Yesterday was the day of the Worst Hangover Since I Don't Know When. A really impressive degree of physical discomfort. I felt strangely undamaged when I first arose, buoyant even, and suggested to my partner in liquor and sodomy that we go out for breakfast. Expansive and garrulous in the car, I prattled on about everything and nothing, with air-slicing gestures and the eyebrow motions of a person fully engaged with life. But something happened as we were seated at Banning's Pie House in Beaverton. Maybe the deflating cushion wheeze of the brown naugahyde booth flipped a switch in my beleaguered guts, or was it the sight of an enormous whipped cream-covered Belgian waffle being served to another diner whose repellent lip-smacking I was unfortunate enough to witness. My world became vertiginous and my disgusting entrails commenced to roil and convulse as if a carny at the intestinal fairgrounds had started the Tilt-A-Whirl in motion. Suddenly it was brother turning against brother in some sudden eruption of internecine visceral warfare. As I took the first sip of coffee I concluded that death was imminent and pondered the disposal of my personal effects. I excused myself to the men's room, maintaining a dignified bearing worthy of someone famously known for their unflappable poise whose name escapes me at the present time. What happened in the men's room is a matter best left undescribed, as my internist reads this and I don't want to alarm him. After offloading a portion of my person into the public infrastructure I felt a little better, which is to say my freefall into oblivion was momentarily slowed by a slight updraft, and returned to my seat and the plate of pancakes and eggs that had just been served to me by Satan. Immediately the calmative effects of my pitstop (the echoes of my groans still reverberating among the tiles) were obliterated in fresh waves of physical and metaphysical despair. My face froze in a rictus of horror as my companion slathered approximately one gallon of sour cream atop a repulsively enormous cheese omelette. I considered the possibility that he was applying dandruff shampoo to a human brain that had been carelessly left in a hot car. Life was ugly and vile. I drank more coffee and nibbled one end of a piece of bacon so large it suggested the diminished remains of a charred human limb. My pancakes were grotesque abominations and I passed them across the table as soon as my ravenous friend was finished consuming his shampooed brain. I could go on in this manner but you get the picture, and anyway recalling these sensations is making me feel a little ill again.