Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

John R. Dunlap's Writer's Cramp, about "students and the Norman Mailer syndrome" is good.  These outtakes are wonderful.
 

"Sometimes, collectively, the students reveal clichés I didn't know existed. Each of the following sentences occurred in a different theme in a class of only twenty students:

The smell of pizza fills the air.

The stench of rotting fish fills the air.

The musty scent of perspiration fills the air.

The air was filled with the aroma of sizzling bacon.

Next are the mixed metaphors, the inevitable consequence of disconnecting words from images -- of not thinking:

 
The stinging yellow dust grabbed my eyes and yanked.

His fist was released like an arrow from a bow.

My hands began to shake like an earthquake.

The dugout erupted like a broken piñata.

Covered with Christmas lights, our home shines with the beam of a lighthouse.
 

 
The vibrant warmth of the sun covered the verdant wilderness.

I was awed by the river's elegant windings.

Dusk is the time to look at the breathtaking sunset.

My car's ignition sounded similar to the boom heard from an F-14 Tomcat or any other jet featured in the classic movie Top Gun.

The sky attained the color of the silver tea set that has been kept in the attic since my grandma died 20 years ago.

A 1973 Buick-sized orange moon fills the evening sky.

Of course, the three patterns, like Greek conditional sentences, can be mixed into bewildering varieties. Here's a composite served up by one student:

The acid churning in my stomach was my body's natural response to its impending doom, and the invisible wells in my forehead brought buckets of perspiration to the surface.