Are all the good ones taken?

Well, I've got some bad news for you. No matter how creative you think you are, no matter how unusual you think your name is, no matter how hard to try to come up with something original, it's almost certainly already taken.

Unless it's your dog, then you can name it anything you damn well please. Fido, if you must. But if your dog wants his own website, and why shouldn't he, he probably won't be able to get www.fido.com. (Let me know if I'm wrong.)

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Olivia would understand.

As a result of watching far too many episodes of too many versions of Law and Order, I have become incredibly jaded, desensitized to the viciousness of violent crime, and suspicious of everyone. But that's not the problem.

The thing that really gets to me about these shows is that when they search a person's apartment (that's "toss the perp's crib," to you,bub), looking for a piece of evidence-a ticket to Tahiti or a gun, smoking otherwise — they find the damn thing in what seems like mere moments. "What do we have here, Lennie? Looks like the professor is planning a little sabbatical."

Or, the exact opposite happens: they don't find what they're looking for — and are absolutely sure it isn't there. "The place is clean, Elliott. Let's take a look at the car."

I, on the other hand, am constantly losing things in my own apartment, things that go missing for hours, days, months, years, and in a few sad cases, more than a decade. That poignant phrase, I know it's here someplace, can be heard echoing endlessly through the kingdom. 

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Oh, go ahead and do it!

It's my theory — and it's only a theory, folks— that it's very important to do small but nasty things on a regular basis. The thing is, if you don't, then the nasty feelings build up and up, and at some point you'll have to do something really, really nasty. Mean, even. If left unchecked, this situation could actually make you . . . bitter.

Let's face it, you're always a little annoyed at someone. That loudmouthed woman on the bus who talks incessantly on her cellphone about nothing even remotely interesting. That idiot in your office who dumps all his work on you and never loses his job.

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