Speaking of Shimazaki, I learned a lot about myself this week making these terrible memes so I could drop them in the discord chat as I made my friends watch MP100. What I learned was, I have a terrible sense of humor (actually I already knew that, I just didn't realize it was this bad) and that the only thing I enjoy more than watching Shimazaki kick ass, is Shimazaki getting his ass kicked. (I'll have more of these for next week when we get to Serizawa's stuff! Sorry!)

reflections in wisps

Length - 2457 words

Characters - Seokjin x Jaehwan, BTS Ensemble

Rating - Teen and Up

Summary - Seokjin knows he won’t have Jaehwan for long. The illusion of their love is a false reflection in the fading wisps of feelings they once harboured for each other.

Series

Tag List -  @tomatoholmes @merlionmen @seraphistols  @k-craze-97 @blossomtearsleo

-

“You’re smoking again”

“I was wondering when you would notice it and ask me to stop”

“I don’t think asking would have actually made you stop.”

“I guess not”

-

When Jaehwan returns, he apologises to Seokjin.

Jaehwan apologises but makes no excuses. It’s part of what Seokjin likes about Jaehwan. He has no lies or cover ups or excuses. He comes down to the fancy apartment they share in the ‘right side’ of town after disappearing for days and tells him he is sorry.

He doesn’t tell Seokjin what he is sorry for and Seokjin doesn’t ask because there are things he should be sorry for and he doesn’t tell Jaehwan about them either.

Instead they kiss. It’s easier to be lost in the way Jaehwan’s lips on his skin give him goosebumps and how the warmth of someone else feels just right when he has been deprived for so long. Sex doesn’t require thinking. Sex doesn’t even require feelings if you are doing it right.

And so he kisses Jaehwan back and let’s the thoughts in his head be drowned out behind white noise.

-

Seokjin grows up in a house in the posh suburbs to the east of the city. He grows up in a small two storeyed house with a flower bed in the front yard and a white picket fence all around. He even had a sugar glider briefly but he forgets the name.

His life changes drastically when his father decides to run for the local government body. Suddenly his family is thrust into the limelight and his father’s PR team decides to use the opportunity to broadcast how virtuous and well behaved they are.

His mother and brother fare better under the scrutiny. His mother is traditional and believes in supporting her husband and hence has no problem playing the part of the loving partner. His brother is ambitious. He studies business in a prestigious business school and starts his own business, riding on his father’s fame. He humbly attributes his success to the values his parents instilled in him at any public event and even marries the daughter of their father’s biggest sponsor for campaigns.

Seokjin does what any sensible young adult would when faced with life changing events out of their control.

Seokjin rebels.

He goes to the local art college to study filmmaking. Despite his gorgeous face, he becomes an assistant director with a non-profit organization that works to raise awareness about issues plaguing modern society through films. And as the last nail in the proverbial coffin of his good boy image, he starts to date Lee Jaehwan. A good for nothing who brings no addition to their family’s social status, his grandmother announces over a family dinner and Seokjin kisses Jaehwan in front of everyone to “console him”.

-

“Try not to give someone an aneurysm” Hoseok pleads, adjusting Seokjin’s wonky bow tie.

“I make no promises,” Seokjin says with a devilish smile.

“Okay. I’ll treat you to coffee for a month if you can wait till after the auction has concluded before offending someone with a witty remark” Hoseok says.

“Of course I am not gay, I am merely waiting for the right girl to make an honest man out of me. Of course my parents are doing well, I called them just the other day. Yes my brother’s business is doing great, I am very proud. If only I was more like him” Seokjin says in a shrill voice and Hoseok gives up on any hopes he has.

Seokjin follows his friend who navigates through the crowd and talks to the crowd attending the art exhibition he has curated. It has the most ostentatious, the creme de la creme of society in attendance and Hoseok has high hopes to earn the profits he needs to keep the museum running tonight. And Seokjin is many things but not a bad friend so he sticks to the flutes of champagne supplied helpfully by the servers and makes a polite comment here and there but says nothing more.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Hoseok asks, when he finds Seokjin looking at one of the modern art pieces on display. It’s a realist painting of a diner in a small town. The diner has large glass panels that lets the onlooker see inside and note the people sitting down by it and a waiter serving them from behind the counter.

“What’s the story behind this?” Seokjin asks. The diner is dreary to look at and inspires no strong emotions but that is how real life is. Nothing interesting ever happens and Seokjin can hardly blame the artist for depicting the truth of the world. It’s also surprisingly devoid of people and meaningful interaction, like it is an image of a lonely time, sliced out of the flow of time and captured on canvas. It’s how most of his nights look now but Seokjin quickly squashes the depressing reminder.

“Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. A classic modern art piece” Hoseok tells him. “It’s supposed to be a comment about loneliness in the urban lifestyle of the 1940s America.”

“Still holds,” Seokjin says, taking a sip of his champagne. His cheeks burn with warmth but he ignores it.

“Is it already bid for?”

“Not very high if you’re thinking about buying it. Everyone is going for the more well known modern art pieces or the fancier classics” Hoseok says. Seokjin takes a cheque book out of his jacket. He didn’t intend on using it tonight but life has never gone the way he intended it at any time.

-

“What do you think?” Seokjin asks once the crew from the museum installs the painting in the living room and leaves.

Jaehwan looks at the painting and says nothing. Seokjin knows he hates it. But it is magnanimous of him not to voice it immediately. The painting has grown on Seokjin and he can’t bring himself to regret the small fortune he has spent on it.

“I like it” Seokjin responds when Jaehwan doesn’t. He reaches out and adjusts the painting so that it is perfectly parallel to the edges of the wall.

“Why this specific painting?” Jaehwan asks.

“I liked the irony of a social place being used to depict loneliness. It spoke to me spiritually” Seokjin says. He goes on to add the analysis of the painting that Hoseok gave him about loneliness and despair and how the want of company and comfort is a thing that hasn't changed over decades and continents.

"You could add a funky neon sign with a few letters blinking or not lit up and it would be any themed diner here in South Korea" Seokjin jokes before admiring the way the painting looks on the light cream coloured walls of the apartment.

Jaehwan stares at the painting and never looks at it again for the remainder of the night.

-

Things almost go back to normal but they really don’t.

Jaehwan takes Seokjin on pretty dates to pretty places during the day and whispers dirty things into his ear as he kisses him at night. It’s almost like the days he disappeared and the fights they had didn’t exist.

But he also dazes out in the middle and never really pays attention to whatever Seokjin is talking about. He hums and responds at all the right places in a conversation but never really means any of it. Jaehwan also takes to his old habit of smoking in the balcony after every night they spend together. It’s like whatever happened in those days has changed everything between them.

Seokjin knows that the ground beneath his feet has shifted. He’s no stranger to that feeling of the world changing overnight. Only this time, it happens so quietly that Seokjin really doesn’t know how to deal with it.

How do you hold onto smoke that lies within your reach but cannot be held? It only shifts out of his grasp, just far enough to never truly be held and just near enough to suffocate him slowly.

-

“I have news for you” Jaehwan says, looking at Seokjin. “Taehyung liked the manuscript I sent in. He’s suggested minor changes and decided to forward it to Namjoon. If Namjoon likes it, I will get a publishing deal.”

“That’s amazing,” Seokjin says and finds that he really means it. “I didn’t even know you were planning on sending it in.”

Jaehwan and Taehyung have an awkward history. Taehyung is a book critic and editor for Namjoon’s publishing house and someone very familiar with Jaehwan’s writing from his newspaper columnist days. Taehyung always claims to have fallen in love with Jaehwan’s writing way back then. But Seokjin knows that Jaehwan wants nothing to do with his old life and so he usually diverts Taehyung's attention away from it.

“It’s nerve wrecking as fuck. I hope this becomes popular as hell so I never have to write ever again” Jaehwan swears. Seokjin laughs.

“Let’s open up a new wine bottle. Yoongi recommended this new brand of red wine that I got a bottle of and you can tell me what your new book is about” Seokjin says. It’s a little too early to celebrate anything but a little cheer will be good for them.

“It’s just a story about… people. Places and things. Nothing and everything” Jaehwan says vaguely as he gestures to the air around him.

“What a thrilling description. I’ll ask Namjoon to put it on the book cover” Seokjin says wryly. For the first time in a very long time, Jaehwan laughs and Seokjin laughs with him.

-

What Seokjin does ask of Namjoon is a copy of the finalized manuscript that is approved for printing.

Namjoon loves the book and gives it a raving review. The publishing deal is finalized quickly because Taehyung does not want to give Jaehwan the chance to change his mind. Before Seokjin knows it, a thick bundle of papers tied together with a large gaudy paper clip and sealed in tacky brown packaging arrives at his doorstep.

Seokjin keeps the manuscript a secret. He wants to let Jaehwan offer a signed personal copy for keepsake. But he is also a curious soul and this trait always gets the best of him.

