Off the Cuff

I follow my blog statistics like a farmer monitors crop growth during a drought. Every minimal gain in numbers is a tiny triumph, a comment cause for celebration, a new follower a major victory. My second-most read blog (with 141 hits so far) is Lexicon, a blog about the joy of learning ghetto slang. My first most read blog (with double the blog hits of all my other blogs combined, at 2,149 views) is How Super Junior Changed My Life: A Blog with Pictures! This is a little bit dismaying--The blog with the most views is not one of the blogs about grappling with poverty or trying to understand the dichotomy of words and pictures to communicate. No, the blog with the most views is the one with pictures of handsome Koreans. Blogger statistics reveal the majority of people who come to my blog (from as far away as Singapore, Indonesia, the U.K and Germany) do so on google image search for "super junior" "super junior wearing hanbok" "Suju" and "sj". I guess in the end I find it a little funny. But far be it from me to ever try to manipulate blog statistics by posting ridiculously cute pictures of Donghae offering you (yes, you, female fan) a rose:

Or Kim Heechul playing with a kitten:

Or  Li Seung ki holding a baby:

Or Kim Hyung Joong being, to quote Zoolander, "Really, really, ridiculously good-looking."

Far be it from me to do that. That would just be tacky.