Paying the Piper

I had the car inspected today. Total cost to fix the front bumper and underlying bumper bits: about $1300. I'm going to assume an additional ream factor of $200 for a grand total of $1.5K.

The condenser was also dented and they wanted to fix it. However after I quizzed them it turns out that the condenser still works fine and the dent is purely cosmetic. I told them to ignore it.

I also got a letter from the city telling me that I would be getting a bill for the fence.

I'm so happy, white-hot molten joy is oozing from every orifice.

Estrella/Vegas '09 - Part 11, A Tale of Two Cabbies

On the way to the Palomino Club we hailed a cab.

"Quickly, to the Palomino Club!", we cried.
"Are you sure you want to go to the Palomino Club?" He asked, noticing that there were only two men in our party of five.

I imagine mixed gender groups going to strip clubs is not that usual, especially when the women outnumber the men. We'd also heard about assorted scandals involving Vegas cab drivers getting kick backs for bringing customers to certain clubs. We didn't want another club, we wanted seedy, all-nude, goodness!

"Yes, to the Palomino Club", we repeated.
"Full nude and liquor. You're sure that's what you want?"
"Yes, the womenfolk have been informed what they're in for."
"OK".

And that was it for the first driver.

Our adventures in the club are outlined earlier. On the way home we got a noteworthy cabby.

"How are you folks doing?" he asked.

We let him know that we were doing fine.

"I'm not doing so well myself", he said, "I just saw my ex-wife, the former KGB agent and current prostitute, being poured into the backseat of another cab in front of me."

Oh my.

"Yeah, I wasn't sure what I should be feeling when I saw that. I mean, she was hooking pretty much the entire time we were married and I didn't know about it until later. I think I've gone past anger and now I just feel sad for her and myself."

That's quite mature.

"So where are you folks from?"

Canada.

"Hey that's great, we're sure glad to see you folks from Canada. At least somebody's economy isn't as bad as ours. This town is going to dry up if the economy doesn't approve."

He then launched into a fairly sophisticated analysis of the current global economic downturn. For an encore he linked this to a more general thesis that everything that was wrong with America today was Reagan's fault. And he made a pretty strong case. 9/11? Direct result of Reagan funding the Taliban to push Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Bank failures? Relaxing industry regulations that began during the Reagan era. Iraqi invasion? Official policy of the Project for the New American Century, a group primarily made up of Reagan era neo-conservatives.

Beothuk was particularly smitten with him, saying "We've never actually heard an American say all this stuff" (not entirely true, I've certainly read a lot of blogs by Americans saying this, but 'thuk's not as addicted to the Internet as I). Certainly most of this is common knowledge to people outside America. It's probably common knowledge inside "blue" America too, but it's generally not talked about with outsiders.

And then our cabbie went from working-class-philosopher to nutbar.

"Yeah, even AIDS is Reagan's fault - it was originally made in a lab by the CIA and then they field-tested it in the Congo back in 1982 and now we're stuck with it killing millions around the world."

Whoops. Hopefully he's just misinformed about AIDS and can eventually see the evidence that it's natural and has been around longer then most people realize.

Too bad really, this was a guy I could get into a long bar-room discussion with over a pint.