like kicking dead whales down the beach

like kicking dead whales down the beach adj.  Describes a
   slow, difficult, and disgusting process.  First popularized by a
   famous quote about the difficulty of getting work done under one of
   IBM's mainframe OSes.  "Well, you *could* write a C compiler
   in COBOL, but it would be like kicking dead whales down the
   beach."  See also {fear and loathing}.