These are the winners of the Washington Post Style Invitational "worst analogies ever written in a high school essay" contest.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

Actual English Subtitles Used in Films Made in Hong Kong

I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.

Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.

Gun wounds again?

Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.

A normal person wouldn't steal pituitaries.

Damn, I'll burn you into a BBQ chicken!

Take my advice, or I'll spank you without pants.

Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?

Quiet or I'll blow your throat up.

You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken.

I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out!

You daring lousy guy.

Beat him out of recognizable shape!

I have been scared shitless too much lately.

I got knife scars more than the number of your leg's hair!

Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.

The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?

How can you use my intestines as a gift?

This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the desert floor for your aunts to eat.

Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough extermination.

Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, May 9 (Reuters)(DS) - Ecuador coach Hernan Dario Gomez was in a stable condition early on Wednesday after being shot in the leg in the coastal city of Guayaquil, said a nurse at the clinic treating him.

"He's out of danger. It's not serious. The bullet hit him in the leg and he has a fractured nose," the nurse at Guayaquil's Clinica Kennedy told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

The following is the text of a description of an item offered on eBay.

This is a free monkey phone call from me. This is a real auction, no joke. When you pay, I will call you and make this sound "ee EEEE ee EEEE eee EEEEE"...it's kind of like a monkey shrieking sound. Not a big fat monkey..and not like a gorilla...but like a monkey that's the size of a chihuahua...you know, like that old Taco Bell dog. So this monkey sound will be like "ee EEEE ee EEEE eee EEEEE". There will be no other additional monkey sounds. However, if you want and are willing to pay an additional $10, I will make a monkey grunt sound. The monkey grunt sound will go like "ooo ooo". Imagine a monkey sitting on top of a donkey while making that sound. Why a donkey? Because monkeys on donkeys sound better. The call will be about 1 minute. The following is a scripted call: RING RING Buyer: Hello? Me: "I am super monkey and here's a monkey sound: ee EE ee EEEE ee EEE" Buyer: Wow, this is so cool A super monkey is calling me! Me: "oo ooo oo super monkey is on a donkey ooo ooo oo" Buyer: Wow, a DONKEY!!! Me: "Thank you, it has been a pleasure doing monkey business with you" (That joke about monkey business will be free!!! Get it? MONKEY business! HAHA) Buyer: "Thank you, sir. I will buy 10 more monkey phone calls from you. Does your company have any stock? I wish to buy 10,000 shares." End of conversation. When you win, you have to tell me the time to call you. It has to be between 6 pm and 7 pm US pacific time. You only have a one hour time frame. If this time isn't good enough, then you can request a 7 to 8 pm time frame, but you won't get the joke about it being monkey business. This offer is also only valid in the United States. Acceptable forms of payment are cash, pay pal or money order. Here's a picture of a monkey that you should try to visualize when this phone call is made:

WARNING: This is not the actual image that was used with this description, posted on eBay. Anyone who claims that it is may be liable to the seller of the free monkey phone call, and anyone who thinks that it is may have the wrong impression.

The following transcription is of a somewhat less legible column posted here.

Attention and welcome to the first column of "HIGHSMITH TRETH" by I, Mark E. Smith Oct. 2G.

The following is not indicative of subsequent pieces but here goes anyway.

STRANGE RECURRING DREAM ILLNESS

FOR AS MANY YEARS, DEAR READER (3-5), EVERY 5-6 weeks there comes over me this peculiar form of "State" that lasts 2 or 3 days -- it cannot be described as an "illness" really because it is partly terrifying, partly illuminating and part madness -- it is not erotic, psychedelic or even inspiring. Have tried to explain it to close friends, doctors, family etc. and they are all baffled or look at you funny.

Here is what happens:

First signs are always in public places, big cities, big new auditoriums such as the Lowry, just opened in N. Lancashire U.K. As in "trigger words" supposedly used by the secret services "something" will start me off -- a face on a magazine cover, so many, or somebody "letting on," a friend, or someone who recognizes me from career -- shouting “Mark!” or “Smith!” -- street signs then start to throb -- then the crowd and the world population suddenly reverts to five or six types (somebody once wrote there are only twelve people in the world) from then on any conversations, business or otherwise involve me talking loudly, lucidly, truthfully etc. (this odd to me -- I just listen) and this can shock people, especially my window cleaner of four years. This frightens me too (and it’s definitely not drink or drugs).

