all.

5) Rows are good. If she gets cross with you, get cross back. Never, ever appease a woman's anger. Women hate craven, cringing men.

6) Never believe what a woman says about the type of man she finds sexy. All that stuff about kindness, intelligence, etc is all crap. Women are as sexually predictable as we are, and we find big tits and slim hips sexy, and they find big, dominating men sexy. Believe me, your reading of Heidegger will be utterly irrelevant to whether she likes your cock, and she will, whatever she says, not be turned on by your claim to be a poet.


Well, that's it. As you can guess, some of this is inspired by reading less savoury stuff about "game", but my experiences over the last two years (of steadily being battered into the ground like the beta I am) suggest that there is a lot of truth in it.

Women are not hard-wired to be caring, or loving, or care-givers or whatever. They, like men, are animals, and their desires and preferences are far more animalistic than we often think.


The title of this post is inspired by the extremely cool track Bulletproof by La Roux, which is 80s synth pop for 2009, with a video whose visual imagery is what many 80s groups would have made, had the technology allowed it. It shows that this kind of music really does have meaning: archetypal grid patterns, geometric solids, splintered images, too much lighting, asexual or androgynous characters (she's a mixture of Toyah, Hazel O Connor and Flock of Seagulls). I wonder if the grid patterns, reminiscent of laboratories and prisons, are trying to say something in particular...

And not a single whoremark arse tattoo in sight. No lingering cunt-shot either.


Even crap 80s synth pop had more to say about real life and real personalities than Lily Allen, whose failure to reach an orgasm is not really inspiring me. Nor am I rendered speechless by Black Eyed Peas' prediction of a great night's clubbing and sex. I'm also unprepossessed by Lady Gaga's somewhat tired attempt at edginess. Equally, Evacuating the Dance Floor could have had intriguing cold-war psychological subtones - but it doesn't. It's just shit.

Yeah, ok. I'm spending 2 hours a day in the gym right now. So I know my music. Thanks to TMF.

Cricket and Game

OK. Here are some facts.

Strauss = beta
Cook = beta
Bopara = beta
Bell = omega
Collingwood = lesser alpha
Prior = alpha
Broad = alpha
Swann = beta
Anderson = beta
Harmison = lesser omega
Onions = beta

Watson = alpha
Katich = beta
Ponting = alpha
Hussey = beta
Clarke = alpha
North = alpha
Haddin = alpha
Johnson = beta
Clark = alpha
Siddle = alpha
Hilfenhaus = alpha


There's the problem. The England cricket team is populated by beta males.

Not Dead Yet

No, not dead yet. Despite all predictions, of his arse, his head, his bollocks: he is not quite dead.


Citalopram is a soft but stupid drug, which makes you shake and makes you tired. Especially when you ignore your quack's orders to give up the booze. Then it's worse. You shake all day, you feel like death (oh the irony). Also you don't want sex. You want death more than sex. Heh. Death and sex are indeed two sides of the same filthy coin, with Edward VIII on it.

It's a fuckwitted drug, which makes you want to drink to calm down, even though you oughtn't to drink. Well fuck that. I feel great on citalopram and loads of Stella. Citalopram and no Stella then I feel like shit.

I seem to have the DTs!!!! Fuck me I have the DTs!!!


Alright. Well no-one cares about that. Well what have I been up to. I have spent the last two weeks throwing out year after year of my life. The tip is my second favourite place. They let me put my clothes, tea towels, videos, computers, anything. All my life goes into the skips there. Thirty two years of rubbish. Lots of it. Any sign that anyone loved me. The things I loved as a child. The VHS videos I spent years recording. The books I collected.

All gone. In a flash of bin bag, all gone.

My car, even. Gone even before I sold it, thanks to an utterly unscrupulous Ford dealer!!!

