Canonical List of Metaphorical Invective |
"Duh!" on parade.
$HOME = /dev/null.
3K RAM free, no EMS.
A .22 caliber intellect in a .357 Magnum world.
A 1.0 in a 4.5 installation.
A 10K brain attached to a 9600 baud mouth.
A 20th century man... The guy has no future.
A 3.5-inch drive, but data on punch cards.
A bad case of colon nose.
A barnacle on the ship of progress.
A black-and-white mind working on a color-coded problem.
A brain like a BB in a boxcar / box of Corn Flakes.
A butter knife in a steak / prime rib world.
A candidate for optorectomy. (Disconnection of optic nerve from rectum, to repair a crappy outlook on life.)
A couple of blocks behind the parade.
A day late and a dollar short.
A deadbolt with a broken cylinder.
A dim bulb in the marquee of life.
A face designed for radio.
A face designed in a wind tunnel.
A flash of light, a cloud of dust, and... What was the question?
A few dice short of a full bag / role-player.
A few photons short of a hologram / holodeck.
A great deal of pride, but very little to be proud of.
A gross ignoramus -- 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus.
A hemorrhoid on the face of the world.
A hop, skip, and jump from success, but to get there he'd have to give up chewing gum.
A kangaroo loose in her top paddock.
A lap behind the field.
A legend in his own mind.
A logically defunct twit.
A looney tune.
A lot of feathers but not much chicken.
A medical mystery.
A mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost.
A mind as empty as the sleeping pill concession at a honeymoon hotel.
A mind like wet tennis shoes... Makes squishy noises when running.
A minefield of information.
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
A natural talent for finding subliminal messages in ice cubes.
A Neanderthal brain in a Cro-Magnon body.
A notch off the timing mark.
A one-bit brain with a parity error.
A pacifist out of necessity / always loses in a battle of wits.
A PBS mind in an MTV world.
A penalty kick over the bar. (In soccer.)
A peripheral visionary.
A person of rare intelligence... It's rare when he shows any.
A photographic memory, but no film / the lens cover is glued on.
A poor excuse for protoplasm.
A prime candidate for natural deselection.
A quart low.
A real rocket scientologist.
A real space cadet.
A return with no gosub.
A room temperature IQ -- centigrade.
A semitone flat on the high notes.
A single-cylinder brain in a V8 world.
A socketless drone in a plug-and-play world.
A square with only three sides.
A standard deviant.
A statue in a world of pigeons.
A T1 line of pure stupid.
A teapot with a cracked lid.
A titanic intellect... In a world full of icebergs.
A vacuum-tube brain in a microchip world.
A VGA card and a Herc monitor.
A victim of retroactive birth control.
A violin minus the bow.
A walking argument for birth control / post-natal abortion.
A waste of skin.
A wind-up clock without a key.
About half smart.
Adult child of alien invaders.
Afraid she'll void her warranty if she thinks too much.
Ain't no psionicist. (role-playing games)
Airhead / bubble-brain.
Aliens zapped him with a stupidity ray -- twice.
Alive today only because it's illegal to kill him.
All booster, no payload.
All cassette, no tape.
All crown, no filling.
All fetch and no execute.
All foam, no beer.
All foliage, no fruit.
All hammer, no nail.
All hat and no cattle.
All hawk and no spit. -- Molly Ivins talking about Ross Perot
All he remembers about his middle name is the first letter.
All his eggs in the same basket.
All his learning curves look like Mount Everest.
All icing, no cake.
All lace curtains, no knickers.
All lime and salt, no tequila.
All missile, no warhead.
All of his bytes are odd.
All Preparation, no H.
All shot, no powder.
All signs and no scenery. -- John Taylor
All the lights don't shine in her marquee.
All the notes, none of the music.
All the personality of linoleum flooring / plasticene / putty / caulking / saran wrap / a bowl of oatmeal / a plastic spoon.
All the sex appeal of a wet paper bag.
All thrust/mach, no vector.
All wax and no wick.
Alphabetizes junk mail / T-shirts / canonical lists.
Already visualizing the duct tape over his mouth.
Always in the right place, but at the wrong time.
