Like, I Mean, Y'know

John has shipped me one of those collocations of failed similes, as in "he was as tall as a six foot, three inch tree"--things that are funny in their non-funniness. The trouble is that it is not always easy to tell the unintentionally camp from the really clever. I mean. Don't you wish you had said

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

Or

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.