hey
 

We have tortillas and avocados in Michigan! What's wrong with your mother? :mad: :rolleyes: :p

She must be hitting all the smaller towns;)

(i.e. Owosso)

And I don't think I will ask if a country that
did this
has electricity.

"Tortilla" is a Spanish word that means 'omelette', so we do have tortillas here, lots of them. We have avocados too, although we call them "aguacates" ("abogado" means 'lawyer' :D).

And db, I know there are lots of climates in Australia, but it's a big country anyway. Here you can find nearly as many climates in a much smaller space, maybe not 'extreme' climates, but quite different.

Sorry Burnaway, I didn't mean to come across as hostile at all. Fact: In the Polish language, there is no such word as "opinionated". That word to us would be redundant, because for us it is a daily fact of life that everyone is 'opinionated' and throws, and rebounds, those opinions into everyones' faces - so no point having a word for it. Like there's no word in English like, for example, "blooded". There's no point having a word that differentiates between those who have blood and those who don't, because everyone does have blood. It's just the way we converse - we don't mean to be rude by it - actually, for us, when someone speaks so bluntly, it shows that they're not hiding anything and that they consider you interesting enough to get actively involved in a conversation with you. Anyway, I think that you would have realised this if we were speaking face to face, but it's so much harder to clearly express yourself when you have nothing but a few stupid little circles with eyes on them to convey the emotional meaning of your words for you :) :p :D ;) :( :igor: .
Anyway, sorry for coming across that way. Surfers' Paradise is a tourist resort town, and I'll take your word for it that they didn't have avocados there. Unlike most countries, including the USA, 80% of the population of Australia lives in large urban centres (and they do have avocados ;) )- and, presumptous though it was, I assumed your mother's friends lived in a city.
And as for America being a developed nation, well, I'm glad to hear that you guys have real cheese as well, so you pass the test. As Frank Zappa said: You can have your own president, your own football team, or your own currency - but you are not truly a nation if you don't have your own beer . What's that got to do with cheese? Buggered if I know. I suppose what I mean is that even though your beer tastes like water (Sorry mate, this is as diplomatic as I get ;-), you do brew it, and you have good cheese, so it's good to see that all those dollars are being spent on something worthwhile ;)

And yeah, Carmen Miranda was the name I was looking for.

Ripe: I've just downloaded part 1 of Brainfreeze. I only bought Product Placement recently, and have only listened to it a few times - I look forward to discovering it more :up:
The new album's cool. The only problem I have with it is the same problem I have with the other Shadow CDs I've heard (Premptive Strike and Endtroducing...): so bloody eclectic. It's hard to listen to a CD that is hauntingly beautiful one minute, comical and silly the next - then hits you with some totally funky shit, only to interrupt itself with some more wackyness. It takes you to all these conflicting places, and each time, you want to stay longer, but you can't, because it throws you around between them... Haven't heard the UNKLE stuff or the Bombay the Hard way - but I will soon :) Speaking of Dan the Automator, have you heard Nathaniel Merriwether presents: Music to Make Love to your Old Lady by by Lovage? It's a set of songs primarily about sex, though not always - some are funny, some are quite sexy, sung by Mike Patton (terrific vocalist from Faith No More) and Jennifer Charles (don't know who she is, but she's got a sexy voice)- with the music by Dan the Automator and Kid Koala. :)

PS - I don't know what that tune on Product Placement is.

Cool - I sure didn't either!
You are right about the face-to-face thing. There are so many nuances of voice tone and facial expression that get lost here, misunderstandings are bound to occur.
Have some good guacamole everyone!:D