I was there — well, I was a small child at the time — but I remember they got lots of airplay, even on Top 40 stations. If memory serves Chaka and Rufus didn't do too badly for the era. They were even "crossing over" in a way, in a time when that was not done.

What crazymaking mixed signals! It's not you, whatever it is. I have learned to distance myself and walk away from these kinds of mind games, and not even try to hash out whether they're intentional or not.

"That's not long enough to reach all the way over to where I am, so why bother?"

Spiders are good, for the most part; they eat other bugs, like roaches and mosquitoes, so I would rather have them. If they 're in my way I just move them.

As far as I know it's a must. In some societies it's a big deal that requires a special outfit.

Or Allah, probably, at least some of the time.

Foot-fingers!

I hope the sarcasm WRT 'bad and scary' was obvious.

Maybe this is an indirect reference to "The East" — those bad and scary Kurdish people in bad and scary places like Mardin, Van, Diyarbakır. That region is not as developed and tourist-friendly as other parts of the country, and in summer it's not a good idea to go if you can't deal with extreme heat, but otherwise,…

Maybe it was for historic preservation. There was a house in our town where George Washington slept and they had an ancient piece of wedding cake on display. I have also seen pieces of bread from the Battle of Gallipoli in a case in a museum. They were hardly recognizable as bread, but no matter.

In many Slavic languages the word for the color red and words meaning "beautiful" or other positive things have roots in common. Russian, for example: красный is "red" and красивый is "beautiful/handsome/attractive" etc. Another case in point, Moscow's Red Square, which is so much more than just red to the Russians.

That technology hardly seems any "smarter" or more difficult than the self-checkout that gives you a hard time if you don't take your groceries off the table, or don't put them on.

It's very much a thing in certain repressed, conservative countries, actually.

Kind of a Pepe LePew "mistaken for female of his species" situation, I would guess.

It might actually not be good for you, and that's your body's way of letting you know. I hated eggplant for years, then a couple of times I was forced to eat enough of it to realize it gives me severe headaches.

It might actually not be good for you, and that's your body's way of letting you know. I hated eggplant for years, then a couple of times I was forced to eat enough of it to realize it gives me severe headaches.

You fell for the old "No means 'try harder' " routine. Turkish women have been working that for centuries, dude.

I was also born near one of the biggest holidays on the US calendar. My frustration was never so much about presents, but that having parties was impossible b/c everyone would go out of town. That became a LOT less stressful after I decided to move it around, like President's Day. I get carte blanche to celebrate…

I sometimes wonder what kind of horror story I must be to all those guys who vanish on me after the first date. The weird thing is, the more blatantly they flirt and make unsolicited references to what we might do "next time," the more likely it is that they will not even reply to my polite followup e-mail.

Where I live (surreal place far from the US) there is this dreadful thing called a patso, which is a sandwich stuffed with nothing but fries. Teenage boys in particular seem to keep them in demand, go figure.