2014-05-05 – The American Scholar is trying to crowd source the writing of a sonnet. They have posted a first line and they are looking for the second line. Here is the first line:

How like a prison is my cubicle

I am not going to submit a second line. That’s too easy. The second line doesn’t rhyme with the first. I’m going to submit a third line that rhymes with the first. Here it is:

Jailhouse rocks are very musical

I think I’m going to win the contest. I don’t even need to know what the second line is. Are you friggin’ kidding me? How like a prison is my cubicle?

Hysterical metaphors like this are, well, hysterical. These day’s everything is like Hitler. “I bought and ice cream cone and it was so bad they probably used a recipe from Auschwitz.”

Now, I’ve worked in cubicles. Working in a cubicle, staring at a computer screen is maybe like . . . sitting and watching TV or a movie or playing the piano (the finger part). But “like a prison”?

The problem is that intellectuals that publish in the American Scholar don’t know anything about prison. We put people in prison where they can’t walk out at 4:30, where they are raped, where they can’t take a latte break at Starbucks, where they can’t really jump up on the tables in the mess hall and sing.

Maybe if they knew something about prison they would be conc-e-r-n-e-d . . .

I’m getting carried away aren’t I?

Next thing you know, I’ll be saying that our silence about the wanton imprisonment of African Americans is somehow comparable to the silence of the German people when their Jewish neighbors started to be carted away in the 1930s.

It is different.

It’s not the same.

It’s like comparing a cubicle to a prison.

Aren’t metaphors lovely?

If you know any insane metaphors, leave them in the comments below.