“A man’s home is his castle. Mine happens to be White Castle.”

We’ve all been locked out of our houses or apartments or dumpsters before—not a week or month goes by we aren’t evicted or simply lose our keys. Maybe you step out to get the neighbor’s newspaper and the door slams behind you, then locks itself. Now you’re standing bare-ass naked out in the hallway, or maybe in your neighbor’s living room, and you can’t get back in the house! Shit! Pardon my language.

Locked out is no problem. When you get locked into your house, that’s when the shit hits the fan. Pardon my language. What do you do then? You can’t call anybody for help from inside your own place. Unless you have a phone. Sure, you can open the window and yell for help, but the first time you start using profanity they’ll just send cops to ticket you. You can’t get the door open, and they’ll only kick it down. Now you got a broke door.

I’ve been locked in before. It’s not pretty. I don’t want a broken door so it’s usually a survival mission until the end of the month comes and the landlord shows up looking for the rent. Sometimes that could be as many as 60 days. That’s a long time to live on whatever’s in your refrigerator, or growing under it.

No one wants to think about it, but at some point you have to seriously consider eating the dog. It’s only fair—if he could talk and wear clothes, he’d eat you. Don’t think about making it a fair contest, like drawing straws. They don’t say “cheating dogs” for no reason. In a fair fight, just you and the dog, maybe it would be the right thing to do. But they bite, and that’s cheating.

Not that I want to eat my dog. We’re just talking if things go from bad to worse, or bad to good and then to worse—you can’t plan routes for bad. It goes it’s own way, like a rebel. Seriously, I only plan to eat the dog if all the condiments are exhausted and no birds land on the windowsill.

Yeah, I got a plan, no shame in that. I sneak up on him while he’s chewing his crotch and smash him over the head with a lamp. Not the good lamp. Or plan B. Throw the tennis ball right into the oven. You got to be fast, though, or he’ll just bring it back to you and not give it back. Then that plan’s history.

If you do somehow to make it until the landlord comes around, with or without eating the dog, I know some tricks to make everything work out okay. First off, you got to make him think you’re dead so when he opens the door with his spare keys he’ll be happy to see you’re alive and not pissed because he hasn’t gotten the rent. You have to make a dead person smell. I give this off naturally, the landlord says, so I don’t know what to tell you—find a website. I’m sure there’s a website that tells you.

It always helps to turn the fridge over on to yourself. Not only to pretend you’ve been pinned and not just couldn’t figure out the deadbolt mechanism. It helps keep you warm, too, or a good place to hide from the dog if he gets the upperhand.