Where is the last ditch? (or what is a metaphor for?)

    Some thoughts on the rhetoric of journalists (alternately lurid, trite, hackneyed, rich in solecisms...) with a truckload of examples to embarrass everyone and ensure that I never work in this town again...

Oh hey, here's a fresh and fairly good one from the October Mother Jones: "a continuous series of pipelines and processing plants that line the Mississippi as it twists like a busted-up slinky toward the gulf"(48, although I think both Slinky and Gulf should be capitalized)...

Ah, were but all journalist so dexterous with their words!

As I return to this germ of an essay after

Tailoring Canada's national anthem to various cranks and agendas

Picking up the August edition of our community paper Rat Creek Press, I notice a quarter-page advertisement from my MP Peter Goldring with the somewhat awkward heading, "O CANADA 'IN ALL THY SONS COMMAND'"  and arguing in nine paragraphs that: "The current anthem is politically correct and is gender neutral."
    Wow, good to see that all the bases are covered, Mr. G! But, as many a furious controversy over the national anthem has raged north of the 49th Parallel, even to violent barfights, mayhem and editorials (note to Americans: joking here) it may be worthwhile to address the burning question of the anthem's social adequacy in that cool, rational and faintly neurotic way that typifies the True North.
    Mayhaps it is even more worthwhile to address it in a ribald and iconoclastic way. I mean, this isn't the Excited States, where people get lynched for not saluting the flag. We DO get a bit choked-up about the anthem, but not to that degree...