Baires

Bairesⁱ is perhaps the definitiveⁱⁱ artefact one could employ to gain entry into the vaguely amusing if deeply ridiculous imagological Argentina - that is, the Argentina Argentinians imagine exists, to keep themselves from the catastrophic effects of a frank look in the mirror.

Since it already cost me the equivalent of twelve dollars in their local "currency" so to speakⁱⁱⁱ plus whatever damage their technological ineptitude^iv did to my retinas in the space of half an hour, I will pour a further half hour of my worktime down that same drain and pretend like the dozen Bitcoin or so worth of damage thus resulting is justified by this article, as a whole, somehow. Because really... taking a frank look in the mirror to see all the damage coexistence with idiots is doing to my daily life is more than I can psychologically afford at the moment.

The film wants itself a sort of "90s realism", with crimes and twu life dramas and whatnot, a vague echo in this muddy pond of things like Snatch and etc. The broad idea is that some drug dealers are moving cocaine from BA to Madrid by slipping mickeys to honeymooning derps, keeping the woman hostage^v, and making the dude their courier.

This is a very cheap approach - you don't have to find a good leading man or a hot leading woman, you need a hipster derp and a girl next door. This shaves between two and five degrees of magnitude off the cast cost in civilised places, and probably eased the burden for Argentines from "impossibru" to "very very hard and difficult". The downside is that it's also a very boring story, I'd rather watch "The Cow Farm Mysteries" on late night cable, and I don't have cable.

Leaving aside how their "sociopath" druglord doesn't work, and leaving aside how the whole dynamic of that entire "criminal enterprise" thing as depicted utterly betrays a complete lack of familiarity on the part of everyone involved with anything other than "office life" ie government dole, and leaving aside the very basic difficulties "the actors" have with stuff such as what to do with their hands or how to manage their own gaze, suggesting that they're perhaps slightly unqualified to take the fucking subway and have absolutely no business in front of a camera, in a word leaving aside any pretense that this thing is a film, and the poeple involved human beings, and so any expectation that it would be judged against standards for films and human beings, we can finally enjoy the freedom of considering the misshod byproduct of the flailing about of some congenital retards as descriptive of the particular diseased functioning of their brains. Like you know, the "art" of some Down syndrome nine year old -- which is exactly what it is.^vi

There is a scene whereby a kid tries to run off with the woman's purse.

One could scarcely explain in sufficient detail the importance of this particular bit of idiocy for the Argentinian delusion. In practical terms, this country is about as safe as the Hamptons - in the bad parts. It is also drastically uniform and flat, there's none of that "cross the street and you're in Iraq" stuff that happens in say New York. I've been here close to two years, the one and only street altercation I ever witnessed was when a bunch of ~16 yo teenagers in school uniforms spent a while pouring flour and juice on each other's heads, as part of what was clearly some sort of obscure but institutionalized revelry. I've yet to see as much as one pickpocket. Nobody has ever run off with anyone's purse (but I do know someone here whose gf lost an iPhone going up in a bus, once).

Yet every serious restaurant must have complex purse hinges so the purses of the patrons won't be violated by the hordes of purse violators they imagine somewhere behind each corner. It's certainly sickly and patently psychoanalizable, the purse snatching thing. Oh la insecuridad!11

There is a scene where the two get roofie'd in a bar. The problem with the bar as depicted is that IT DOES NOT EXIST. I tried to go to such a bar yesterday. It turns out that while it's only open on Saturdays, and while it advertises opening at HALF PAST MIDNIGHT (yeah, you got that right), it's still not open at one in the morning. Now, I'm all for exclusive stuff, and sure, parties start late and what have you. This preference of ours, no matter how shared, does not change reality. You can not run a bar that's open one day a week. Period and full stop. You can not open your bar at an hour half the population looking for a fuck long settled. Also period and full fucking stop. The only way you can pretend to be running such a wonder is if you happen to find yourself in a market that does not in fact exist - which is exactly the case. There's no point in discussing HOW the Buenos Aires night life is, owing to its sheer, complete and utter absence. There isn't any. Which is how inept derps get away with pretending that they're running a bar that's never open. Just like that GBBG Bitcoin scam, or the fabulous "Bitcoin finance" services of yore.^vii

