LJonEarth

I'm surprised they stayed away from the essential oils MLMs, with their health claims and targeting of conservative religious communities.

Is there excitement about this movie? I'm hearing nothing. Compared to Civil War, I don't know anyone in a rush to see it.

I use self-check if I have a moderately small amount to buy and if I've had a long day at work and don't feel like interacting with the cashier. There's always an employee at our self-checkout, so sometimes I still have to chat if they're particularly friendly; but usually it's better at self-service. I live in the friendly South and sometimes I just don't want to chat about my cleaning products and Midol. Plus, it's so hard to watch the cashiers struggle with my reusable bags or remember to not bag my items when I say I can just carry them. They just go through the motions and forget. Once I asked for no bag for my one item and ended up with three.

Private schools for the most part are just schools that are run privately rather than under state/local control. They are often religiously based and/or have perks that public schools don't have mostly because their funding comes straight from parents plus endowments. My experience in private school was that the kids came from wealthier families on average, but weren't any more or less intelligent than public school. The gifted programs in public school in the 90s was one where they pulled you out of class for a few hours each week to do enrichment activities with other gifted kids.

Which was why the private school thing was a bit strange. There were public school gifted programs in the 80s and 90s. I think this option would have been better for the show dramatically, since they're going for max-drama. That or having him moved up a grade. We even had a 4th grader in our high school match classes back in the day. I wonder if she has an attitude of "why did you get yourself and this child into this if you weren't prepared." And also a little bit of thinking it's not rocket science. They shouldn't need to ask those questions. It's a flaw and a real one and I like that they're showing it.

Months before I turned 30, I kept coming across bloggers and journalists who described 30 as the start of mid-life if you expect to live to 90. I'd never heard anyone else put it that early. But Beth did joke that it was early. Yes. Commodities like corn crops are dealt in futures contracts to smooth out the bad years and good years. I suppose someone has to do the math to figure it out. I loved Randall being perfectly happy in the end with his odd-for-TV job.

I grew up with Mandy Moore as pop artist. Beyond that, she will always be a real live Disney Princess to me. I struggle with her as an actress. The depth just isn't there. I suppose my unpopular opinion is that Kate's character is the only one I really connect with. Other than that, I'm really struggling with this show. The acting's decent and it's well orchestrated to be a hit. But everything that makes my friends swoon and weep over either bores me because I already assumed the shocking twist or makes my skin crawl from the "emotional anvils" as the original poster called it. I wonder if all of the FX and AMC shows have deadened my emotions.

I know a lot of cartoonish stuff happens on this show, but I hope they stop right about here with Diane and don't keep adding this trend, similar to what people have said about Ruby.

I remember trying (and failing) to literally hide my visiting brother from a AA-studies major, Black Power fist-waving female version of Craig years ago. This show perfectly captured everything awful, wonderful and confusing about the Craigs of the world. I could stand to see more of Craig. The ending grossed me out. Did Earn shower? I'd love to know what their relationship was like at the start.

I haven't read past this section in the books, so no spoilers, but I don't understand any of the things I'd heard about the Negan character. JDM is handsome. Is the charming? Sort of, I suppose, but not enough to forgive any of what I just saw. I still want to see what happens next, but the Negan character embodies everything manipulative about how they write this show.

Well, since he "Nick Cage" instead of "Nick Coppola" because of his love of Luke Cage, I could see it happening. And I would hate-watch the heck out of it. I was kind of nervous that Jordan would be fantastic, but my dislike for him remains. I would have liked to see anyone but Jordan or Michelle fill in, but considering Jordan's character, this makes sense. He's like a cross between real life Kilborn and Colbert Report Stephen.

New pet peeve: People who sit and their driveways and idle their vehicles for an inordinate amount of time? My neighbor does it for 30 minutes at a time in the middle of the night. Who has money to waste gas like that? Are you having an NPR driveway moment? Why are you ruining our quiet neighborhood? Did you fall asleep? Is the passenger you're waiting for asleep inside? Aren't you going to be late for wherever you're going?

You just described how I feel about all of Michelle's appearances. I didn't watch this debate, but from what I've seen about the Ken Bone stuff, it seems people are in love with him because he can express his thoughts in a coherent manner and he seems like a teddy bear. The bar has been lowered that far that that's all that it takes for someone to catch our collective attention? I hope that's what they were going for, but I never know with Trevor. I remind me of his segment about that Conservative Facebook star woman.

