Mark Sheldon's Blog: Mark Sheldon's Dossier of Flayed Cliches, page 17

Pick up Your Ears

A professor in college once asked our class to pick up our ears.  I looked around the class, and as far as I could see nobody had dropped their ears.  I told the professor that I was pretty sure that most students wouldn't appreciate being confused with Mr. Potato-heads.  Some people really shouldn't be teachers.

Pig in a Poke

Someone once accused me of making a pig in a poke.  I told him that where I come from, that kind of thing is illegal (never mind the fact that "Charlotte's Web" was one of my favorite books as a child) and I did not appreciate having such disparaging remarks being made against my character.  Some people should never be allowed anywhere near a farm.

Passing the Buck

Someone once accused me of passing the buck.  I was rather surprised by this offer, because I had been expecting to have to pay a LOT more than a dollar to get rid of the company I had founded for making self-replicating blueberry smoothies (As it transpired, the process necessary for making self-replicating blueberry smoothies just so happened to open up a vortex to a parallel dimension inhabited by man-eating lemur-like critters, and thus my desire to get out of the self-replicating blueberry smoothie business).  So, I took out my wallet and handed him a buck.  He looked at the buck.  He looked at me.  And then he threw the buck back at me and stomped away.  Some people don't know how to haggle...

Over His Dead Body

One time, somebody told me that I could only date his sister over his dead body.  After hearing him say that, I wasn't so sure I wanted to date his sister any more, if that was the kind of family she came from.  I'm sorry, I try to be open-minded and all, but incestuous necrophilia is just plain disgusting.

On The Fence

Someone once told me that he was on the fence about whether or not the bandicoot is the result of alien genetic experiments on mice and anteaters.  I told him that I wasn't really sure what a fence had to do with all of this - seeing as aliens wouldn't have much use for a fence in their genetic experiments - but warned him to be careful because he could get a splinter and it could get infected and that would be a very unfortunate place to have an infected splinter.  Some people just lack common sense.

Getting off on the Wrong Foot

Someone I never particularly cared for once told me that he thought we'd gotten off on the wrong foot.  I snapped at him that I didn't know who he was confusing me with but A) I'm straight, 2) I'm not into foot fetishes, and III) even if those first two points weren't true, I wouldn't do any such thing with the likes of him.  Some people just can't take the hint that you don't like them.

Not Playing With a Full Deck

Somebody once accused me of not playing with a full deck.  This left me rather confused, as we weren't playing cards (or any other game, for that matter), but discussing my blueprints to replicate the building from "Ghostbusters" that acted as a doorway to the underworld.   Now, if I had been planning to construct the building as a house of cards, his remark might have made sense - but that would have been a rather silly thing to do as playing cards don't make very good pan-dimensional conduits.  Some people really are just so addicted to gambling that they can't focus on anything else.

No Room to Swing a Cat

One time, I was moving into a new apartment with a friend.  Upon seeing the bathroom, he said that there was no room to swing a cat in there.  I was appalled.  Not only did he forget that the building had a no-pets policy, but it was rather disturbing that he'd want to bring a cat into the bathroom anyway, and just plain wrong that he'd want to swing it around once he got it in there.  The moral of this story is to always learn about someone's  fetishes before signing a lease with them.

No Dice

Once, while playing Monopoly, a friend responded to my proposition of relieving him from the burden of owning Boardwalk by saying, "No dice."  I looked at him oddly, and pointed out that the dice were right in front of him, but that they didn't really have anything to do with my proposal anyway since the dice have no monetary value in the game.  Some people aren't very good at board games.

Mum's the Word

One time a friend, after I had confided a secret with him, told me that mum's the word.  I asked him when had he become British, and then asked what his mother had to do with my ingenious plan for world domination, requiring nothing but a twinky, a dromedary and a deck of Tim Burton playing cards.  Some people just have very short attention spans.