So no, nobody's passing anyone any roofies. There isn't where, even allowing quia absurdum est the notion anyone here has any roofies.^viii

But moving on : the two kidnapped fuckwits spend a night spooning and dancing around in a room they have to themselves. Because yeah, in incompetence land that's exaclty what you do to your captive cattle : let it by itself for a night in a room. What escape ? What turn the thing into a fucking ambush by morning ? Nah, you just casually stroll in like anything, because the fucktards were told this is how it goes and hey, they're from Argentina. They can't think on their own, they just... yep, that's right, know how to work the searchbox. Sort-of.

"Sorry honey, I did say I love you forever, and that was a great wedding, but none of that's worth two shits in the face of someone telling me what to do!"

Yeah, they're THAT bad with authority. And while it's true that perhaps the only economic use for the pointless sacks of flesh inhabiting this country would be as meat shields in explosion management or I suppose drug couriers^ix, nobody's really bothering.

Because yes, they're that worthless. And stupid. And no hay mas futuro. In which vein, I hope this movie plays at Argentina's funeral. I'd go.

1. 2015, by Marcelo Páez Cubells, with Carlos Belloso, Sabrina Garciarena, Rodrigo Guirao Díaz to pick some random "names" of nobodies from a disjointed pile of equally worthless, nameless, nobodies. Don't let anyone tell you anything to the contrary - Argentina does not have a single actor worth the mention. In fact I have my doubts they even have anyone who'd make it with Central Casting. [↩]
2. At any rate it surpasses the previous one. [↩]
3. Costs nothing to pretend like the various tribes of troglodytes live in "countries" and use "currency" and whatnot, plus they seem very flattered by the error. [↩]
4. I don't think you can grok what exactly it means to be a peasant living in a peasant's land until you actually see the wonder. Oh this enchanted sort of herbivore that breaks industry just by mooing in its general direction...

   It's not that they use the things wrong, or have no idea how to use things, or what things even are. It's that the foregoing doesn't even make any sense whatsoever, nor can it be introduced in conversation, owing to the prerequisites for its meaningful definition being wholly absent. Not accidentally absent, the sort of absence you could remedy. Structurally absent, an absence to be remedied only by kidnapping their children cubs and raising them in a sane environment. [↩]

5. Why not the other way around, I asked my slave. She said it's because they intend to turn the woman out, obviously nobody's sending her off to Madrid "in the next flight" as they kept promising.

   While the answer she gave is coherent with who she is and might explain why she is my slave, it happens to also be wrong. The real reason pigeon keepers keep the female and send the male is simply that... the female wouldn't give a shit, and just leave the derp behind.

   Contrary to all the noise going off in your head, transparently for the purpose of protecting you from this particular frank look in the mirror, there's very good biological reasons sexuate reproduction works the way it works. You're here to rape her and she's here to betray you, it's how the entire machinery came this far, it's why The Rape Of The Sabines features prominently the women insisting that their old owners come to terms with their new owners rather than gouging their eyes out. That you're not man enough to rape her these days does not mean she's not woman enough to betray you, these quid pro quo deals only happen in your head. They also have a name. [↩]

6. I do not wish by this to imply that Argentines are, at the peak of their achievement, roughly equivalent to actual human children aged nine and saddled with Down syndrome. I'm outright saying it. [↩]
7. See bitfinex, icbit, btcjam and whatever other bs I'm too lazy to list. [↩]
8. I recently tried to buy iodine in Buenos Aires, only to discover that NO ONE knows what iodine is, or what it's needed for, or how the thyroid functions, or anything. All they know is to work the search bar in their provisioning system and that's fucking it.

   And these are medical professionals you understand, you don't get to open a pharmacy in Argentina without going to medical school for it first. [↩]

9. Except cocaine here is more expensive than in San Diego, for the same reason anything is more expensive here than in San Diego : these people are fucking dumb and so getting anything done costs more (and generallty takes longer). Besides, who in his right mind would take it to Argentina when they could just fly it into Madrid directly from Mexico ?! [↩]