Loose Cans

Home home coming home
I'm coming home (yeah)
Coming home (woooo)
I'm getting bored walking up and down the same old kip
I'm going back to a place where the kids are hip

Taking a break from a whirlwind of essay-writing, packing, cleaning. Got the essay in just, and I mean JUST under the wire. Totally unrevised and unedited. About 3000 words. Containing sizeable block quotations from--and only from--the three writers academics just love to see cited: Christopher Hitchens, Susan Sontag and David Sedaris. The Sedaris quotation is from "I Almost Saw This Girl Get Killed." I'm pretty proud of that, but nowhere near as much as I am that I actually wrote the essay for the wrong tutor.

I was so sure my tutor's name was Jenny. I mean, she looked like the English major version of a Jenny. So I picked up Jenny's essay questions from the TA office board. Well, turns out her name was Rachel. I answered the wrong question for the wrong tutor. I still maintain that her name was Jenny, and everyone else is wrong. I think it's all hysterical.

But you know what? I don't care. I'm coming home. And that's the best Hanukkah present ever (though Sadie's latkes and applesauce last night were a close second).

But on the other hand the worst Hanukkah present ever is the fact that my iPod seems to be completely fucked as of a few hours ago; it's not just spinning, but skip-spinning. Very troubling. I may not make it to America without it.

That's not true. Nothing, not a fucking thing, could keep me here right now. Whee!

So fucking hard for the money. Got home at 5:30am, as usual. Insane party last night. 400 people (twice the normal club crowd), slammed solid from 8:30 to 2:30am (twice the length of a normal club night). Packed five or six deep at the bar. Five or six of us behind the bar. One of us utterly useless: this short, dumpy woman named Pamela, from Monaghan, who has no business bartending in a club--which I say on the basis of her looks, which are, I'm sorry, wholly unsuitable for a club like this--or anywhere else--which I say on the basis of her skills, which are totally nonexistent--who was inexplicably assigned to lobo last night, against general protestation. I mean, I'm not that good, but oh, wow, did she suck. I don't mind people sucking at their jobs, just so long as they don't interfere with how I suck at mine.

But the money last night...whee doggie. They were using these €5 vouchers, but no one, apparently, had told them how much they were worth. We were supposed to take them and give them change, but no one knew they were supposed to get change. So they'd order a €4.50 Guinness, hand over the voucher, take the pint and walk away, leaving us with €0.50. They'd do this over half the time, sometimes leaving three, four euro. 400 people drinking, that shit added up. The tip jar, which, in lobo, rarely yields more than €5 per person, and rarely makes more than a tinkle when you shake it, was so full you could hardly pick it up to shake it. In the end, between eight of us, we pulled in €280, all in spare change, or €35 per person. But it doesn't end there. They also spent €7500 on canapés. Yes, that's right, €7500. When canapés happen, a 12.5% service charge on the food happens, split between kitchen, bar and floor. That means about €85 per person in service charge. Pity it's not on the whole megillah, because those fuckers spent over €20,000 last night, all tolled. So it's €35 plus €85 plus €80 base pay (8 hour shift)...I wouldn't say €200 was really what last night's work was worth--but it's a start.

The flipside of it is, I'm getting a bit tired. The only night I had off was sunday, and I'm on tonight and tomorrow, too, which means I'll have worked eight out of the past nine days. Part-time me arse. On saturday morning, I go directly from work to the airport to catch an 8:15am flight, YES!

Tonight, they wanted me in for five, but at the last minute I had to beg off until ten, as I am scarcely half-finished with the Wilde essay, decided upon at the last minute. I have wonderful managers. As for the essay, a thesis was forged about four hours ago and since then words have come trawling into port at a rather leisurely pace. It's a 2500-3000-worder, and I'm up to 1400 or so. And they want a count at the end. Problem is, I feel like I've wrapped it up already. Have to stretch now.

Only one decent line to come out of this one so far: regarding Wilde's being the only writer in history one can, and should, take entirely at face value, "we’re much too conditioned to mistrust the obvious and look beneath the surface, because there’s meaning in them thar hills." Everything else is fairly sober. I will have to amuse myself some more if I am to reach my word quota.

Well, half-deaf. My left ear--what is it about the left side of my body that puts it in a state of constant rebellion?--is so blocked up by God knows what that I cannot hear a damn thing in it. This is exceedingly unpleasant. It has gone from deadness to pressure pain to a very loud ringing. I went out and bought some ear drops which did absolutely no good at all, dropped half the damn bottle in my ear, lay on my side, turned on the radio and listened to Click and Clack. That's right, Car Talk. It's on from 1 to 2pm on Mondays on Anna Livia 103.2 FM. And they were goddamn brilliant. Made my day.

Then I watched Nightmare Before Christmas, brilliant movie, and went to work. Ghastly boring, graveyard-dead party plus pain in my head meant I cut out at 8:30, after only 3h30 of work. It's okay, though, I'm working every night this week. Every night. Oy. I'm dead. Going to bed. Stupid ear wax. I had to leave work early for fucking ear wax. Jesus Christ.