*hik* Kill me. *hik* Kill me.

ST. PETERSBURG — She has tried holding her breath. Drinking water from the far side of the glass. Putting sugar under her tongue. Sipping pickle juice. Breathing into a paper bag.

But none of those home remedies has helped 15-year-old Jennifer Mee, who started hiccupping three weeks ago and hasn’t stopped.

Something like 50 times a minute, she hiccups, a staccato sensation that resembles a smoke alarm with a dying battery. Her mother, Rachel Robidoux , thinks Jennifer sounds like a barking chihuahua.

It was kind of funny at first, but now it’s become much more than an annoyance.

Kinda puts my sneezing problem into perspective.

Insert Van Gogh joke here, woof woof

Anni Sheriffius said she was trying to wash off what she thought was dirt on her dog Jasmine’s ear when the ear fell off.

Sheriffius rushed her dog to the veterinarian to learn that the dog’s ear had been cut off by a dog groomer and super-glued back on.

“And I saw the ear float away, and it freaked me out,” Sheriffius said.

Bonus coverage in the "there are minions and then there are minions" file: Debra Pickett resigned from the Sun-Times Monday afternoon, minutes after being asked to do a story she thought was preposterous.

“I laughed,” says Pickett, recalling her response when features editor Christine Ledbetter called with the assignment to breast-feed her infant son in public places and write about it. "I have to say I didn't take it terribly seriously." She'd seen other Sun-Times stories begin with an "outrageous premise" then get negotiated into something not beneath the dignity of adults. Some other day, she and Ledbetter might have begun negotiating. But not this time.