perfidy

JohnL, the proprietor of Texas Best Grok, has found hisself a coblogger. And this seems to have upped the posting frequency a bit. The new addition, Planet Stories, provides some insight into the mind of the engineer:

Understanding Engineers: Take Four

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons and Civil Engineers build targets.

Understanding Engineers: Take Nine

An engineer was crossing a road one-day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do anything you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, and that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

All true. I remember back in my sordid youth, I spent a lot of time in bars. One night, I was hanging out at Larry's Bar, Grill and Seminar of Lower Woodruff Avenue, and a pair of charming and attractive women joined me at my booth. We fell to talking and it turned out that one of the two was an engineer - specifically, an engineer working in the environmental field - dealing with toxic waste and whatnot.

"Cool!" I said. "One of my best friends does that too. Let me call him, and invite him over." So I called my friend (let's call him Dave) and said, "Hey, there's a hot Macedonian chick over here who's an environmental engineer. Stop jerking off and come over to Larry's." And so he did.

Now, the conversation continued. I learned that Emily (or so we'll call her) was by training a Civil Engineer, but at the time I thought nothing of my friend Dave's deep and abiding hatred of civil engineers. Nothing whatsoever. About twenty minutes later, Dave arrives, and flops bonelessly into a chair at the end of the booth. "Rough Day?" I asked.

Dave mimed putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. "I fucking hate civil engineers."

"Dave, this is Emily. She's a civil engineer."

Panic. "I, uh, fucking hate civil engineers that I work with. That's what I meant to say."

Dave didn't mention that he, as recently as the week before, had said in confidence that civil engineers were people who failed out of all the real engineering disciplines. "How hard," he asked, "is it to get water to run downhill?"

Of course, Dave blamed me for not warning him that Emily was a civil engineer. Now I ask you, am I responsible for Dave's engineering bigotry? I think not, but it was certainly fun watching Dave preface a disparaging remark later with a question to the two young ladies - "None of y'all are from Texas are you?"