The Half-Guinea starts in with his damn jokes
I don’t know what John Smith is up to, sitting back there and placing this Kowalski character between us. It’s like he’s hiding something, and that’s not a trait I identify with Smith. Not at all.
Instead of sitting here with me, he, or fate, has somehow managed to throw The Half-Guinea into the seat across from me – and that fucking dog of his. It would be an understatement to say that The Half-Guinea is not the best dining companion in the world, but I’m putting up with it. I’ve always put up with The Half-Guinea. Can’t say why. It’s not like with John Smith, for whom I actually hold a fond affection.
The Half-Guinea, The Half-Guinea – I don’t know. There’s something about forces in time in history – forces you have the power to change but somehow understand it’s better just to leave them alone. That if you tried, they’d eventually bend back toward the course they would have taken anyway, without your interference. And all you will have done is delayed the inevitable. And then it turns out that’s how it should have been anyway, so it turns out that you don’t turn out to be an agent who has acted upon something, but that something has turned out to be the agent acting upon you, and so you end up being acted upon, just like everyone and everything else, by forces you are too small and stupid to understand.
And Man can talk about free will.
I’m not giving the prices for these menu items. Let’s just say everything is reasonably priced – say somewhere between the high-low to the low-mid range (for downtown city center, that is), with perhaps a few exceptions – and the portions are usually generous enough so that you can eat like a thrifty burgermeister of a cunningly self-sufficient little Bavarian dorf and leave smugly patting your belly and snapping your lederhosen against your chest.
That’s not true for all of Viola’s, though, and judging by the trend, things may be getting worse.
I don’t know what the politics is like for the other establishments in the Love and Hunger network, but there must be similarities across the board – of the type whereby you get less for the same price as before, which essentially comes down to paying more for less. It’s what businesses do, isn’t it? But it’s a shitty way to make money. The cheapness, the frugality. It’s despicable. All the years, all the years they’ve been filling stomachs with hardy meals at reasonable prices, and it has to come to this.
They keep the same prices on the menu, or raise them, and list the weight of the dishes, but how can the weight be the same when the dishes have gotten visibly smaller?
The Greek Salad has gotten smaller. It used to be, you ordered it and were halfway to full (I’m assuming this for the regular man, and based on eyewitness accounts, my needs being somewhat greater). Now, you end up hungrier than when you started.
There’s a pasta dish with shrimp and pieces of salmon, regarding which the menu says 400 grams – not bad at all for the price. But time was when this used to be served on a large plate fairly abounding in salmon and shrimp.
Now, they serve it in a plate with a small bowl-like depression in the middle, which, Viola’s contends, is spacious enough to hold 400 grams of pasta together with the fish. That’s a lie. It’s supposed to be a main dish, but you end up paying top hryvnia in exchange for hunger pangs, humiliation and misery.
And then there’s another dish where you used to get three large medallion-like pieces of steak. Now, you only get two. The kitchen, knowing what it was like in the past, refuses to make any concessions, thereby proving the cheapness policy is indeed a reality – and very much in force.
The dish comes with pasta, but I wonder why they bother cooking the pasta at all, since you get no more than a small cupful.
Is pasta so expensive; will the establishment increase revenues significantly by putting fewer noodles on your plate?
It gets so you’re afraid to come in here and order anything, not knowing what they’ll cut down on next.
It certainly gives new meaning to the network’s name – Love and Hunger. Maybe this is their way of living up to it.
The Hunched Cornish is tired of talking about this shit. Let them do what the fuck they want – it’s not going to change a thing for me. I don’t have the stomach for it anymore – not with The Half-Guinea bugging the hell out of me. I swear, if he insults my kid, I’ll kill him. I’m about to rip apart his fucking dog.
“Hunchy – Hunchy, Hunchy, Hunchy – yeah, there’s not enough black women in this town. I’m going back to Moscow. It’s gotten so bad, I’m actually hunting down the mulattos – the daughters of Africans who came here as students for the good Soviet education deal and ended up bedding Ukrainian chicks.”
I really resent The Half-Guinea’s constant talk about all of his women. It reminds me of Manny Face – the one I truly hate… and will kill, if I have to.
“What about the one you were with recently.”
“Ah, Hunchy, I got rid of her. They’re no good after two or three weeks.”
“That long, eh?”
“Yeah, what did you think? I’ve got integrity.”
“What about all the white women.”
“Nah – they want to hold on for too long – like in all those old films noir – way out of bounds of everything that’s reasonable.”
“That’s quite a problem.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Hunchy.”
“What a shame.”
“What about some jokes?”
“You mind if I eat.”
“No. They’ll help you digest your food better. You won’t even notice you’re eating.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Come on, Hunchy, give me a break.”
“Okay, what the hell – let ‘em rip.”
“Now you’re talking. Okay, first joke. Once, there was this rabbit, see…”
But the damn dog was getting up on its hind legs and trying to embrace the stool my Venus kid was on.
See next frame…
The Hunched Cornish, January 31, 2014