Churchhoney

So you're saying they should look around bunk beds, then?

Except for advertising dollars, apparently.

I looked on their website, and the site itself seems to describe absolutely nothing. It just explains that it's hard to keep a marriage alive and jumping -- Duh, we know that if we're looking for a solution like this, people. Then I looked at a youtube review of the company, and there it suggests that what you really get are access to videos, such as dance instruction or a cooking class, and access to a video that shows you how to cook a meal -- for which they ship you the ingredients in that box. The box the reviewer couple described included the dinner ingredients (which they said included "fresh produce" (with a cold pak), necessitating having the date in the next day or two after the box's arrival), and two notecards on which they were supposed to write nice notes-to-the-spouse and a stamped envelope in which to mail the notes back to the company. Then at some random point the company mails those notes back to their intended recipients as a surprise. A small listing I found says that one possible date is an "art show" and cheese tasting, so I guess the companies records something such as a gallery tour with a guide or something that a couple can watch together. The youtube couple also mentioned that one of the virtues of the idea is that you don't have to find a babysitter, so I assume that these are all stay-at-home dates, perhaps all video driven, and that its target audience is mostly people busy taking care of kids... Of course, that shouldn't be a problem for Famy and PickleBrain -- and I assume they'll want to go out to the liquor store, at least, in addition to doing whatever the box suggests. Turns out there are actually a bunch of companies doing stuff like this. I didn't look at the other websites, but I hope they do a better job of describing their wares than this site does. I did notice that one site seems to send you board games and other kinds of games to play together. That company has some sort of focus on using games both for fun and for building relationship-enhancing skills. The website discusses affiliate marketing very briefly (per below) and doesn't describe amounts of compensation, but I assume that Dill and Amy spend most of their time combing the web for such "passive income" opportunities: Q: Love this! How can I help? You’re awesome! Thanks! We are always looking for brand ambassadors, bloggers, Youtubers, and social media influencers to help promote our brand, if this is you please email at promotions@getdatebox.com

Given Michelle's general attitudes, I'd say the psalm is pretty much word salad to her, too. Seems to me that she "sitteth in the seat of the scornful" a lot, such as when she's making robo-calls. Or many of her many pronouncements.

Ah, at last something I like better about my family's methods. No shared bathwater. Baths were once a week except in extraordinary circumstances, bath water was an inch deep at its deepest point, the other six days you washed comprehensively at the sink, and bathroom doors weren't closed. So cleaning up was always freezing except in summer heat waves. But -- no soaking in other peoples' crud! I like that. I'll accept a little cold for that tradeoff.

It's also true, however -- though admittedly rarer -- that you can be a complete lunatic and jerk while having had a perfectly fine childhood. Some people are just born with makeups that are ready to sour and that worsen even in home environments that aren't a problem at all. I know this as a fact from experience. It's probably not the best idea to be so quick always to blame parents for producing crazy and/or warped and evil people. Sometimes they're big contributors and sometimes they may not be contributors at all. ... And complementary lunatics and jerks have an uncanny ability to sense each other and hook up together. If, like me, TLC caught a glimpse of those horrifying red-dress-girls photos, I expect that they saw the whole thing as far too crazy and potentially wild and fraught with hidden insanity to pass up. ... Those dystopic photos are what first alerted me to the horror that is the Duggar family. I'd bet that TLC has probably been somewhat disappointed at how often they've had to create "dramatic" situations by sending the Duggs off on vacations and so forth, given the promise they seemed to have as an absolute horror show. But I suppose the ratings created by leghumper love and hater hatewatching has soothed their feelings as the family turned out to be primarily a crashing, snoring bore.

When it's your only pastime, it's pretty much your favorite by default, I suppose. I guess it shows that they're resolutely set apart from the evil, heathen world?

Jesus makes very precise demands.

For me, it depends on whether he's as similar as I think to the person in my family that he reminds me of. If he is very similar to that person, then he's furious and blaming the whole thing completely on others. So he'd be rocked, but not shaken about himself. Just rocked and supremely pissed off by the wrongs that have been done him by others and seeing absolutely none of it as being any reflection on himself. If he's closer to normal than that, then it's as you say. My bet is that he's very far from normal and well ensconced in the narcissist end of things, but who knows? I hope for everybody's sake he's having the reaction you describe.

Nutty as they are, a lot of the other nutty families of this ilk that I know of do seem to display some sorts of competence and energy. Picture MEEEchelle writing an article like Teri's here on why homeschoolers should give the kids report cards, for example. http://articles.titus2.com/seven-important-reasons-why-homeschoolers-should-give-report-cards/?utm_source=155&utm_medium=288&utm_campaign=423 Yet again I wonder what is wrong with people who view the Duggars as role models for this mode of life. If you want a role model for nutso living, there are many who have way more to offer, nutty or not.

Maybe it's interest vs. complete indifference. Jim Bob's interest in the kids is an ownership interest and a control interest. But I'm sure they do sense interest. While it wouldn't surprise me that Michelle's checked-out-ness was reflected in complete lack of interest in the kids, in any way, shape or form. She periodically parrots stuff that the ideology suggests she say. But it's robotlike, to me. And maybe she's just a robot around the kids, too.

She was surprised when "Mrs. King" failed to get any magazine covers.

Oh, I expect he would. But since I don't think anybody'll pay him to do that any more, we won't have to see it done in public, at least. How could he live if he couldn't look down on somebody?

'Favorite Quote: “Lord, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me; and sever every tie, but the tie that binds me to Thy service and Thy heart.” - David Livingstone' Hmm. Freudian cry from Jana, since this could easily be construed as: Get me out of here!?? Interesting that she has no future plans, but her favorite quote says she'd be very happy to go anywhere at all -- losing every current tie -- to just be on her own with God to work. I'm sure she thinks she's just quoting something about serving God, but there are quotes that say that without essentially asking God to sever all your current ties and send you to the ends of the earth.

I actually would bet that it's worse than that on Jim Bob and Michelle's part. Strange as it is to think this, I actually doubt that that's the kind of thing they would have gone very far to squelch even with the older kids. Rudeness and meanness don't bother either of them a bit (unless it's rudeness and meanness toward them, probably). Look at the disgusting way Jim Bob has behaved in numerous other countries -- bragging to a mother who told about her dead children that he had 19 or however many it was. And the ways he's behaved on home soil, too. I gather they made no objections when everybody was openly rude in the Ethiopian restaurant in DC. And JB himself pretended to kidnap the Bates' kids. (I haven't actually seen any of this, but I've heard tell, so I hope I'm not getting it far wrong.) In any case, being polite and kind to others really isn't a value they hold in the least, as far as I can see. I don't know that they would even have noticed a kid putting on an act like that. And if they had noticed it, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had thought it was funny.

Yep. I just tried it in the mirror. I have quite thin lips but I can make them look fairly luscious, even, by pouting them out. And I got the exact same wrinkle pattern around the mouth that Jessa has there when I did it. Never tried that before. .... When I think of all the years of lip sex appeal I missed...When I think how I've wasted my life...

For me, the worst thing about them is all the people who still gush about what a wonderful family of role models they are. That there are at least thousands of people who are that blind makes me completely sick.

Makes sense. They are definitely starved for excitements. On the other hand, they do seem to be allowed to do mean things: kick your sister's bunk till she goes crazy -- you get her most prized possession as your reward; aim your sled at a cat while the whole family howls with laughter -- put that right up on instagram; rub sardines all over the honeymoon car -- cherished family tradition.

Yeah, I think he's creepy and sex-obsessed, too. But a) he also comes across to me as a coward! -- so I doubt that he would have the guts to do too much. And b) I wouldn't count a smidgen of prostitute action or a bunch of sex club visits or the like as some huge scandal. I actually doubt that he's done even very much of this, but when I see people talking about some huge scandal lurking in the Duggar household, I think of an actual scandal, not small amounts of sex on the side which, let's face it, happen all over the place.

Yep. My sentiments exactly. I think he was one of those who's just born with a massive massive will to control everything coupled with massive insecurities about not being at the absolute top of every heap. That kind of person will use anything at all as an excuse for why they resent everybody in their lives, and they have such outsized egos and complete obliviousness to everyone else on the planet that they fit in nowhere, so they are naturally socially insecure and tone deaf, too.That bullshit about his being abused because his father didn't go to church enough is pretty good evidence of that, I think, and he was apparently spouting that from a pretty young age. I expect his parents had no idea what to do with a child with such an overweaning ego coupled with an inability and unwillingness to read other human beings and respect them at all. Then he found Gothard -- a cult tailor-made to attract insecure people with an inexhaustible hunger for control. Once he was in there, his mega-warped personality got a free pass from everybody and he was completely free to create the ego-feeding private world of his dreams, stretching out for generations. It's disgusting and horrifying when you think of all the kids who are trapped in it.

True, but they sure smile like this a lot. It's the same smile from every one of them -- and we do know that Gothard actually teaches that smiles must be with a certain amount of teeth and so on. The Waller kids have the exact same smiles, for example. And aren't kids sometimes just happy on their birthdays, cameras or no cameras? Doesn't a kid's smile often reach his eyes on his birthday? I think it does for lots of kids. And I just don't see genuine smiles from any Duggars very often, except maybe Jim Bob. James doesn't look to me like a happy kid here.

I expect that JB announced that the wedding had to be at a certain time for the TeeVee schedule. And Derick, being all follower to begin with and only becoming more so as he was subsumed by Duggardom (I imagine), saw no choice but to go along. .... If he had been the sort to see a choice, I think JB would probably have rejected his suit.

Good grief. I never saw actually watched that before. No shit that those vows are different from other people's, Jessa. They're ridiculous and horrifying. What idiot things for two people who barely know each other and are in the throes of mad fundie barely-out-of-teenage lust to stand there promising.

Emotionally stunted and, I expect, emotionally warped as well. They've been deprived of a lot of life but they've also been indoctrinated in a lot of psychological stuff that's just simply nuts. Among other dead wrong things, I doubt that fake crying like that is even something that JB and M would notice as inappropriate and talk to him about. Social tone deafness coupled with a complete lack of empathy is the stock in trade of those two. Honestly, they strike me as just about as capable of doing something like that as their 14-going-on-8-year-old son. Well, Jim Bob anyway. Michelle seems so out of it I don't know that she even notices things that people do.

Even with the sundae, though, his smile doesn't reach his eyes, I just noticed (or think I have, anyway). And that show-those-front-teeth smile they all have looks like something they automatically force every time they're in camera range. Maybe he mocked Gil Bates' crying because he doesn't believe that such love exists. It certainly doesn't in his life. I know that when I was a kid I got really angry when I saw emotional bursts like that from other people, although at the time I didn't know why they made me want to hit someone with a hammer. Maybe some Duggar kids have the same feelings that they don't understand.