planetclaire.org | past rant

03.10.04

I have the plague. It sucks. Despite my best efforts not to contract it from my ailing roommate, I am ill. And grumpy.

On that note. Random story:

Over the years, the most consistent typo I've found in typesetting Bibles is that the word plague often is misspelled plaque. It makes me giggle reading about bad hygiene befalling the Israelites.

Seriously, I think I've found that misspelling around a dozen times.

03.08.04 cont.

Better late than never. I hereby present February's installment of:

TOP FIVE REALLY FREAKY SEARCH STRINGS
INTO PLANETCLAIRE.ORG

Title needs work. Ahem:

1. abmany [Why does this pop up EVERY month? argh!]
2. ryan o'reily lord of the dance quote [Heh.]
3. carlos the dwarf [From Freaks and Geeks.]
4. quotes by punkers [I have in sum total one quote on punkers. Sorry.]
5. fidel castro boat monument grandma [?]

Runners up:

al jolson a wife beater [Woah. I ain't accusing anybody of anything.]
dino's gyros nutrition [does it really matter? the food's too good.]
black istory quotes [Not even close. I think they went to the Monty Python page. Get sidetracked?]

03.08.04

Say it with me, folks: We're number one! We're number one!

To update the Secret War of the Claires: planetclaire.org is currently resting in the number one slot. Sweet! In your face, .com!

Ironically enough, what turned the tide was me writing about the Secret War of the Claires. Bwahahaha!

03.05.04

One post this snowy Friday since I don't do anything online on the weekends. A story for y'all:

It's Friday afternoon and Heathrow and I are mentally willing 6:00 to come. Now we have this tradition: every time we get some random spam offering Viagra or cheap prescriptions or the like, we politely inquire if the other is in need of said product before pitching the email. You know, just in case. Hey we're polite like that. Anyway, it's become a bit of a habit, but it's most likely funny only to us.

So today I get a phone call from a client and we're talking. Said client has to leave the room to get a fax or something. And it sounds like he put me on hold. So I check email and, sure enough, spam. I immediately ask Heathrow: "Do you need any Viagra?" Heathrow replies that she does not. Short silence.

Then I hear, "Did you just ask me if I needed Viagra?"

The client.

I turn twenty shades of red and start babbling and trying to offer up an adequate explanation of why I was offering viagra. Meanwhile, Heathrow's next to me just laughing her ass off listening to me try to extricate myself from the comment.

Good times, people. Good times.

03.02.04

Wow. I am completely mesmerized by this link someone on an email list posted. It's kinda cool in an ADD sort of way.

So I figured, time to fight fire with fire. I never submitted any of my pages to Google to be listed in their directory. I got by on my looks. So I submitted 'em. I want to be popular again! I crave validation.

03.01.04

Well the glory days are over. Whereas I used to be number 3 in the Google search for The OC quotes (thereby garnering me upwards of 200 visitors a day) I am now nowhere to be found.

I'll admit it, I'm a little hurt.

02.24.04

Traffic to the site has slowed down. I'm hurt. So I will tell a story:

I am at war with a Claire.

And she doesn't even know it, so it's Claire's Secret War. Who, you ask? With the Claire at planetclaire.com.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I want the domain. I love being a .org. Wouldn't change it for the world, I swear. But the war rages on all the same.

You see, occasionally one of my friends will accidentally send an email to claire@planetclaire.com—my friends, they don't believe in address books, apparently—and she never replies. Ever. Now isn't there some internet code of ethics that states you must send a reply informing the sender that it's the wrong person? I believe there is.

In fact, the most famous mix-up was Shanny constantly inviting me to dinner and accidentally sending it to the other so-called Claire. This other Claire must have thought some random woman in Minneapolis had an unnatural obsession or something. It went on for months.

I'm sure this Claire is a perfectly lovely woman and all, don't get me wrong. She has a perfectly lovely site and I'm sure a perfectly lovely voice to match. I just have no life.

But I digress. Back to The War of the Claires:

See, lately I've been gaining some ground. The tide is turning. How can I tell?

Occasionally I'll type "planetclaire" into Google just to see where I show up. Now normally, Miss Dot Com shows up above me. But recently, I've nudged above her. And then I get bumped down! And then back up. Now, I'm not one for conspiracy theories (much) but it seems as though Google is manually pushing her up to the top. I gotta say, I'm guessing I get more traffic than she does.

