Shot In The Dark: Overpowered By Metaphor

June 10, 2005

Overpowered By Metaphor

I was sorting laundry a few minutes ago, when a random thought occurred to me:

If someone's a railroad or transit traffic flow engineer, and their job (literally, when stripped of all metaphorical baggage) is to make trains run, and run on time...

...and you're at a meeting, and your project involves improving the timeliness of the rolling stock, and someone asks you about your project goal...

...how do you say "My goal is to make the trains run on time" without the metaphorical overtones of the statement?

That's gotta be wierd.

Posted by Mitch at June 10, 2005 08:23 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Funny you should mention this, Tuesday while I was at the Hennepin County Commission meeting where commissioners decided to re-hear smoking ban testimony, I was giving Ms. Dorfman a history lesson about the first smoking ban imposed by Hitler, she was upset by a flyer I sent. I told her I was offended that Hitler enfoced a smoking ban, but also offended that she followed in his footsteps.

The very next sentence which almost came out of my mouth was to be, next you'll enforce a county ordinance to make the light rail trains run on time.

I'm sure it would have been priceless.

Posted by: marcus aurelius at June 10, 2005 09:15 AM

I suppose the same way that one who escorts equines to the aquafer, but cannot explain his seeming incompentance to make them consume.

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