Jaehwan is out for the night. (He is always out for some reason or the other.) So Seokjin pours himself a glass of cheap store bought red wine and puts the manuscript on his lap and begins to read.

It's a story of a lost man. A man who feels lost even though he is loved by all and a man who doesn't know himself though everyone around him is quick to label their relationship with him and by extension to label him. The protagonist spends half the novel wandering and pitying himself till he meets someone and falls in love. It's a forbidden sort of love and sucks both men in till their feelings overwhelm them. The protagonist leaves by the end because the protagonist always does but he leaves his heart in the tiny dingy motel they met in and even that admission is a guilty confession to the wide vacuum of an uncaring world and not to the object of his affection.

Seokjin reads through the manuscript in one setting. Jaehwan is just that good with his words and Seokjin knows this is a rare glimpse into his mind that no one else is afforded just yet. Jaehwan will make it big. No wonder Taehyung is anxious to have the deal under his publishing house. Jaehwan writes about true love and heartbreak in a magnificent way that anyone can understand but can only hope to experience in their lifetime. At once the grandeur of heartbreak is within your grasp and just out of your reach.

When he finishes the manuscript, he looks at the painting hanging in the gallery and understands Jaehwan's surprise. He rereads the last confession and understands Jaehwan's disdain too.

-

"I don't have excuses" Jaehwan says, when Seokjin finds him smoking on their bedroom's balcony.

"You never do" Seokjin says, sitting down next to him.

"I'm a shit liar for a writer" Jaehwan admits. Seokjin scoffs and rubs his nose. He is resigned to the situation but he doesn't find the smell pleasant. Nothing will endear him to smoking, he thinks. Not even the oncoming heartbreak.

"You're much better than you think you are" Seokjin says. Jaehwan gives him a searching look. How much does Seokjin already know, Jaehwan wonders. The painting from the living room is gone and Jaehwan has seen the copy of his book on Seokjin's nightstand.

"How much did you read?" he ventures to ask. Some band-aids are better ripped off as soon as the wound stops bleeding.

"All of it" Seokjin replies honestly.

"I didn't mean to break your heart" Jaehwan tells him.

"You don't get to decide what hurts me and what doesn't" Seokjin says sharply. He doesn't like the way Jaehwan genuinely sounds apologetic and guilty. He hates how it isn't motivated by love and merely by concern over a relationship that should have died much earlier.

"Why did you come back if you thought you really loved the one you left behind?" Seokjin asks.

"Because that ending is… a white lie. A romantic ending to make the book sellable. I didn't fall in love when I was at the motel. I didn't fall in love with someone else" Jaehwan explains.

"You only fell out of love with me" Seokjin summarizes breezily. Jaehwan draws a deep breath of his cigarette and turns away to let the smoke out. This hurts more than Seokjin thought it would.

The two men sit in the balcony and avoid looking at each other. The air between them is thick with tension, stuffy from the remains of what once was and will never be again.

Seokjin watches the tendrils of smoke rise from the last of Jaehwan's cigarette through its reflection in the window glass. The ember glows till it dims and fades out, leaving only smoke in its wake.

He wonders if the disappearance of the carbon means he can pretend that the smoke never existed once sufficient time has passed. Or if the smell will taint his memories forever like heartbreak threatens to taint the rose hued past blue. He wonders if he can lean forward and catch the smoke as it twists in and out of the air current to rise up and disappear into nothingness. He wonders if the smoke was always meant to escape and if the paper was always meant to burn to give it the freedom it so runs after.

In the end, all the smoke does is suffocate him and make his eyes water.

-

I Just Need to Get This Out (Political Content Warning)

Now more than ever, I am going to be avoiding politics on Tumblr.  This is, with any luck, the last political post I will make on my blogs.  It is meant to serve as an explanation of why I’m going to be a lot less tolerant of political content on roleplaying blogs.  TL;DR, I don’t fit in on the right or left and I’m fucking tired of seeing politics everywhere.  I deal with it at work, and I deal with it at home.  I don’t want to deal with it here.  I’m going to start unfollowing people when I see it.  That doesn’t mean our friendship is over, it doesn’t mean we can’t RP.  But I’m so tired of it all. If you want the long explanation, keep reading.

