trinacriabob

In my ode to jokes a few posts up, I forgot to add the creativity factor. I'm laughing at the outlandish thinking process that even led to the creation of these jokes. When we were teens, we had (inside) acronyms for everything. Some of them were pretty funny. They went great with Big Boy burgers, fries, a Coke, and a side of zits!

Right, they squeeze the nickel real tight, so to speak ... Right, and it's interesting how vehicles like the Suburban and the Tahoe have gotten more angular with the latest refresh, rather than more rounded, which is more suggestive of cheating the wind.

For what it's worth, I laugh at almost all jokes, including almost all jokes made about Italians. Sometimes, it's more about the irony, sarcasm, stereotyping, fatalism, and drawing of parallels that overrides the facts. Q: Why do most men die before their wives? A: They want to. Anyone have any other jokes?

Currently, millennials in Italy have forgotten what the sentiment toward Germans was like in the 50s and around there. Time, globalization, and the internet have smoothed over some of those dynamics and the differences, not to mention the fact that the EU has allowed many folks to move to other European countries more effortlessly. At the time you refer to, the average Italian on the street was blindsided that they would be allied with the Germans in a war they did not support. For people from that generation, the attitudes toward Germans were not exactly positive. My parents were young and remember the bombs that the Allies were dropping on the countryside as a result of who their country was in bed with. Sicilians felt liberated when the Allies finally stormed through and had essentially taken back the island, as depicted in the epic film "Patton." The joke, as I'm sure you know, has to do with Germany's Angela Merkel era and the countries in southern Europe whose economies have teetered the most during this last global recession. But it was a joke limited only to the current era ... on a joke thread.

This joke is sort of 2013 in its punch, but it will probably always have some relevancy, relatively speaking ... Q: An Italian, a Spaniard, and a Greek go to a bar. Who picks up the tab? A: A German.

I don't follow it either until it gets down to the end. Don't have the desire to sit in front of the boob tube with a bunch of grunting beer drinking ex-frat types or "pick up truck alumni" (term I learned while living in the South) commenting on the goings-on for months prior to the slimming down of the schedule. I have a similar joke: Wanted into UVa for grad school and didn't get in, but got into U of I (IL). Either way, I ended up with the same school colors - blue and orange. The two schools couldn't be more different, though!

Only the "school of hard knocks" in that things seem to come 180 ... flat fronts are now normal in dress pants, with pleats gone and, for a while, I saw some rendition of shag carpeting in newer model homes in California, though the fad didn't last long. Yes, that sawed off Sequoia does look very notchback like! I was saddened that the famous California redwood one could drive through is no longer. I actually set foot in church tonight, after over 5 years, so that I wouldn't have to go on Easter Sunday. Regarding the NCAA tourney, I took off from where I was having a gyro to go to church and Loyola was leading Michigan and I hoped they'd pull through. They didn't. Then, when I came home late, because they ALSO served food after the service, I learned that Villanova had won. At this point, I want Michigan to win. Could you imagine all the new suits Jay Wright would buy with the ensuing avalanche if Nova Nation were to win? Go Blue. Meh ... it has always been my favorite Big 10 (it's still 10 to me) school.

This just in! Last night, I went onto a used car lot prior to going to a fish fry type buffet. They were coincidentally close to each other. I had spotted a '94 to '96 Caprice Classic there. The guy gladly showed me the car and it had the 4.3 liter "baby LT1" V8. I turned the key and I immediately made it a point to note that there was an unusual growl, possibly in a manifold and/or an exhaust leak. He nodded. Everything else about it was nice. Love that expanse of dashboard ... what an old school cruiser. Overall, it was clean. The gauges are all analog, save the centered digital speedometer. 4.3 V8s, whether derivatives by Chevy or Olds, have always been great little small block units and, probably because of the way their intakes are configured, can run so quietly. Or should. I like these engines quite a bit. So much space under that hood. Funny that the alternator, power steering, and compressor are all vertically stacked to the left, with less pulley action on the right bank, like the air injection pump. He told me that, with the shroud being the same, the 4.3 and 5.7 are identical in appearance in these units and a person needs to read the placards. He actually started to talk to me about cars of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and told me he had the Monte Carlo the first year they put the 4.3 liter Vortec V6 into this car (1985) and I told him I putted around in a rented bucket seat/console Monte Carlo with this very engine picked up at Newark Airport for about $175 a week and explored Manhattan, Bergen County (NJ), Westchester County, and Atlantic City while visiting a relative. He just gave me his card and let it go at that. It was 20 minutes prior to closing on Good Friday, and the atmosphere at most places of business seems to have been very chill this weekend.

I am looking forward to the 180 degree return to more notchback styling in sedans and the better visibility that goes along with it.

I looked at the ad. The Beef Positano and Italian wedding soup (stracciatella) also sound good. Reasonable price, too! Stancato means tired in Italian, IIRC. And you will be stancato after a meal like that, tryptophan and all ... Generally speaking, I try to limit myself to 2 buffet type meals in any given month. I always need a nap after one.

But we pretty much all agree that, when you're far, far from home, you're at a hotel/motel for work and/or pleasure, you wander over to the nearby auto dealership strip, and you TELL THEM ALL THAT, for them to pursue you is obnoxious, right? They should just let you browse.

To anyone who celebrates it, Happy Easter. Brunch buffet or dinner buffet? They read me the list of items at each and the dinner buffet wins! I need to put my tongue back in my mouth.

