When it's raining cats and dogs, you've got to cut corners because you could get your eyes peeled. You must come to grips with yourself until you fly off the handle & then if you're not fit as a fiddle you'll spill the beans. That's hitting below the belt with the short end of the stick, if I can bring the point home ladies.

It all started in 1975, I had an axe to grind during a blanket freeze. It was no great shakes but I had to go against the grain, iron out the details. You see, I pulled a few strings & had to go off the deep end. But I guess I had reckoned without my host. (That's burning the candle at both ends because this whole thing rings a bell.) The host carried a torch for this chick & now she's praying through the nose. I guess the handwriting was on the wall though.

Colloquial phrases composed of words whose literal meaning is other than the context in which they are used I call dialectic metaphors. These units can almost be regarded as single words. They have been constructed by the communal mind to solve morphemic problems inherent in English & surmountable only by using these phrases.

There are two distinct classes to these infradialectical metaphors. One calss is an outmoded historical connotation, ie 'Put your nose to the grindstone' while the other class is a purely abstract or nominative procedure giving us 'Head in the clouds' or 'Come on' at its most abstract. It is this latter category which comprises most of the following story.