oh the irony

Isn't it ironic that people are always using the word "ironic" improperly?

dls

i should have tried this

dls

chuck norris would be jealous

Today, I was doing "donut runs" to prepare for the triathalon my friends pressured me into. Basically, I run around the block, then stop at the donut shop on the corner for a classic fat man's wedding ring. I repeat until I am tired, or full. I've never looked forward to exercising, but this is working out beautifully. You really feel the burn if you shout, "Bam, another notch!" every time you finish a donut.

Anyway, I was on like my fourth rep, when Oedipus-the-dog (my spotter) spotted a really suspicious old lady and took off to bite her ankles before she robbed us. She was wearing a do-rag (might have been a hair net), she had blinged out her teeth with this enamel colored platinum, and she was decked out head to toe in Fubu gear (or really saggy panty hose -- it was hard to tell). Well, this witch starts yelling at me to keep my "freak-dog" on a leash, and how she should kick my ass and stuff, so I was like, "OK homes -- let's throw down." You better believe old ladies can move. She just stopped talking, and assumed "praying mantis" stance, totally karate kid old-school-style, except with a walker. Like a fool, I walked right into it, and she kicked me square in the chin. Next thing I know, she is rolling all around me, taking shots at my kidneys, and every time I try to hit her, she dodges out of the way, only to come back with some counter-punches. I was really worried that I had somehow picked a fight with the only old white lady in the city who dressed like a gangsta but was secretly a retired ninja.

At that point, she got into this Jean Claude Van Damme kicking routine and I saw my opening. I grabbed a handful of dirt, much like Bloodsport, and blew that stuff in her eyes so she was temporarily blinded. I then kicked her walker away with a beautiful roundhouse that sent the thing flying into the street, and then finished it up with a 22-hit Ultra combo that I learned playing Killer Instinct. I let Oedipus get a few licks in too, since she called him a freak-dog.

It is clear that Oedipus will have to learn more effective techniques for attacking old ladies as part of his guard-dog training. I just don't feel safe knowing I have to attack them myself.

dls

can the undead "re-live" the past?

Well, Oedipus and I have the house to ourselves for the foreseeable. We were watching a documentary called "Dark Days," which is about homeless crackheads (sorry, that was insensitive -- crack-PEOPLE) who live underground in a sunless rat-infested shantytown for years at a time. But I mean, actually, it was pretty nice: they had painted houses, television, and electric razors. Anyway, cue my roommate Drake, who was homeless before he moved into mine: his eyes get all saucer-like, and he gets the idea that this village of eternal night would be home to a homeless vampire. So he gives me Oedipus' leash and collar, does the turning-into-bats thing, and I suppose the best word is "migrates" to New York.

The first day, Oedipus was really frantic with Drake gone, but I treated him to an In-N-Out Double-Double ("animal style" obviously), and he calmed down like a baby in a topless bar.

dls

my friends will be the life of me

So today I was cornered by a group of so-called friends demanding that I join up for a team-triathalon with them. Peer pressure used to be about drinking and smoking things, not running and swimming at the plumber-butt of dawn.

This whole situation was totally wiggidy, especially because the ring-leader was a professional pastry chef. How could a person who majored in cake tell me I need more exercise in my diet? Of course, she is one of those post-post-modern chefs of the French new school. In other words, she makes dessert that you look at, and if you try to touch it or take a picture, a volunteer docent from a nearby senior center asks you to stay behind the velvet rope. I'm obviously not a fan of having cake and not being able to eat it too, but I do appreciate some of her work -- she specializes in cakes with moving parts. Not like a flip-top so a naked lady can hide from the law, but like an Alexander Calder sculpture. It is almost hypnotic watching carefully balanced cake-parts swivel slowly with the wind. The way it turns toward people as they pass in a rush of air, it is like it is aware of their presence. I kind of get a little teary when I eat it -- I feel I am snuffing out some flicker of life, which is weird since I never think twice when eating gingerbread men, and those fuckers are always staring right at me.

dls

not a good day to be a dick

Well, I thought the second amendment had already faced it's darkest hour: Dick Cheney as Elmer Fudd. I was wrong. Latest studies show that while Cheerios are good for your heart, shotgun pellets are like tiny, injectable bacon bits. This has now become the funniest shooting-your-friend-in-the-face incident since sliced bread. I live with an HIV-positive vampire and a guard dog raised on a diet of ankles, and we don't have accidents like this. Of course, I found out the reason Cheney pulled the trigger without thinking -- check out poor Harry's driver's license picture:

Dick just gets a little twitchy around his black friends.

dls

dog shoots man

Did you hear about the trouble Vice President Dick Cheney got himself into? Who gives a paranoid old man with a heart condition a gun, and then camouflages his friends? This is the worst idea since I carved a snowman out of a giant block of sponge, soaked it in ten gallons of lighter fluid, and then gave him a corn cob pipe.

dls

teaching a new dog an old trick

I was watching Blue Crush (for the articles, I swear), when I got the best idea ever! A dog that barks on command! It is like having a talking parrot that only learned to say one word, but who mispronounces it so it is completely unintelligible. Anyway, Oedipus now barks whenever anybody says "holla at me dog!" Even my roommate agrees that this is pretty much the funniest thing ever. Plus, we will quickly be alerted to Beenie Man break-ins.

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say hello to my little friend!

Did you hear? There was a coke bust at Stanford! I had heard murmurs from a few different sources, but now that it is printed in the Stanford Daily, I know for sure it is fact -- when has the Daily ever been wrong?

Anyway, the whole situation has me humming "Z St." by the Antipop Consortium. Actually I am kidding, I don't think those guys have a single hummable song. Tron Man sounds like a Stanford music major.

dls

nature vs nurture: training a chihuahua guard dog

I am teaching little Oedipus to hunt, because I think he would make a beware-of-dog-sign-worthy guard dog. No thief would suspect the chihuahua with huge paws until it was too late. Because of his height disadvantage, I think we'll replace "go for the jugular" with "go for the achilles, wait for the victim to fall down, then go for the jugular."

That is my ultimate goal, but we're taking baby steps. I started by rubbing old socks with hamburger and letting Oedipus chew them up. That should get him thinking along the right lines.


dls

who names their dog oedipus rex?

Drake, my vampire roommate, has become pretty inseparable from Oedipus, who has graduated from his cardboard-box-confines to free reign of the downstairs area. We have one of those baby fences keeping him from heading upstairs, since he still has accidents once in a while. He is a chihuahua-great-dane mix, which makes him look like he stepped in a transporter built by Jeff Goldblum. I've been told that such rare cross-breeds fetch top dollar in Japan, since chihuahuas and great danes rarely interbreed in the wild. And believe me, all the stories you've heard about vampires and their pet dogs are true.

On another positive note, Drake is feeling upbeat after he found an online support group for vampires who have contracted diseases fatal to humans. He has been chatting with a German lady-vamp who developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from one of her victims. It sounds like after a big scare, his future is looking practically UV-esque.

dls