pyesetz | A few needles short of a cactus (Reply)

The title of this post is from an article about Scott Fistler, the Arizona Republican who changed his name to "Cesar Chavez" and is now running for office as a "Democrat" (but still using Republican tactics). I used a wildcard Google search "a few * short of a *" to find other examples of this snowclone.

The first hit is A few sandwiches short of a picnic, which has an entry at Wiktionary. That entry gives a synonym "one card shy of a full deck".

The next hit is A few X short of a Y at the Snowclones database, which lists these examples

a few bananas short of a bushel
a few sprinkles short of a sundae
a few hosannas short of a miracle
a few smarties short of a lollybag
a few beers short of a barrel

The snowclone entry links to the Canonical List of Fulldeckisms which is a 1994 list from USENET. Some of its entries are rather dated now, such as

A return with no gosub
A VGA card and a Herc monitor
An 8080 in a 68000 environment
An Apple //e on UUCP
An XT clone in a Pentium zone
Blew his O-rings
Her dialing thumb must be broken
In need of a ROM upgrade
Mainspring's wound too tight
Metronome needs oil
Missing a few catalog cards / gears / marbles
Nine pence in the shilling
Overruns above 110 baud
Pins 2 and 3 (RS-232) permanently connected to ground
RS232C brain with a DIN connector
Running at 300 baud
Single-sided, low density
Slept too close to his radium-dial watch
The fan is working but the freon's leaked out
Thinks at 5 baud
Thinks cellular phones are carbon-based life forms
Thinks E=MC² is a rap star
Too many birds on her antenna
Using a 1S-2D floppy for brains in a world of hard disks

Google's list then includes some items that duplicate the USENET list ("a few fries short of a happy meal", "a few bricks shy of a load", etc.)

Then there's the Not too bright list, including items such as

A few screws short of a hardware store
A few peas short of a casserole
A few Bradys short of a bunch

Then there's the Euphamisms for Stupid, which is written by a college professor who apparently doesn't know how to spell "euphemism". Anyway, his list doesn't include anything not previously seen.

And that's the first page of Google results. Surely no one would look any further?

Okay, so I clicked "next" and got