Dışkı nincası.

The dung ninja.

Yesterday, for the first time in... uh.... <smell of tires burning>.... two years, I went to church. Well, of course it's because it's Easter Sunday. It was, to put it mildly, quite a shock. The Mass itself was conducted in English, Spanish, Korean and Bahasa Indonesia. It was welcoming, affirming and multicultural. Gone, apparently, are the days of Inquisition! Gone are the days when bile poured forth from the pulpit about those who live in shadows, beyond the bountiful saving grace of Catholicism! Gone are the days when nuns beat you with baling hooks soaked in the briny tears and rank urea of the guilt-stricken!

I was, needless to say, apprehensive about going. Was the hand of the Almighty going to smite me where I stood as I attempted to cross the threshold into his sanctum? Was the holy water going to hiss as it touched my skin, and would I recoil and bare my vulpine fangs at it? Would the Host burst into smoky flame as it touched my tender, Gomorrahan tongue? Needless to say, nothing of the sort happened, and I walked forth from Mass unscathed. Unscathed, and filled with a creamy center of good old-fashioned Irish-Italian guilt. Ah well. At least I'm not impaling tots on pikes as much anymore, having given it up for Lent.

Friday night, the Republic was graced with a guest from THE Republic (Türk Republikası); it was none other than Faruk Loğoğlu (low-oh-lu), the Turkish Ambassador to the United States. In a grim little lecture hall in Ass-Boil (Ballantine) Hall, Faruk bey expounded the friendship between the U.S. and Turkey, taking special pains to dodge "special" questions, like Turkey's denial of land use for the devastation of Iraq, her Kurdish issues, and of course, her desire to ascend on high to join rich, racist Christian white people in the European Union. After the speech and the question/answer session, Faruk (and dozens of my Turks who were in attendance) retired to the Memorial Union for cheese, punch and pleasantries.

Of course, I was dying to meet him. I caught Kemal bey and he brought me over to Faruk bey whilst Faruk was diddling with the Turkish Studies publications. Kemal pressed me to the ambassador. "Faruk effendim, this is Domonic. He's one of the best students of Turkish Studies."

[single golden tear!]

Of course, he neglected to mention that I am the ONLY Turkish Studies student, a fact which I did not hasten to proffer. And then {wagging vestigial tail as I speak} I shook hands with the TURKISH AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES. Faruk, however, seemed much more interested in my lapel pin, which shows the Turkish and American flags together. He lost interest in me quickly, but I didn't care: his dead skin cells were holding court on my hand! I haven't been that excited since I excavated that mass grave in the Balkans.

Today, however, was more akin to a scene in Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I assume everyone on earth has seen. This is because my Turkish exam raped me so hard that the light from "passing" won't reach my biosphere for 4.2 billion years. But you all know the scene. It's the one where Van Helsing figures out that beloved, deceased Lucy is, in fact, living beyond the grace of God as a nosferatu. [Wha'? You mean she's Italian?] Anyway, they go into her ancestral crypt and, upon prying the lid off her sepulcher, are confronted by the maw of an empty coffin. With a small child upon whom she'd feast in her clammy arms, Lucy appears, and they chase her back to her vile coffin. Van Helsing then decides to do something that proves that he's an utter lunatic: he gets reeeeeeally close and starts screaming at her reposing "corpse" whilst holding a cruciform aloft. Whilst he's shrieking "We are strong in the Lord and the power of His might! Ex umbris in luce!", Lucy decides: Hey. Now's a good time to projectile-vomit three gallons of rapidly-cooling human blood onto this bass'ad. And she does. For that, she gets beheaded and staked. Poor nosferatu.

In my neighborhood, several people are pet owners. I know this because I sometimes see them walking said canines, but more often than not, I know that these beasts exist because Tony and I have been finding steaming, man-sized coils of feces in our "yard." The first time it happened, I wrote it off and watched, day by day, as it mouldered and turned corpse-white before disintegrating in a violent rainstorm. The second time, the beast surely had to have been one of the Budweiser Clydesdales. As I watched scarabs roll Kaiser roll-sized lumps of dung to their vile keep, I decided then and there to take justice into my own hooves. A "chat" with the apartment complex staff was fruitless. When Tony told me about two of our neighbors--with Tony sitting right there, watching--parking their Shetland pony-sized beasts on our lawn, something in me snapped and I went [further?] out of my gourd. I went inside and got two Wal*Mart bags and went outside and picked up the two piles and carefully tied the bags. I then went inside and dressed all in black and, strapping my katana to my back, I launched myself at their homes with "savory" treats in tow. I carefully placed each bag on the appropriate neighbor's porch, in their doorway, and then I threw a smokebomb to cover my retreat.

I will continue to do this until this stops. "Now Domonic", you all are saying, shaking your heads sadly, "you're doing their job for them." But, my devoted, you haven't heard about stage two! If it happens again, there will be a typewritten note. You know, something to the effect of:

You disgust the Master. Allowing your pets to defecate here befouls grounds sacred hundreds of millennia before you were a zygote in your mother's wretched womb. Continuation of this allowance will cause His servant to bring down calamity of unimaginable proportions on His behalf. You have been warned.

Accompanying this note will be a lock of hair. It will be my hair. The lock will be woven into a delicate doll and then covered with paraffin. There's no significance to any of that, but their bewilderment/fright will please me. And, a third mishap? Well, let's just say I'll be trolling I-37 for roadkill.

I've gotten my first birthday wish. It comes from Turkey, where it's now... uh... like, 5:30 AM. Dinçer ağabey beat everyone to the punch. In an hour and a half, I'll be 25. Four years ago, I turned 21 on another continent, on the high plateau of the land of the galloping mare's head, in a land where 21 really DOES just mean 21. Having to explain that "21" means "vomiting on your crotch whilst hunched, ashen, trying to not die of alcohol poisoning on a toilet that hasn't been cleaned since the Blitz" makes us sound like weird, Puritanical prudes. Turks can drink as soon as they ask for it... well, those who don't take the Words of the Prophet seriously.

25. A quarter century of living. What have I accomplished? What will I accomplish? And, isn't there a rerun of The Golden Girls on?

I remain, as ever,

Domonic