From about middleschool to shortly before the election of the current president I considered myself an ardent conservative.  Listing out a lot of my positions, this might have seemed not to be the case: I’m not religious (try as I might to be so).  I’m pro-LGTBQ+.  I’ve always been a proud member of what Rush Limbaugh used to call the Wetland Gestapo. I think anthropogenic climate change is a real thing.  I want pot legalized.  I think military interventionism is a mistake in all but the rarest situations (granted this is a more recent position).  I think the welfare state is necessary and in places ought to be expanded.  I am enthusiastic about multiculturalism. On the other hand, I am pro-religion despite not being religious, and feel religious conservatives shouldn’t be compelled to violate their own religious beliefs as long as it’s not hurting anyone (and my definition of ‘not hurting anyone’ seems to be a bit broader than most progressives).  While I’m not anti-union, I think that unions can be corrupt as any other institution, particularly at a national level, and that the Left is too inclined to overlook that.  I’m solidly pro Second Amendment.  I consider illegal immigration a bad thing (mostly because it’s an excuse to exploit the poor and undocumented).  I think “states’ rights” is not just a dogwhistle term for racists, but something that really does need to be taken into account given the way the American republic works. I could have expanded the above to paragraphs, but they’re already ungainly and, I’m sure, a pain to read through.  Where am I going with all this?  Well, first I wanted to establish that I COULD consider myself “an ardent conservative” while holding a lot of varied opinions (like literally everyone on the planet has).  Secondly, I want to establish that I hold all of the above views, and have for some time, while bearing a specific label—right winger.  I’ve ended up rejecting that label, and rejecting what for want of a better term I’ll call “the conservative movement”, but my positions haven’t changed.  And, most importantly, stopping thinking of myself as a conservative DOES NOT mean I’ve come to think of myself as a progressive. Let me try to tell a story. I’m decent at stories. Metamun in middle school and high school was a lonely creature.  He was sick a lot, and pretty socially awkward, although he could make up for it by being funny and knowing some trivia.  But he mostly kept to himself.  Since being on the bus made him sick (it was at a time of life when people experimented with scents that screwed him up at close quarters) usually his dad picked him up after school.  That’s where Metamun picked up his politics, those drives home with dad.  Dad listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh, and so Metamun did too.  Metamun was already sort of inclined to conservatism—he had a pessimistic view of the world, distrusting the US government and feeling that people ought to be able to protect themselves (i.e. own guns).  Rush did not convert Metamun, but he did affirm Metamun.  He didn’t usually say anything that seemed greatly outrageous to Metamun. (Mark that “usually”.) Now, as Metamun was living in suburban New England, it happened that conservative politics did not go unchallenged as they might have, say, farther south.  To Metamun it seemed as though he was in a tiny minority, especially where authority figures were concerned.  Looking back he’d realize this wasn’t the case— particularly not in terms of his actual views.  But remember, Metamun didn’t get out much.  And furthermore, although he considered himself conservative, he found he usually didn’t like the company of conservatives— they tended to be less interested in the things he was, like books and acting.  So most of his friends and acquaintances tended to be, if not self-identified progressives, at least the kind of people who sneered at conservatives and made the obligatory comparisons of Bush II to Hitler. Because that was who Metamun dealt with day-to-day, he was left with the impression that this was the norm for the society he lived in.  Most of what was on TV, with the exceptions of Fox News and South Park, seemed to confirm this. And so Metamun became genuinely terrified of people learning that he was not like the majority. Being homebound so often, Metamun spent a lot of time online.  That did nothing to lessen his terror.  Lonely as he was, Metamun went looking for conservative blogs.  Pajamas Media was the big one, but there were plenty of smaller ones.  One important thing he learned was that post 9/11, there were a lot of people who sort of fit his description—socially liberal, but mistrustful of leftist politics for various reasons.  Ex-leftists. Neo-Cons.