My poor little Fiesta. Don't get me wrong, I love my sexy new Focus, with its glorious, vast, curvy arse, and its tempting Pacific blue colour....but my poor little Fiesta which did me so well up and down the M4 and took me to Frogland 3 times....


*sigh*

Can one have an affair with an ex - car?? Is it ethical?

Oh but I'm still in love with my Fiesta and her little teardrop rear lights....her invitingly tight front grille....oh Fiesta, would you take me back, even though I abandoned you so?

No. I knew it. Even when you had gone when I went to pick up the Focus, I knew you'd moved on. You'd never have me back. Someone else was driving you. Someone else was getting their foot soaked because of your malfunctioning aircon, someone else was having to get in via the passenger door because the driver's side door was fucked, someone else was feeling your utterly lame braking. Someone else knew that your foglights were shit. Someone else knew that your brakelights never ever fucking worked.

Not the Ford dealer, thankfully, but, I guess, someone else. The someone who'd taken you out even before I'd sold you.

And the Focus? Yes she is as sexy as hell. Her tits (front fog lights) are fucking amazing and her arse...well, I've fucked it already. Twice. But you know she doesn't love me like you did. It's like her mind is on someone else, someone bigger. Someone who doesn't need to move the seat forward. Who doesn't need to lean to see the blind spot. Who doesn't need to move the rear-view mirror. Who can just park it in reverse with hardly needing to look. Who just knows where the front end of the car is when they do tight turns and that.

My Focus will never love me, I'm not man enough. And I still fancy the sexy little thong off my ex-Fiesta, not that she ever wore a thong but you get the picture.

Oh fucking hell, has ever a man had such a problem with his beloved cars??

She Blinded Me With Science

Time for another experiment, dear readers. This time, unlike my previous posts on the subject of mind-altering substances, this one is entirely serious. Doubtless it will come as no surprise to my remaining readers (ie Cheeks and Matt), but I, along with half the western world, have been prescribed anti-depressants. I wonder what took them so long. My fear of doctors, probably. But it seems that things I thought were normal - utter lack of interest in career, trouble sleeping, rubbish concentration - are symptomatic of depression, along with a number of other things I've generally lived with for a few years (no, being right wing is NOT one of them). It was a self-pitying email to my mother that finally persuaded me -or rather she did - to see a proper quack this week. So I have spent the day enjoying the various side-effects of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. I was warned that during the adaptation phase the symptoms for which I am being treated may increase, along with other, rather more interesting side-effects. I started on Thursday.

Since then I have experienced:

constant low level shaking;
constant drowsiness but inability to sleep;
increased depression and mild suicidality (a word I thought I had invented many years ago, but it turns out to be real) - ie silly fantasies which I remember now having as a teenager - don't worry dear reader, it's just like being fourteen again, or eighteen, in my case;
palpitations & general increased anxiety;
anorgasmia (don't ask);
bruxism -(weeping and)grinding of teeth(though I get this anyway).

And it's true. It does affect your driving. I was struggling to find third and fifth gears. Or maybe the transmission on the old Fiesta is giving out.

I haven't quit the booze, though I have cut it in half, and I think probably that has something to do with it. The quack said I didn't have to give it up but the pack's instructions are fairly brusque on the matter. So I guess I will try. I don't feel like a drink anyway. I feel like breaking up with my Stella...

In other words, whereas I didn't feel too bad, just generally rubbish, now I feel utterly crap.

You might wonder why you are being subjected to this. Well. I went to the quack's because I am utterly fed up with what Will Self correctly called The Talking Curse in his book of short stories, Grey Area, and my mum insisted I do something about it, making her about the fifth in line from the ex, my dad, my landlady and my sister's boyfriend (don't ask). Talking through problems often makes them worse, activates and doubles the bastards, increases self-absorption and pity. And I've been there and done that, endlessly.

So I wanted something chemical.

But I can't altogether get rid of the urge to talk about myself.

So here it is.

Hey ho. Ten O Clock and I'm blogging on my bed. Alone.