All Japanese Girl Rolls

Ain't it pretty? I even gave the whole urn a shine in honor of my first cup of coffee in a week and a day--which is not actually true because you're all kinds of kooky if you think I haven't been brewing the begeezes out of whatever's in the 9L office. But the home cup is my cup. I might order a few of these to have back-ups so that this never happens again. Looks kinda like a halo...the bless'd coffee angel. She knows what I'm saying...

And speaking of Kooky...
Leave it to K-dub and Deb to add a little diversity to the world. Click over to the new YoYo SoKo! and learn all about how South Korea and it's children will never be the same. I haven't seen my dear friend Kelly since March, but now that she's 2/3rds of the country and an ocean away, I feel like I can miss her proper:


I know she looks tiny, but make no mistake: this girl can down an Psycho Chicken like woah. As she says, "It's a feast or famine life style..." and on many a day, we FEAST! Mostly around payday. But this was a long time ago. Back when we used to hold up buildings. Now we teach English.

I'm feeling good this morning. So good, I'm gonna share a poem from Dean Young's Embryoyo. It's mostly for K-dub, but you have it too:

Ode to Hangover

Hangover, you drive me into the yard
to dig holes as a way of working through you
as one might work through a sorry childhood
by riding the forbidden amusement park rides
as a grown-up until puking. Alas, I feel like
something spit out by a duck, a duck
other ducks are ashamed of when I only
tried to protect myself by projecting myself
on hilarity's big screen at the party
when one nitwit reminisced about the 39 cents
a pound chicken of his youth and another said,
Don't go to Italy in June, no one goes in June.
Protect myself from boring advice,
from the boring past and boring present
at the expense of an un-nauseating future:
now. But look at these newly socketed lilacs!
Without you, Handover, they would still be
trapped in their buckets and not become
the opposite of vomit just as you, Hangover,
are the opposite of Orgasm. Certainly
you go on to long and in your grip
one thinks, How to have you never again?
whereas Orgasm lasts too short some seconds
and immediately one plots to repeat her.
After her, I could eat a car but here's
a pineapple, clam pizza and Chinese milkshake
yum but Hangover, you make me aspire
to a saltine. both of you need to lie down,
one with a cool rag across the brow, shutters
drawn, the other in a soft jungle gym, yahoo,
this puzzle has 15 thousand solutions!
Here's one called Rocking Horse
and how about Sunshine in the Monkey Tree.
Chug, chug goes the arriving train,
those on the platform toss their hats and scarves
and cheer, the president comes out of the caboose
to declare, The war is over! Corks popping,
people mashing people, knocking over melon stands,
ripping millennia of bodices. Hangover,
rest now, you'll have lots to do later
inspiring abstemious philosophies and menial tasks
that too contribute to the beauty of this world.