So in order to fight, I type in planetclaire and click on me repeatedly. This is a war that must be won! By me! So if someone reads this and is bored... I'm just suggesting...

And if anyone actually does this and can prove it... um, I'll whip up some planetclaire merchandise. Or cash.

02.21.04

All right, I have my rant for the morning. It concerns gay marriages. As of late, the mayor of San Francisco has been allowing City Hall to perform same-sex marriages. What do I have to say to that?

It's about friggin' time.

The ban on same-sex marriages is one of the more wrongheaded thing I have come across in my 26 years on this planet. The logic behind it fails me. It goes hand in hand with the stupid nature versus nurture argument: are people born gay or did something in their upbringing "turn them gay"?

Eh! Times up! Thanks for playing! It is neither nature or nurture, but both. You can't get away from genetics any faster than you can get away from your upbringing. It's a combination, people. Which reminds me of something I once read. I'll admit it, I think it was from Doonesbury. And I severely paraphrase: "Who the hell would choose to be gay with all the problems that come with it?" I always liked that.

What the hell is my point?

Well I'm not sure. I'm rambling. But I think, in the long run, my point is that we have no control over who we love. The heart wants what it wants, so to speak. And I don't think the government should have a say over who we publicly bequeath our love to. And I have a feeling, deep in my soul, that God feels the same way. And if [He] doesn't, I'll be partying down in Hell with all the rest of of the sinners that the Right has identified.

Okay... went away for a bit and reread my rant and it sounds stupid. But honest. That's how I feel. I wanted to re-edit it but I won't. The reason I came back was to mention that the sending of bouquets to San Francisco (read below) has gone national. The Star and Tribune has an article which I will not try and link to now.

02.20.04

This just in: I have made it my new life mission to include the word "snazzy" into as many conversations as possible.

There's a snazzy movement started here to send flowers to couples waiting in line to get married. What a wonderful idea. LINK

02.19.04 cont.

You know, I like that nobody reads this. I'm left to my own devices to write whatever I want. So I have a confession. I love cartoons. In particular, Arthur. A cartoon on PBS. Or tpt if you're in Minneapolis. Which I am. It's bloody brilliant:

Arthur celebrities:
Larry King
Art Garfunkel
Some boy band (N'Sync or Backstreet Boys)
A theme song by Ziggy Marley
An appearance by Alex Trebek and Mr. Rogers
And has referenced Harry Potter, Edgar Allen Poe, other people...

I love this show. It's a kid's show. I'm lame. That is all.

02.19.04

"I'm Eddie. How do you like me so far?" is...

An ongoing pick-up line/theme from Keen Eddie, a show I'm considering adding to my short list of Best. Shows. Ever. Bravo is rerunning the episodes now and I'm remembering how much love I had for this show. It was actually replaced by The OC, which is funny, as I remember resenting the show for killing off Keen Eddie. I hope they come out on DVD.

My favorite fun fact from the show: while trying to cast the part of Pete the pit bull (Eddie's pet) they found a dog in a crack den or some other unseemly place in London. They weren't going to use him for the part, but couldn't bear to leave him. So they rescued him. He ultimately showed so much personality that they decided to use him as Pete. Awww.

Oh, and The OC rules.

02.18.04

Anybody need a laugh?

02.15.04

Whoa. This week has been unsane. I have a new second niece (or something... I forget the relation-thingies), a new child for a co-worker, and our resident super-genius got engaged to our Gal-Friday-at-the-front-desk (high school sweethearts).

Plus plus, Celebrity Mole 2 is winding down, and, in a Reality TV meets a faction of my life, our sales VP met Stephen Baldwin at some Christian Broadcasting convention. She said he was weird. Lots of "Dude"s. But she thinks I'm weird.

Hmm... another "we did that!" moment when we were at Target this afternoon. We were looking for a copy of pat the bunny and I looked at the endcap and found my Hot Wheels book staring back at me. I was tempted to buy it, but I refrained.

02.13.04 cont.

I just found out that my 48% geek co-worker has his own website. So now I'm not the only person I know with their own domain. Whew!

It's bitwiseOR.com which is apparently some brainy computer term I'm too dense to fathom. But he does have a Pong game for people to play. And he rigged it so you win a lot. Good times.

He's too smart for his own good. He's going to take over the world someday. You heard it here first.

