That is all.
Korean 포틀랜드
Le road running through the heart of my new neighborhood looks curiously like Belmont Avenue
in Pdx.
That is all.
That is all.
Settled Diet
Brekkie, lunch, dinner, midnight snack four times a day. The only thing I love more than kimbap are the old ladies who man the kimbap station, ruthless sorts who smile only after I've paid the $1.25 per. My bare stomach is a shirt that reads World's #1 Fan!
2012 Till Next Year
I'm up at nearly 3 am Koko time waiting for the Tigers game with the White Sox, partly because it's the most important game of the year but mostly since I don't have a proper job AKA never think about pants until 2 in the post meridian.
But ja, the Tigers, loves of my life. Used to say that about Michigan football but am, quite honestly, losing my taste for 20-year-old men running around in tight pants. I now prefer rotund 30-somethings just reaching their athletic summit thanks to HGH and other food things only horses would ever think to ingest. Homeboys I root for were supposed to win their division and possibly the World Series this year, but you know, life. This year's reason for spectacular failure is partly that they suck 46.9% of the time and partly that the White Sox - the team in first place right now - has had one of those magical years where even if they shit their bed it's fine because wife was going to cuckold her man anyhow but oh look, she has doodie in her hair now, har har har.
The Tigers are only two games back right now and if they win today will be only one back with 16 games to play. They pretty much have a 50/50 chance of winning the division, but since I believe in narratives rather than cold statistics I'm just going to assume the Sox will win this year and we'll dominate the world next year instead once Victor Martinez returns and we no longer have a black hole batting in the 5 spot all year.
Even though I'm waving the white flag doesn't mean I don't love my team, though. Aside from setting myself up to be pleasantly surprised if they accidentally do win, there are some affable characters on the team, most I hope play for someone else next year. But for now I'll hope they do their best despite themselves.
Jim Leyland
Our manager. Suppose most other sports would refer to him as the coach but we just call him the Marlboro Man since he luverlies him some ciggies, or Johnny Smokes since that's what his mom called him when he was a boy. The only thing that makes him swoon more than a pack of reds is a veteran ballplayer batting sub-.200, which explains why a man who doesn't change his underwear during a winning streak had fresh undies going through April, May, and half of June.
Elmon Young
His parents named him Delmon but baseball made him give back the D after watching him try to play left field. His only job for the Tigers is to hit but he was an absolute disaster during the early parts of the season, though I suppose he's picked up quite a bit since growing a mustache. He doesn't normally have a handlebar but I gave him one here in hopes of coaxing a few extra key hits out of him during the stretch run.
Quintin Berry
If a tree falls in the woods and Quintin Berry doesn't clap, was Barack Obama really born in Ecuador?
Miguel Cabrera
One year Cabrera's stat line will read .410/55/190 and he will finish 4th in the MVP balloting. Last year he was fat and played 1st base but since the Tigers spent Angola's GDP on another fat 1st baseman Cabrera lost 110 pounds and shifted over to 3rd, where all the baseball writers who vote him 17th in the MVP race every year wrote five articles a day about what a disaster he'd be defensively. He took a bullet to the face in spring training and everyone fell all over themselves singing I Told You So but he's been pretty solid since. I only mention because six months later and he still has a black eye.
Miguel Cabrera
If I drew a black eye on Avisail Garcia's face then he and Cabrera would be twins. The only way to tell them apart would be the MVP Garcia will win before Cabrera.
Neck
Some guy named Andy Dirks gets paid a lot of money to play baseball even though he's no better than I am. His neck, on the other hand, is hitting over .300 this year.
Austin Jackson
This really fast black dude who always plays center field in Detroit.
왕자
Prince Fielder is a prince only in the sense his father was the egomaniacal sort who thought he established a kingdom by swinging a bat for all of one season and a fielder via proprietorship of a mitt he doesn't wield very effectively. He's the fat man the Tigers signed to cut into Cabrera's share of the burfet table, so positive job performance review there. I call him 왕자 because that's the Korean word tattooed on his neck he doesn't even remember how to pronounce, which fair enough since ask any meathead or sorority biscuit what their Chinese tattoo means and they'll use a bunch of un-Chinese words to say faith, love, courage, ladies night before 12, this protein shake tastes like a McDonalds shake, or any other conjured meaning that cuts to the essence of who they believe themselves to be, though curiously not what their nearest and dearest think of them. Blah blah blah, 왕자 is pronounced wahng-jah and means prince.
Quintin Berry
Still clapping. If you ever wondered what Alex Rodriguez would look like without the steroids, well now you know.
Justin Verlander
Homeboy won the Cy Young last year because he's the best pitcher ever. He also won the MVP because otherwise they would have had to give it to Cabrera. Pretty big deal since King Henry III was the last pitcher from either league to win the MVP. Since then he's started wearing suits and dating supermodels so now everyone just swings at the entirely predictable first-strike fastball and then collect their bonuses because whooo, home runs!
Large Potato
Guess the story is Valverde used to play somewhere near Mexico (Houston? Arizona?) and the white announcer took to calling him Papa Grande thinking it meant Big Daddy. Ja, whoops. I prefer to call him Valgreen instead because my sister's husband calls him that and he's a funny dude. Whatever you call him he's an oddly porcine man who moves astonishingly slow and will requisition two hours of your life to witness a half-inning of baseball. He causes my other brother-in-law to miss Fernando Rodney but makes me miss Todd Jones. Whatever happened to that guy, anyhow?
Ryan Raburn
The team wet nurse since everyone has a role to play and his isn't anything baseball-related. Might as well breastfeed the managerial staff instead.
Brennan Boesch
Such a worthless cad. An angel doesn't necessarily die every time he comes to bat, but I do pluck one from the air and strangle it to death. I can't wait until 2180 because he'll be dead by then and won't be able to ruin any of my afternoons.
Quintin Berry
Jesus, still?
Quintin Berry
OMG STOP IT!!!!
G$
Gerald Laird can't hit a baseball so he spends a lot of time in bars hitting not-baseball players in the face instead, though only if his fat brother (don't know he's fat for sure but c'mon) is there to help out. Sounds like a goon to me but I like the guy, so bad he's accidentally good.
Quintin Berry
THE GAME ENDED THREE HOURS AGO YOU LOST GO HOME!!!!!
That game they lost was the aforementioned one I was waiting for to begin when I first started writing this post. The Tigers didn't win because Life's Not Fair, obviously, meaning that basically 50/50 chance at the division I guessed at earlier has dropped to 95% chance of nuclear winter. Quintin Berry is still clapping.
But ja, the Tigers, loves of my life. Used to say that about Michigan football but am, quite honestly, losing my taste for 20-year-old men running around in tight pants. I now prefer rotund 30-somethings just reaching their athletic summit thanks to HGH and other food things only horses would ever think to ingest. Homeboys I root for were supposed to win their division and possibly the World Series this year, but you know, life. This year's reason for spectacular failure is partly that they suck 46.9% of the time and partly that the White Sox - the team in first place right now - has had one of those magical years where even if they shit their bed it's fine because wife was going to cuckold her man anyhow but oh look, she has doodie in her hair now, har har har.
The Tigers are only two games back right now and if they win today will be only one back with 16 games to play. They pretty much have a 50/50 chance of winning the division, but since I believe in narratives rather than cold statistics I'm just going to assume the Sox will win this year and we'll dominate the world next year instead once Victor Martinez returns and we no longer have a black hole batting in the 5 spot all year.
Even though I'm waving the white flag doesn't mean I don't love my team, though. Aside from setting myself up to be pleasantly surprised if they accidentally do win, there are some affable characters on the team, most I hope play for someone else next year. But for now I'll hope they do their best despite themselves.
Jim Leyland
Our manager. Suppose most other sports would refer to him as the coach but we just call him the Marlboro Man since he luverlies him some ciggies, or Johnny Smokes since that's what his mom called him when he was a boy. The only thing that makes him swoon more than a pack of reds is a veteran ballplayer batting sub-.200, which explains why a man who doesn't change his underwear during a winning streak had fresh undies going through April, May, and half of June.
Elmon Young
His parents named him Delmon but baseball made him give back the D after watching him try to play left field. His only job for the Tigers is to hit but he was an absolute disaster during the early parts of the season, though I suppose he's picked up quite a bit since growing a mustache. He doesn't normally have a handlebar but I gave him one here in hopes of coaxing a few extra key hits out of him during the stretch run.
Quintin Berry
If a tree falls in the woods and Quintin Berry doesn't clap, was Barack Obama really born in Ecuador?
Miguel Cabrera
One year Cabrera's stat line will read .410/55/190 and he will finish 4th in the MVP balloting. Last year he was fat and played 1st base but since the Tigers spent Angola's GDP on another fat 1st baseman Cabrera lost 110 pounds and shifted over to 3rd, where all the baseball writers who vote him 17th in the MVP race every year wrote five articles a day about what a disaster he'd be defensively. He took a bullet to the face in spring training and everyone fell all over themselves singing I Told You So but he's been pretty solid since. I only mention because six months later and he still has a black eye.
Miguel Cabrera
If I drew a black eye on Avisail Garcia's face then he and Cabrera would be twins. The only way to tell them apart would be the MVP Garcia will win before Cabrera.
Neck
Some guy named Andy Dirks gets paid a lot of money to play baseball even though he's no better than I am. His neck, on the other hand, is hitting over .300 this year.
Austin Jackson
This really fast black dude who always plays center field in Detroit.
