Author: Steve Cavers

I’ve been sick this week, and daytime tv is driving me slowly, but surely, insane. As I explained to someone earlier today, this thing is lingering like a… lingering thing. And then it occurred to me to wonder about other lingering similes. Writers so often struggle to compare one lingering thing to another. Besides the usual selection (like a fog, like a cold, like a hangover), some lingerings stand out, like a vegetarian at an NRA banquet.

Here they are, some random “lingering like a…” similes pulled from the web:

lingering — like a train passing dysfunction junction

lingering like a fog on the lowlands

lingering like a just extinguished candle

Lingering like a ghost that / Was determined to finish that song.

lingering like a toxic cloud

lingering like a series of smoke signals

lingering like a train’s lonely whistle on the night wind

lingering like a river smooth / Along its grassy borders

lingering like a dreary January afternoon with no sun in a dimly lit room

lingering like a shallow wind

lingering like a well loved guest

lingering like a fart in a hot car

lingering, like a woman?s pique when she is disappointed in her lover

lingering like a great big elephant that has been sleeping next to the Prime Minister

lingering like a benevolent ghost dog protector

lingering, like a village maiden

lingering like a salsa stain on a white shirt

lingering like a running canker in the nation?s psyche

lingering like a fine tasting cigarette that he doesn’t want to burnout

lingering like a ticking time bomb in the archives

lingering like a buoy in the lake

lingering like a retarded parakeet in an unlatched cage

lingering like a lizards dead kiss

Lingering like a stolen god / That threatens to destroy our sin

lingering like a balloon nearly out of helium

lingering like a moth in a flood light

lingering like a small river through an ancient town

lingering like a palm print on the city’s face

lingering like a raincoat across my teeth

lingering like a whale at a buffet

Some similes are best forgotten, lest they linger like an anteater at an all-you-can eat ant bar. Like a copy of Police Academy 5 on the video store shelves. Like a grungy teen at a hemp rally. Like a one legged ring-tailed lemur at that place where they give free stuff to one-legged ring-tailed lemurs. Like a flock of ravenous vultures circling over the carcass of this blog entry.

OK, I’m done. Your turn.

In my latest big project, I decided that it was time to give my futon couch the ol’ heave-ho and replace it with a real couch. The futon served me well over the last ten years — and by that I mean that it held me up off the floor. Beyond that, it’s the worst piece of furniture that I’ve ever had the misfortune to own. As a futon bed, it’s lumpy and hard; as a couch it’s misshapen in a way that makes me think that it was designed for aliens. Either that or the Swedes who designed it were mutants.

I originally bought it as a student, when I needed inexpensive but functional furniture. It has followed me around from home to home (to home to home to home to home, etc. — I moved a lot in the 90s). Now I’m an adult, or like to think that I am, and I feel it’s time to graduate to a real couch. I want a couch with cushions. I want a couch that I can sit or lie on without bruising myself on the wooden frame. I want a couch that doesn’t make my living room look like the “before” shots of the crummy bachelor’s slum in “While You Were Out”.

So…

Step One: disassemble the futon to make way for the new couch. There’s no point buying a new couch if there’s no place to put it.

Done.

Step Two: move futon frame pieces out of the living room.

Right, here’s where things went wrong. My hallway is now full of pieces of unfinished pine futon frame. I can’t sell it or give it away (I’ve tried — no one will take it). I can’t throw it in the dumpster because the pieces are too big. I can’t cut it up because I don’t have a saw. I can’t put it in my car because the car’s too small.

It’s stuck. This is a serious problem. I need solutions here — and keep in mind that no one in their right mind would want this thing. (That would explain how I came into possession of it.) My living room is now couchless and my hallway is almost impassable. And did I mention that this started in late February?

It’s time for a creative solution.

While visiting my parents on the weekend, I noticed a sign at the entrance to one of the trails. Apparently, the people in charge of the parks in Richmond felt that a series of pictographs would be the best way to communicate the rules.

Here they are: the rules of Richmond’s West Dyke Trail:

The first one seems to indicate who should yield to whom. Either that or it shows who gets run over by whom. Apparently the guy on the bike can run over either the person with one hand or the drunk sailor with pegs for feet.

Dogs should be attentive? Dogs should point the way? Dogs should run on AC power?

Cyclists should break wind at hitch-hikers? Or is that a one-legged man on a pogo stick?

Always leave your fingers next to a flower.

Tiny dogs should be buried? Tiny dogs should be struck with a shovel? I didn’t care for the implications of this one.