One important factor was patriotism: It seemed like all progressives genuinely hated the United States on principal.  Unflattering and quite often spurious comparisons to other countries seemed to abound on the Left.  One of Metamun’s new acquaintances explicitly wrote on their blog that they’d always wondered how the Right “co-opted” patriotism before concluding the Left simply threw it away. This acquaintance, a gay Seattleite, would be a touchstone for Metamun’s sense of political self for some time.  During the Tea Party era, the Right genuinely felt more fun and open than the Left.  Metamun still felt like an underdog, but also like he was part of a ragtag resistance movement with real emotional bonds.  And yet, even with all that, his prime political emotion was fear. (Mark the recurrent theme of fear.) Some of you might see the shape of this narrative and guess that Metamun was fed a steady diet of paranoia by nasty wingnuts.  Yes and no. The conservative blogosphere was a scary place—it told him that his basic values were under constant assault. That some of the “basic values” in the package were not actually his was beside the point, because Metamun just generally hated the thought of State force being used to coerce people into violating their own principals.  Metamun was happy to fight for values that were not his own, on that account.  It did bother him, sometimes, the assumptions conservatives made, but by this time he had gotten used to thinking of himself as a minority, so the majority being different wasn't so jarring.  Of course there would be a few differences of opinion. But the Right accepted those differences in the way that surely the Left would not.  And he knew that this was true, because he’d seen it with his own eyes. The Left was VICIOUS to conservatives, sometimes in a very personal way.  In some ways, sick and often absent though he was, Metamun still got the basic high school experience as he watched insults and worse fly fast and thick.  Leftists expressed GLEE at any conservative misfortune.  They made absolutely insane comparisons between conservative pundits and Nazis.  “Republican” was a punchline to very cruel (and sometimes racist and sexist) jokes. Sometimes they seemed to outright lie.  Metamun remembered a novelty song about Satan claim he was “in all Rush Limbaugh’s rants”, and Metamun KNEW that was untrue because he’d been listening to Rush for years and couldn’t recall the man even referencing scripture outside of holidays. Metamun heard people casually cite Glenn Beck as routinely opposing gay marriage when Metamun had heard the man himself arguing that the government shouldn’t even be involved with marriage (and thus that it couldn’t compel churches to validate gay marriages, sure, but that seemed a separate issue). But it was watching his conservative friends’ comments sections and twitter feed that solidified the image of progressive-as-persecutor.  It was blatantly apparent that these people hadn’t come to engage, they just wanted to take potshots.  Ad hominem abounded, total lack of reading comprehension was displayed, and just general delight in cruelty was rampant.  He was particularly appalled by the treatment of minority conservatives, who received all sorts of abuse based on race, sex, and orientation. Something that stuck with Metamun for years was watching conservative women get rape threats, death threats, and admonitions to kill themselves.  One of his best friends got such an admonition in response to mentioning on twitter it was her birthday.  That was it. Nothing political.  Just excitement for a special, personal day.  And none of his Leftist friends seemed to understand what their own wing was doing.  They talked about the Right doing such things, which baffled him—he’d never seen anything like that, or, if he did, it was only once or twice and never anybody HIS friends actually associated with.  Every movement has a few bad apples, right? (Mark the irony.) It didn’t help that once, depressed, Metamun DID admit on twitter that he was a conservative, and moreover that he was afraid people would stop being his friends over that. He promptly lost two friends. When he asked a third friend if they could please ask if he’d been unfollowed on purpose, they said they’d do it. And then THEY never talked to him again, even when he reached out.  He was convinced the only reason he didn’t lose everybody was that they hadn’t all seen the tweets—he deleted them quickly. So there Metamun was: Lonely, convinced that even if he didn’t line up perfectly with conservatism that at least conservatives accepted him, and very angry at the Other Tribe that was so cruel and callous to him and his friends.  But he was starting to grow up, and as he did he began noticing certain discrepancies.  Now and then the movement that was supposed to have a Big Tent felt oddly crowded. People sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way.  Metamun particularly hated it when the term RINO got thrown around, because he was all too aware that might apply to someone like him. Then there was the lack of nuance.  He slowly came to realize people on both sides of the aisle would sometimes use “nuanced” as a snide insult.  When the Dalai Lama described himself as anti-capitalist Metamun was disappointed, but understood (and also His Holiness was on record as saying when someone’s shooting at you it’s reasonable to shoot back, which Metamun thought made up for a lot). He did not expect certain conservatives to not only sneer at His Holinesses “nuanced” relationship with capitalism (accepting material support to fight against Mao) but actually accused him of being a PRC puppet. What?  Hadn’t they read anything about the man’s life?  Or his own writings?  Yes, he’d tried to work with Mao, but that fell through because Mao hated religion unequivocally—how could any religious leader work with that?  Why were they jumping to such insane conclusions?  This wasn’t what conservatives were supposed to do! There were a thousand other cracks in the façade, but two stand out. First, Metamun admitted to a dear friend, full of apprehension, that he voted for Mitt Romney. And not only did she not cut him out of her life, she explained WHY she wouldn’t do that.  Metamun was elated but also very confused—this wasn’t how the script in his head went.  He was admitting this because the pain of keeping a secret was too much, and he fully expected to pay a price for that.  He was (and remains) a drama-addled moron that way.  He was also a creature who put a lot of stock in narrative, and this narrative was nothing like he expected. