Hell, or High Water

   Clichés rock. I know that as writers, we are told to avoid clichés like the plague. There is a difference between a cliché and an idiom, though, remember- everyone uses idiomatic expressions and figures of speech, and they only become cliché when they are used banally, incorrectly, or even pretentiously. There's a certain familiarity with clichés that allows us to build off of them to achieve new heights, or remix them into complete non-sequiturs while still having people know what's going on. This allows us to layer our humor: the inherent wit of comparing two things cleverly, as well as the angle of sheer bafflement that we feel when we come across something incongruous. Think of it as a complex pun cum pop culture reference.

   The imagery is never separated from its form; at some level, the message and the messenger must be one. Clichés, with their familiarity, allow us to see both, because at once we know what they mean and wonder why they are so idiomatic. We can achieve some rather clever things with this, turning clichés on their head:

Came the flood, we stood together in high water,
Professor's son and farmer's lovely daughter,
Sandbagged and sturdy, doing rather well.
What broke us were the good times: They were hell.

-from Orson Scott Card's view on the subject. 

   Also. We must remember to keep it in mind that at the end of the day, not only is not every idiom a cliché, not every cliché is an idiom. These can't be remixed as well, but still, sometimes, it's fun to use non-idiomatic clichés. At the end of the day, that's just something you can't buy. Also, at the end of the day, "at the end of the day" is just something you can't buy. And "just something you can't buy" is also just something you can't buy.

  Clichés!