Apples, and other relatively similar topics.

You're comparing apples and oranges.  That's what people say, right?  Meaning, I just can't compare them, they're two completely different things, you could never hold one up to the standard of the other.  It's common and I'm sure each of us has said it dozens of times ourselves.  Only here's the thing:

THEY'RE NOT THAT FREAKING DIFFERENT.  They're so incredibly not that different, in fact, that I'm starting to wonder if the saying itself is a joke.  Is that it?  Is the whole apples/oranges debate some sort of big universal joke that everybody in the world is in on except for me?  Yeah... wouldn't be the first time.

Now I get the point behind it- even though these things are typically categorized together, fruit, sweet, juicy, roundish, whatever... you can't fault an orange for being a bad apple.  But you know what would be a better analogy there?  Pretty much anything.

Such as:

Motorcycles and bed sheets.

Tank tops and breakfast cereal.

Library books and beach chairs.

Apples and rock concerts.

Because you really can't compare apples and rock concerts.

It occurs to me that the real problem here is that this idiom was created by someone with essentially no imagination, and apples and oranges were the differentest things that he could think of.  Yep, I'm attributing to a man, because apparently I'm being super sexist and assuming that a woman would have exhibited more creativity.  And talked more about shopping and fancy shoes.  Because you know, you just can't compare shopping and fancy shoes.