A Pooh guide to blogging

While I usually avoid talking or even thinking entirely consciously about this, it often strikes me (usually when I don't find anything to blog about) how strange it is that for five-plus years I've managed, FWIW, to come up with a post idea about six days out of seven.  More often than not, this just happens while I'm reading something (something doesn't add up, or reminds me of something else that doesn't seem entirely arbitrary), but sometimes it's a matter of mood, or caffeine: it feels like something is about to catch.

When it's the latter, my repetitive mind -- not so much a lizard brain as a perpetual child brain -- usually throws up a line from Winnie-the-Pooh "he felt singy." Here is that jewel in its setting (House at Pooh Corner, Ch. 6):

One day, when Pooh was walking towards this bridge, he was trying to make up a piece of poetry about fir-cones, because there they were, lying about on each side of him, and he felt singy.

Herman Cain on Libya: "The Spotted or Herbaceous Backson"?

I had deja vu when I listened to this exchange between the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Herman Cain:

Asked if he agrees with the president on Libya, Cain looks up and says, "OK, Libya." He then pauses for a moment.

"President Obama supported the uprising, correct?" he asks, speaking carefully. "President Obama called for the removal of Qaddafi - just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing before I say yes I agree, or no I didn't agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason - nope, that's a different one."

Cain then pauses for about five seconds.

"I gotta go back and see - um, I got all this stuff twirling around in my head," he says. "Specifically, what are you asking me. Did I agree or not disagree with Obama?"

It was the "Specifically, what are you asking me" that triggered the prefiguration. It's in The House at Pooh Corner, Ch. 5, "In Which Rabbit has a Busy Day, and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings."