I have been feeling once again neglectful of my little rant and since I couldn't think of anything to write about I thought I would migrate in another month of rants. And I came across this gem:

Another dream I don't care to analyze: I dreamt the other night that I was pregnant with a demon child. Except the weight was measured in gigabytes, not pounds. I was avoiding the demon who showed up to help deliver it, but he finally caught me. He was nice, and reminded me that the last time the other demon midwife stayed with me for a week to help me heal since the birth was so painful.

On top of that, there were these little demons wandering around with plates of cigarettes for sale.

And it took place on my University campus.

Riddle me that.

When I first started reading it I thought, Huh. Way to make shit up, Claire. But then it came back to me and I actually remember having the dream.

In other news: I was driving home the other day and a car in the lane next to me had what looked like bright pink strands of something hanging out of the trunk. Like two distinct clumps of hundreds of strands.

My first thought: They kidnapped a muppet and stuffed it in the trunk! Crazy!

My second thought: They kidnapped a cheerleader and stuffed her in the trunk! Crazy!

Blergh.

One would think that having an apartment that stays regularly at 75 degrees would preclude one from getting a cold. One would think. But hell if I haven't contracted the plague.

Not that I'm surprised. Ever since college this is when I get sick. It would be a stressful period of finals and papers and chaos and as soon as that was over and I was ready for Christmas break I would get horribly sick and be down and out for a few days. And it's stayed with me. Ten years after I graduated.

Blecch.

I trekked out this morning around 8 AM and bought some clementines in an attempt to stave off the plague, but to no avail. I also tried shopping away the cold but that didn't help. So I went home and went back to bed. Didn't help either.

I am perhaps the least Sporty Spice girl ever. Don't really watch sports, never participated in sports (which I believe has cost the world many unintentionally hi-larious moments), not all that interested in sports.

Which is why I am constantly amused at the high ratio of interest to ownership of sports paraphernalia that is always in my closet.

It makes sense though. I had cousins growing up that were all-state everything, so I got a couple of shirts that way. I had a father who used to build sports arenas for number of years, so I would get a bunch shirts from the various teams he was working with. And today I got a large package from a guy I did an ad for (he used to have a shop down the block from us) with a bunch of sporty stuff.

And it's really quite nice stuff, too. I think maybe I'll show up for Christmas in my new Vikings team jersey. This is the family that has had season tickets to the Vikings since forever, so they might appreciate it.

Random instant thought: I'm watching Lockdown on MSNBC. And the montage of various shots through the prison shows a prisoner i the yard rubbing the belly of a rather contented looking cat. A pretty, well-fed looking cat. I can only think of Prison Break and hope the best for the cat.

When I moved into this apartment (about four years ago) there were pretty much no other people with wireless connections nearby. And I know this because I desperately tried leaching off any stable connection I could find. And I could never find one.

But these days there are around ten at any given time, not including Minneapolis' wireless service. Which is a pretty cool thing for the city to do. But I have a planet to run, dammit, and it just wouldn't feel right not having a "planetclaire" network available to me and only me. I am a megalomaniac after all.

But the other day I noticed an odd entry on the list of available connections (Illustration 1). Because... well really, what the hell? I even tried to reason out what it meant. Did this person previously have an open connection and now feels the need to explain why it is no longer open? Did their ex leach off of other connections and got busted? Is this person really insane? The mind boggles.

Then it got me thinking. Perhaps the wireless connection list is the newest method of online communication. Little messages passed back and forth over the wires. It's almost... well, sad. But kind of interesting. I'll have to monitor the wires.

In other news, I was at mom's yesterday making cookies (ginger snaps) and while I was there a friend of hers was installing new locks on her doors. She claimed it wasn't because she was trying to keep me out, but I have my doubts.

Anyway, for some reason she turned to her friend and said, "Criminy Dutch! I can't believe I broke the lock". Or something.

What an awesome phrase. Say it with the same feeling as "Fucking shite!" and you get the idea.

Criminy Dutch.

I am currently finding a home within my home for some new furniture. Not so exciting, but a bit like a game of Tetris when you have a smallish apartment such as I do. You tend to have to find creative ways to fit everything in so the furniture doesn't pile up to the top of the screen and then you get "GAME OVER" flashing on top. With that annoying music.

A random thought to mull over:

• My mom had her carpets cleaned last weekend in anticipation of the holidays. So she asked me to hang out because she didn't want to be home alone with the carpet cleaner. Turns out she didn't totally need me since she was comfortable with him and he was quick about the cleaning. And very proud of it. Which is awesome. Pride in your work. Go team! Clean!

As he was on his way out, my mom thanked him for doing a great job and he said (quite serious), "Well, it's because I'm so incredibly efficient with the hard strokes."

How does that not sound like bad German porn? I ask you.

Well I asked my mom, actually, and she looked at me like I needed to just keep my thoughts to myself more often.

Perhaps there's something to that...

In the past few snow-filled days I have found myself more on the road than not (thanks in no small part to being stuck in a traffic clusterfuck for four hours yesterday) and have noticed that our resident Classic Rawk! radio station has a new billboard ad campaign with such zippy slogans as

"Our Lawyer Is Always Busy"
"Not For the Faint of Heart Fart"
"We Criticize You in English"

I'm not even entirely sure what they were going for with the last one; perhaps you need to be xenophobic to get the joke. But even if you are, it's just really not all that funny. None of them are.

But I totally get it. They want to establish that they're hard core! They'll make fun of you! They'll offend you! They're soooo crazy they're always getting sued!

Which might be more convincing if they weren't owned by (wait for it) Disney.

Take cover! The Mouse is coming after you. And it totally knows how to rock out to Winger.

I have some thoughts:

One: I haven't been writing much lately. But I think I totally made up for it with that awesome snowglobe a few posts back.

Two: I was driving down Franklin the other day. No, seriously. I was. Anyway. The old Dairy Queen that is now a non-regal frozen treat place was completely swarmed by people, movie cameras and old-timey VW buses. The place looks like it was originally in black and white, and then recolored for the Turner Movie Classics channel. And now I am curious as to what they were shooting.

Three: I was feeling mighty lonely in here until I figured out that some people are now reading this on an RSS feed. See, but when you don't come through the site you miss all the nude pictorials in the sidebar. Just sayin'. Although you do get to see the awesome snowglobe.

Four: Spammers have apparently latched on to the idea of using pictures (or less creepy pictures anyway) in their emails. It's like an Abercrombie ad now. Except less pornographic.

Five: I'm off to find a snazzy image to go along with this post. Aw! See what happens when I wander through my computer aimlessly? I found the original Norman photo. He's been watching over planetclaire.org since its inception. I love Norman. Norman needs to be on a t-shirt. Not the original photo, but a drawing methinks. So I'm off.

I've been chatting back and forth with my erstwhile boss as she has been preparing to depart for warmer climes.

California, here she comes.

And she's a big texter. I actually hadn't really used that feature on my phone until now, so I've been taking some time to get used to it. And I can see why there are so many misspellings. The automatic word finder dealy doesn't make it easy to insert things like, oh, punctuation. So I've been learning all sorts of shortcuts. Because the auto word finder can certainly help when you're trying to spell out a longish word.

Not every time, however. Take for instance tonight when I wanted to type "criminal mastermind". Not a rare phrase by any means. But when I got to the end, the only choices it gave me for that configuration of buttons were "criminal mastermine" and "criminal mastermime". Not wanting to retype the thing, I chose "criminal mastermime". Because the mental imagery it conjures up is just completely beyond awesome. So from now on I'm prepared to insert the word "mastermime" into any conversation I can. As in, "Who do you think you are, some sort of criminal mastermime or something?"

Although whenever I do random word replacements like that people end up thinking I have a speech impediment.

And... we're into December.

Fitting, that. As we're getting snow dumped on us as I type. I was out driving in it earlier and had forgotten how much fun it can be. There's something about taking ten minutes to brush all the snow off your car and then slip-sliding down a deserted street that makes it feel like everything's right with the world. Screw global warming, screw people jumping ship for "warmer climes". This is Minnesota, bitches. This is what it should be like in the Winter months.

But I fear I am in a small group that feel that way. Yesterday and today everyone was going into panic mode and stocking up on groceries like the Rapture was coming. It's just snow. Yeesh.

I did do one thing that I wouldn't have usually done: I dropped off my rent yesterday, as I was unsure where I'd be today.

And seeing as I have a new caretaker I threw in a note welcoming him to the building and giving him my vitals (name, phone number, email addy). And as I was locking up to go and drop it off I threw the envelope in my mouth. As I am wont to do when my hands are full. So I ran upstairs, slid the rent check and cheery note under his door, and made my way back down the stairs.

In the process, I realized I had a mouthful of blood.

Okay, not a mouthful. But there was blood. I had apparently ripped open a split lip when I put the envelope in my mouth.

So now I have no idea if there's blood all over the envelope I had. Because, what an odd way to say hello in a cheery fashion. "Hi! I'm the wannabe vampire downstairs! Giving you a sample of my blood is how my people greet newcomers!" Or "I may sound cheery, but I often cut myself! Welcome to the building!".

Or maybe it'll look like lipstick. Which might be even worse than blood, as I never want to seem like one of "those" people who sign off their missives with a lip print.

Or maybe there's no blood or faux lip print at all on the envelope. In which case I'll look like some hyper cheerful next door neighbor. Until when he least expects it and then...