Tag Archives: Bartender

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Hold On

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I’m out already. Back in the comfort of the office. All is dark now and the light is on and it smells good and now I really am drinking whiskey and ginger ale, but the heat is still off. No sign of the AirBnB guest, except that the back door was unlocked and the extra set of keys were on the table. So far as I can tell he is fast asleep in his quarters.

Just before I left for work I watched the Alabama Shakes on YouTube. I’d never actually seen a video of theirs even though I listen to their album all the time. This video is a little different than the album version and it almost made me cry. And it got me through the day. That’s what art is all about!

GF is out with her friends, celebrating killing her first lobster at school. I am supposed to pick her up in a Zipcar when she’s done. I offered because one in five woman in the United States will be a victim of a crime and I want to keep her out of that. Don’t like her traveling home alone at night. She does it sometimes and it’s fine, but I’d rather her not if I can help it.

Supposed to be a busy day tomorrow. I’m working a double. But I’ll be home again at a decent hour. So strange, three days in a row. I kept thinking all day that today was Thursday. I was so sure of it. But anyway, strange, because I usually close tonight, tomorrow, the next night and the next, but I’m not even working Saturday, going home for Easter. Coworker left me two dollars from yesterday’s cash take. Weak.

At the wine tasting, no one gave the salesperson who was showing us the wine any respect. It was so weird. One guy was yawning and saying the wine was bad and another was interrupting her all the time saying she didn’t think that was right. It was so weird. One coworker said that they were probably acting this way because the wines were inexpensive, and last week were tasting Burgundy Grand Crus, so they were probably like yeah whatever. Well, shit, that’s pretty fucked up to disrespect someone just because of that. I mean shit our manager is the one who told her which wines to show.

But fuck it. Everyone is mean sometimes, sometimes you just got to Hold On.

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Only If For a Night

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Shit I couldn’t hardly sleep last night after a long day of working I came home and ate some seafood pizza that GF made and drank half a bottle of Californian psuedo-champagne I got for free from a man in a bejeweled blazer. The pizza was delicious. I ran out of bubbly halfway through so I also had a beer. And before that, I had a shit ton of caffeine, so my dreams were lucid yet horrible.

I dreamed I was serving lemonade, bartender style, at a bus stop where these cranky bitches who brunch were yelling at me and Lawrence Fishburne wasn’t taking any guff. It was awful. And with GF turning on and off the lights and whatnot shit was getting psychadelic in there.

She had to go to this volunteer thing at like 6:30 in the morning, so all this was going on around 6. I was like fuck it, I’m getting up. And that rarely happens but the dreams were so bad and I felt like a ball of fiendishness.

I’ve been up for a few hours now and watched the sun not rise at all behind all the clouds from the windows of the office.

Shit I did my taxes. Just got my last W2. Got some money back but for the first time in my life I don’t need it desperately to make a payment. I mean, the loan companies want it but they can wait. I’m just going to bank that bitch and I’m sure the IRS will come calling wanting that shit back anyway.

Yeah but then I thought about asking GF to marry me. I would have a long time ago but never had enough money for a ring and we’re in no rush anyway, since we’ve been living as a married couple since 2009. But now I got this credit card with six months of no interest so fuck it!

Now my landlord is outside walking around with that weird Saturday morning gait, checking license plates and whatnot.

So basically all is right and good with the world, and my life is a tiny sphere of perfection. Just waiting for other shoe to drop, as it were. A mother fucker really can’t get this lucky forever.

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Repetition and Metaphors

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It kicks like a sleep twitch. I just been listening to a few songs on repeat, yesterday and today.

I listened to The Xx for the first time two days ago with GF on NPR and really liked them so I’ve been playing Crystalize and Angels alternately three times, and then Anyone’s Ghost and Conversation 16 by The National, and then Crystalize and Angels again, and then Papillon by The Editors just to mix it up.

Most of the time I write in silence or else I’ll start to put in lyrics of the songs because I just can’t help it. But I played this little playlist like 10 times yesterday before work and I’m on my way to doing the same thing today.

And I’m doing almost exactly what I did yesterday.

And it’s awesome.

I’ve been really sore from riding my bike to work and apparently a lot of the pain has to do with the bike being too big for me. I’ll let you figure out the metaphor in there.

But other than the fact that it hurts to bend over, working at the bar has been pretty cool. I do have to suppress my ego like a mother fucker as people treat me like a non entity, both on the road and at the bar, but that’s a good exercise anyway.

