Charming. Charming. Very Charming.

It's the iron rule of three: Three sources make a story, three strikes make an out, three items make a post.

It's true. Only the discovery of the third of these drove me to the keyboard.

1) Walking this morning listening to public radio, I heard a newscast in which a health official said, yes, we have identified a beef lot a mile from a spinach field as the source of the death-dealing ecoli that has upset the nation's spinach cart. But hold on, he said. There are blanks still be filled in, links to be determined. "I won't say that we have identified the smoking cow," he said.

2) In the Chron this morning a story about Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snicket books. Accompanying it is this picture with this cutline: "Daniel Handler jumps off a park bench in San Francisco with Annalese Levaggi, who just happened to be passing by." (And the photographer who took the picture is a Pulitzer Prize winner, which shows.)

3) As I said two items don't make a post, so imagine my delight when I go a couple pages deeper into the Daily Datebook to discover an ad for the Market Street Cinema, which is XXX and proud of it. There on the right side of the ad just next to the lady and her pole it says: "Convention badges allow 1/2 off."

I am stopping right now. Three items are a post. Four items are a diatribe.