Strange things people think
Go to a pharmacy to buy Epsom salts. Pharmacist, clearly knowledgeable, has no fucking idea what that is.i Magnesium salt dude. He starts backing away slowly, like a contradicted cat. Goes to talk to even older, even more clearly knowledgeable pharmacist. They agree there isn't such a thing, not only in their own pharmacy, but in the Authoritarian and Definitive Pharmacopoeia of the Ages. It just dun exist, this, what Epsom salts, you must have hallucinated the entire thing during a dream.
So noticing they have a computerized inventory system installed, I write it down for them. E-P-S-O-M. They shake their heads, hopelessly. "This foreigner cat is not making any sense, poor him" they think. But then they type it into the magical machine (calculadora mecanica inglesa) and... wait! Yup-yup-yup-yup-yup-yup. D-rrrrring!
What the fuck do you suppose they think Epsom salts are called, over here ? Hm ?
Sal inglesa. That's right. And I shoulda fucken known, because when I asked for Worchestershire they thought I'm asking for little moon rocks or something, until some clearly English fellow that had been slowly marinating himself in straight whiskey for at least fifty if not eighty years somewhere in the back of the shop yelled out "salsa inglesa!". In the spirit of which, I suppose next I see a street hooker Ima ask her how much for follar inglesa, cause I have no idea how you say half'n'half in Spanish.
But moving on (not very far) :
As you can see, this is a restroom. It belongs to a nice and spacious cafe / rendezvous place in their local version of Greenwich Village (Palermo), except this is populated by whores and immigrants rather than aspiring writers. Actually come to think of it...
But anyway, notice there's a notice in between the urinal and the hand drier station ? Wonder what it could possibly say ? Here you go :
Just in case you were sitting there with your penis in hand and thought to yourself, "you know what I'd really need right about now ?! A condom!". Maybe you need a urine sample or something, what do I know. Yet judging by the various announcements inside the stalls, such as "busco activo" and other similar...
At any rate I'm taking a woman there and fucking her in that restroom just to see what happens. (I will be bringing my own condoms, tyvm).
Moving on, my crosstransverstudinal and also longitudinal market & socioeconomic study is complete. A cab medallion costs ~ 200`000 pesos, which is about 18k or so. Most cars are rented by the drivers, who pay 600 pesos a day, Mon-Fri, for a total of about 13`000 a month (cca 1`150 USD), Sat-Sun they get the car for free (some actually pay for the car to be on the street). The driver pays for the gas, but the owner pays all repairs. In general a driver willing to work like in Romania (12 hours a day) takes home 15`000 to 20`000 pesos a month. That's about 5`000 RON, something that ain't happening in Romania, ever, period.
Meanwhile the locals think that well, since I'm from Europe, all this is peanuts for us, and so what do I care. That's right : these people here actually make more money than the EU average, and yet perceive themselves as a sort of you know, post colonial shithole. Which perhaps they were, thirty or so years ago, before the socialists managed to completely ruin the capitols, rendering them worse shitholes than their erstwhile colonies.
Life.
———- At least when I was a wee tyke - or two centuries ago, whichever comes sooner - not knowing that'd have worked as a literary means to suggest whoever is negatively qualified. Like you know, a sysadmin that has no idea what ll does. [↩]
