Voltaire

I never learnt the math either. with Italians, rule of thumb, if they're somehow related, to you and they're older, even two or three older, just slap an "Aunt" or "Uncle" on their first name and you're good. For everybody within ten years of so of your age or younger, just use first names. The oldsters all knew each other from Detroit's Italian ghetto days before it blew up so your grandparents would show you off at weddings and funerals and I was 'Joe's oldest grandson' and that worked. You're required to go with your grandparents down the line of boring old Italians one after the other to meet them "and when we get to Uncle Veto, don't ask him about his job." "This is Aunt Stella your great grandmother's cousin, this is her sister Aunt Maria, this is Uncle Silvio the one that gave you the toy plane, ...." A half hour and fifty oldsters later you could go play tag or something with those cousins your age that you don't know.

Welcome Wiffleball if you ever do come. China is locked down from foreign travel at present.

They do in major cities but not here edit: refering to burritos not pedestrians getting hit by cars. China is like a real life game of Frogger but Thailand is worse.

My MiL's home village, where I just got done saying that she'd eaten mortar as a child, most families have a car (as opposed to every member of a family with their own car). They have electricity and plumbing and 100 channels on TV.

Well the starvation is long gone and a large majority of poverty is eliminated as well. But the cultural norms of eating whatever moves trace their roots to that. Most urban Chinese live in in an apartment that Jerry Seinfeld might comfortably live in and can largely afford buy the same things as well, well US quality stuff is hard to find outside walmart.

Stop that. Some of us are trying to get Dan Snyder to fall in love with him.

Well, if you buy into Catholicism you might find the Pope's prayer to be inspirational.

Oh, not me. I was not a tanker. I was in 3rd shop maintenance support. These guys were 2-5 miles in front of me. "1st shop" is the user/operator. They generally aren't responsible for fixing anything but if they have some handyman skills and an itch, they are free to knock themselves out. Generally though if something breaks they are expected to report it. Also, like once a month, they just go down a checklist to run a diagnostic to make sure everything is working properly and if it doesn't they make a note. and 2nd shop looks it over. The "2nd shop" are the unit level mechanics and 99% of stuff gets fixed at that level. "3rd shop," where I was, is brigade wide maintenance where the big problems with expensive replacement total overhaul/replacement of an entire system might take place with specialty tools or large components. Third Shop has a "Code X" which is "Unrecoverable War Loss" and what you're seeing is the only time anything was ever Code Xed in my military career. So I got to see the Bradley and APC as they had loaded them up and brought them by third shop on the trailer of a MAN truck to receive the Code X last rites.

Us getting shot up in a friendly fire incident by a Big Red One helicopter commander out of Ft. Riley.

Fortunately, they have numerology and Feng Shui and palm reading and Chinese medicine.

We hang our masks next to the window to get sunlight when we're not wearing them.

:lol: I love when frank goes full Yogi Berra on us.

As far as I know, I am the only Geek who ever rode around in one. I wasn't a tanker but I went to war with 2nd Armor (FWD) in the Gulf War, a tanker uint, and as maintenance support we were responsible for them as they were in our 3rd shop motor pool all the time.

We fock around on this site alot. Know that I am not joking and my wife would be delighted. Also, since I happen to know that you are the Geek Club's winner of the All Time Worst Ex-Wife award, after what you've been through, maybe you're serious too. I do know these women personally and would shield their feelings against Geek Club jokers, but I do think you'd be great if you really want me to.

I watched that video waiting for the pope to say something absurd and worthy of ed's ridicule, but all I saw was a standard issue Catholicism fastball hurled straight down the middle of the plate. Really, it was a very typical, normal Catholic prayer to be invoked in a time of crisis, it strikes all the right messages and can only help the faithfully in this time. If/when Pope Francis says something dumb, I'll call him out on it as I don't like him. But this isn't that.