Oh! The theme I’ve been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence: “A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time”. Poetry. Sheer poetry, Ralph! An A+! – Miss Shields reading Ralphie’s theme, in his fantasy, from A Christmas Story.

OK, now it is Wednesday evening and I am still flopping around, still trying to come up with a theme for the next day’s post.  Dan?  Dave?  Chris?  Is there anyone else out there ready to come to my rescue, once again?  Actually, this searching for a blog topic is a theme, but it is also a recurring theme, so I think that I will pass on using it now.  I’m sure it will be there again, if I ever need it and certainly if I don’t want it.  I have an idea for another movie post and another photography post, but it feels too soon to use either of them and more importantly looks like too much work for tonight.  Instead, I think that I will go for one of those stream of consciousness posts, no central theme, just a little of this and of that and hopefully enough of something worth reading.

Wednesday was a pretty good day, at least for me.  Anne stayed home with a cold though.  See what comes from hanging around with those runny nosed guttersnipes?   I have an interesting project to work on this month.  I wish that I could bore you to tears with my telling of it, but I can’t, so you are safe.

NPR is now holding the sixth edition of its 3-minute-fiction writing contest.  I have entered two of the previous editions.  Entries for this round must have a character that tells a joke, a character that laughs and a character that cries.  My muse had an idea or at least a joke that filled the bill, but it is a bit lewd … 😳

A man walks into a bar.  He and the bartender get to talking and the bartender explains to the man that he has a horse, but the horse is really depressed. The man says, “For a free beer, I can make your horse laugh”.  The bartender says, “You’re on!” and the man goes over to the horse and whispers into its ear.  The horse laughs.  The bartender congratulates the man and gladly serves him a beer, but even after the man has finished his beer, the horse is still laughing and it is starting to get annoying.  At this point the bartender offers the man another beer, if he can make the horse stop laughing.  The man says, “I can do even better than that, for two beers, I can make your horse cry.”  The bartender agrees.  The man goes over to the horse again and the horse immediately bursts into tears.  Mystified, the bartender asks the man, “How did you do that?”  The man explains, “The first time I spoke to your horse, I told him that my member was larger than his.  He didn’t believe me and laughed.  Second time, I showed him I was telling the truth.”

Needless to say, with this story rolling around in my brain, there is no room for anything that might actually be entered in the contest.  I could try polling my muse again, but she is rather incapacitated.  Maybe I should have stuck with the searching for a blog post theme after all.  Sort of a theme within a theme idea, always an old saw in the theater, movies and now even blogging.

My above mental request for help, was answered and in just the nick of time.  Chris sent me this evening picture of Monterey’s Cannery Row.  Back in John Steinbeck’s day, Cannery Row smelled of fish canning factories.  Nowadays, it is a tourist attraction.  It also happens to be the neighborhood that Chris’ new, high-tech employer has set up his shop.  Not too shabby an area to work in now.  I’m guessing that he shot this picture before work, because there are no tourists on the sidewalks yet.  Am I right, Chris?  Enjoy, everyone!