I finished reading Blown Away by Caitlin Kelly a couple days ago. I meant to get up early today so I could get some reading in but I went to be at 2:30 and just slept through all my 9:30 alarms. I wouldn’t have gotten up if American Express hadn’t called me at 10:30. Thanks guys!

I got enough money this paycheck to almost pay the rent, so that’s good.

I made an omelette with chicken sausage and cheddar and peppers and it made me want to throw up, so that sucks.

I’m going to make some coffee soon, that’s going to be sweet, in a non-literal way.

I’m about halfway through my second reading of Great Expectations. It’s good.

I don’t know, in this part of time I’m feeling less realistic and literal. I feel like expressing my emotions and ideas at this moment all comes out in absurdist bullshit or song lyrics. Fuck it I’ll just go with it for now. It’s working okay anyway.

Live on coffee and flowers.

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The Thrill Is Still Gone

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Blog stats have flat lined.

Damn it.

And the worse they get, the more fiendishly I check them.

How did it come to this?

In my other blog attempts, I would have been happy with two followers as long as one of them was someone I didn’t know. Now I have thirty followers but if I don’t get a new like every hour I’m a sad panda.

In the beginning, I was writing more than I ever had. Just pushing out posts. Then, as I realized how much interesting content was already out there, I followed more and more blogs. Still, I don’t follow as many as most bloggers. But I spend a lot of time reading now, way more than at the beginning, which, let’s keep it in perspective, was only about a month ago. And even more time than that…well ok not really more time but certainly an unhealthy amount of time is spent checking my stats. Seeing what people searched for to get here.

With all that I haven’t been writing near as much.

On the positive side I have been getting out more. Doing more stuff.

And I am trying to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

And the more I think about that, the more I think, what am I trying to build?

The harsh and shameful truth about my mentality is that in the back of my mind, no matter how therapeutic and lovely this blogging experience has been, I’ve been thinking, how can I make enough money doing this so I don’t ever have to leave the house again?

It’s hard for me to be honest about this, because I’d like to think I do things just for the pleasure of doing them. That I blog for the beauty of the connections I’ve made with other minds.

I forget if I mentioned it in another post, or if I wrote it by hand in my super luxurious leather bound diary, but I feel more and more like I am many people. Each of me inhabiting me at different times. I don’t think I have multiple personality disorder, which would be more interesting, but rather, it’s just a way of conceptualizing or grasping the different ways I feel from day to day, sometimes hour to hour.

So one part of me, or one person of me, one person I am…shit, what’s a good way to say it? I don’t know. I’ll name them. Fred. Damn it. That’s another thing, I don’t really like the name Gordon Flanders and I don’t really like the name Fred. But they both just came to me. I should pick a bad ass name like Black Elk. Or Crazy Horse. But Crazy Horse is too awesome for anyone but Crazy Horse so I can’t use that one.

Insecure Money Bastard. That’s what I’ll name that one me. The me that gets worried I’ll never have enough money to pay off my debts and the same one that wants to just stay home all the time and never go to work. I’ll name that me Jerry.

Nah this will get too confusing.

Anyway there’s always that part of me in the background saying, “How can you turn this into a ‘tribe’? How can you turn this into money?” A bunch of buzzword bullshit.

The worst part is no matter how many lessons I learn or insightful things people tell me, I can’t shake this bastard. And so I think, shit if I had 10,000 followers I could just write a book of me just saying whatever came into my mind and sell it for a dollar and I’d have $10,000.

And that’s why I check the stats every day.

Or maybe just one of the reasons. Another reason is it feels really good to have someone ‘like’ your post.

Yeah I think that feeling has more to do with it.

I am chemically dependent on ‘like’ endorphins.

At the same time I still would like to just do this instead of having a job.

A friend once told me that I was still young enough to think I could get rich without working really hard for it. I think I am slowly getting too old to think that.

The problem is I do work really hard when I’m at work, at manual labor type shit. But it’s very easy to be mentally lazy. To zone out and just do your job and get through.

I remember thinking last week that even while I folded napkins I should make it so that I was like a napkin folding artist. Then yesterday I remember thinking, I’m going to be a getting through the workday artist. Fuck folding napkins like an artist, I’m just going to get through the day on autopilot and that’s how I’m going to earn my money.

