Got off on a technicality

[darksasami]

The other day I was struggling to describe a coworker who was recently moved into a technical job for which I am not convinced that he has the technical background to handle. I wanted to say that he was "about as technical as a ..." something, except I realized that there isn't a standardized "something" in the English language for "as technical as." Lots of other comparisons have standard benchmarks: fiddles are the standard for fitness, arrows for straightness, doornails for deadness, boar hog tits for uselessness, etc. But none exists for technicality.

So, I did the natural thing, and consulted Google. I found that the lack of a cliché had prompted a number of people to attempt to create their own, which is all to the good. What fascinated me, though, were the patterns of thought that emerged when I compared what people came up with. So I figured I'd share.

The vast majority of these were self-descriptions (although a few of the nastier ones were aimed at technical support departments). Sentences with this construction that were not describing people (for example, "This beautifully simple basket breaks that tradition. It's about as technical as a basic twined basket,") were not included in this list.

The items people chose to compare to fell (with minor overlap) into only eight distinct categories:

Animals
about as technical as a duck-billed platypus
about as technical as a dead fish (x2)
about as technical as a frog
about as technical as a mongoose
about as technical as a monkey having a shit
about as technical as a monkey that works for Arnold Clark
about as technical as a rhino
about as technical as a slug
about as technical as a snail.....as fast as too.....
about as technical as a wet fish

Food
about as technical as a bag of crisps
about as technical as a banana
about as technical as a cashew peanut
about as technical as a donut
about as technical as a fruit trifle
about as technical as a grapefruit
about as technical as a ham sandwich
about as technical as a peanut
about as technical as a piece of toast
about as technical as a sandwich
about as technical as a Snickers bar
about as technical as a sprout
about as technical as a tea bag

Objects
about as technical as a block of wood
about as technical as a box of rocks
about as technical as a brick (x4)
about as technical as a fence post
about as technical as a fire hydrant,
about as technical as a lump of rock
about as technical as a pillow
about as technical as a post-it note
about as technical as a rock
about as technical as a wind-up Mickey Mouse
about as technical as a wooden post

Obscenities
about as technical as a clump of turd
about as technical as a dildo
about as technical as a fart
about as technical as a monkey's cock

People
about as technical as a 3 year old
about as technical as a kid with Lego
about as technical as a politician

Pomo self-reference
about as technical as a . . . well, I can't think of a good analogy
about as technical as a non technical thing
about as technical as a very non-technical thing avoiding the local technical college

Procedures
about as technical as a Chinese fire drill
about as technical as a root canal

Tools
about as technical as a butter knife
about as technical as a can opener
about as technical as a hammer
about as technical as a handsaw
about as technical as a nail
about as technical as a paper clip (x2)
about as technical as a quill pen (x2)
about as technical as a shovel
about as technical as a spoon
about as technical as a steam engine

So who's the most technical?
Quite a number of these comparisons are to things that are quite technical, from a certain point of view. For example, even the most popular comparison ((as technical as a brick") could be said to involve an object that takes highly specific knowledge to create: if you use the wrong kind of clay, or bake it incorrectly, or fail to add whatever is supposed to go into a well-made brick, you won't end up with a brick at all. Try to determine the required shear strength and the maximum torsional stress of the finished product on a materials engineering level, or analyze the way the molecules bond chemically, and you've got something highly technical indeed.

However, there are several candidates for high technicality on a common-sense level in the list. These are:

• about as technical as a kid with Lego
  If you are an engineer, a geek, or merely a Legophile, you probably cried out in indignation upon reading this one. "If playing with Lego is not technical, you're not doing it right," I hear you say. You're probably right; and, like me, you're probably a nerd.
  
  
• about as technical as a steam engine
  Anyone who uses this comparison has most likely never attempted to design and build a steam engine. (Granted, most people have most likely never attempted to design and build a steam engine.)
  
  
• about as technical as a root canal
  This comparison came from a description of a video game's gameplay, and I admit to being unable to determine from context whether the technicality of the gameplay was meant to be characterized as high or low. Certainly the amount of training required in order to perform a root canal is rather high--or at least, I'd want someone doing one on me to be extremely well trained.

...And least?
While I want to go for "very non-technical thing avoiding the local technical college," avoidance is very difficult to program. Better go for rock.

Notes
Special recognition seems appropriate to our friends the lower primates for getting into multiple categories. Really, they get into everything.

And who's Arnold Clark?

So, how technical are you?