Former Member

Such things do happen! But it’s usually over inheritances and favoritism…

It is difficult to go against the vindictive tide, but all this talk about tossing people into prison and throwing away the key is why the US has the highest percentage of its population behind bars. We need to rehabilitate people instead of just locking them up. We need to have programs to explain to people why their actions were wrong and how to rebuild their lives to become more productive. We need to ‘turn the other cheek.’ We need to get people to understand we have much more in common than we have differences. We all need to learn more about each other. We would soon find out that we share common experiences and have little to fear about each other. A little forgiveness goes a long way. This doesn’t mean that criminals should be allowed to continue their bad behavior. It just means that they should be taught to behave better, much as a child is taught. Verbal lessons might work for a very small percentage, but most would need a more powerful incentive. And many would need psychological assistance as well. Only a relatively small percentage are completely un-rehabilitatable and absolutely need to be kept imprisoned. Why does this Agnostic need to teach ‘christian’ behavior to those who profess to believe?

April is described as a dweeb, but somehow he inadvertently managed to uncover the hidden same-sex desires of two different men who previously identified as straight! ;–) Poor April! He’s not a drama seeking kind of guy. But un-straightening guys is inherently filled with drama! ;–)

Jett is really clueless if he thinks that computer nerds throw parties. LAN (Local Area Network) parties, maybe, where they play computer games! But computer nerds tend to be socially inept. I worked with a bunch of them and none of them were party animals. ;–) But I recently found out that the theory that socially inept single men were well suited for computer jobs was never tested or proven before it became widespread. It turns out that it’s a myth. But it’s so entrenched that it has become self-perpetuating. ;–)

This reminds me of a Bloom County Sunday strip during the PC-Steve Dallas era. Steve is talking to his mother about the words she uses to describe African-Americans. When he objects to her use of ‘Coloreds,’ she brings up the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He then objects to ‘Negros,’ she points out that the United Negro College Fund uses the term. When he suggests People of Color as an acceptable alternative, she says, ‘That’s what I said, Colored People!’

In California, we try very hard to avoid oil on our water. The Santa Barbara Spill was one of the first major oil spills that inspired the environmental movement.

I think it’s likely that any ex-cons that you know would not be forthcoming about their sordid history… ;–)

Eric is a bit like Sheldon Cooper. He has all this trivia stuffed into his head that he just can’t help sharing with everyone. But poor Peter has to wait for the slang definitions. It took me years to learn how to moderate my discharge of trivia. I have a difficult time reading emotions (both mine and others). I never noticed the eyes glazing over… ;–)

It’s a good thing I have a translation app. ¡Lástima que no me ayudan a hablar con mis vecinos!* ;–) * Too bad it doesn’t help me speak to my neighbors! ;–) But what’s up with all those weird non-link links?

I don’t know if there is a solution to heartless Hartley. Sometimes survival is the best you can hope for. High school is not real life. Sarah will discover that after she graduates and is humiliated by reality when daddy can no longer manipulate her grades for her.

As a Californian, I’d never heard this term before. But I know Ron Romanovsky (of Romanovsky & Phillips) is proud to be from Pittsburgh. ;–)

My expertise is too narrow and the depth of my knowledge is too shallow to be a true expert. I had a friend (who died of ALS in his mid-50s in the Nineties) who was much more knowledgable than I am. His porn collection encompassed 8mm film, video tapes, and digital images on his Macintosh LC. He once replaced the soundtrack to a seduction scene in William Higgins’ Big Guns with Ravel’s Bolero on his own copy of the movie – the music was only a little shorter than the scene, but matched the mood perfectly! ;–)

There are some schools that have gotten funding (probably grants from non-profits) to start vegetable gardens with the students raising different vegetables. Because the kids are involved, they are eager to eat the vegetables they’ve grown. They sample things that they wouldn’t otherwise be willing to eat. Of course, most inner city schools are struggling to maintain their facilities and resources including text books. Many schools have large populations of homeless children and have set up food pantries and laundry facilities. Schools are being forced to deal with issues far beyond education.

Juan Diego Flórez sings Lalo's Vainement ma bien-aimée

The trouble is that there are generations of poor people who never learned to cook. Fast food and deliveries are much more expensive than home cooked meals. The alternative, frozen dinners are also expensive and not particularly healthy. I’ve seen news reports on families shopping as soon as their SNAP (aka CalFresh or food stamps) funds are loaded into their EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) Cards. Just after midnight on the third of the month, hundreds of families load up their shopping carts with processed foods. Because they don’t cook from less expensive, basic ingredients, they run out of food before the month ends. Much of the food has empty calories and hidden sugar, so people are becoming obese and diabetic. When I first got CalFresh, I was getting $200/month. I guess I shopped very thriftily because of how my mother trained me, and I never spent the whole $200. Later I realized it wasn’t a good thing to leave a surplus increasing every month, so I ‘wasted’ it on things like soda, desserts, candy, and snacks just to bring the balance down to zero every month. One of my case managers was monitoring my shopping and correctly concluded that I was living out of county, so I had to ‘prove’ that I was living in the county I was getting benefits from. I had to go to the neighboring county to get into a different homeless shelter because each shelter had time limits and restrictions that prevented me from remaining in the county unless I slept on the streets – I got an overnight pass from the shelter I was staying at (not all shelters allow this), stayed overnight at the rescue mission, got the paper that certified I was ‘staying’ at the mission, and turned it in to the case manager. Now I’m housed, am on limited income (Social Security Disability), but no longer qualify for other benefits. I am on a Section 8 Wait List (and expect it to be a couple more years before my Voucher becomes available). When I get my Voucher, I’ll have to struggle to find an apartment where my Voucher is accepted. My building’s manager accepts Section 8 Vouchers, but my Voucher is for the neighboring county (only). After I’ve lived in that other county for a year, I’m free to use the Voucher in any jurisdiction (including other cities and counties that run Section 8 programs).

Rather than being reassured by what we’ve learned about Simon, I’m even more disturbed. He claims that he thinks of Johnny as a son, yet he not only planted the video cameras in Jason’s new loft, but he jerked off while watching his ‘son’ having sex! I don’t recall Chi Chi LaRue using incest as a theme, but she might have since she directed so many different movies for so many different studios. William Higgins was obsessed with incest as a theme, but he used porn-brothers (two unrelated men who resembled each other to varying degrees, most often created to boost a new performer’s profile by linking him with a more established and popular actor) while he was still in California. William Higgins did manage to find actual twin brothers after he moved to Prague. (I just learned that William Higgins died of a heart attack at 77 on December 21, 2019.)

Is Makarovia such a patriarchal society that all the men are surprised that Eric can cook? My mother was very traditional in many ways, but she decided at some point that she wasn’t going to do all the traditionally female-associated tasks in a house with a husband and three sons. We were required to do all sorts of chores that men and boys wouldn’t have done a century ago. We set the table, cleared the table, washed the dishes, and dried the dishes after dinner. My brothers and I all learned how to do basic cooking and baking. She tricked us into baking cookies and cakes for desert for our sack lunches. We occasionally cooked dinner for the family. She would have been offended to be described as a Feminist, but that’s what she was! ;–) We had family friends whose mothers did all the cooking and all the cleanup after dinner, in one case along with her only daughter, in the other case all alone. We were shocked when everybody (or almost everybody) got up and just walked away when we finished dinner. I don’t remember anyone even taking their dishes to the sink. And it wasn’t as if either family had a dishwasher!

You’re telling the guy who referenced the episode! ;–)

This is a wonderful performance. Someone might do well to write a movie script about Mahler, Rott and Brahms *spoiler: one of them dies tragically young*

If the donor turned out to be Simon, that would cause all sorts of conflicting emotions. But if it were Conner, it would tie him into the family better. Either would be more interesting and more unusual than a family member. In the Who Shot Mr Burns story arc resolution, Marge says she became a Simpson, DNA and all, when she married Homer. ;–)

That would certainly be life-changing for the entire group! They’d have to go on GMA again, at the very least. But wouldn’t this storyline be better as a Book 3? But it doesn’t sound like the second year of school changes that were mentioned…

Or it could be the flu…

I think Jack knew he was violating his father’s grounding by letting the boys in. I was expecting them to know that he’d been grounded and bring him his books and homework assignments – that’s what usually happens in these sorts of stories. I would have expected them to stay outside and leave after they left the books and assignments. Getting into an argument with his mother and leaving the house will exasperate the situation. I don’t know what Jack’s father will do, but the whole family needs therapy and counseling!

But don’t kill off mom either!

Whatever the resolution is for Nate, Simon, and Charlie, I hope you resist the calls for a thruple. They seem to be very rare in the real world and often split into a couple and a third wheel after a relatively short time. Things are too confusing enough for teenagers in any case, and adding an unusual situation will only make things even more unstable.