Well, a few days ago I decided I would never make money from writing. I decided to give up on making money at writing and just do it for the sheer pleasure of writing. Then I thought I should get a part time job during the day to make money, and then invest that money to make more money. I’ve known all along that writing stories is a bad way to make money, and anyway I haven’t written any stories and that’s an even worse way to make money. So I got pretty excited about finally giving up on it. I love giving up on things, it brings such a peace. At first anyway, or maybe it’s just a peace in disguise. Maybe it’s a little death. When you finally give up on everything, you can transcend this world and exist as an indistinguishable part of the all-soul in complete tranquility, or what humans call not having a pulse any more. Hm sometimes it’s pretty tempting.

Yes and then the very next day, I saw that the restaurant put me on a lunch shift where I usually work a night shift. So I thought, well that’s going to be hard to reconcile with the new part time job, if I’m not on a set schedule every week. And then I thought, because I was thinking at first about what Seth Godin said about the days of the journeyman writer being over, or in other words that only the greatest of writers will get paid, the ones that persist through insurmountable odds and such, and the rest of us will just do it for free because it’s so available now that no one really has to pay for words…okay I’ll restart that sentence. So as I thought about the days of the journeymen writers being over, I thought, well what about David Gaughran and Dean Weasley Smith. They make at least a little money from selling their books. I could eventually make enough money to at least account for what I would be making at a part time job.

So then I was back on the “I can make money writing” train.

And I’m still on it. Because it works perfectly with my new “Rome wasn’t built in a day” kick. Who cares if I don’t make any money at it this year or the next or the next? In ten years I’m bound to make a few hundred a month at it. You just can’t do it that long and fuck it up.

This is the kind of writing I love to do. Just writing down whatever comes in my head and having people actually read it is a dream come true.

To an extent, writing a story or a well researched essay is a craft. If you work hard at it, you can make a product that someone will pay a little money for. And even though I’d rather just sit here and write random bullshit all day, I guess I’d rather work at writing that kind of stuff than work at another coffee shop.

Then again, I was reading this book today about women and guns and it was talking about how this one lawyer works for free to defend women who have been charged with using a gun against an attacker unlawfully. And I thought, shit I’d like to do that. I never once thought about becoming a lawyer, but GF is in grad school, fuck it, maybe I will too.

Yeah I pretty much got it all figured.

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Back in the House

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It’s cold out there ya’ll. Snowing last night and shit. Snows like a mofo in this town. But I am so warm and toasty now I got the space heater and the regular heaters rocking. And I heated up some soup from last night, the squash soup, and opened up a bottle of red wine I bought from work to learn about since my wine education has been slowing down to the point it’s falling backwards. And now I got a head rush. And I’m eating this roasted duck,what’s left of it. Oh my God I can hardly function this way. And I just finished reading Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires. An amazing book that talks about food all the time, so I am in a food place right now, a food paradise. A paradise of the senses. And fingers on the keys too so I got the touch and I’m listening to The National so I got the ears going too. Life just doesn’t get much better than this.

I wanted to link to this interview about Seth Godin if only to remind myself later that I read it at this time, because I think it’s going to change the way I look at writing, or at least change a little bit, or at least start a change to the way I approach the idea of writing. This is how Seth Godin writes. This was the part that really made me think:

What’s your best advice for overcoming procrastination?

The deadline focuses the mind, of course. The curse of the traditional writer is that the publisher wants a book no more often than once a year. So procrastination is part of the process.

But blogging? Once a day. Not every minute like Twitter, which provokes mediocre writing because there’s so much of it. But every day? Better write something, better make it good.

Oh my god I’m like the posterboy for gluttony right now. This class I took once, Biblical and Classical Literature, one of the five major contributors to my renouncing my Christian faith, we had to illustrate the seven deadly sins. I could take a picture of myself right now. Shoving basically an entire duck in my mouth. Oh my god oh my god.

Though I’ll remember not to recommend this wine with duck.

“Better write something. Better make it good.” I’ve just been thinking that over and over again today.

Tonight should be a good night for writing. GF has a lot of reading to do and I don’t think we have anywhere to go. Tomorrow I’m going to take this rusted bike to the bike shop and see what’s what. I’ve been having to take a taxi home after work too many times  and it’s not financially sustainable so time to consider other options. Helmets probably cost a shitload. Or a shit-ton. Or at least a guinea.

I’m slowly making my way through Great Expectations. The last time I read it was in…ninth grade or before that. I’m at the time when Pip is taking leave of his old friends and he’s being a total douche. Poor Joe.

