It might seem that I would be the kind of guy that might have a street mutt as a companion, a mangy dog with lots of personality that was always at my side even when the world was against me. Man's best friend, right? You know, we'd play fetch, he'd bark at strangers, and he'd be this ever-present pal that would do anything for me. We'd go to the park and after a time we'd probably start to look like each other. We'd be a pair.

Or maybe I'm a cat guy. I've got my dark vibe going on, so perhaps a sleek little panther to prowl my apartment, warily watch me from across the room, and set an example for me of what it means to live on instinct alone. The feline would probably give me shit a lot of the time, but then again, when it got cold enough and I didn't seem to notice, the predator would sneak up onto my bed and dream cat dreams against my body heat.

But I don't have either. I grew up with many cats and dogs and I love 'em all. But I also found that I was happiest when they were happiest, and that meant when they had lots of room to roam, the great outdoors to play in 24/7, and every opportunity to, well, be animals. Not pets, but animals in the truest sense. Sure, they were domesticated, but they were beasts to be sure. Our dogs ran wild and cats wilder. We loved them all, but we never thought of them as our children or babies, but rather as companions and very cool reminders of the less civilized part of life, a part that we all too often forget about in our sick hurry to make money, buy more and more, and show others our success.

It's summer in DC and that means lunch in the sun, the brutally hot sun, and that means street carts selling the infamous half-smokes and other quick food.

This photo is actually a few years old, but what the hell. I still like it and it still reminds me of working downtown.

Oh, yeah. Like the Metro station?

You would think that after a while the whole "vampires are cool" thing would begin to wear off. But no. Good thing, as I made a few bucks myself off the nasty blood sippers, but even I'm amazed at the staying power of this archetypal creature. Hell, my friend Eric even wrote a whole book that was recently featured at Barnes & Noble, "The Dead Travel Fast," that focused on our culture's fascination with these undead bastards. Now, scouring iTunes and the Web I find that there are many current and upcoming television series based around vampires. "Moonlight," "Blood Ties," and "Bloodcopy" are prime examples, following, of course, in the footsteps of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spinoff, "Angel." And that's not mentioning the many other shows that feature vampire characters as either regulars or "monsters-of-the-week." 

So, here's a big ol' glass of blood to all you fangsters, out there. No matter how often we think the genre has finally died, well...you know the rest.

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