Demonstrating the Intellectual Capacity of a Broken Toaster

A few years ago I toured the West Coast of the United States. One of the localities I happened to visit was Portland, Oregon. I only spent a few hours there, and yet it made an indelible impression on me that will last a lifetime. Truly, it is one of the worst places in the United States. More hobos and street thugs per square foot than any other city in the nation, and it seems that there is a bit of a widespread drug problem amongst all classes in that city. Either that, or the locals are simply less lucid than other areas of the country.

For example, the restaurant (a rather nice one actually) I went to was mostly empty, but the conversations being held in it were...interesting to say the least. Like the engaged couple who called into the restaurant and wanted them to cater their wedding, with the caveat that none of the food was prepared with utensils or on surfaces that had EVER touched a dead animal, on a $7,500 budget. The only problem is that it would cost the restaurant ~$30,000 to get new equipment, as it was not a strictly vegan establishment. The couple wanted them to go buy new equipment and food anyway and stay within the $7,500 budget. The staff, who were otherwise rather professional, were so pissed that they screamed to each other about it for 10 minutes. Which is how I found out about it.

And the people immediately next to me were rather interesting as well. A man was trying to convince a woman about a possible course of action for the evening, which I will lay out thusly:
1) They go back to his place.
2) They watch movies there.
3) She doesn't go home, but he doesn't have sex with her. (He was a bit loud on that point)
4) She sleeps on the couch. (Or maybe he would; the details are a bit fuzzy so many years later, either way its a stupid idea)

Naturally, the woman didn't think that would work out well. After she said this, the man repeated the plan again. And again, the woman didn't say "NO", but said it wouldn't be a workable plan as-is. So then the guy repeated the plan again, the woman said "its not feasible" again...and it never ended. The same conversational line went on and on AND ON. For nearly a whole hour! Of course they both seemed a bit mentally sluggish, but I chalked it up the to the local drug problem, as they were hardly the only people I had encountered up to that point who seemed to have issues with cognitive throughput.

If you think I am being horribly unfair, please take a look at this more recent story from the Portland area. Some people might be surprised at the rank idiocy of dumping 8 million gallons of water from a reservoir because someone took a leak in it. But I'm not. It's Portland.