02.13.04

There's a quiz online, "Are You a Geek". I took it last month after seeing the link on a music list I'm on. I was 18% geek, which seemed low knowing me, but I was happy with it. I have two officemates around me, and I sent the link to them. The first, Heathrow, took it and scored -2%. Negative geek. I didn't know that was possible. The second person, a brilliant computer geek who I adore, scored 48%. No big surprise. So that's who I'm surrounded by: anti-geek and uber-geek.

On a related topic, we were discussing when we were first exposed to computers. The general consensus was around fifth grade. The game everyone remembers? The Oregon Trail. You had to cross the US in a wagon, making sure to bring enough supplies and hoping against hope that your family didn't catch cholera or diptheria (they always did). Then the final raft ride along the river to end the game. Who thinks these games up, anyway?

02.12.04 cont.

Yeah yeah yeah, John Kerry had an affair. So what. The shocker today is that Barbie and Ken are splitting up. Seriously.

The plastic duo are no longer going to be married, according to Mattel. That link is worth it to see the media announcement and the broken heart photo. Ah, hell. I'll just grab the image. It'll save you the trip.

Two days away from Valentine's Day, and I'm thinking the truth is Ken didn't want to buy her anything.

Barbie's new man? Blaine the boogie boarder.

Article is here.

02.11.04

Well I chose the star for a favicon. Apparently there was no caucus, primary, or election regarding the decision, so I got over myself. It actually became quite simple when I remembered my asterisk was the star. Duh. The stupidest part is I'll never see it, being an Apple girl and all.

We went to It's Greek to Me for lunch (for those dying to know, I had spanakopita and a side of gyros). We took Lake Street back to the office and I gave Heathrow a driving tour:

"That used to be the Sears Building, that's the saddle shop, that's where I went to junior high, that's where a cop was shot, there used to be a carnival there, that used to be a whore house, that's where I went to high school..."

Good times.

Random history: Lake Street became Lake Street because the soldiers from Fort Snelling would take it to get to the Native American communities. The largest and most popular cemetary was the one on Lake and Cedar. Um... that's all for now.

02.10.04

Speaking of transportation...

Fling the Penguin game. No penguins were harmed in the making of this game.

Okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna put in a favicon.ico so I don't get so many errors in my web logs. It's a matter of pride. What do the Chinese say? "A clean html page is a happy html page." Or something. Here are my choices:

Of course they'd be in another color. Which is my other dilemma. If I make it pink, some dude'll bookmark the site and be cheesed off that there's a bright pink thing in his IE. I'm sort of leaning toward #1. If any of my family or friends (or well-wishers) wants to weigh in, email me.

Vote early! Vote often!

02.08.04

With all the winter driving lately, transportation has been on my mind this weekend. So today will be about precisely that.

The first time it popped into my brain was when I was stuck behind a student driver coming home from work on Friday. And I was reminded of my Drivers Ed teacher in high school. It was the only class he taught, and I can't imagine he had a ton of classes, so this guy probably didn't work a heck of a lot.

He would often put on a movie and fall asleep in the back of the room. We'd have to wake him up so he could dismiss us. Sometimes he'd just plain leave the room. The bell would ring, we'd have to leave, and he's nowhere to be found. So we'd just leave with the film still playing.

But my favorite story is from taking driving lessons with him. He would tune the radio to a Christian station. So I'd be trying to parallel park while hearing a tirade on why abortion doctors were all Satan's tools. I once actually asked him to change the station, and he did. To another Christian station. I stopped asking after that.

Anyway, maybe the third driving lesson, he directs me to the St. Paul Midway Sears store. Now keep in mind that my high school is in Minneapolis and Midway is maybe 15-20 minutes away. I park the car and he tells me he'll be right back. So I sit there for 30 minutes. 30 minutes. I couldn't believe it. He comes back like nothing's happened and we drive back to school. Completely useless.

I thought I had the trump story, but a friend of mine beat me: she had a driving lesson with him where she had to pick his daughter up from band practice.

Is this normal? Do all driving instructors take their students on errands instead of teaching them how to drive? I have no idea.

02.06.04

So last night on ESPN Classic they showed the 1980 US vs. USSR hockey game. I'd never seen it before (I was 3). I'm sure that if I'd seen it in original form it would have been a lot more riveting, but I gotta say, it was fun to watch. Alan and I were cheering when they scored the last two goals.