왕자
Prince Fielder is a prince only in the sense his father was the egomaniacal sort who thought he established a kingdom by swinging a bat for all of one season and a fielder via proprietorship of a mitt he doesn't wield very effectively. He's the fat man the Tigers signed to cut into Cabrera's share of the burfet table, so positive job performance review there. I call him 왕자 because that's the Korean word tattooed on his neck he doesn't even remember how to pronounce, which fair enough since ask any meathead or sorority biscuit what their Chinese tattoo means and they'll use a bunch of un-Chinese words to say faith, love, courage, ladies night before 12, this protein shake tastes like a McDonalds shake, or any other conjured meaning that cuts to the essence of who they believe themselves to be, though curiously not what their nearest and dearest think of them. Blah blah blah, 왕자 is pronounced wahng-jah and means prince.
Quintin Berry
Still clapping. If you ever wondered what Alex Rodriguez would look like without the steroids, well now you know.
Justin Verlander
Homeboy won the Cy Young last year because he's the best pitcher ever. He also won the MVP because otherwise they would have had to give it to Cabrera. Pretty big deal since King Henry III was the last pitcher from either league to win the MVP. Since then he's started wearing suits and dating supermodels so now everyone just swings at the entirely predictable first-strike fastball and then collect their bonuses because whooo, home runs!
Large Potato
Guess the story is Valverde used to play somewhere near Mexico (Houston? Arizona?) and the white announcer took to calling him Papa Grande thinking it meant Big Daddy. Ja, whoops. I prefer to call him Valgreen instead because my sister's husband calls him that and he's a funny dude. Whatever you call him he's an oddly porcine man who moves astonishingly slow and will requisition two hours of your life to witness a half-inning of baseball. He causes my other brother-in-law to miss Fernando Rodney but makes me miss Todd Jones. Whatever happened to that guy, anyhow?
Ryan Raburn
The team wet nurse since everyone has a role to play and his isn't anything baseball-related. Might as well breastfeed the managerial staff instead.
Brennan Boesch
Such a worthless cad. An angel doesn't necessarily die every time he comes to bat, but I do pluck one from the air and strangle it to death. I can't wait until 2180 because he'll be dead by then and won't be able to ruin any of my afternoons.
Quintin Berry
Jesus, still?
Quintin Berry
OMG STOP IT!!!!
G$
Gerald Laird can't hit a baseball so he spends a lot of time in bars hitting not-baseball players in the face instead, though only if his fat brother (don't know he's fat for sure but c'mon) is there to help out. Sounds like a goon to me but I like the guy, so bad he's accidentally good.
Quintin Berry
THE GAME ENDED THREE HOURS AGO YOU LOST GO HOME!!!!!
That game they lost was the aforementioned one I was waiting for to begin when I first started writing this post. The Tigers didn't win because Life's Not Fair, obviously, meaning that basically 50/50 chance at the division I guessed at earlier has dropped to 95% chance of nuclear winter. Quintin Berry is still clapping.
11 9.11s
I once had an opinion about 9.11. Probably have a similar one today that isn't actually important since I was only affected as an American, not as a person who suffered actual pain and loss that day. Can probably waste your time trying to articulate my complex feelings but think it best to defer to this short film, which subtly captures the visceral agony that still haunts people to this day.
Telepar-tay
Scored an invite to my twin nieces' first birthday par-tay. Was an exclusive affair limited to the select few either related to them or friends with my sister and her man. Got a decent paparazzi shot with my awesome DellSLR:
Even scored a sit down with les princesses that either looked like this...
...or this...
...depending on which side the digital divide you reside.
Even scored a sit down with les princesses that either looked like this...
...or this...
...depending on which side the digital divide you reside.
Jeffersons
Jammed the last three years in the same apartment, a new PR since your parents' stability isn't your own. Finally said goodbye last week, though. Kind of sad, if only because it's standard bro social currency to have done the diddle in every last corner of your living quarters, and I got down in my bedroom, dining room, guest room, antechamber, vestibule, throne room, S&M playground, garage, and nursery even though I never actually left my bed.
I'll save my gentle readers all the blah blah blah personal finances blah blah I'm making moves Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz but for now the view from my new balcony looks like this:
A bit different than my old antiseptic corner of town, which wasn't settled by Seoul proper until the Olympics paved over a bunch of rice fields just so 1988's top jocks could run fast and throw javelins at each other. The buildings there are new and modern, whereas my new neighborhood feels authentically Korean AKA old, ragged, and more personality than the indistinct, faux-marble cube I lived in before. So many words when all I had to say was everyone over here looks poor.
I'll save my gentle readers all the blah blah blah personal finances blah blah I'm making moves Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz but for now the view from my new balcony looks like this:
A bit different than my old antiseptic corner of town, which wasn't settled by Seoul proper until the Olympics paved over a bunch of rice fields just so 1988's top jocks could run fast and throw javelins at each other. The buildings there are new and modern, whereas my new neighborhood feels authentically Korean AKA old, ragged, and more personality than the indistinct, faux-marble cube I lived in before. So many words when all I had to say was everyone over here looks poor.
