Random visuals from someplace

Argentina is so pretentiously inept it can't even do Winter right, but let's instead pretend like we're in "someplace" and focus on visuals.

Other than the terminaⁱ, the flora is pretty decent in Argentina (the fauna - not so much). Depicted above, a tree I definitely want in Eulora. Ho there, spiky guy!

Yes, you got that right : this is a grassrootsⁱⁱ protest against the expansion of bus lines. Can you wrap the head around this wonder ? Someone should tell municipalities everywhere to stop spending on infrastructure, as nobody-on-a-stick, shopkeeper in Buenos Aires has discovered a secret mayors hate : infrastructure development destroys commerce! And creates unemployment! Not to mention bus lines fragment the city! If only New York knew in the 50s what these bright minds discovered today.

Anyway, to rescue you from the pit of wtf : you have to understand Buenos Aires is not so much a city, located in a country, as a collection of inept monkeys located outside of human civilisation, culture or history. Consequently, the 10-20mn strong suburban agglomeration consists of easily half a million shops, numerically, but which STRICTLY reduce to about five types. There's not more. You have the RCB&Pⁱⁱⁱ that serves uniformly the same five to six dishes and three drinks (don't forget to order extra de muzza), the Pastelleria^iv, the Gelateria^v, then the Almacen^vi, the Tienda^vii with the Cotillon subtype^viii and that's about it! So technically, while the city consists of millions of people and hundreds of thousands of shops, you could film the whole daily life on a modest sitcom budget and nobody would know, nor be able to prove, that most of the city is missing. Because it wouldn't be missing, it would be all there. ALL OF IT.

Why do they do this ? Why is not the slightest variation permitted or even ostensibly considered ? Because they're imbeciles and idiots, what. Next you're going to ask me why the bars are full of old women gathered in troops squealing with delight at their smartphones^ix and why the fuck they imagine they can live like in the magazines, on the collective basis of having a soy farm somewhere, vaguely nowhere. Hollywood rent control is a fiction trope, but that's ok : Argentina is a fictitious place.

The fact of the matter is that they do this, and they will not change or examine the deed. Once that's given, the rest is easy to understand : shithead figures that through paying the rent, he is entitled to the business of the people in so and so parcel of town, in so and so field. Which business those unfortunates must have, whether they want to or not. And the government should give them more money, so they can have more of that business^x because if someone has a hundred pesos he'll spend 10 on an empanada and if he had ten thousand obviously he just buys and eats a hundred empanadas at 10 pesos (ie, 70 cents) a pop. Each day. Which is why my displeasure with their "night life" is thoroughly incomprehensible to the locals - but there's all these 70 cent empanada stands!

So that's his logic : the bus will drive some of the money bags from his neighbourhood. Thus therefore, "it destroys commerce". Problem ? And if it destroys commerce the "entrepreneur" will be out a job, and so... creates unemployment. What do you mean a job is a specific thing with a specific meaning that doesn't map on sinecure ? What are you, some sort of sociopath ?! Why would he have to do the actual job, he already gave at the office! He IS an entrepeneur, as a matter of ontological categorisation, as proven by so and so piece of paper. What function ? Are you crazy mang ?!

Before you say "But MP, statistically speaking you've not provided any reason the buses aren't just as likely to bring business as they are to cart it away ? Not like buses get a free pass on mass conservation ?" : it's not whether they do or they don't. It's that they could. Entrepreneur does not wish to have a method to control practical events. Entrepreneur wishes for a transcendental solution, he wishes to control things in principle. Entrepreneur is really a monk in the wrong clothing, and the earlier observation re Juan Manuel de Rosas should finally make sense in all its full glory. YES, that fucking stupid, that fucking anachronistic, that fucking worthless, pointless and outside of nature and society. Savages, yes. Monkeys. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Vote for more immigration.

Since we're doing this whole "explain the words of Argentine idiot to normal people" thing : the above isn't a "typical union protest" thing. The above is the very pointedly specific following : some dudes were spending some time of their day hanging around in this place "someone" (ie, the state, God, whatever) put at their disposal. Like a social center for adults. At some point in the recent past which memory can still reach, some of the people that used to come to their social club stopped showing up. The remainder miss them, because they had whatever telenovela-grade superficial relations to them, and wish they should be brought back. That is all.

It's perfectly mystical, like a protest against death at the Florida retirement home, there's no more substance to it than "we grew used to Sally, where is she". That's it.

The country has seen better days.

This is a bar where the waitress brought me champagne but forgot the napkin, and when I asked for one she couldn't produce such. Brought me a towel instead. What the hell's the difference, right ?

1. Fauna was the Latin goddess of critters. Then Linneus decided to invent Flora no wait. Flora was the Latin goddess of flowers, usually depicted as a nude slut in burlesque costume. Then Linneus decided to invent Faun-a, to discuss animals. Since architecture is essentially a matter of the configuration of rocks, and Terminus is the Latin god of significance in rocks, I guess the triplet would be termina, flora and fauna. The alternative to the demonymous approach would be to take the Linnaeic and name it after a famous rock or other, say kaaba, flora and fauna. But fuck him, hasn't he named enough things already ? (No seriously, he's the most prolific godfather in history, there's about 5mn items named in his style.) [↩]
2. And very unlike what they pretentiously label that here, this is authentic. That is a nude exercise in pretense, and if you live like I lived on Corrientes y 9 de Julio you will in short order notice that the 500 to 1k derps "marching" and "lucha, bro!" are throughout the same people, hired for a pittance to play the part of "general public" in the complicated, stylisized, inept kabuki Argentines pretend to substitute for politics.

   Because hey, the alternative is to say they've no politics nor the ability to create such, and since J. M. de Rosas died they've essentially been a people without a country, waiting for the next Messiah to come and render the perceptiblia meaningful and structurable again.

   Speaking of which, you should probably look in the history of de Rosas and the Argentine derp's thoroughly Sabbatai Zevi-esque relationship to him. They're very, very deeply ashamed of the fact that yes, de Rosas was voted dictator in 1935, legally (as there was no law against it, then), by a sort of majority (9`713 to 7) of free votes that socialists have never ever attained, often not even while trying to employ force. This simple fact irks every socialist out there to high heavens, but what's the humours of a bunch of idiots to do against immodest reality ? [↩]

3. The Restaurante-Cafe-Bar con Pizzeria/Parillada, two subtypes [↩]
4. Which offers pre-made cakes ONLY for takeaway, it is forbidden by law to allow customers to eat the cake there, as they've not the license. [↩]
5. Pretty good icecream universally. [↩]
6. Random general interest shitty goods. [↩]
7. Shitty apparel and clothes, the same ones. EVERYWHERE EXACT SAME ONES! [↩]
8. "Party" items, which look cool at first, except they're always and everywhere the SAME party items. [↩]
9. This happened last week. There I sit, talking, suddenly there's static. Very, very loud static. I turn around and there's the group, four fat fifty year olds with no utility or purpose, gathered around the iPad of one of them which was playing some video. With static. Volume through the roof.
   "Do you mind ?"
   Fuck that, no way anyone for a mile around can hear human speech.
   "DO YOU FUCKING MIND!" I bellow from the demonic depths of Hell.
   "Urgh ?!"
   "Turn the fucking thing down!"
   So they do, believe that! And then spend the next twenty minutes giggling amongst themselves like a bunch of preteen black kids in an inner city school. I'm telling you - it's not the race ; it's the cranium. [↩]
10. Trickle down economy!11 [↩]