trinacriabob

Very cool...no wonder you're so multi-faceted.

Just curious, what did you study before grad school? Engineering or something related?

Oh brother, that is the EXCEPTION and not the rule. I just spent almost a month during the summer lying on beaches in Italy and I DID NOT see anything like that. However, what I did see is that Italian women, who are obsessed with being thin, have gotten chunkier...my cousins said it's the importation of fast food and bad on-the-run eating habits over the last decade or so.

Kind of like this?cl*t l*ck*r ??? My response to thread: mud wrestling

Yep, I thought it was kind of a freak show. Though a good student, I was so irreverent about the whole thing and I'm quite sure that irritated some of the tightly wound ones.

Thanks for the info. And yes, I know that Staten Island has a ridiculously low population to the tune of about 500,000 whereas all of the other boroughs have almost 2,000,000 people each. I've been told it's because it's hard to get to NYC by car from it and that it makes a better bedroom community for New Brunswick and that area.

We are not Sicilians of the Greco-Arab strain. Not the case in our family, sorry. In that case and having seen one of your ever-changing Avs, please don't produce any daughters.

I love it. Is that looking at Brooklyn or Staten Island? Is that bridge one level or double-decked, I've forgotten?

orange juice

Yeah, yeah, I know, that of a misogynist as you've previously said ... and that must mean something, right?.......sorry, but I like hanging on to my "valuables" and I've fielded such accusations before...

Eh...it looks like the marriage of the current Pontiac Grand Prix and the Nissan Altima. I'm not convinced. It appears to have the little fish-eye lamps up front again. The rear might be promising in terms of its proportions, but it would depend on how the taillamps are treated. Having just spent a week in an Allure up in Canada, I think that, with the new grille, I could very well own the current model. It made for a very relaxed week of motoring around Quebec.

Wow, were there any pretty and fairly slender Italian girls with brown hair/brown eyes who might actually finish their degrees and maybe even spoke the language? I guess I grew up on the wrong coast if there were?

driver

You are my effin' hero based on the incisiveness of the above post. I swear. Most of these generalizations have validity, that's why they career profile and use this stuff for career/personality fit tests. To me, ANY chick in an artsy and/or granolafied field of study is generally in the "stay away" category. They would have not liked someone like me, even in architecture, because I looked, acted and talked like a business major. They are out to "change things," make a useless statement, work at being different for the hell of it, or whatever. If they like you, I guess they might bed you, but to conservative me, a chick with piercings, tattoos, funky hair and the like would just seem...well...kind of dirty. Women in architecture - can be weird, reclusive, alternative, granola, and generally not personable. I enjoyed hanging with very few of them. They can be dour and combative. Oh, yes, the sorority and/or attractive chick who gets in there with the "Oooh, I think it would be neat to be an architect": give them, at the most, 2 years before they've moved over to a generic liberal arts curriculum. When I was in my grad program for unrelated bachelor's degrees, the only people I hung around with were: 1) those in the joint MArch/MBA program because they were normal, 2) those coming from other schools to do the +2 masters part because they were open to meeting new people as opposed to those coming straight through from the undergrad portion at U of I who kept to themselves, and 3) believe it or not, a few undergrads who actually sought out and wanted to hang with the grad students from other places because they found us intriguing or something. Women in engineering - about 80:20 between cold bitches:nice down to earth girls. I have worked in an A/E firm that wanted both disciplines so badly but the culture dictated that architects were not respected. The young female engineers weren't particularly friendly, except for one who liked my warped sense of humor and would send me racy and politically incorrect video attachments (but then, no surprise, she was doing at MBA at night at the same place I was). The rest of them there were rags. Women in business - in my mind, the best of the lot and I had no problem getting along with them...except for the obvious get-ahead-at-all-costs vibrator-kick-startin' dykey types. Most of the chicks in business were smart and practical though not stellar enough to be in the real rigorous fields. Most of them wanted to work in a company or at a firm and do some analytical or meaningful work. Most of them had no problems finding boyfriends and were easy to get along with, for the most part, minus the few sorority chicks who thought that their A-list status would carry them forever....always great to see grades passed back and the looks on their faces. Women in the health fields - eh, we disagree here, once on the bio-chem treadmill to med/dental school, you are on a different path. That becomes a fraternity in itself and once they get into upper division, it's really hard to cross paths with those people. They tend to hook up with each other as well as socialize. This extends into the work world. They operate in such a specific arena that they generally don't befriend people in other professions....plus, why would they want to hang around architects or bean counters who can't spend what they can at restaurants, while traveling and so forth. Women who become teachers - get along with them, but can also be kind of weird. I've found that hanging around 3rd graders all day long tends to stunt them chronologically. It's just not like talking to someone in your own age group any more. Case in point: Mary Kay Latourneau and her ugly mo-fo now husband --- what a train wreck that is! Ocnblu, babe, where are you? Revel in the stereotypes a bit, will you? :AH-HA_wink:

