jpcr: Don't take his comment as critical to you. It was a common misunderstanding. Your question was very broad and it did seem as if you didn't know how textures work. Some people that come to the forum don't understand, and in the past we've had many people that have never even tried looking at the manual, which will help you through those beginning stages.
His comment doesn't say anything about him thinking you're dumb. All he's doing is referring you to the manual so that you can learn to use textures, because that's the sort of thing it's there for.
Nobody is insulting you, they're trying to help you, and also help you to first use sources such as the manual or google to see if you can answer your questions.
Here's my advice:
Procedurals are nice, yes, but you should not learn to rely on them. Instead, it's a very powerful skill to learn to texture yourself. If you have a camera, you can go out and take pictures yourself of things to aid you in the texturing process. If not, Google is a wonderful resource.
There are many texturing tutorials on the web, and since texturing is not anim8or specific, you can look for any that work with Gimp or Photoshop, or the texturing program of your choice.
Good luck with your texturing.