Yup. And also, her character behaves like a MANIAC throughout. She just completely drops all sense of professional ethics and abandons the principles on which she'd presumably based her whole career, and they were pretty decent principles, really. It's not like she replaced them with better principles, or more ethical…

You can find him in his veg garden, talking mournfully to the carrots.

Oh, please don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that this is RATIONAL. This is just a possible explanation, but certainly not an excuse not to treat people well or fairly, or to start slagging a whole country at any opportunity. And I wasn't even suggesting that this was a conscious association. It just seems to me…

I was fixating more on the "chickens," plural. I realize that this is not really incorrect, but it just seems like a funny way to order chicken. "Can we get some chickens over here?"

YES. And I also thought, "was he lacking in hope before? Did he have some cause to feel hopeless, until this baby came along, bringing him at last a faint glimmer of hope?"

I think a lot of it comes from the increasing emphasis conservative politicians put on the so-called "special relationship" between our two nations, and particularly instances when they act as if the "special relationship" should override other political concerns. So there's become this unconscious association between…

Ohhh, that thin-sliced garlic thing DOES work, it's what Mr. Obvious Burner does, and it's VERY good. You're basically making your own very fresh, potent garlic-infused oil. So nice for flavor distribution. And the little package of razor blades in the knife drawer does look pretty badass.

This is an EXCELLENT tip. Thank you!

Ooh, colander plus pot lid is not a bad idea. Then you just shake it?

What in the world is the rationale behind allowing crockpots and George Foremans but no electric skillets?

I actually find my salad spinner super-useful, though obviously in a very narrow category of use, but I hate using it anyway because I have no dishwasher and that thing's a bitch to hand-wash.

You're the best of all the people.

Ha, there you go.

Oh, I don't think she was an asshole at all. She didn't say it in a super-sweet and sisterly way, but she didn't say it an asshole way either. I just think that the action itself implies something that's sort of collectively taken for granted about purchases related to sex and contraception, namely that they're…

Listen, y'all: I don't mean to suggest that she was personally condemning my birth control choices. But yes, privacy, which is kind of my point—"you're going to want more privacy for this purchase than for the other stuff we sell here," because...? This was not a consideration I was offered when, say, I had to buy the…

This reminds me of a girl I knew in college who was at the store buying Vagisil when she bumped into the cutest professor in our dept. She actually drop-kicked the tube down the aisle.

I was WAY prouder of myself than I should have been about that. "I AM SO PREPARED FOR ANY TRAVEL EVENTUALITY!" Meanwhile, the day I checked into the hotel I dropped my eyeliner in the toilet, which just goes to show: one is never really prepared enough.

That makes sense. And I totally understand that overthinking impulse, let me tell you.

Omg! If you ever decide to fictionalize that story, I think it should end with you saying "oh, it's not what you think—the Burt's Bees is just so I can give smoother blow jobs."

I'm totally laughing at the idea of people opening boxes and shoving condoms into their socks and dropping the box and running, as if that doesn't draw more attention to the transaction than just casually walking out with your purchase! Were these kids whose moms were waiting in the car or something?