Hm. I was grumpy last night. My hiccups did eventually go away after like three or four hours. And they really did hurt.

Turns out the new office mascot is sticking around for awhile longer. It's a lot of fun being able to take a break to pet him. And it cracks me up because every once in awhile he'll wander out from the back and customers will do a triple take. Like, "Is that a CAT?! Awesome."

I suppose I should retire this thing. But before I do, a Cops quote for the night:

Ted about trying to solicit a prostitute: I see someone who is half-naked. I mean she is not what you would call a toothless wonder. You know what I'm sayin'?
Cop: Ted, let me ask you, have you ever been with any toothless wonders?
Ted: Yeah. My girlfriend.

I have the fucking hiccups. And I've had them for like an hour.

And as I am wont, every time I hiccup, I follow it up by "Ow."

Try spending a few hours hiccuping every 10 seconds. It'll hurt like hell after a bit.

I will shortly wish to shoot something.

Oh wait! That moment has come!

Ow.

I have no idea why, but I decided to watch the SAG awards show. But it is sort of relevant since people keep popping up that roam around my little planet. So I suppose I oughta deviate from not paying attention to these sorts of things and watch.

Yay! Kiefer won for best actor in a television series. And I ain't disagreeing. Gotta love 24.

Lost won for best ensemble in a drama, which meant I got to see Hill and Adebisi. And Meloni wandered onstage a bit later.

Boston Legal lost for best comedy (which makes sense since the show sucks) but I got to glimpse the ever lovely Mark Valley. Mrow.

And then I noticed that Reed Diamond and Tate Donovan (HLOTS and The OC, respectively) were both in Good Night and Good Luck. And I completely forgot that Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks) was in Brokeback Mountain.

I always forget which awards shows let the audience drink. But I spy with my left eye alcohol. Which may account for all the fuck-ups.

I love fuck-ups.

But I do hate (okay, like) the montage of people who have died. Because I always go, "WHO DIED?!?! WHAT?!?" In that category this year would have to be Wendie Jo Sperber. I had no idea that Amy from Bosom Buddies was battling cancer.

Best quotes (it's become habit apparently):

Sean Hayes: I'd like to thank Ang Lee for taking a chance on me.

S. Epatha Merkerson: And I have say a public thank you to my divorce lawyer.

William H. Macy: Unlike so many of us, Paul is working. So I'm going to take this home. Paul, if you want it give me a call.

Ryan Phillippe to Morgan Freeman: I've always wanted to meet you. You just met Reese, my wife.

The last one isn't really a great quote, per se, but if I were on the same stage as Morgan Freeman I'd definitely want to introduce myself.

It's that time again. Two full hours of Cops.

The arresting officers are discussing where they found drugs in a vehicle (between the two seats in back)
Perp: "If that was mine why wouldn't I have pushed it behind the seat?"
Cop: "Probably because you're stupid."

HA!

You know, I really miss the old Cops episodes where they sometimes even followed a homicide investigation from crime scene to arrest of suspects. It's like an early First 48.

Okay, it's actually the 29th and I'm up early. But for the record? It's snowing right now.

That's Minnesota weather for you.

When TV Shows Collide News: I was watching Stargate SG-1 on Friday and I was looking at one of the guest actors and thinking, "Holy shit. That kind of looks like Reed Diamond". An actor from Homicide. And then after watching for awhile longer, I realized it looked a little like him, but that I was totally high to think it was him.

It was him.

It's a gloomy day in Minneapolis. Or at least in my apartment. I need better lighting. In an attempt to catch up with this site, I'm off to quote things. Wish me luck.

Mixed bag on the planet this weekend.

It's kinda weird in the Twin Cities. We're in the middle of January (okay, end of January) and it's in the mid-40s. There's been some talk of global warming, but I'm not sure it isn't just weather being weather. In a month or so we'll hit the coldest time of the year and I'm guessing it'll be just like old times all around.

But for now it is kind of strange seeing puddles everywhere.

I'm happy to say that I picked up two new clients this week. When I started my own business I contemplated bagging this site because my clients would potentially be conservative Christians. Now my clientele is so primarily liberal (yay!) I almost thought about removing the more conservative stuff.

In the end my decision stays the same. I stand by all my work whether I agree with the politics or not.

Except for anything I ever did involving Thomas Kinkade.

Wow. It's a Rhett Miller fest on Veronica Mars tonight.

Most notably they played "Four Leaf Clover" by the Old 97s. Featuring the lovely Exene Cervenka of X fame. The track is off of Too Far to Care. And is well worth the purchase.

I'm guessing the last song is from Rhett's latest solo album. Charming fellow, which I know I've mentioned before. As are his band mates.

In other news: my email program froze on me and when I restarted the machine and opened the mail program, it politely congratulated me on using the program for the first time and asked me to enter in my email accounts.

So now I'm scrambling to rebuild everything. This night sucks ass.

Oh Lord. What to write.

I have been having serious trouble getting out of bed in the morning this week. I'm not a morning person in the slightest, but this week has been horrid.

I actually contemplated calling in dead this morning. I figured that if they didn't believe me they would at least laugh and if they did believe me it would be all the awesomer when I came back to work, ostensibly from the dead.

But I decided to go in anyway today. And was greeted by a new co-worker. Which kind of surprised me. He kind of slunk out of the back room and I had to do a double-take.

He's seriously cute. He's a little chubby and he's got kind of a lot of hair, but he loves it when I scratch his head.

I think he's only in the office for a week, though. But for the time being it's nice having a cat lurking around.

Just don't tell Ramona.

This is a random thought, but why in the world would you ever have your nickname be BJ? Just sayin'.

Ugh. I hate Sundays. Hate. Hate. Hate. I feel like crawling under the covers and staying there. I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to be left alone to wallow in my grumpiness.

Phew. Mission accomplished. For the most part. And I got work done. Actual work.

Totally rare.

Is there some sort of Copy Bitch Code of Honor? "Thou shall not peek at all the random shit you're making copies of"? Perhaps there needs to be.

For the record, if you're needing some personal stuff copied, DO IT YOURSELF. If you hand me something that looks interesting and/or scandalous, you best believe I'll read it.

I keep getting these little jobs that are most likely confidential info. And I'd love to share, but I don't want to become some sort of tabloid rag "Guess which local Asian restaurant might be going into the last home of a local Irish pub".

Gotta love gossip...

Oh dear Lord. I can't stop laughing. Every once in awhile Ramona will wake up from a long nap and look all drowsy and drugged out and trying to adjust to the light. And every time, I think, God she looks like someone or something.

Tonight she did the same thing and I figured it out: she looks like Thor from Stargate. Even down to a slow and constant blinking of her entirely black eyes while kind of moving her head back and forth languidly.

It's fucking uncanny.

I heard a disturbing sound today. A crunching sound my car made when I turned a corner. Which sounded... expensive.

In other news: I was watching Project Runway and as usual had paused it somewhere during the episode. So I was about 5 minutes behind. Around 10 PM my mom called and started the conversation with "I can't believe Santino's still in it!"

Way to give away the ending of the episode, Mom. I mean, I kind of knew that was coming, but geez...

Two full hours of 24. I don't know if my heart can take it. I have high hopes for this season.

Hm. Palmer's brother has a similar computer to me. Weird.

Best line of the night (as Jack's dealing with the son): "The only reason you're still conscious is because I don't want to carry you."

Ha!

Although I wasn't shocked at Palmer's death, Michelle's gave me pause. I wasn't amazed it happened, but...

Michelle! She was so cool. I hated her in the beginning but I so grew to like her.

One of my favorite recent Cops episode moments is on tonight. Some crazy old guy is terrorizing a local fast food joint. The incident itself is kind of funny (the guy keeps screaming "ACLU! ACLU!" as he is being cuffed). But the reason it stands out is because after he's in custody they're interviewing a witness who had been confronted by the perp:

"...and then he had the nerve to call me George Bush and that's when I thought he went too far."

I have no idea if that's as funny as I think it is. Or if the guy meant it the way I interpreted it. But either way it cracks me up.

Friday again, huh?

I took a header (or a footer, perhaps) on a patch of ice tonight. Fell on my butt. I'm gonna be sore as hell tomorrow. My tailbone especially. I hate Winter.

Hopefully the concussion I incurred won't affect me much affect me much.

As I write this I'm watching Homicide "Night of the Dead Living". Great episode. Ah, with Tergesen in it. He showed up on a semi-regular basis until he got shot and went blind.

Munch to Bolander: "Your partner Mitch. Has sex with goats."

Anyway, in preparation for doing taxes this year (or should I say having someone else do my taxes) I've been getting all my ducks in a row and someone needed to see my original business filing with the state.

So I'm looking through my excuse for a filing system and it isn't where it should be.

Fuck.

So I started tearing through my piles of paper and finally found it. And as I was sitting on the floor surrounded by mass amounts of paper, I finally decided to suck it up and get all the filing/reorganizing I needed to get done.