And a lot of the kids on the team were Minnesota boys. We rule.

Quiz time:

What Replacements Song Are You?

I'm Bastards of Young.

Not sure if that's good or a bad thing.

02.05.04 cont.

Someone on an Oz board posted a link that made me laugh:

Everything I Need To Know About Web Design I Learned Watching Oz

The article in itself was sort of meh. But the title alone rules.

Okay, so I think the funniest part about the whole Janet Jackson boobages thing is that the incident, according to Justin Timberlake, was a "wardrobe malfunction." That is my new favorite excuse for everything.

"Claire, you forgot to update that website."

"Sorry, boss. Wardrobe malfunction."

"Oh. Never mind then. Carry on."

02.05.04

Woah. I just found the coolest sites. Allow me to share:

archive.org : dedicated to preserving digital files for posterity. And they have files of live shows from bands on there that you can download.

db.tree.org : a database of live shows and traders that have the shows. Some of which you are free to download.

Now they're primarily in SHN format, which I'd been told Macs couldn't either use or translate into a format that was Mac friendly, so I gave up on it. Now it turns out I can burn them to disk with this software:

Shorten software

Oh man, I should not have discovered that. Danger.

Sweet sweet danger.

02.04.04

Awhile back I mentioned that the show "Let's Bowl!" on Comedy Central was filmed across the street from my office, at Stardust Lanes. Or alledgedly filmed there. They claim it is, but a co-worker of mine doesn't buy it.

Anyway I couldn't sleep Monday night and was flipping stations and found it at 2 am. I forgot Trailer Trash was the house band. Nice.

For some reason whenever I hear the name I think of another local band, Dumpster Juice.

Which leads me to The Simpsons:

Bart: Otto Man? You're living in a dumpster?
Otto: Ho, man. I wish. Dumpster-Brand trash bins are top of the line.
This is just a Trash-Co waste disposal unit.

I watched the commentary on The Simpsons DVD from that episode this weekend. Cracked me up. It's very edu-ma-cational. You get the lyrics to Herb Alpert's Little Spanish Flea song:

There was a little spanish flea
A record star he thought he'd be
He heard of singers like the Beatles
and the Chipmunks he'd seen on TV
Why not a little spanish flea?

That's not the whole thing, but... whatever. Dan Castellanata singing the song over the credits made me giggle.

So I go from a bowling show to band names to dumpster quotes to The Simpsons. Further insight into my twisted payche, eh?

02.03.04

So over the weekend I was looking over the access logs for this site and had to laugh at some of the search strings that got people here. So this is the first annual monthly top search strings.

My favorites in no particular order:

action jesus [I refer to him every once in awhile.. never got his webcam going. hmm...]
abmany [I have absolutely no idea how someone typed that and got here, and like 5 people got here after typing it pretty much every month]
neal pert [Freaks and Geeks quotes]
captain oats oc [everybody's favorite plastic horse]
bill haverchuck [that name always makes me laugh]

02.02.04 cont.

So this has had me giggling like a 12-year-old all day. In Google preferences you can change the language Google displays in. So I changed mine to Elmer. Everything's been Ewmerized. And when you do a search and don't get any results it says:

Youw seawch - claire is a genius- did not match any documents. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit!

I'm 12, I realize this, but hee!

02.02.04

It's been snowing for the last two days. Roads are slippery, people are antsy... bad combination. As I left for work this morning my roommate was casually seated on the couch watching TV and making sales calls on his cell phone. Damn him!

Random story somewhat related to above ramble:

I got out to my car and, before I opened the snow-covered door, brushed it off with some papers I had so all the snow wouldn't fall INTO my car. Some woman was driving by, stopped, and offered to let me use her snow brush. How nice is that? And not Minnesota-nice, but really nice.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl (well I saw the last few minutes). I usually watch it for the ads, and I didn't even care to do that. I caught glimpses of a Willie Nelson doll, a donkey, and the teens the RIAA arrested for music-downloading.

And I thankfully missed the half-time show with Justin "I desperately need street cred" Timberlake and Janet "I have more silicon than my brother" Jackson and her boobages.

Stupidest. Staged. Incident. Ever.

Meh.

01.30.04

It's -10 degrees outside right now and it's supposed to get COLDER.

Sometimes I love Minneapolis and sometimes I don't want to leave my warm house ever.