After a while I go home to sleep. Waking the next morning, the world is a foreign, strange place, an Indieplanet, ho ho. Family, the “band,” my house, record company phone number -- absolutely nothing. People say “T.V.,” “computer,” etc. Zilch, but I feel all right, solid, I know I must eat and drink and sleep, etc. When I do, I wake early the next day. Suddenly everything in the world is there, it must be like having a web site and more in the brain -- school days, every show I’ve done, the smallest memories formerly forgotten about how somebody drank when I was 10 yrs, and ate, or said -- this is the truly terrifying bit as in those films when people go through the dying experience, their life flashes before them -- all the short stories I’ve ever read. Colours, azures pop-out, photos and pictures telling a million stories.

Mostly not unpleasant -- I just wish I had ten arms and ten pens, it is all so concise. The body is shattered.

Four hours later and all is o.k., and I realize the picture of Samuel L. Jackson on the front of a magazine the first day is not that of the World Leader.

As said before, doctors and specialists and so on have no explanation, after brain tests, etc. -- this in my view not for anything brain-wise anyway.

So, dear readers, do not be surprised to find some odd randomness here every 6 weeks or so!

“ODD SHAPES ON THE STREET
NEVER BEFORE HAVE FOSSILS
HAD CHANCE
TO EMBRACE THEIR
SUPERCEEDERS
WHATEVER THE HELL THAT MEANS”
-- M.E.S. Sep. 2G

-- N. Manchester extremely strange at the moment. Public transport on strike 3-4 days every week, on top of this all the water mains are being dug up, add to this a petrol shortage, and the ongoing post-I.R.A. bomb renewals-renovations which seem to involve designer-fashion stores that the locals can’t afford to go into. This leads to a sort of perpetual malignant anxiety, and conversations like:

M: Hello neighbor, why haven’t the dustbins been emptied?

A: I don’t know, could be the roadworks, you should leave them a note.

M: Yes, like where the f--k are you?

A: I’ll do that and say it’s from you.

Also, in town I met a man called Paul McCartney (honest!). Because of transport problems he couldn’t get to Lourdes -- his dead mother had told him to, so he was stuck on the ferry half way to France. I asked him what he did. He said, “I talked to her there -- the passengers had to restrain me from swimming there.” I thought, well you would, wouldn’t you, if your parents were that doolally to call you Paul McCartney, and left him alone.

Played the Royal Festival Hall in London last week, with Dick Dale and Terry Edwards who plays/played trumpet with The Specials and Madonna. It was a great show -- just had to walk two miles back to the hotel. Boo-hoo.

Donnerstag, 16. März 2000, 04:56 Uhr Manchester United's Andy Cole (L) scores past Fiorentina's Danielle Adani in their Champions League group B match at the Old Trafford stadium Wednesday. United's 3-1 victory assured them a place in the Champions League quarter final round. (Dan Chung/Reuters)

You have clicked on my ribbon against chicken mans. This is the club against the chicken mans! The reason that I have started this club is that I have to go to work and people are mean to me there, and it is like I am in jail all the time, but I have done no crime! And at work, they say to me, "Lisa! You have to be political-correct to the CHICKEN MANS!" Nobody says to the chicken mans, "Hey, Chicken Mans, you have to be political-correct to Special Princesses like Lisa Pea!" And some things are wrong. It is wrong to eat the meat of yourself! It is wrong to have babies with animals! It is wrong to be a leprechaun! It is wrong to take things that are not yours! It is wrong to go sticking your big greasy fingers onto other peoples' food! It is wrong to have a dirty teeth contest! IT IS WRONG TO BE A CHICKEN MAN! The one thing that is even wronger than being a chicken man is if you are a chicken man and you go around places you do not belong! Your job is at the circus! Go there! Don't go working at big telephone companies, and putting your dirty chicken poop around those places, and making people look at your pasty yellow chicken legs! Go to the circus, chicken man. Go back to the circus. We know what you put in your yard. We know what is in your trashcans. Go find some big chicken man church or a circus, and stop coming around our houses with the rest of the circus people and the bad god people.