Sometimes I have to stop and think where ideas for posts come from. Yes, and that is usually the point at which my head is empty and I am out of ideas. I spent years teaching the writing process and I advocated many different pre-writing idea-generating strategies. I should be able to come up with something to write about without resorting to bashing my right temple with a hand-held blunt object. After all, those ideas come out kinda wobbly and full of strangely-colored stars. So, let me find a broom in the upstairs broom closet in the empty hallways of my mind and sweep together all the possible ideas I have in one pile to look at, grimace, and compare.
There is a letter with a Martian stamp on it. Inside it proposes I hold an aliens-only poetry writing contest and put the worst possible results into a post. That could be worth a few chuckles, and possible a gazorpingwallow or two. At least, that’s what the letter suggests. It is from some Ixcanixian from the spinward edge of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. 
I have several ongoing cartoon projects. I could be adding another page to the Hidden Kingdom graphic novel I have been working on for thirty years. I could also do more action-figure comics to rationalize all the time I spend playing with dolls. And I like to do novel illustrations to go along with the many bizarre and mentally warped novels I have created.
Of course we have recently received the kind of political Christmas gift that most of us would like to track Santa down to his lair for and return back inside the reindeer butt that it came out of. Insulting the new orangutan king is an easy source of insult-based humor that I don’t have to work too hard at or feel too guilty about. But too much of that is like getting drunk on cough syrup. You intended to cure the problem, but you have only managed to add new problems and a hangover headache to top it all off.
I still have to fix the cracked and leaky swimming pool before next spring, so that should yield some cementing-your-feet-into-the-pool-wall stories later on. And there are the numerous frustrations of living life with six incurable diseases to write about. I can probably make the flaking off of all the skin on the back of my neck from psoriasis sound pretty funny if I try hard enough. The family dog is still producing dog poop at Guiness-Book-of-World-Records rates… and, oh, yeah, I am still a long way from being done telling you about the bad jokes from more than a quarter of a century of classroom cut-ups.
You know, I think the way to deal with the problem is to simply make a list of ideas. I can throw darts at the list if I still can’s decide.
Catch a Falling Star 