Always late... Her ancestors arrived on the June Flower.
Always needs to have jokes explained.
Always responds to "Make Money Fast" postings on the Net.
Always sharpening his sleeping skills.
Always speaks her mind, so usually she's speechless.
Amplifier turned all the way up but no one's playing / all I hear is white noise.
An 8080 in a 68000 environment.
An alligator. (All mouth, no ears.)
An Apple //e on UUCP.
An early example of the Peter Principle.
An ego like a black hole.
An example of how the dinosaurs survived for millions of years with walnut-sized brains.
An experiment in Artificial Stupidity.
An expert on padded cells.
An expert on the historical significance of cottage cheese.
An inch short and a stroke early.
An innundated receptacle of primordial ooze.
An intellect rivaled only by garden tools.
An XT clone in a Pentium zone.
Ano-fossal ambiguity. (Can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground.)
Another engineering prototype that should not have been shipped.
Answers the door when the phone rings.
Any connection between his reality and ours is purely coincidental.
Any similarity between him and a human being is purely coincidental.
Any slower and he'd be in reverse. -- Gignac
Any smarter and he'd be retarded.
Argues with herself -- and loses!
As a baby his parents stood him on his soft spot.
As bent as a corkscrew.
As bright as a nightlight / small appliance bulb / tulip bulb.
As dumb as an ox.
As focused as a fart.
As funny as a fire in a children's home.
As handy as a whiskbroom and twice as intelligent. -- Peter DeVries
As happy as if he had brains / was in his right mind.
As happy as the village idiot.
As popular as a French kiss at a family reunion.
As popular as a pork pie at a Jewish wedding / synagogue.
As queer/rare as a nine bob note. (Very English.)
As quick as a corpse.
As sensible as entering an ass-kicking contest with a porcupine.
As sharp as a bag of wet mice. -- Foghorn Leghorn
As sharp as a donut / marble / bowling ball / beachball / pin head / wet sponge / bowl of Jello / mashed potato sandwich / boiled weiner / pound of wet leather, and twice as smart.
As smart as a politician/lawyer is honest.
As smart as an automatic email responder script.
As smart as bait.
As smart as Christie Brinkley is ugly.
As strong as an ox and as dumb as two.
As thick as champ. (Irish; champ is mostly mashed spuds and cabbage
.) As thick as two short planks / two half bricks.
As useful as a back pocket in a vest. (Very English, vest = undershirt.)
As useful as a brick lifevest.
As useful as a carpet fitter's ladder.
As useful as a cheese sandwich to a drowning ferret.
As useful as a chocolate teapot / fireguard.
As useful as a condom vending machine in the Vatican. -- Rimmer, Red Dwarf
As useful as a football bat.
As useful as a fur-lined walking stick.
As useful as a glass hammer.
As useful as a hip pocket on a T-shirt.
As useful as a kickstand on a horse.
As useful as a lead parachute.
As useful as a mint-flavored suppository.
As useful as a spit valve on a guitar.
As useful as a top hat with pockets.
As useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.
As useful as an inflatable cheeseknife.
As useful as bolognese sauce on shoe laces.
As useful as bookends down a well.
As useful as dinosaur repellent.
As useful as green stop lights.
As useful as passing gas in a spacesuit / boiler suit.
As useful as piss on a forest fire.
As useful as reverse gear on a lawn mower.
As useful as tits on a bullfrog / bull / boar-hog / turtle.
As worn out as a cucumber in a convent.
At least he has a positive attitude about his destructive habits.
Attic's a little dusty.
Back burners not fully operating. Backstreet Boy in a Talking Heads world. Bad spot on the disk. Baler done run out of twine. Bandwidth limited. Barney's his hero. Bats have flown the belfry, and now he's all alone. Bats in the belfry. Batteries not included. Beamed down and back up one too many times. Been napping in front of the ion shield again. Been one too many times through the wormhole. Been playing with his wand too much. Been playing with the pharmacy section again. Been short on oxygen one time too many. Been using her head as a mass driver. Better at sex than anyone; now all he needs is a partner. Blew his O-rings. Blew the hatch before the lock sealed. Blocked one too many hockey pucks / soccer balls / punches with his head. Blown/leaking head gasket. Body by Fisher, brains by Mattel. Body off Baywatch, face off Crimewatch. Born a day late and like that ever since. Born during low tide in / swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool. Born too late -- he'd have been a great Neanderthal. Born ugly, and built to last. Both oars in the water, but on the same side of the boat. Brain as busy as a hog farmer in Israel/Iran/... Brain is running on empty. Brain like a hard drive with no read/write head. Brain permanently in power saving / 8-bit mode. Brain transplant donor. Bright as a Zippo lighter without a flint. Bright as Alaska in December. Bright as an acetylene torch -- without an oxygen supply. Brings a knife to a gunfight. -- Sean Connery, The Untouchables Brings binoculars to submarine races. Broadcasts static. Bubbles/leaks in her think tank. Buddy breathing with himself. (SCUBA term.) Built a special showcase for his herd of pet rocks. Busier than a one-armed paper hanger. Busier than a one-legged cat trying to cover its excreta on a frozen pond. Busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Caboose seems to be pulling the engine. Cackles a lot, but I ain't seen no eggs yet. Calling from a rotary phone. Calling her stupid would be an insult to stupid people. Calling him a pea brain would be an undeserved compliment. Calls people to ask them their phone number. Can be outwitted by a jar of Marshmallow Fluff. Can discern facts and form predictions with the acumen of an economist. Can easily be confused with facts. Can only remember her old passwords. Can only shoot pool with a left-handed cue stick. Can't count his balls and get the same answer twice. Can't dial 911 because she can't find "11" on the phone. Can't distinguish jacking off and stropping a razor. Can't find his ass with two hands and a periscope/compass/map/ flashlight/bloodhound/GPS receiver (in a locked closet). Can't find his couch in the living room. Can't find log base two of 65536 without a calculator. Can't hold water in a bucket. (Can't keep a secret.) Can't program his way out of a for-loop. Can't tell his hole from an ass in the ground. Car's only got three wheels, and one's going flat. Carrier wave unmodulated. Carries a tire gauge in her purse. Carrying an empty Easter basket. Cart can't hold all the groceries. Cauliflower for brains. Cerebrum vaccuoso. (Empty head.) Changes hands and picks up a stroke. Charming as a carbuncle. Cheats when filling out opinion polls. Cheezwiz for brains. Chimney's clogged. Clock doesn't have all its numbers. Closer to the edge than a bicycle on the autobahn. Cold / flat / dry as a witch's tit. Colder than a well-digger's ass in the Klondike. Collects cards for Craig. Colo-cranial compaction. Communications with him is limited to ping. Confused as a baby in a topless bar. Confused as a lesbian in a fishmongers. Conserves toilet paper by using both sides. Consumes hard drugs as vitamins. Contributes to collections like this one without searching first to see if their little gem is already listed. Contributes to the population problem. Could only be loved/missed if the minister read someone else's eulogy. Could qualify as a houseplant if he learned to photosynthesize. Couldn't balance a checkbook if Einstein helped. Couldn't be shown that his ass was on fire with a flashlight and a three-way mirror. Couldn't count to 21 if he were barefoot and without pants. Couldn't engineer his way out of a wet paper bag. Couldn't figure it out if God gave him the instruction manual. Couldn't find his way through a maze even if the rats helped him. Couldn't find oil with a dipstick. Couldn't find two Saint Bernards if they were in the same telephone booth with him. Couldn't get a clue during clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if he smeared his body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance. Couldn't get laid if he crawled up a chicken's rear end and waited his turn. Couldn't get laid in a monkey whorehouse with a sack of bananas. -- David Spade Couldn't hit sand if he fell off a camel. Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if he were standing inside. Couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. Couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery. (Common in Australia; apparently there was a documented case where the wrong date was put on the invitations.) Couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. Couldn't run out of sight on a dark night / in a week. Couldn't scratch his ass with a hand full of fish hooks. Couldn't tell which way the elevator was going if he had two guesses. Couldn't think/pee/fight his way out of a paper bag. Couldn't write dialog for a porno flick. Coverage 90%; signal strength 10%. CPU doesn't pick up on all clock cycles. CPU is always in powersave mode. CPU not connected to the bus. Cranial cavity filled with neutronic matter. (Really dense.) Cranio-rectally inverted. Creates his swap file in a RAM disk. Cunning as a dodo bird. Cursor's flashing but there's no response.!
Dealing with him is less fun than going to the dentist.
Dealing with him is one angst worse than a blind date.
Deep as her dimples / reflection in a mirror.
Defective hard drive / boot sector.
Dense as a London fog / neutron star.
Depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.
Diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
Diarrhea of the mouth; constipation of the ideas.
Differently clued. -- Dave Clark
Dock doesn't quite reach the water.
Does aerobics... in his head.
Does everything the hard way, like making love standing up in a hammock.
Does the work of three men: Larry, Curly, and Moe. (Three Stooges)
Doesn't adjust for leap years.
Doesn't consider his drive a slice unless it lands two fairways over.
Doesn't have a brain, just a primitive nerve bundle.
Doesn't have a fart's prayer in a hurricane.
Doesn't have a round in every chamber.
Doesn't have all his cornflakes in one box.
Doesn't have all his dogs on one leash / cups in the cupboard / groceries in the same bag.
Doesn't have all the dots on his dice / pens in her plotter.
Doesn't have both oars in the water -- can't even find the damn boat.
Doesn't have elastic in both of his socks.
Doesn't have his belt through all the loops.
Doesn't have sixteen annas to the rupee.
Doesn't have the brain power to toast a crouton.
Doesn't have the sense God gave an animal cracker.
Doesn't have two neurons to rub together.
Doesn't just know nothing; doesn't even suspect much.
Doesn't just wear perfume, she marinates in it.
Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair. -- Billing
Doesn't know whether to scratch his watch or wind his balls.
Doesn't know which side the toast is buttered on.
Doesn't need to worry about excess knowledge.
Doesn't put the cross-hairs on the target.
Doesn't quite sample at the Nyquist rate.
Doesn't suffer from ear pressure when flying at altitude.
Doesn't suffer from stress, she's a carrier.
Don't blame him, he's from Uranus.
Don't know what his problem is, but it's hard to pronounce.
Donated her body to science fiction.
Donated her body to scientists... Before she was done using it.
Downhill skiing in Iowa.
Driveway doesn't quite reach the garage.
Driving at night with the lights off.
Driving down the road of life with his sun shield in place.
Driving with his tailgate down (and stuff is falling out).
Driving with two wheels in the sand / not all wheels on the pavement.
Dropped his second stage too soon.
Dropped on his head as a child.
Dumb as asphalt / dirt / a mud fence / a stump / a sack of hammers.
Dumber than a chicken / box of hair/rocks / sled tracks.
During evolution his ancestors were in the control group.
Ears are redirected to /dev/null.
Easier to count the bricks left than the bricks missing.
Echoes between the ears.
Eight pawns short of a gambit.
Eighth of seven.
Either the good twin or the evil one, hard to say.
Electroencephalographically challenged.
Elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor / penthouse / mezzanine.
Elevator goes all the way to the top but the door doesn't open.
Elevator is on the ground floor and he's pushing the Down button.
Elevator to the brain suite is out of order.
Emails a one-line contribution to this list with a full copy of the list attached.
End of season sale at the cerebral department. -- Gareth Blackstock
Enjoys listening to telemarketers.
Enough sawdust between the ears to bed an elephant.
Even a two button mouse gives him too many options.
Even in victory, he's a loser.
Evidence for the theory of a missing link.
Evolved from a toxic waste dump.
Face like she's been in a plane crash.
Failed the Turing test.
Fell out of the family tree.
Fifty-one cards short of a full deck.
Fighting the war with a starter pistol / water pistol / pop gun / cap gun.
Finds a flat by swapping tires.
Finds canonical humor collections amusing.
Finds Sesame Street / knock-knock jokes challenging.
Fired from McDonald's for having a short attention span.
Fired her retro-rockets a little late.
First to admit he's a slow thinker -- actually, more like the seventy-first. -- Pratchett
Five bullets in his six-shooter.
