we should have named him stitch
biscuit loves to chew. luckily he doesn't chew on important things like wires and shoes. but things like cardboard boxes and chew toys and trash are his favorites. but he doesn't just chew. oh no. he systematically destroys things. the dog toys made of el cheapo rubber no longer squeak and now pepper his poop with florescent green and hot pink. it's frightening how he works over a cardboard box. he doesn't just shred it; he gnaws patiently to weaken the supports before ripping it apart, pushing with his paw for leverage. and when he chews on something he can't destroy, like a tough rubber chew, he whines and cries. he must have a chemical imbalance. maybe some doggie paxil would help.

dried lizards and justified anger
my sister got a bamboo curtain for christmas which she hung over her window. this afternoon, she noticed something bumpy on one of the bamboo sticks. closer inspection revealed the bumpiness to be a tiny dried lizard clutching the bamboo. its eyes had decomposed, i assume, because his sockets were empty. and it wouldn't have bothered me or my sister so much if the lizard didn't look so...different. its strangly shaped head made it look like a little dragon. like a tiny, dried, demon lizard. eesh.

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oh, and biscuit came back from the vet today. and he was mad at us. and rightfully so. the vet said that neither he nor daisy would notice anything different. and while she had no clue the she was fixed, biscuit could tell something was missing, and he knew we were responsible. so he's been peeing on the carpet to spite us. i can see the spite by the way he'll squat right in front of us and wag his tail when he scream and gnash our teeth. it's dreadfully annoying, but i don't fault him for it. i just hope he doesn't hold a grudge.

biscuit vs. the vacuum cleaner
daisy went to the vet today to be fixed, but biscuit didn't really know she had left. he's been looking for her in the house. well, as soon as he caught a glimpse of his evil nemisis The Vacuum Cleaner, he knew what had happened. The vacuum had eaten daisy. now he's clawing and scraping at the linoleum floor in front of the closet where the vacuum is. my dad even showed him the vacuum and demonstrated that it was harmless, but he still wouldn't let up. he whines and screams and barks, trying to talk to daisy, i suppose. when my dad changed the overdue bag was probably the most traumatic. he pulled a daisy-sized bag out of the belly of the vacuum. now he's lying prone on the floor, staring at the closet. maybe a little snip-snip will take care of his neurosis.

new yorkie
in case you didn't know, pit bulls are going to be renamed "new yorkies." the man initiating this believes that new yorkers and pit bulls both are misunderstood. yeah, they're generous people and loving, sociable dogs. of course, they're temperamental and unpredictable, too. j/k. i've never actually met a person from new york city, i don't think. and i'm sure everyone reading this (is anyone reading this?) is thinking me a closed-minded bigot, but hey, they make fun of us, too. it all balances out. i'm sure a lot of the mauling and killing done by pit bulls is caused by the way the owners raise them. i don't know about those new yorkers though... :c)

obsolete? kiss my toner
the edict was issued: anything we print out for the yearbook has to be lasar, not inkjet. well, i didn't want to go to hell, because that's certainly where i'd go if i used inkjet, so my mom and i pulled out the old $1500 b&w lasar printer that hadn't been used in muchos a?os. The sticker on the back was dated "May 1990." a month older than my sister and just as annoying. we had a devil of a time getting it to work, but we did. then when we went back to actually print what i needed, we found ourselves back at square one. we tweaked every setting you can imagine, and nothing worked. so we gave up. this afternoon, i knew i had to get it working because my page was due very soon. i plugged the printer in, and it worked perfectly. only out of certain applications, and only with unrendered text, but it worked! twenty sheets of paper and 600 dpi later, i got it to print images. my mom said it was only a 300 dpi printer, but it took 600 to get rid of the alias edges. and if i was really a perfectionist, i would crank it up to 900. hmmm...

all a flaky biscuit needs is a dollop of daisy
we have a puppy named daisy. she has a brother. we seriously thought about getting him and her, but we decided one dog was enough. well, my dad got to see the brother every day as he delivered his route. her brother was kept outside and teathered to a tree. now he's in our house because his mom had already had another litter of puppies and the guy was read to give him away. so we took him so he would have a home until the family that was meant to be his owners came along. we bathed him and shaved him, and the vet gave him his shots and cleaned out his ears. he's a big, chunky puppy, but he's laid back and really like a stuffed animal. with drool. daisy has been more of an agitator than he has been, but when he has enough and starts playing/gnawing on the side of her head, he's a little too rough. he's sweet, though. daisy and he slept on my bed last night, which was his first night in a house. he woke me up by smacking his lips one time, one of the few times i actually slept. luckily, none of them farted, which would have been especially dangerous because i was trapped underneath them and couldn't run away.

do not eat
this christmas, i've been marveling over the various methods of packaging, realizing that the whole objective of packaging is to keep one from getting whatever is inside. it's sadistic, but true. but eveyone's seen those little quanta of tiny pellets that come in your shoes and your pill bottles. "silica gel, do not eat," it says. i always figured it was poisonous or harmful. i remember at school one day i found a packet in my coat and opened it up. andrew ate two pellets, and jarrod ate one because it tasted nasty i guess. and our science teacher said they would pop in water, so we tried it. it wasn't very impressive. well, my dog ate a small package of them last night, so i searched the web to see if they were poisonous. turns out they're harmless, although some animals have had vomiting and lack of appetite. but daisy's fine. i did, however find an interesting blog discussion about the mysterious pellets. turns out some people eat them as nutritional suppliments. but the little packets can absorb bad things, so stick to cheeze-its for afternoon snacks.

homing pigeon...no.
i don't like roads. especially the ones that go in both directions. if you turn the wrong way on that road, then you're going the totally opposite way that you really want to go. and it's bad for me, in that i'm not good at finding my way around places unless i go that way often. if i get really confused, i have trouble telling right from left. so, my mom makes maps for me. maybe it's the confusing lines of the fancy maps, or maybe it's the fragrant sharpie smell of my mom's maps, but i prefer her maps to the maps with all the tiny streets. and my friends make fun of my maps. road trip plans are swiftly squelched by my custom made maps. but i never get lost with my maps. and i use them to fill in the missing pieces of my mental map, which is getting pretty large now. maybe, when i'm 25, i won't need my mom's maps anymore.

morons say the darnedest things
sadam was offered some water during an interrogation, and he declined, saying:
"if i drink water, i will have to use the bathroom. how can i use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?"

well, that answers the question of "how can i get kidney stones and a bladder infection while my people are in bondage?"

a real quote from Dick Gephardt:
"everything you care about is vanishing. our good jobs are vanishing, our civil rights are vanishing, our clean air and clean water are vanishing. osama bin laden has vanished. sadam hussein has vanished. george bush needs to vanish."

we care about bin laden? we care about sadam? but he's not vanished anymore, though. i think "dip" gephardt needs to vanish. and they make fun of george bush for saying stupid things.

a holiday moment
i experienced a holiday moment today. it was 6th period. mrs. g had just opened a cutesy little christmas card someone had emailed her. from the speakers came the music of "silent night." i looked out the open portable door and saw the snow falling. and i saw an indian (from india) in a hawaiian shirt licking a light pole.