Dedicated to the memory of my brother
Alan Niquette 04/17/1943 - 10/30/2014
playwright, actor, entrepreneur

hat good are metaphors if you don’t mix them?  That’s a rhetorical question I have asked in more than one or two contexts.  My greatest achievement, if that's the appropriate term, may be the standup script for Metaphors of Modern Management. 

• cool as the other side of the pillow
• caught between the dog and the fireplug

•   painting the walls while the plaster is still wet
•  one must be able to climb gum and chew stairs at the same time

• it is not rocket surgery
• losing one’s moral rumpus

• lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon-wheel rut
• nervous as a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs

o illustrate their potential for amusement, here are some original mixed metaphors in no particular order…

• There is no such thing as a free lunch or a gift horse, so looking a dark horse in the mouth makes sense, but beating a dead horse before the cart does not, any more than re-inventing the wheel or judging a book by its cover. (7)
• The camel’s nose inside the tent is neither ostrich-like nor the same as having an elephant in the room grabbing the long pole in the tent or finding a pig in a poke, and even though it may have been a straw that broke the camel’s back, a straw-man argument cannot assure that an 800-pound gorilla will get the short straw. (8)
• In the fog of war, mission creep is a slippery slope that can put boots on the ground and result in a Pyrrhic victory. (5)
• Throwing the baby along with the wash under the bus is hardly killing with kindness any more than nuclear overkill, which is tantamount to using a sledge hammer to drive a tack. (6)
•  At the end of the day, if a sacred cow walks like a duck, we might decide it was the chicken that came first across the road not the egg. (4)
•  Ready, fire, aim, which is not a slam-dunk, is more likely to jump the smoking gun and shoot the messenger with a proposition that will be dead on arrival. (6)
• The butterfly effect resembles the domino effect more than the snowball effect. (3)
•  Wearing a black belt and red suspenders, a fireman might use karate in fighting the mother of all conflagrations and be left high and dry.(4)
• Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is about as funny as a rubber crutch. (2)
• Having  cold feet is merely the tip of the iceberg compared to being caught flat footed sliding down a cellar door then hollering down a rain barrel about the low hanging fruit that can get spoiled by one bad apple. (6)
• Old people who piss-and-moan about young people who are full of piss-and-vinegar are about as welcome as an albatross necklace during a perfect storm. (4)
•  A politician will climb onto a soapbox and double-down on a wedge issue or champion the holy grail, then walk back a campaign position or kick a political football, but that said, without touching the third rail in a melting pot, a stump speech won’t be much of a stem-winder, inasmuch as, bottom line, a win-win situation seldom results from cherry picking or playing musical chairs at a witch-hunt. (16)