How to generate subdomains in Drupal URLs based on content type?

I hope it's ok to post this here. I first posted this question in the support forums -- but it was suggested that I post here instead since it's a path question.

I'm totally new to Drupal but experienced in SEO and PHP. I've always rolled my own crappy CMS because of custom needs. I'm REALLY hoping Drupal will help me to stop this wasteful methodology.

The main thing I need to figure out is how to take full control of Drupal URLS. My future sites need simple URLs in the style of about.com wherein each subject or content type is assigned a unique subdomain (one site, many dynamic subdomains like http://dogs.about.com, http://cats.about.com).

All incoming subdomain links are directed to the base folder where an HTACCESS file does an internal URL re-write (no redirects) for Drupal. This part is easy for me so this is NOT a question about DNS or HTACCESS.

What I need to know is how to get Drupal/Path-auto etc. to generate (alias?) links using my pattern? Here's the URL pattern (with no subdomain for the default type "pages"):

it would look something like this:

I'm looking in Pathauto but it doesn't seem to allow defining the entire URL. I hope I'm just missing something obvious. Does the "alias" hold an entire URL or just the path part?

I've searched around in the forums and the other subdomain questions seem to deal with DNS, HTACCESS, redirecting etc. and not how to get Drupal to create links using the pattern. Perhaps this part is already too obvious?

Thanks,
Chad