comparative uselessnesses

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        Bob Fitzke sent us the following comparison this weekend (under the
heading "Idiom Question"):
         An old saying around my part of Michigan describes the male of the
species, "Useless as tits on a boar-hog".

        When I was teaching at a college in southern Maine in the mid 1960s,
one of my (Italian-surnamed male) students denigrated the worthiness
of a classmate with the comparison "Useless as the balls on the
Pope."

GAT