Yellowstone, FL —New studies from the Yellowstone-Everglades Technological Institute, or YETI, show that excessive usage of common clichés may be even more harmful than we thought. Often frowned upon amongst the English teacher community, the cliché is a literary phrase or expression that has been used so many times that it has lost all meaning. Phrases like “as fresh as a daisy” and “as useful as a lead balloon” have all been considered as clichés at one point in time. Now, researchers from all over the world are beginning to question whether or not these overused expressions even had meaning in the first place. Ed Finkelstein has been researching the phrase “The best thing since sliced bread” for over thirty years. “Sliced bread just isn’t as great as they make it seem. I mean sure, it’s more convenient when you want to make a sandwich or pop in some toast for breakfast, but I can think of about a million other things that are much better. That warm feeling you get when you wet the bed, for instance. Or the Victoria’s Secret 2006 Fall line. Heck, when you think about it, just about anything is better than sliced bread!” A local bee farmer said, “Whoever coined that ‘busy as bees’ baloney ain’t never spent a day living in the real world. These bees are the laziest pieces of crap I ever sawed. I work my butt off every day, toilin’ in ‘dis here hot sun, while all them bees do is sit around their custom-built luxury hives while ‘dat ‘dere nectar just pours out of their rears.” As reports of inaccurate clichés continue to pour in from across the nation, the people of Greenville, Ill., are beginning to panic. Local cliché enthusiast Diane Edwards said: “I was sitting in our living room with my knitting group, when I mentioned that it was raining cats and dogs outside. Right after I said that, Jan, who lives two houses down from mine, stood up and threw a 6-inch yarn needle at me, which pierced the cornea of my left eye. She told me that saying ‘raining cats and dogs’ was blasphemous and that I would surely be condemned to the depths of hell. To be honest, I’m afraid.” Jan White, the out-of-control knitter, spearheads the Alternatives to Cliché Use Initiative, a local group that tries to spread word of the evils of clichés and what the public can do to stop them. “I wouldn’t have minded if Diane had said ‘it’s raining rather heavily’ or even ‘it’s raining to an extent where amount of falling water is a greater magnitude than usual.’ But cats and dogs? That just simply doesn’t make sense.” Brook Gephart, of Cleveland, Ohio, has a difficult time discussing clichés since an accident involving a cliché took her husband’s life in 1998. “He was a big gambler. One day, a friend told him, when referring to an upcoming bet, that he could ‘bet his life on it.’ He did, and well, he lost,” Gephart said, wiping tears away from her eyes. Although clichés still continue to face criticism, its is reported that many others in the science community have agreed that the use of clichés is “right on the money.”
