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7 days to go
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2488
The days are long, grueling, a short day is 12 hours, long one 14, 5 double shifts and a Saturday, we're not so busy, nowhere in Calgary is, but for three waiters we're running, lunch and dinner, the slowest Xmas in the history of the restaurant, but everywhere in Calgary is pretty much the same, this downturn in the economy, it's flattening everyone, we can't complain...
Well, we can, about 12 and 14 hours a day, about not-enough sleep and a grumpy boss and customers we hate and all the other trifles, like our complete and utter lack of lives, and we see it in each other's eyes, A*****, the civilized waiter, no relation to the Nephew, he's just hanging in by a thread, as am I, the Nephew is still Fresh off the Boat and wants to get his own place, not so much his own place, rent a house near the restaurant, rental prices are dropping every day, it would be great, we could all live together, so cheap, and he proposes this ridiculous domestic scene where we all curl up together, housemates with a single giant bed and TV, watching Netflix...
But we have some pretty good customers as well, who double and triple the tips before Xmas, ensuring we're lucratively rewarded for our lack of sleep, but fuck, I'd throw it all in in a heartbeat for a good nights sleep and day off...
Only 7 days to go...
Looking for candles...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2004
(It's been a long time since I had a restaurant dream...the job has grown a little routine, and I don't stress about it. But...)
I'm in a big restaurant...motel, sort of, huge, empty, built around an empty parking lot, with various other restaurants sharing the space...
I'm working, being sat tables, only it's getting dark and I don't have candles for the tables, I'm off on a mission to look for them...through various other of the connected restaurants, dealing with maitre-d's, looking, not finding, looking, meanwhile outside it grows dark and more tables are being sat...
(yeah. Looking for a little light in my life. Figured that one out without even searching for it...)
Faust - Jan Svankmajer
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2226
And I rediscover this, I've watched it a couple of times. Genius. Metaphor, Allegory, everything in it, from the age of the actor to the every last Plasticine detail in the animation, recommending it to a friend, recommending it again and again, but they are few and far between who would appreciate it as I do. After Orpheus, my second most favorite myth/legend...
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Nephew, Back
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2277
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Gangly, loping, forever apologizing for shit he knows better, nervous and stuttering, while talking to tables he fidgets, flails a napkin in his hand like a cheerleader having a seizure, talking over-loudly to the customers, (talking loudly the Italian answer to reason...), interrupting you while you speak to your tables, taking orders, telling them the specials, he's a mixed blessing or none at all, our income dropped now by a third and our workload just doubled, braying like a donkey, he's loud, about how hard he's working (he's seated while he tells you this, having a coffee and a cigarette...), instigating inappropriate conversations in front of customers, about the double ended dildo he and his girlfriend just bought, about his membership in the underground political parties of Berlin, about every minority he would like to see exterminated, about how lucky we are to have him...to come here he had to leave a job in Germany, 16 Euros an hour, through connections (the current girlfriend's parents, always, the chance of him finding work without someone calling in a favor are next to none), soon it will be that he was the head of VolksWagon, Vice President, CEO, Chief, Mercedes Benz,
The Owner, he shows me a text message:
"When you are dead, you don't know that you are dead. It is difficult only for the others. It is the same when you are Stupid"
This is everyone that works here, that comes here to eat, this is everyone in the world, but, at the moment, this is the Nephew.
Tonight, needing a glass of Prosecco for a customer, we catch him trying to open a bottle of Dom Perignon...truly a fucking idiot...
...I've come to the conclusion, from his anecdotes, from the too many Italian emigre's that I've met, that Italy is not a country, it's a pasture, an island, surrounded by Donkeys or Goats, filled with people trying to escape, or in the Nephew's case, not trying to escape, merely procreate...
Completely without filters or unifying field of consciousness, merely the percolating well of unconscious thoughts that shouldn't be voiced, certainly not in front of customers...the too quick utterance of every untutored opinion, mental hiccup, burp, fart, every vulgar trope culled from his favorite pornographic movies...sooo offensive, you have to laugh, he mocks, ridicules every customer, a few short feet from their table, their every disability, none too traumatic, strokes, hear attacks, cripples, no disfigurement of color, ethnicity, religion, country not parodied and pantomimed for our obvious discomfort...
Work, well, same as always, it's like paying someone to do it ourselves...
It's almost good to have him back...
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