01.29.04

I'm working on the Tim Easton lyrics page. Have I mentioned it? Oh. Yeah.

It's almost done. Yay for me. Anyway, I just finished Tragedy Bound and, like everytime I hear it, I got tears in my eyes. It's so beautifully sad. And I never cry over songs. Ever.

Tragedy Bound

I am tragedy bound
Locked and loaded, filed down
Everything I loved is under the ground
I can't see still for shaking but there's no one to hold me down
I am I am tragedy bound

She was New York City bound
Young and hungry strong and sound
Nothing behind her holding her down
She was much too tired of being small-town
She was she was New York City bound

He was criminal bound
Blind and tired totally strung-out
Down at the Bottoms where no mercy is allowed
Found himself a stranger in the wrong part of town
He was criminal bound

Now they were dark street alley bound
He took her money and he asked her to lay down
When she refused him the knife came out
He didn't want to hurt but she called his name out loud
Jesus, Jesus was dark street alley bound

Now I am tragedy bound
Locked and loaded, filed down
Off to find this man in the devil's town
I can't see still for shaking but there's no one to hold me down
I am I am I am yes I am
Well I am tragedy bound

01.28.04

Well I know you like to stay out late
Reinforce and revelate
I know you like your whiskey straight
So your mind can elevate
Well me, I like elevators too
So whatever gets you true

Paddy Casey, Whatever Gets You True

I can't believe he's such a sore loser
Maybe someday you'll learn that coffee is for closers
Raise up the glass and toast the motherfucker
Just move along.

Sunday's Best, Indian Summer

01.27.04

Okay, more Tim Easton. I was listening to the Haynes Boys release in an attempt to add those to the lyrics page and I really need to listen to that album more. It's a stunner. It took me a couple of months to track down.

And now I just found it on Amazon. Why must I do things the hard way?

01.26.04

Woo hoo! times three. I got an email saying that the release date for Freaks and Geeks is set. They're selling a collector's edition online. So I preordered it. I don't know how I'll be able to wait until April.

Thankfully, I'll have season 3 of Oz to keep me company. That is released next month, on February 24.

And just because someone up there doesn't want me to have any money, Homicide season 4 is being released on March 4. Whew. Deep Discount DVD is one of my favorite places to buy DVDs. They're always less (often markedly) than Amazon.

This catapults me closer to owning all of my favorite shows on DVD. With Freaks and Geeks I can cross one off completely. Although I think it will be awhile before all *cough* fifteen seasons of The Simpsons get released.

On two unrelated notes:

1. It snowed here. A lot. We got like half a foot. I hate driving in snow. HATE IT. I had no idea it was supposed to snow (see earlier comment re: buying a lot of DVDs), so I was rudely brought to reality when I tried to step outside to go to work. Sigh.

2. Someone signed my guestbook! Not just anyone... well, actually I mean just anyone. It wasn't a friend, but a well-wisher. They complimented the site (O.C. quotes) and the design. That is so cool. Just the other day I was thinking of yanking the guestbook because it's just gathering dust. I was going to switch to the electric mail dealie (™Homer) instead. But no, the guestbook stays! Oh, salvation!

I'm babbling, aren't I? Sorry. With upwards of 200 people coming to this place a day, I haven't really had any indication that people were actually staying. This person said it "offered several minutes of enjoyment". I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that's a compliment.

CONTENT : I wasn't so hip on Ike Reilly's Salesmen and Racists when Jay brought it in month's ago (I liked Hip Hop Thighs) but it made it's way into the changer along with Tim Easton's Break Your Mother's Heart and Ryan Adam's Rock and Roll. It's growing on me, as are the other two. Well, maybe not Ryan so much. There's a couple of songs I like but overall... meh.

I'll shut up now. Carry on.

Okay, I'm back. Anyone still with me? I thought not. After gushing about someone signing my guestbook, I got an email from someone else that likes the site (O.C., of course). Hee! I'm 12! And very happy.

So, the reason I came back (other than being afraid to go outside) is because I have decided to launch the beta version of the Tim Easton lyrics. Just like the quotes, I got sick of not being able to find lyrics and, for my money, Tim is one of the better singer-songwriters out there right now. So here goes.

01.12.04

Woo hoo! I got my first Nigerian Scam Letter of the year. I was beginning to think they'd finally given up. Someone started up a site of ongoing correspondences with the lads. It's pretty funny. LINK