I’ll take a kiln.
Doper women seem to be fairly atypical in this regard. I’ll assure you that if this were a board populated by a different type of woman the answer would be a very serious “I get both, its my wedding - and the diamond had BETTER be something you can see from a few feet away.”
(For the car industry, the proper question may be “what would men rather BUY as a gift, jewelry or a car.”)
My father (of a certain generation) has always gone out and bought my mother her car without much input from her. He’s getting better about it and maybe putting a little thought into what she might actually LIKE. But since they have a (working) traditional marriage, he controls the purse and makes the decisions on major purchases. So he could very easily have given her a car for her birthday or Christmas - since he functionally gives her a car anyway its just a matter of timing.
My mom doesn’t even drive, and Pop controls the purse strings in their marriage too. If she did drive, you can bet he would decide exactly what. (When he was helping me shop for my first car, he narrowed it down to a few choices and when I made noises about something else, he said he wouldn’t be able to help me in the process. :rolleyes: So I have the base model Civic, like he said I should. I’m happy with it, but still.)
Ah, slab roller! I looked it up. You could get a bunch of them for a diamond. 
BTW; is everyone in New Hampshire/Vermont an artist of some stripe? I goofed around the area when I was stationed at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn for a while. I spent some time with a girl in Maine who fed me crab. 
She talked funny.
My husband is getting me a laptop for Christmas. 
He gets me computer-related gifts a lot, even for Valentine’s Day, and I’m shocked to see how many of his coworkers give him absolute grief about it. A few times, he’s had to use pretty harsh language to tell one of them to shut up about it, as he knows me well and they obviously don’t.
I bought my wife a convertible for Valentine’s Day several years ago (and I am finally selling it: http://denver.craigslist.org/car/462349204.html :(). We actually picked out the car online together, but I flew out alone to Cleveland and drove it back to Denver, in February. She was very happy.
I actually got pulled over in Indiana for speeding – the car is pretty quick – and told the trooper that the car was a Valentine’s Day gift. He was very surprised, thought it was great, and let me go. 
I think it may have been you who talked funny. I don’t know too many people here, but of the ones I know, a good number are not artistic or crafty. Although they probably do fish, hunt, or take part in snow activities!
–gigi, a flatlander who has picked up only a few of the pronunciation “features”
My dad, the engineer, used to say that he’d buy more diamond jewelry for my mom if he could get settings with industrial-grade diamonds.
Mom wasn’t particularly amused.
Great Thread.
Your comments about Giant Car Bows (the subject of an SNL skit) as well as the flawed concept of cars-as-gifts (or diamonds for that matter) illustrates why it is a bad idea to take normative cues from television and other media, particularly television advertisements.
The average American watches something like 4.6 hours a day of TeeVee, which if you figure in time for sleeping, eating, working, and other mandatory activities, doesn’t leave time for much of anything else. Since many folks, such as myself, don’t want ANY television, then some folks must be watching 6, 7 or 8 hours a day.
So it seems that most people spend every non-working waking hour glued to this propaganda box, which tells them to do things against their own personal interests. Buy fast food. Drink a Coke. Buy your wife a car as a gift. And for God’s sake, don’t ever, ever turn off the TeeVee! (you might die).
For all but the wealthiest Americans, buying your wife a car as a gift is a bad idea - and misogynist as well. All you are doing it taking the joint marital assets and spending them without her consultation. This is a gift?
The tip-off is the Giant Bow. The purchaser (usually male) wants the neighborhood to see that he is wealthy enough to buy his wife a car as a gift, not just as a normal purchase. While the rest of the middle-class Suburban schmucks struggle to make ends meet, he can just toss away forty grand on a car as gift, right?
That’s what he’d like them to think, anyway. And maybe the wife would like them to think it as well.
Impressing people you hardly know - it sells a lot of products. Like those tacky mini-mansions the cars-with-bows are usually parked in front of.
The sad thing is, folks claim they can “afford” this sort of extravagance, and for the time being, they can. But later on in life, when the reach retirement age, they may regret spending all of their capital just to impress the neighbors.
A car-as-a-gift might be impressive looking. But paying off the mortgage a decade earlier is much better, financially. Fully funding your 401(k) even better. But you can’t put a giant bow on that, can you?
I wrote some more on this subject at:
[removed link]
BTW, I liked the part about the guy who buys the wife a new car in order to get laid three times a year. There are a lot cheaper ways to get laid…
There are good uses for television;
[ol]
[li]Education.[/li][li]Information[/li][li]On in another room for company[/li][li]Burgulary deterrent[/li][li]And sometimes good entertainment[/li][/ol]
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. (There’s a drought) 
Peace
mangeorge
But does anyone give zombies for Christmas?
Yes, and brains are perfect for that New Year’s Day meal!
thread closed
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