I’m going to try to write something about something specific today. Maybe instead of being a food critic like Ruth Reichl I could be a book reviewer. I need more time to read books though. Fuck it I’m already a bartender. I’ll write a post about this wine.

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Son of a Bitch

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Readability Index: Unreadable

Well the internet decided to up and not work yesterday and you know how Saturdays are around here, it’s QT with GF so that means hardly no computer anyway. But I wanted to jump on and write something quickly anyway since I’m part of a blog challenge stipulating I have to get one post in a day for five days straight. So I had no choice but to tap a little rectangle and out came yesterday’s post. So that was a bitch. Then Comcast told me they would call me when service was restored but they did not. And I had to reset my own router and then the shit decided to work this morning.

And the other son of a bitch is that I somehow committed myself to going to a party. A superbowl party. Well I never much gave a damn about superbowls but working at the bar with a TV behind you changes things pretty good, and then there’s the fact that the Ravens are in it against the 49ers, which is how I predicted it would turn out about four weeks ago, though few believed me. And Joe Flacco, the Ravens quarterback, and I were at the University of Delaware at the same time. So I had to be a little interested this year, and then my friend from work is into the 49ers and invited me over so how could I refuse.

By now it’s almost time to go and it’s a long way to his house on the 86 bus, the worst bus ever besides all the other buses I take, and GF is not feeling it at all. And I’m there, too, because we are sitting in this heated ass house on the couch doing the only thing we ever wanted to do in life, and we just cooked up this artichoke dip and it smells so good we just want to sit here  and pass out. I hate going outside. And it’s cold too and snowing. Looks great from in here. Son of a bitch! I wish I could teleport over there. Or at least had a car.

Oh well.

Man shit I can’t think of anything to write for my new project. Fuck it I probably just need a day to do it and get to it and that’ll be tomorrow. I’ll just sit at the computer and let shit fly for a couple hours and I’ll have something to work with.

I saw this book at the library by “The Blogess” who I have never heard of before but the book had some funny shit on the cover so I got it. I hope it’s awesome and has something to learn about blogging in.

Man I am feeling so upset about leaving the house and shit…I think I’ll just read some other people’s posts. I can’t even pull it together for this shit. The well is running dry over here. The thrill is gone. But I still like reading other people’s stuff so that’s good.

I’ll get it back. All I need is too much coffee. And I need to read more. Spend more time reading.

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Hot Damn My Feet Are Cold As Ice (The Interruption Story)

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Readability Index: Readable

You know I realized something while at work today, one really great thing about blogging is that no one fucking interrupts you. They just can’t do it. They can distract you if they comment on a previous post or like it and that star comes up. But they can’t interrupt. Which is great. Because I feel like I get interrupted all the god damn time. It’s annoying as hell.

For instance, today at the bar.

This dude comes in, he’s a salesmen that sells us liquor and shit, and I met him once before and can tell he’s just a smooth operator. And we exchanged names and a handshake and a howdy do and I haven’t seen him in a month. But he rolled in today and I knew I knew his name but I couldn’t remember it. Well he didn’t give a good god damn about that, just called me man and I was happy to do the same. Even when I remember people’s names I usually just call them man. Or yo.

Well I could see he wasn’t in a mood to talk and that was damn fine with me because I didn’t have any idea what to say to him.

And hot damn! My feet really are cold! Wish I had a Labrador Retriever to retrieve my slippers.

Well, I just went on about my business and then all the sudden he got his food and he wanted to start talking. So I drug my ass over there and said “Oh what’s up man.” And he said in a philosophical manner, “Can I have more ketchup?”

And you have to understand about the ketchup, it’s house made and they serve it in these what’s a call it’s and they only fill it about a quarter way up so you get enough to cover the top of four french fries. I may be revealing too much about where I work here because probably anyone who has seen these little fuckers…what do you call them…filled a quarter way with ketchup well that’s something you won’t forget.

So to get on with the get down, I knew what the hell was going on here. I was hip to the mother fucker’s jive in a way. I felt we connected on a personal level.

Myself me, I don’t even like that house-made bullshit. I like Heinz got damn it, probably because I read this review in a newspaper about house-made ketchup that said that shit was not worth doing since Heinz is the only ketchup that delivers a hit to each of the four sensations you can taste – sweet salty and bullshit bullshit whatever the others are. So I’m damn well mystified by these little…what the hell are they called…filled a little bit up with this strange version of ketchup that no one even wants. Okay, a lot of people really love it. But anyway.

