Model Train Journal

FOGGY NIGHT AT WALMART by Wayne Benda, on Flickr

Midnight run to Walmart
I was there to feed Old Blue
I swore I'd only be a minute
Figured six cans ought to do

Old Blue by Wayne Benda, on Flickr

Ol' Blue is a good-lookin' dog!

Most people who meet Old Blue say that. I can't see it. He is just a dog.

It was a dark and foggy night........

webenda wrote:Most people who meet Old Blue say that. I can't see it. He is just a dog.

"...just a dog." I hope he didn't hear you say that!

Blue cannot read, so what I say here is safe.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:It was a dark and foggy night........

Yes, it was.

I wish I could have written a good poem about being out in the fog to get some dog food. Alas, I gave up after a few tries and sent what I'd written to Gemini AI, asking, "Make it rhyme." What I posted was what Gemini did for me.

Phrases like "It was a dark and stormy night" are often-mocked and parodied phrases considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose.

I love purple prose or poetry.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents
—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked
by a violent gust of wind that swept up the streets (for
it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the
housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of
the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

--Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford.