Shortly after I posted it, I realised that my previous post could be taken as a “comedy mishearing” — and indeed, it duly was so taken. That’s not what I originally intended it as — and indeed, if I had, it wasn’t very funny.

No, when I started writing it, I was genuinely wondering what Robert Johnson was talking about. Why was he thinking about methane? Could he, perhaps, have been interested in the search for life on other planets, where the existence of methane might suggest the existence of oxygen-breathing life?

Or might he have been using a methane-burning stove? A dangerous and unpleasant cooking solution which might well have weighed on this thoughts and made him think of rambling.

Or perhaps “methane” was code for a drug or sexual practice — we are talking about the 1930s US, after all: a less enlightened time and place than our own.

But the dreary reality was that I had misheard “mean things”. Perhaps when I discovered that I shouldn’t have posted; but I was only a click or two away and it’s hard to stop.

Still, it all gave and the chance to have a little chat, and for the latter to point us to Kiss This Guy, where some of the mishearings actually are funny.

Anyway I hope that this has made it clear that I wouldn’t waste precious posts on such a thing as a comedy mishearing.

At least, not unless it was funny.

[1]See [www.sfgate.com/columnist...](http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/mondegreens.shtml)