So I’m happy go lucky as a mother fucker running over to the line and getting some extra ketchups. I grab one and I think shit man, this ain’t enough, so I go back and grab two. And I feel like I pretty muched hooked a brother up by the time I get back there. But our man the salesmen couldn’t give two shits I would soon learn.

I said, “Here man, I got you the double double.”

“Thanks,” he said and kept eating like a lonesome Rotweiller. Shit even WordPress doesn’t know how to correct that spelling of Rotweiller. But you get the point…perhaps.

Well I was ready to walk away and call it a day. But here this mother fucker, and got damn this story is going on forever, here he goes and says, “How come they only put a little bit?”

Well darn my socks I was happy as a lark.

Wait, now I got a recommended link for Rotweiller. So what the fuck am I spelling it right or not? Ah fuck it.

So I launch into this campaign of commiseration. I say “well shit man I been trying to figure that out myself! First of all…”

“You guys got any grapefruit juice?”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“Grapefruit juice?”

“Yeah. Yeah we…sure man no problem.”

Man that shit done fucked up the next five minutes I couldn’t believe it. And now that I spent twenty minutes writing about that shit, I really hate that mother fucker! Argh! He’s got kids too, the crazy son of a bitch. I’m a straight up go to his house, find his kid and smooth interrupt her when she’s telling a story.

Nah I’m just kidding about that. I’m sure she’s cute.

But shit! This mother fucker damn well knew we had grapefruit juice too because he sells the shit to us!

So yeah, I’ve always hated being interrupted. I hate when people don’t listen to me. I mean, especially because I don’t talk anywhere near as much as I write. I’m a quiet dude. If someone asks me a question, I’ll answer. And you’re going to damn well interrupt while I’m answering your question! Hoo shit!

First time I ever got amped on this blog so…well I’ll just publish this and take a deep breathe. Breath? Rotweiller.

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About Today

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Readability Index: Unreadable

Ok I finally put in some laundry. I had to try to shove the quarters into the machine like three hundred times. I set a timer for my French Press before I went down into the basement, four minutes, and it went off not halfway into my struggle. But it finally worked. There’s a note on the wall from 2001 saying that we tenants should let the landlord know if there are any problems with the machine, but I feel like we should probably have said something by now, so I’m definitely not bringing it up at this point.

I had some thoughts:

I should be a journalist

I should just read books all of the time

I should be a famous bartender

How did that guy on Top Chef get to be famous

The owner of that noodle place

He makes me think I could do some shit too

He just wants to have a good time

Wouldn’t it be funny to start a story with this guy’s next door neighbor lets him in the house, like inivites him over and the guy is kind of weary of the situation because he pretty much likes to be by himself anwyay…but then the neighbor says, “You want a beer?” and he says, “Well, by God, I would like a beer!”

Ok I’ll talk about that stuff later. Maybe.

So I left out of here to go get some shit done and I gotta say it did feel good. Getting shit done just feels good. I don’t know why. I was thinking about it at Stop and Shop while waiting for the bus. It’s like that Bob Marley song, Pass It On, “Live for yourself, you will live in vain, live for others, you will live again.” Well, I really don’t understand that shit at all because you are the only person you know, but then again, we’re all made out of the same elements so we’re really all the same thing, we’re all one, the universe just experiencing itself subjectively. I am everything that has gone before me. And yet I have an ego and can block the world out if I want to, and parts of me want to, one part. You know I’ve never read Freud or Jung. Should fix that. But I did read some Ruth Reichl on the bus, and you know I never have before. Well it was great. She’s awesome. But so Bob Marley, I should watch that documentary again. Marley was the creative title and it was the shit.

But I was thinking, that some of these errands, well I wouldn’t run them if it was just me. I wouldn’t probably run any of them if it was just me, but it was for my girlfriend. Well, not exactly. Like I had some stuff at the library, but so did she, so that was sort of for her. Really I only went because she asked me if I was going to go and I felt stupid saying no since she’d probably be like, well what the hell are you doing all day then?

So being productive. I’m sure it feels good because my mother was always all about being productive. Rather she still is. And so I grew up in an environment that reinforced my getting things done, or however Dr. What’s-his-face would say it. Skinner. BF Skinner. That was a fascinating read, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. If we’re not controlling the environment then we’re simply leaving control of the environment to someone else, because the environment will control the public. Or the society. Something like that.

All the muddled notions one arrives at by way of a thousand books one only read as fast as they could so they could say that they read them…could they be dangerously incomplete? Well. In reality I didn’t read them so I could say…well some of them, perhaps as many as half, could’ve been read that way…for that purpose rather. But mostly, like today, I just start a book and I get so wrapped up in “what happens next!?” that I can’t slow down to appreciate the way it’s done. Like the first page of Garlic and Sapphires, I was like, wow look how she does that, and look at all that alliteration and consternation, this is a beautiful piece of writing, and look at that formatting, but by page 3 I was like hot damn this shit is intense! Is she going to give Le Cirque a 3 star rating? 2 stars? Will she fold? Shit! And before you know it I finished the damn book and it’s two weeks from Friday and I don’t remember a damn thing.

Well I had to take a break here because my girlfriend came home and now I feel less on a roll. She’s pretty awesome, she just walked right in and made chicken stock. And gave me a chicken taco. Then I washed the dishes. Now she’s taking a shower. I made some more coffee because she said she wants some. She has a lot of reading to do which is awesome because it means I can just keep writing and writing. And finishing that damnable laundry.

But shit, what was the point. Yeah so just going out and doing errands, running them rather, well that was enough to make me feel pretty accomplished. At this point that feeling is starting to wear off. But at the time I didn’t feel anxious about whether I was wasting time and whatnot. I guess those are the kinds of things I feel are important. Daily drudgery type things that have nothing to do with art. I don’t know where I got the idea that working at art was a waste of time but I guess it’s down somewhere in my psyche because I don’t make time for it. Of course I have made plenty of time to blog. But then that’s not true, I had all the time there anyway. I just stopped doing a lot of other things like sleeping late, watching porn, watching movies, and washing the dishes, not to mention eating and reading about cocktails, and then all of the sudden I had all this time to blog. So I guess it is true, then, that I made time by clearing away those activities. What is it about blogging then that makes it ok?

Well I guess I haven’t given up entirely the idea that one can make money at writing. Even though by God I have tried. Merlin’s beard. I’ve tried to give up the idea. But it just seems right that I should make my money writing, even though I’ve never sold a damn thing I’ve written, or even tried to. Shit that’s not even true, now that I think about it! I sold a story on Amazon. I think I sold two of them for 99 cents each. Well there you go. That’s progress for you.

One of my favorite proverbs goes something like: Be not afraid of moving slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

Of course I spent most of my time going backwards. Or so it seems.

Where is all this leading to? What’s next?

Reminds me of that scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Damn that was a good movie. Hunter Thompson is everyone’s favorite. And Johnny Depp is my favorite actor. The scene at the hotel when he’s tripping out and trying to check in. “What’s the score here? What’s next?”

Well, I was thinking I could become a food writer. Or a journalist of some kind. I love writing, but I just love typing and typing and never looking back. Maybe I could send it in and someone else could edit it or something. Ah shit. But that’s how Thompson did it. Just let it go. Maybe if I spent enough time practicing, I could do it something like Jack Kerouac. But well that’s completely misunderstood. He worked really hard. I just finished reading a biography that came out recently called The Voice is All and it was by a Carol…something…Carol Johnson..shit I don’t know but it was damned interesting.

I shudder, I sit at my own dining room table, someone else’s dining room table for that matter, this furniture is a rental from the real occupant, I sit shuddering here listening to the demons all around. And by demons I mean those bastards that live upstairs and those bastards who live downstairs. I can hear their every breath. It’s a good thing they’re not big talkers or I’d go mad. No chance of that now. Not at all.

But God damn it. What is going on. I’m positively giddy with the notion, the idea of spending hours just typing random bullshit. I could even get down with typing Random Bullshit Random Bullshit Random Bullshit over and over again. You know, that’s a damn good way at getting better at typing, because the more you type one word the harder it becomes to do it without fucking up.

Positively giddy, where did I pick that phrase up? Either a book movie or TV show that’s for damn sure. Used to be I would pick a phrase or a mannerism up from one of my best friends. But I have moved away from them now, so whatever I say is probably from books or moving pictures.

Everything is unimaginable.

Ah, but damn, I need to get good at everything. Read all kinds of books about food and educate my simple palate. It doesn’t pick anything up at all. Lemongrass? What the fuck. I’ll tell you what an apple tastes like if you can tell me first. Like Ruth Reichl says, food writing is very subjective, to the point that I can’t be absolutely sure that what you taste when you eat an apple is the same thing as what I taste. Just like with colors and all that.

