Here I am again, sitting in what I now refer to in my head as the Worst Bar in the World. It's not the worst looking bar in the world. There are some rough-and-tumble jobs on the bad side of Bangkok, where betting your Baht on spontaneous bouts of Thai-boxing is a respected tradition. In one bar that I visited where the tuk-tuks dare not roam, I actually found a tooth in the ashtray. It was a human tooth, I assume, though admittedly I'm no dentist. There were dried blood patches on the floor, at least on the night I was there (perhaps not coincidentally it was Ladies' Night). There's also the late, great Stein Club in Midtown Atlanta to consider.
No, this bar is just the worst all-round bar in the world. You may recall the episode with the fütchen, about which I wrote a week or two ago. At that time, the staff was just too stressed to bring people beer. Tonight, however, they had a different reason. I walked in about a half hour ago; and, as usual, about half the customers were sitting around with warmed-over, greasy, empty glasses in front of them. The other half were either already drunk, or not the drinking type. I walked up to the bar to order myself a beer; I've given up ever getting served at a table here. The wait staff were sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes, as is their wont, and I actually had to tap one of them on their tattooed shoulder to get their attention.
Once I'd ordered my beer, the tall, slender, albeit buck-toothed blondie sauntered around to the business side of the bar, and started pouring a beer. After a few seconds of shooting nothing but foam into my glass, she called to the other "waiter" that he needed to grab a new keg from storage. "What, a new keg again?" he whined.
Again? I thought. When the hell could they have last changed out kegs? How many months could it take for such a ridiculous gaggle of slackers to actually dry up a keg? More likely the beer evaporated. Does this place even have a boss? What do you have to do to get fired here? In many places, sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes while all the customers wait for beer from an empty keg is nigh Dickensian in its cartoonishly abject insolence. There's a niggling little thought in the back of your head that you forgot the password, and that everyone thinks you're a narc.
You'd think that years of abuse, culminating in having a waitress delegate her job to you, would be one of those lessons you'd never forget. You get burned, and you develop little rules of thumb to avoid making mistakes more than once; you develop little proverbs like, "always throw the circuit breakers before drilling", and "never moon a Chinaman". But sometimes you forget, and here I am again, in the worst little Kneipe in Germany.
Well, looks like I've managed to become illegal again. The last time was in September, and then I managed to get a three-month extension. The twist in the spiel is, if I can manage to stay on German soil until April, I'll get a Green Card. Of course, what happens in-between will probably have a major effect on whether or not I'll be a hollow-eyed 80 lb. scarecrow by then, selling nickel-bags to schoolchildren to buy coffee and tobacco, but whatever, it's a start. I think I've developed my game plan; stay tuned...
Bureaucracies have their place in the order of things. They bring order and impersonality where it's needed. It's the earthly manifestation of the Rule of Law, where the rules apply regardless of identity or circumstance. To be sure, there are good and bad bureaucracies, but the point of it all is, poor and rich alike are affected by the red tape, thereby assuring some sort of lowest common denominator of suffering that unites, feel the love my brothers. Bureaucracies do have their drawbacks, of course. To wit, "going postal" is now officially in the American lexicon. But still, you have to admit that it all looks good on paper, like Socialism or torx screwdrivers.
So, now all that's left to hope is that I can phone it in for four months and back into the playoffs, to mix a metaphor or three.
"First of all, baby, it wasn't me. That's all I've got to say about that. I don't care what the bitch said, I didnt. Do. Shit. I was jsust sitting there typing away, like I always do. And you know how cute I look when I'm sitting there bangin-, I mean, typing away on my little Powerbook. Baby, can I just say you look beeeee-u-tiful tonight? You do. What? Oh, I mean, then she came over to me and said, 'Are you like a journalist or something?' And then I was like, 'Journalist? You trying to piss me off or what? Journalist?' And she was all, 'Well, you know...' playing with her hair and shit, twisting little curls around her finger and stuff. You know, I can read people. So, I deigned to retort: 'I'm not a journalist. I'm a blogger.' Which was probably exactly the right thing to say, you know, because then she was all like, ewwwwww, get it off me! which was fine by me, she's probably in j-school for all I know. What's that, baby? Naw, baby, I think blogging's sexy, especially when you do it. So anyways, I was just sitting there typing away about how bad the service here blows, I mean, you know, they're lax and whatever, and then I look over and the bitch is staring at me. I mean like retarded starin'. And that's when I noticed that not only had she done peeled off the label on her beer bottle, she'd already got started on her date's! Well, baby, that's when I realized it was time to get the HAIL outta Dodge, nowhutimsayin.
"Check please! I mustered through my risin' gorge. Now, stop that fussing. You know ya daddy treats ya right."
Yee-haw! I got my search thing working again, in order to settle a personal dispute. As it turns out, I've only used the word 'twat' 3 times in 2 years. And, I might add, always in a non-sexual context.