And in the process I ran into some time capsule stuff.

You know the stuff you forget about for awhile and then try to find to no success? Only to find them in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"?

So the back story: In 1993 the Black Bible Chronicles came out. It was the Bible (or like, the Pentateuch, the Gospels, and Psalms or something. I forget) written in slang. The intention (I think) was to get African American teens interested in the Bible.

I think.

And back in those days it took maybe four or five people to typeset a Bible. So there were a bunch of us who were in the middle of typesetting some Bible or other. And we all decided to buy the Black Bible Chronicles out of curiousity. I have no idea what happened to the book, but I found a photocopy of the ten commandments:

"Don't put anyone else before me.

"Don't make any carved objects or things that look like what is in heaven or below. And don't bow down to these things like they are anything heavy. Not ever!

"You shouldn't diss the Almighty's name, using it in cuss words or rapping with one another. It ain't cool and payback's a monster.

"Remember the day of the Almighty which is the seventh day. After you've worked six days, give the seventh to the Almighty" (Remember that the Almighty made the heavens and the earth in six days. He rested on the seventh day and blessed it as right-on.)

"You shouldn't be takin' nothin' from your homeboys.

"Give honor to your mom and dad, and you'll live a long time.

"Don't waste nobody.

"Don't mess around with someone else's ol' man or ol' lady.

"Don't go 'round telling lies on your homebuddies.

"Don't want what you can't have, or what your homebuddy has. It ain't cool."

Heh. Homebuddy. Did anybody ever use that term? I'm gonna start calling people that.

"Homebuddy". Sounds more Gay Bible Chronicles than Black Bible Chronicles.

And commandment number eight sounds like it was taken from the Biker Bible Chronicles. "Don't mess around with someone else's ol' man or ol' lady when you're in Sturgis."

On second thought, maybe that's more the Bisexual Biker's Bible Chronicles.

AUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy crap, why didn't I know this. I was checking sites linking to me and inadvertantly came across the fact that The Sleuth channel has picked up Homicide and is rerunning it—it looks like—every night. That is just insanely cool. Back when CourtTV ran it, I'd watch it every night (I think it was on at 11 PM). I loved falling asleep to Homicide.

I deleted my story about screwing up at work and replaced it with a story that—upon rereading—makes me sound like a klepto.

Heh.

I swear I'm neither. And in a semi-related story I grabbed a t-shirt to wear today and it was an anvil drop shirt from a few years ago. So I repaid my debt to the family business by advertising, right?

Ai.

I've seen a few episodes lately (different shows) about people living in poverty. Or people living in a wartown country and struggling to survive.

There's nothing that will make you feel more petty or shallow. My crap is so minor compared to others.

I swear to god something has got to go right for people in my life soon. 'Cause right now shit ain't goin' so hot for anybody.

In other news, a lunch meeting on Sunday turned into me wandering around Gardner Hardware for a couple hours. Which is actually more interesting than it sounds. I'd never been in the basement before. They've got this collection of old school registers and scales, which are very cool.

But the coolest part by far is the freight elevator. I'm a simple person, remember? And it's larger than my livingroom. By a lot, actually.

Plus I picked up one of those generic telephone signs. You know the blue ones with Braille at the bottom? I don't know why. But it was in the clearance aisle. I figured they wouldn't mind.

On the way home I realized I should have gone for something actually useful, like paper towels or light bulbs or something.

But then again I would have felt compelled to pay.

Yay for Happy Claire! I resolved to start leaving my part time job early on a more regular basis so I could get some work done during the afternoon. And as I was driving home I got that happy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I used to get when I worked from home all day. I missed that feeling. A lot.

I didn't miss that the heat gets turned down during the day.

Every ounce of creativity—literary or graphical—is just plain gone. I went into tantrum mode and threw my laptop across the room in a fit of pique. Which shattered everywhere. I've been sweeping up the pieces all evening. I have no idea how I'm going to get my files off my hard drive now. So years and years of work are just gone in a few seconds.

Okay, that didn't actually happen. But it would have made good rant fodder.

Wangler: Happy New Year, motherfuckers!
Schillinger: Eat me, you little prick.

Gotta love Oz.

C'mon, 'fess up. Who woke up with a strange person in their bed? It's a New Years tradition.

Actually that never happened to me. It happened to past roommates of mine though. I have pictures.

Me? I tended to wake up with people I knew. And that's enough personal information for the entire year.

This morning? I woke up with Ramona jumping on top of me.

Which would sound a lot sexier if she wasn't a cat.