I just watched this along with the Issa Rae HBO show. I loved both episodes. It reminded me of every time I watched Girls and thought "what if I were allowed to behave like that?" The only thing that bothers me about this series is not know if I'm just dense or if they're just being avant garde or surreal with some of this stuff. And by stuff, I mean that horrifying white-faced child. I know we probably won't get them, but I just want answers!

I laughed so hard at the scene with lady in the elevator. Last week I was in line in front of a woman who stepped away and left her purse and cart between me and an older black man. When she stepped back, the man did the absolute most - including a two minute monologue about his grandma's purse - to let her know he hadn't touched her stuff, not that she asked.

I think a lot of upset over this series would be calmed if people (including myself) would remember this.

You're only thinking of presidential elections. If you include special elections, state, local, runoffs, primaries, etc., you could be voting multiple times a year. For every article that says voter fraud is a rampant national threat, there's one that says it's statistically a non-issue. All you have to do is look up "prevalence of voter fraud." I think, if the powers that be didn't have such an awful history of shadiness and outright racism in voter laws and how elections were handled, we could probably give them an inch and the benefit of the doubt when they try to roll things back like early voting or add requirements. But, like they said on Black-ish, you give an inch and they take a mile and we are effectively disenfranchised.

You and the person with the 83 year old grandmother are in a position to help these people. Not everyone has someone to help, or if they do those people aren't in a position to take all the time to get this done. In my experience, a lot of these offices are open during normal business hours. If you also work during "business hours" what are you supposed to do? Skip a paycheck? Not everyone has time off. I know my mom was in a position to just leave work to help my grandma (because she had PTO at her career, understanding bosses and a vehicle), but not everyone can do that. We are seemingly in a place of privilege that even we don't fully understand. I'm in the South. We rely on vehicles here so our public transportation isn't great. I had someone explain to me once what it takes to use city buses here. It sounds like a nightmare for a healthy person, and that's when the buses are on time or working. Add that to long lines, red tape to jump through, and fees for everything, and it can be prohibitive. Then you add that politicians are trying to do things like disallowing non-drivers licenses state-issued IDs like student ID, and you start to see that some of these voting policies are strategic.

I'm not sure which Luke Cage Complaint you mean because there are a few. The three are: 1) the army grades jokes - which annoyed me too 2) can you please stop talking about race (first season was better) - which is hilarious because, BLACK-ish and, huh? 3) but the third is some mixture of white people have nothing to be guilty about and stop telling ME to be guilty! - Maybe I completely missed what they were doing with the white guilt and the school election and the college essay. I wasn't expecting this line of outrage.

I see from Twitter and Facebook that a lot of people didn't get this at all.

I've always heard that early American accents were super awkward compared what we have now.

I hated this except for the political quiz because I've had that exact conversation with my grandma. I hated it mostly in a "not in front of the company" sort of the way, but also in a "please, not another very special episode" kind of way. The Hillary suit was funny. Other than that, it rubbed me the wrong way. I was really annoyed by the army scores joke they kept making. I have family in the army. I have major issues with the military, but who was the butt of that joke supposed to be other than people in the army are only there because they weren't smart enough for college?

I've never read these comics, and all that I'd heard about Luke leading up to this is that he was the strong silent type, so I went in with low expectations for him and high for the series as a whole. Honestly, I'd say I'm 75/25 on superhero movies and shows where I enjoy the villains and supporting characters more than the hero. I hope the weakness of the back half of the season was mostly because Diamonback will be a bigger better villain along with Black Mariah next season. I never found Luke to be whiny, but he did seem less intentionally stealthy and more put-upon. I thought the women in this did a lot of the heavy lifting.

Cottonmouth and Mariah and Shades were pretty good, Marvel still has villain issues with Luke Cage. I didn't like Diamondback's motivations as a villain, but we'll see if he shows up again. That being said, I really liked this. It reminded me a bit of Luther. I cared about everyone in the cast, which hasn't been the case with probably any other Marvel show. I thought the story line was less meandering than Daredevil, or maybe I just cared more. I'd say my this is second on my list after Jessica Jones, then all of Agent Carter, most of Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil season 2, Daredevil Season 1. I will never not be annoyed with Alfre being two completely different characters (if what they're saying is true) in the MCU. Never!

I'm a Southerner living in the buckle of the Bible belt, and now that I think about it, I haven't gotten this in about a decade. Of course, people have ways of sussing out this information without directly asking now, but it never comes up in conversation. I'm surprised by the Ruby dislike too. I do think her character is best used sparingly. She could easily get the Steve Urkel treatment of ratcheting up her characterization and having her on too much.