Well, shit. I think I’ll look at comments for a while.

I’m obsessed with myself. That’s for damn sure. Everything on this post has been for damn sure. I’m tired of that.

You know I really like looking at my stats. What for? Shit the writing is the fun thing right? But really, we only write so someone else can read. I never knew that before. And you’d think I didn’t know it now, the way I spew shit on the page like something I don’t want to talk about.

Damn, and I had a million ideas I wanted to talk about. And they all were me. I should write something that adds value to someones life. How do you spell someones? I don’t know. But I learned what a consomme is.

Oh yeah, but I was at The Breakers in the gift shop looking at all these boring ass books and thought, shit, I could be entertained for years just reading these dumb ass books. I should just bartend, make money, and read books.

Analysis, Not Fit for Public Consumption , , , , , 1 Comment

Caffeine and Bartending

by

The last three days at work I’ve had a redeye and been really talkative for the first part of the evening. Being talkative is important at a bar. Normally I don’t like to talk at all. But you have to engage people at the bar or they feel like you’re snubbing them. And if you’re not snubbing them, they’ll think you’re just a bad bartender. And if you don’t like to talk you probably are.

So the caffeine was working out when I was working doubles, because I would get off at 8 or 9 and be good, starting to come down. Though I would still be up and frenetic for a little while afterwards. Last night I couldn’t hardly get to sleep because I was too excited thinking about what I was going to blog about today.

I’m supposed to take a shower before work. I didn’t take one last night, got home too late and said fuck it.

And last night I had a redeye but then I had to stay until 12 or so cleaning. That was one of the reasons I got it, figured it would be good energy for that. But in the beginning I felt like I was working against the caffeine, like in the beginning of the shifts I was wiping the shelves down and the mirrors behind the bottles and all of that shit, and it felt like it was becoming more and more difficult to work the more I was drinking the coffee. Which is pretty counterintuitive. But there it was.

Plus, I have to spend four dollars on that shit. Tonight I’m going to try it out just drinking the regular restaurant coffee again. It’s shit, and I’ve had some bad experiences with it. It’s strange to think that different kinds of coffee can give you different kinds of buzzes, but I find it’s true. I also find that mixing stuff in changes the effect of caffeine. I don’t know if this is placebo or what.

But yeah the four dollars is some real bullshit. Last night I made a lot of money in cash though. Shit tons of cash. Everyone was tipping cash and on guy tipped 80 dollars cash on like a fifty dollar tab. But none of this has anything to do with the caffeine.

I was talkative like a motherfucker and it was working out, but at some point in the night my eyes started watering and shit and I was like what the fuck is going on. Well, it wasn’t something I wasn’t used to because that kind of shit often happens to me. But I would prefer that it didn’t. Just stay clear headed to the end.

And the damndest thing about my job is I’m the slowest cleaner around, I guess, and I can’t seem to close the bar down fast, which is a desirable trait for a bartender. I mean I don’t give a good shit as long as I’m out of there before 1:20 so I can catch my bus and all, but the managers like to be out of there. Plus the owner doesn’t want to be paying overtime because I can’t clean faster. So last night I was going to work on that and I think I did a pretty good job, but I don’t think the redeye helped anything.

So I think I’m going to retire that redeye shit. Fuck it.

How else can I improve at bartending? I don’t know, it’s a weird thing, I was trying to figure out how to improve and reading and shit and memorizing cocktails and such, but none of that is really helping in the face to face interactions and the real nuts and bolts of bartending. I’m still pretty bad at it. I can make good drinks and I’m a hard worker, but I dont’ have the real finesse. If only I could get drunk at work. Or at least just steady drink the whole time. Fuck it, I’ll just pretend I’m drunk. I pretty much did that last night and it seemed to work out.

Shit. What the fuck is going on with today? What have I done. And it’s 1:21 PM now so it’s almost time to get on that bus and start figuring that shit out. Have I improved from yesterday? I don’t know.

Tomorrow my girlfriend and I are going to prep the room for the first AirBnB guest. And she has some reading to do so hopefully I will get more chances to write. Ah but what the fuck is the point of writing all this shit? I don’t know I really don’t. Ah Christ these motherfuckers are still trying to bring the whole house down, those bastards downstairs.