After two days of typhon's and flooding I was randomly asked how's the weather. This is a textbook English conversation topic but there are some answers that go beyond the textbook. There are figures of speech like "raining cats and dogs". There are local weather expressions. One of my favorite is the brass monkey weather in the UK. That funky monkey.
Any conversation is a breath of fresh air so people do talk about the weather. They use just about anything to break the ice. Even Satoshi Nakamoto is quoted: "Sorry to be a wet blanket."
https://twitter.com/nakamotoquotes/status/1400255711301582848
- nakamotoquotes
I'd rather see Phoenix freeze over than add another phrase to the long list of weather idioms but I just couldn't let this one go. After weeks of rain and tropical storms somebody asked me, "How's the weather?" What am I supposed to say? Oh, it's cool and cloudy?
No!!!!
I told him,
"It's as humid as a leech on a hippo's butt in the Okavango."
Why did this cross my mind? I had never been so sweaty before just from walking outside. It was icky and sticky and yucky out there. It's the kind of weather that makes maggots out of thin air and this guy is asking about the weather.
How shall I describe it to him. There is no metaphor to describe humidity that I know as well as the Hippo's butt. Think of the most sweaty and stinky and disgustingly humid place to be and the thought came to my mind. It is really like a hippo's butt out there.
But that is not enough to begin to describe the humidity. A more slimy and icky way to describe the weather is a leech on a Hippo's butt. This indicates the blood sucking creature that feeds off the Hippo's sweat and life blood creating a nuisance that cannot be better described.
Yet we can better describe the humidity by adding to the fact that this Hippo with the leech stuck to his butt was not in a nice zoo in San Diego where a zoo keeper would call a veterinarian to help him. But this Hippo was in the fresh waters of a River in Northern Africa called none other but the Okavango making this expression a classic and unique Mineopoly phrase:
"It's as humid as a leech on a hippo's butt in the Okavango."
Cover photo credit goes to Mike Sutherland
https://www.facebook.com/MikeSutherlandPhoto/
I hope I have something better to talk about than the weather tomorrow.
Somehow the only song that comes to mind when I think of sweaty Hippo butt leaches is Tiffany
