like kicking dead whales down the beach

like kicking dead whales down the beach

(jargon, humour)Describes a slow, difficult, and disgustingprocess. First popularised by a famous quote about thedifficulty of getting work done under one of IBM'smainframe OSes. "Well, you *could* write a C compiler inCOBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down thebeach."