Maripostas

Let's start by explaining the title. Mariposa is how you say butterfly in Castellanⁱ. Meanwhile postas is how you say postman in Hungarian, as illustrated by the following :

Becsöngetnek egy lakásba, ahol csak a papagáj van otthon, s az kiszól:
- Ki az?
- A postás - felel a csöngető.
- Ki az? - ismétli egyetlen tudományát a papagáj.
- A postás!
- Ki az?
- A postás!
Ez így megy tizenkilencszer egymás után, a huszadik "ki az?" kérdésnél a számlást megüti a guta, holtan terül el a küszöbön. Késő este érkezik haza a háziasszony, a sötétben megbotlik a hullában, és rémülten felkiált:
- Jézusmária, ki az?
Kiszól a papagáj flegmán:
- A postás...

Which I find fucking hysterical, for reasons that I can't readily explain. Moving on :

So I'm sitting down for lunch, and just as the conversation revolves OP pointing out that they've never seen a car crash here, and me countering that I've seen two, all this in the general context of both of us agreeing that it's a wonder we've not yet seen a bus mow down a sidewalkful of pedestrian seeing the way they driveⁱⁱ there's a slight bang. A cab trying to park managed to hit the car parked behind him. Older guy at the wheel, completely petrified. Eventually gets out, looks around in the most awkward "I'm not really looking for witnesses" manner imaginable, notices us inside sort-of laughing at him, gets frozen a second time, eventually derps around for a while, gets back in the car, gets back out and LEAVES. That's it.

He didn't leave any sort of note. He didn't say a word. He didn't even as much as pull the car away from the other car to, you know, inspect the fucking damage. Or to be able to pretend that whatever, someone else hit the car and he parked normally after that "someone else" had left. Nothing of the sort. As OP observed, for all he knew he left a "Cab Company XXX" imprinted on the other car, he never looked.

No interest whatsoever in reality, you see ? You or me, we'd readily get out to look at the actual thing. Not this man. For all he cares, as far as he's concerned, the entire thing is what happened in his head. That's it. That's all. He's just... not curious, not interested, absolutely inadherent to anything whatsoever past the narrative spinning in his head. Nobody could have foreseen...

Originally I thought that said "Starbucks, a coffee shop for people who don't drink coffee", but then someone with a better grip on the local idiom clarified that it's about Apple. Something something design something something people something something real problems. Or something.

But in any case, I wish to know how far to a certain street. So I ask a kid, propping a wall in the shade. He's dressed out of twenty dollars, the flipflops, used jeans and flimsy tshirt bums of all persuasions are so enamoured with. He looks like his next meal is strictly dependent on his being quick on his feet, and he looks like if anyone ever gives him something, it's strictly to do with the confidence the giver has in his strength and physical prowess.

I ask this kid, which way to Av. Coronel Diaz ?

And he tells me. He tells me "you can't get there".

He tells me, that it's far, and that I must take a collectiveⁱⁱⁱ. Because it's far.

How far, I ask ? Uh... must be twenty blocks, he offers.

This kid figures walking twenty blocks, which is not even two miles, is beyond the scope of human achievement, something of the massive, overpowering difficulty of a problem that can only be solved by the state. Thank god for Cristina, because without a decrepit old whore plastered in make-up it'd be scarcely possible to get to the bathroom.

But let's move on : Cupula Central and Pulenta Estate.

So I happen to need a particular drug, which is ferrous fumarate, to treat a particular disease, which is iron-deficient anemia. The thing with this particular condition is that it's very finnicky : some women^iv respond well to sulphate, some women respond well to diglicinate, or mannitol salts, or whatever else. Some respond well to fumarate. Whichever they respond well to, they're stuck with, and this is not particularly predictable - varies somewhat by race and ethno-culture, but also varies within these, etc. The only practical non-invasive curative approach is to try them all and hope one sticks.

So I go to pharmacy, and ask quite specifically. They "don't have it". I persevere. They offer sulphate. Not what I want. One pharmacy clerk even tells me they "don't work" with that kinda high falootin stuff, and recommends I visit Farmacity (the objectionable, god-awful, US-wannabe chain here - I would rather donate to the IRS than shop there). I persevere. Eventually situation comes to a head in a large, clearly "professional" pharmacy - one active, seemingly intelligent young woman tells me that this "fumarate" thing is not something that exists. Another, more perseverent middle aged woman gets me a box of iron, which says sulphate on it, which is the only thing they carry, everywhere. Why the hell would they have decided to only carry one thing of the bevvy of things available, which you're stuck trying individually because you never know what will work ? Because they're the sort of repugnant idiots that will need the "collective" to go two miles and try to parallel park while entertaining complex conversations with the other idiots in their own head. For which reasons they aren't poor, at least not in their own imaginative view of themselves.

So I persevere more, specifically insisting to see the types of this brand they have (all imported, all from Merck). She shows me. You know what she shows me ? A list, consisting of strings, which are roughly speaking a hash based on the commercial name of the product. It does not list ingredients, it's just... a hash. And she's trying string matches on a hash that has been produced by a complex state machine out of nothing at all, to which hash neither her nor I know the salt, and then they fail and so... she doesn't have it.

So no, since the commercial name does not specifically say "Hierro (II) fumarato" and the various abbreviations and assorted skullduggery her (MS-DOS based) inventory application uses upon commercial names to end up with identification strings do not magically compose any of the words, she doesn't think she has it.

Meanwhile the thing's right there, to be discovered only by those insistent perseveratory nuts that ask for one of every single type. They ended up selling me a local salary's worth of product against their will, practically, in any case over their kicking and screaming "knowledges" and "practices" and what have you. And at the end of it all, the even younger, even bouncier blondy at the cash register asked me if I'm buying it all to take it to my country. She did. I should have answered saying that no, we have iron salts in my country, all we need is more of you.

I didn't, but nevertheless : there's very good reason to despise people, generally speaking. They all revolve around the same revolting mental habits.

1. By the way : butterfly on concrete is such a rare sight. Pollution, especially the sort engendered by maintaining high concentrations of humans in the USian fashion, is very hostile to life on Earth generally, but to butterflies first and foremost. In general, how many of these you see a day is a good indicator of how unfit for human life a place you inhabit.

   The relative abundance of butterflies in Buenos Aires is a living testament that the US way of doing things is not merely not the only way of doing things but, very importantly, not the only way of doing those very same things. Yes you can have a large town with a high population density that's nevertheless NOT Los Angeles. [↩]

2. You have not seen anything like this, ancient city busses barreling down, 60 mph, through tiny streets among bikes, motorbikes, stupid women with children in tow hopping mid traffic from among parked cars without warning and on and on and oh my! [↩]
3. Scarcely a more adequate, or more denigratory name could ever be conceived for a bus. [↩]
4. It's almost always women [↩]