I know that when I write I tend to fall back on bad metaphors or cliched idioms. It's really annoying. Yet today I was reading Pastoralia by George Saunders, which is a satire of the modern work place, and there he goes turning a bad metaphor into something really good. I can't tell you how often I've read something that I wish I came up with.
Think of you and Janet as branches on a tree. While it's true that a branch sometimes needs to be hacked off and come floating down, so what, that is only one branch, it does not kill the tree, and sometimes one branch must die so that the others may live. And anyway, it only looks like death, because you are falsely looking at this through the lens of an individual limb or branch, when in fact you should be thinking in terms of the lens of what is the maximum good for the overall organism, or tree. When we chop one branch, we all become stronger! And that branch on the ground, looking up, has the pleasure of knowing that he or she made the tree better, which I hope Janet will do. Although knowing her? With her crappy attitude? Probably she will lie on the ground wailing and gnashing her leaves while saying swear words up at us. But who cares! She is gone. She is a goner. And we have you to thank. So thanks!
Very good. And funny. A well-used bad metaphor. I'll have to keep this trick in mind.
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