Department of Aspergic Metaphor

The other day Gee Minor came home from school saying that metaphors and similes had been the focus of study in literacy.
Now, keep that image on the tip of your brain, while you peruse the following examples of simile and metaphor (hat tip, Dr M.-T. H. of Camden), all of which purport to have surged from realio trulio examination papers like … um … gas from a decomposing hamster. Or something.

At least one of these could have come direct from the brain of Gee Minor, who, as you’ll recall, is the inventor of the concept of the unicycling girrafe; a detective called Inspector Sheepwool; and a pub called the Dazed Haddock:
McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.
Quite a few of these examples, overstuffed as they are like an overstuffed thing, display a fondness for science and technology that might seem inappropriate, even unusual. On the other hand, these could be the LabLit authors of the future.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint.
Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal fax machine that needed a band tightened.
and especially, for science fans,
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef.
A few come straight from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious …
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for while.
Although this one, possibly unintentionally, recalls, for me, the terror of contemplating the cyclopean infinitudes that course between the most preternaturally chthonic chasms of eldritchly ignorant … er … ignorance.
It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
One of them is deliciously pornographic. I took special note of this as I might use it to spice up a sex scene in one of my novels:
“Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 50 cent-a-pint night.
I like. We have sexy time. Quite a few, though, are just plain weird and probably say more about the writers than they intended.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost
and
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.
One wonders whether, on reading these next examples, the teacher’s next call was to the social services dept.
It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
This last one, though, is the zenith of the apotheosis, and truly takes the biscuit, like a thief stealing biscuits from the biscuit jar, especially as the Gees went to the theatre last Saturday to see Romeo and Juliet.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Chicago at 6:36 pm travelling at 55 mph, the other from New York 4:19pm at a speed of 35 mph.