I couldn't stand most of them, but never let on...you know, preservation of the GPA. The other thing that always went through my head is what my friends in other departments would think if they sat in on one of our reviews/crits. So, my thinking went like this: black clothes, mock turtle necks, little round glasses, "gracefully" crossed legs and pissy highbrow language. Nah, won't be bringing my friends from other departments.

The ONLY time I wonder about this is if the car has been involved in an event that would cause it to go off the road...like down the side of an enbankment or wedged between trees in a forest...whatever...and the person had to get out of a mangled door when the door lock mechanism was in the locked position. Then, which design would make more sense?

highbrow sei un cornuto!!!

Thanks for your honesty as you are one of the more accomplished people here.Amen to the gray despair part. Then, please put Portland and Seattle on your "do not move to" list. The gray is starting to get to me and did a number on me when I lived here previously as well.

integration

Last week was my last goof-off trip of summer as I plan to move within the next month. Up in Canada, I had two rental cars...an Allure (LaCrosse) for a week followed by a Camry for a day. In the Allure and in all GM products, when the door locks are in the closed position, you cannot open the door from the inside. In the Camry (and I believe in Chrysler and Ford products), when the door locks are in the closed position, you still can open the door from the inside. Maybe I'm showing bias for GM (so what else is new), I think that the closed door lock should also mean one cannot open the door freely with the handle inside the car. I've never understood why Toyota and others would do this differently. Your preference and thoughts?

nudity hey, ocnblu, no more of the above, since summer is over

Don't know what to say. Growing up on the westside of LA, I had several Jewish friends. I think that they view the Holocaust as something they have gotten past and have overcome as a people. I have never spoken to anyone who showed anger, which surprises me. The weirdest thing was when I was in college and used to work part time in the accounting department of a hospital...I was speaking to this always-friendly elderly lady, Jewish and with some kind of Eastern European accent, and standing at her desk while she was seated. As she was moving her hands, I noticed what looked like serial numbers near her wrist. I think that the Nazi flag probably brings a chill of sorts but have never had that confirmed by the Jewish people I know. Also, I don't discuss that subject since we usually have other intellectual discourse (most of the Jewish people I knew tend to be intellectual). I don't know about the confederate flag. Why now is what I ask? It segregates an area of the country from "the whole." Maybe that's what I liked about Atlanta where this wasn't so prevalent and is now even less Southern as it has people from every damn corner of the globe. In fact, one of Atlanta's founding fathers encouraged integration of Northerners into the city after the war to help prop it up. Did you know it billed itself as "the city too busy to hate"? I thought that was cool. I know one thing -- the Southern people I knew when I lived there were certainly nice but tended to hang with other locals while, as a Westerner, all of my friends were transplanted Northeasterners and Floridians.

This time, for a change of pace, the expatriate was the culprit.

suggestive

Don't let that gate hit you on the ass on the way out, ok!