And when talking about how immersed I became in my online life, I'm tempted to use this language because it provides such handy metaphors.

Awareness of autism has seeped into the culture enough to make it a handy metaphor.

Many modern physicists have found in Abbott's novel a handy metaphor for the predicament of our own physicists trying to come to grips with a 10-dimensional universe.

Sir James M. Barrie's creation has been a handy metaphor for eternal youth and a model of escapism since its first theatrical incarnation in 1904.

This theater work has taught Ms. Gilligan that "voice" is more than a handy metaphor for academics discoursing on identity.

If peace spreads and Beirut is rebuilt, will editorialists be able to conjure as handy a metaphor for the South Bronx?

For the ancient Greek philosopher Cleobulus, for example, interracial procreation provided a handy and benign metaphor for a riddle about day and night.

Honey is a miraculous sweetener, and it makes a handy metaphor for discoveries and compromises made late in a marriage.