{"id":5797,"date":"2012-10-21T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T17:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5797"},"modified":"2012-10-21T12:00:26","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T17:00:26","slug":"this-is-a-dark-ride-week-ending-october-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5797","title":{"rendered":"This is a Dark Ride (Week Ending October 27)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/dark-ride.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-5805\" title=\"This is a Dark Ride\" src=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/dark-ride-300x195.jpg\" alt=\"This is a Dark Ride\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a>Years ago, there was a television program called\u00a0<em>The John Larroquette Show<\/em>. John Larroquette starred as a recovering alcoholic who had become the manager of a bus station. The show had a dark humor, characterized by John&#8217;s attitude toward his addiction. During the first episode, he hangs a carnival sign on his office wall that reads &#8220;This is a Dark Ride.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For the uninitiated, a dark ride is\u00a0an indoor amusement ride in which guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes. If you&#8217;ve ever been through a ride like the &#8220;Tunnel of Love&#8221; or Disneyland&#8217;s &#8220;Pirates of the Caribbean,&#8221; you know what we mean. A dark ride doesn&#8217;t have to be literally dark, but often darkness is used to conceal what comes next.<\/p>\n<p>That sign, and its implications about our lives, has stuck with me for nearly 20 years. Life is very much a dark ride. \u00a0Our future is concealed by the veil of time. It offers unexpected thrills around every turn. Sometimes the surprises are happy ones, but often they are terrifying.<\/p>\n<p>Our flash fiction assignment for this week was inspired by the season and the classic novel <em>Something Wicked This Way Comes<\/em>. Writer Ray\u00a0Bradbury combines horror and fantasy in a story of a traveling carnival that comes to a small town one October. The carnival leader, Mr. Dark, fulfills the townsfolk&#8217;s secret desires &#8230; but at a price.<\/p>\n<p>We asked our writers in the Cafe to channel their darkest thoughts and write a short story for Halloween. They have been thinking about carnivals and the strange awful things that could be lurking in those traveling shows.<\/p>\n<p>So climb aboard. Keep your arms and legs inside at all times. This is a dark ride.<\/p>\n<p>Until Next Week,<\/p>\n<p>The Cafe Management<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, there was a television program called\u00a0The John Larroquette Show. John Larroquette starred as a recovering alcoholic who had become the manager of a bus station. The show had a dark humor, characterized by John&#8217;s attitude toward his addiction. During the first episode, he hangs a carnival sign on his office wall that reads [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[148,191,422],"class_list":["post-5797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-carnival","tag-circus","tag-flash-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}