Flaky.
Flying on a cold shot. (Inadequate force from a steam catapult launch on an aircraft carrier.)
Flying/landing on one engine.
Focused like a 12 gauge shotgun.
Fog rolled in the day he was born, and a bit of it never rolled out.
Folds ace plus red jack hand when playing blackjack.
For those who never forget a face, his is an exception.
Foreign substances float in his cranial fluids.
Forgot to pay his brain bill.
Found his marbles, but is playing jacks with them.
Four bits short of a full DEC.
Four bows short of a string quartet.
Four cents short of a nickel.
Fruit looking for a cake to happen.
Full of wisdumb.
Full throttle, dry tank.
Fur coat and no knickers. (Scottish expression.)
Gasoline engine, diesel fuel.
Gates/barriers are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming.
Gavel doesn't quite hit the bench.
Gears grind/don't always mesh.
Gets a charge out of pissing on electric fences.
Gets her mail at an unknown zip code.
Gets his orders from another planet.
Gets hypnotized on the de-spun section.
Gets lost in thought -- it's unfamiliar territory.
Gets parity errors under load.
Gives a lot of bull for somebody what ain't got no cattle.
Goalie for the dart/javelin team.
God might still use him for miracle practice.
God's favorite target for lightning strikes.
Goes with the flow... He's a bed wetter.
Good at quantum tunneling but not much else.
Got a life, but wasn't sure what to do with it.
Got help, but it didn't help. -- Bob Thaves
Got his brains as a stocking stuffer.
Got in touch with reality, but it was a bad connection. -- Bob Thaves
Got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn't watching.
Got up on the wrong side of bed again this morning -- like always.
Great helm needs some padding.
Guillotining him would make only an aesthetic difference.
Gyros are loose.
Habits explainable if he was raised by wolves.
Had a head crash / her server's crashed.
Had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard-pressed to find the material to make a canary a set of cami-knickers. -- P.G. Wodehouse
Haggles wrong. (role-playing games)
Half a bubble off plumb. -- attributed to Mark Twain
Happiness is seeing her picture on a milk carton.
Hard to distinguish from the tail end of a horse.
Hard to tell if he has an ace up his sleeve or if the ace is missing from his deck altogether.
Has 100-meter talent, but is half a mile into the marathon of life.
Has a bird's-eye view, and a brain to match.
Has a bus fault problem.
Has a divide-by-zero look on his face.
Has a face only a mother could love -- but she hates it too.
Has a few wait states.
Has a full six-pack but lacks the plastic thing to hold them together.
Has a hole in his bucket.
Has a leak in his ceiling.
Has a mind like a mousetrap, but should let some of those poor mice go.
Has a one-way ticket on the Disoriented Express.
Has a personality all her own... No one else wanted it. -- Jim Davis
Has a pulse, but that's about all.
Has a random memory fault.
Has a slow clock.
Has a sparse matrix. (Beware, "matrix" comes from the Latin "womb".)
Has a two-bit operating system.
Has achieved inner peace, but still displays outer obnoxiousness.
Has all her bricks, but no cement holding them together.
Has all the brains God gave a duck's ass.
Has an hourglass figure, but most of the sand is on the p.m. side. -- Thaves
Has an inferiority complex, but not a very good one.
Has an IQ one lower than it takes to grunt.
Has been seen tossing bread crumbs to helicopters.
Has change for a seven dollar bill.
Has delusions of adequacy.
Has FINO (first in never out) memory.
Has her headquarters where her hindquarters should be.
Has his brain on cruise control again.
Has his solar panels aimed at the moon.
Has it floored in neutral.
Has lots of books, but all he does is lick the ink off the pages.
Has no discretionary intellect.
Has no upper stage.
Has nothing to say, but delights in saying it.
Has only one chopstick in the chowmein.
Has over 1000 funny insults saved in a file, but can't remember any of them.
Has plenty of talent and vision, just doesn't give a damn.
Has resonance where others have brains.
Has signs on both ears saying "Space for Rent".
Has so few thoughts that when he free associates, it's like watching tennis.
Has the attention span of an overripe grapefruit.
Has the brains of a house plant / turnip (cooked).