That is really disheartening. I think about stuff like that from time to time. Tonight, I was coming home and had a green through a fairly major intersection. I noticed that a car on the other major perpendicular street was heading into the red light on that street a little too quickly, so I slowed down ... a lot. As it turns out, that person did stop, but PAST the crosswalk, and they were seemingly too eager to make that right turn onto the street I was using. Drive defensively. The worst I've seen was a multi-car accident while driving from the Seattle area to the Portland area on I-5 on a Friday night after work. This was about 20 miles past any metropolitan area and while traversing the forested countryside. All the traffic in both directions was crawling for half an hour to an hour up to the scene. The vehicles were all sedans, IIRC. There were no tangible expanses of metal to be seen anywhere. They all looked like they had been shredded. All sorts of emergency response vehicles were at the scene. It was gross to look at and you don't want to imagine how it played out. You just collect yourself and keep driving, as safely as you can.

Just yesterday I got to visualize this. There was a newer Envision in a parking lot. The words Buick and Envision were very symmetrically placed and, for being a font that hasn't changed in a while, it's not bad. However, I did notice that most vehicles are dropping dual names. The change in the rear deck lid of the Sonata for 2018 shows this, with the letters of the word Sonata spaced across the rear deck lid. And, it looks pretty good. It definitely separates it from quite a few Sonatas of the last few years.

I don't eat fast food all that much, but I do eat it. Lately, I've been happening onto Subway coupons en masse. I will eat there. As for chains, there is El Pollo Loco based in the West and it is a Mexican grilled chicken type place that I wish was more ubiquitous in the U.S. It's actually good. Also, no more than once a month, I may pop into a Village Inn, Baker's Square, or equivalent because of the free pie slice Wednesday if you order something else. The pie flavors rotate, but they've got some tasty ones at times. In FL, you can often count on Key Lime pie as a choice.

Well, now that the reason is stated, it makes "more" sense. In the case of Oldsmobile, and it was with the Intrigue, the Olds badge was altogether missing in 1998, very small and timid in 1999, and back again in 2000 for the remaining few years. In that case, the company wanted to disassociate this svelte new contender in a very competitive segment from the stodgy Oldsmobile image, not at all helped by the ad campaign "not your father's Oldsmobile." (Well, my first car, and first Oldsmobile, was indeed that of my father.) I think most buyers do know what a logo signifies anymore, but having 25% that does not is still a sizable number. In the case of Ford, they sport the oval but it contains the word Ford in their signature style inside that oval.

I will have to say that the family resemblance in the three popular Chevrolet cars (via their grilles) has been extended to Hyundai for 2018, with the Accent joining that trio, alongside the Sonata and the Elantra.

It can be weird. I have eaten fried chicken at KFC three times in my life, the last of which was in my late twenties. I have gotten sick each and every time while the others in the party did not. It was soda crackers, ginger ale, a major headache, and throwing up for the next 12 hours. I am probably allergic to a seasoning or something in the batter. I do not get sick when I've eaten fried chicken (which I don't really like all that much) elsewhere.

Do you read your mail coupons? Do you have an Arby's nearby? I don't usually go to Arby's. However, for a limited time, they are running 2 pitas for $6, and we're talking the shaved gyro meat, whereas the deli roast beef and deli chicken (neither very authentically Mediterranean) run all year long. It looks like I might be having some Arby's for dinner a time or two during the next month or so. I've had this special before and it's good ... it's quite a bit of chow.

I'll go with the Nancy Reagan motto when it comes to curries: "just say no." It is one flavor and scent that doesn't do it for me and I definitely like to eat. This weekend, if my quick checking and memory serves me right, we've got two smaller Catholic universities squaring off against two bigger Midwestern universities in the Final Four. Not a real conventional looking Final Four.

Holy cow, when I lived in graduate housing for the first semester and it was quite popular with international students, the Asian students were renowned for a lot of microwave use for their ethnic cooking and the cooking odors would linger for a long time. A long time. Damn, there was a cafeteria at the ground level with a meal plan. How nice to have left for an ordinary apartment with none of the antics of a large housing complex, albeit very interesting and comical antics.

Check out that road sign, too. It's one "y" short of an embr(y)o. Love all the posh sounding British names around Toronto and throughout Ontario.

There are always humorous and/or eye opening videos of human-animal interactions being featured, but this recent one was just plain nutty ... https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/t/moody-moose-teenager-having-a-very-bad-day-takes-it-out-on-driver/vp-BBKCdvy

Buying a car can be completely random, though. I like to plan it out in advance while sometimes you have to buy a car, either because you need to replace one immediately or your dream second car snuck up on you in a manner that you can't look the other way. The latter is how my Dad, and thus my family, owned its first Pontiac. Being in sales in no way guarantees a 1:1 relationship between customer:closed sale. That's why being in sales isn't for most people and they shouldn't have unrealistic expectations. Also, the stronger the personality they're dealing with, the more likely the person they're pitching to is likely to walk away if the terms or the general situation doesn't suit them.

Two things: 1. If told up front, the salesperson CAN give you a card, invite you to look around, ask if you have questions, and ask you for your business when you are ready to buy. That said, I don't buy without having test driven what I intend to buy via a rental of at least 100 miles. That's how it was with my last 3 cars. 2. I almost could see buying a place to live (#1 purchase) more quickly than buying a car (#2 purchase). The amount of time required of the salesperson in #1 is a lot more involved than for #2 and they need to have passed a test to sell property. Also, it probably won't depreciate. As for a property, you can walk around the outside and almost preview the floor plan just from how the windows and doors are laid out. The few times I've done it, I walked around and walked around the outside and got a good gut feel and, after seeing it inside, which was no surprise, that was it.