Now that editors have mandated that all clichés used in newsrooms have to mean something (no more occult hands, thank you very much), journalists have had to start looking for other similes to sprinkle on their prose. In this profession, the possibility of sneaking in well-worded and slightly absurd imagery into an otherwise boring piece is almost enough to make up for the lack of respect, poor pay, and heavy drinking that invariably accompany the job. Most recently, this has manifested itself in the form of random pop-culture references. Here are a few of our favorites, in the first Gelf Cliché Watch:

Blockbuster, with $6 billion in annual revenue, still dominates the movie-rental industry, but lately that business has been shrinking faster than Lindsay Lohan's waistline—Newsweek, June 27.

Add up these figures, provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and you find that while the total job count is slightly higher, salaries are shrinking faster than Mark McGwire's chest—Business Report, May 24.

That was The Guardian, "whose sales are falling faster than Abbi Titmuss' knickers" according to Morgan—BBC News, June 1. (If you are unfamiliar with Ms. Titmuss, you can see some photos of her here, sans knickers; NSFW.)

Unless you've been too distracted lately in your breathless anticipation of the next Harry Potter book, you'll have noticed that the call center software market appears to be shrinking faster than Karl Rove's career opportunities—TMCnet, July 15.

And Bush is flopping all over the place: Social Security reform is a disaster, and Iraq is an appalling catastrophe, and the economy is running on fumes, and this nation is an international punch line, and Bush's poll ratings are sinking faster than Jenna Bush can slam down a Bud Light—San Francisco Chronicle, July 20.

Whether or not the slump is real, the next few weeks are critical for Hollywood if it wants to erase the perception that it's sinking faster than Tom Cruise's credibility—St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 3.

All this time we thought Lou Holtz, college football coach and professional sandbagger, walked on water. That is, until his reputation began sinking faster than a wave runner carrying Kirstie Alley—Herald Bulletin, July 15.