Has the Grand Canyon under the crew cut.
Has the IQ of a salad bar / an ice cube / three below houseplant.
Has the keen awareness of an ostrich in hiding.
Has the mental agility of a soap dish. -- National Lampoon
Has the personality of a snail on Valium.
Has the same talent as Dr. Doolittle.
Has two brains; one is lost and the other is out looking for it.
Has uncorrected Y2K bugs.
Hasn't caught on that X and Y are relative values.
Hasn't got all his china in the cupboard.
Hasn't got the brains God gave a cat.
Hasn't got the brains of a retarded anvil/oyster.
Hasn't got the full 2% difference (between primate and human DNA).
Hasn't lost his mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
Having a party in his head, but no one else is invited / dancing.
Having a temporary stupid attack. (rejoinder: "just temporary?")
He came, he saw, he clutched.
HE CAN ONLY TYPE IN UPPER CASE.
He can push but he can't pop.
He could give stupid lessons to a brick/post. -- Mike Wilde
He couldn't lead flies to a hog lot.
He demonstrates that beauty times brains is a constant.
He donated his brain to science but they made an early withdrawal.
He fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.
He has a bad brains-to-balls ratio.
He has a good point... Six inches above his eyes.
He has the wisdom of youth, and the energy of old age.
He has two left feet.
He hasn't a single redeeming vice. -- Oscar Wilde
He is a man of few words and he does not know what either of them mean. -- Prachett
He is a mouth-breather.
He knows computers... He's not fit for contact with humans.
He went off to cry to mommie/auntie.
He writes blank checks on a closed account.
He'd screw up a two-car funeral procession.
He'll eventually qualify as a Darwin Award winner.
He's a General Protection Fault trigger.
He's a man on a mission, but can't find his dossier.
He's as soppy as a sack. (British)
He's been invited to every party in town... Once.
He's completely West Ham. (Two stops short of Barking on the London Underground.)
He's diagnosable.
He's in a federal witless protection program.
He's not a complete idiot -- some parts are missing.
He's not stupid; he's possessed by a retarded ghost.
He's really into himself... His head is up his ass.
He's so dense, light bends around him.
He's so dense, the Titanic wouldn't sink in his head.
Hears everything that a dog can.
Hears more lyrics on records when they're played backwards.
Helmet's small.
Her access time approaches infinity.
Her ancestors came to this country looking for bananas.
Her ass is sucking swamp gas.
Her blender doesn't go past "mix".
Her body is rejecting her.
Her brain cells are as hard to isolate as (your favorite politician's) concern for his/her electorate.
Her brain comes with single-bit error detection and half-assed error correction.
Her brain has a corrupted filesystem / someone needs to run fsck on her brain.
Her brain is as useless as a mule's gonads.
Her brain is more like a Rube Goldberg device than a computer.
Her cache is incoherent.
Her career is just taking off -- she's never at work.
Her closet is full of hangars, but no clothing.
Her dentist went deaf from the drill's echoes.
Her dialing thumb must be broken.
Her display is always flashing 12:00.
Her driver's license says, "Picture continued on other side."
Her ears serve the same function as holes in a dribble glass.
Her face is a threat to clocks everywhere.
Her files are compressed 100%.
Her finals are burned out.
Her friends took her aside, and left her there. -- Ron Richards
Her gene pool could use a little chlorine / a good filter.
Her head doesn't cast a shadow.
Her head needs a periodic whack on the side.
Her input pipe is broken.
Her interrupt handler hit a loop.
Her IQ is the reason they had to invent negative/imaginary numbers.
Her kid is an honor student, but she's still an idiot.
Her leads need resoldering.
Her learning curve is fractal.
Her life is a continuous series of senior moments / brain cramps.
Her lint trap is full.
Her lists are unlinked.
Her memory is truly random-access.
Her mental function can be graphed with a single dot.
Her mere presence causes parity errors, power fails, and head crashes.
Her mind is not grounded to a logic supply.
Her mind might have spontaneously combusted.
Her mind works like lightning: One brilliant flash and it is gone.
Don't have the rest of the list, anyone who does please send it to me. Thanks Bunches.
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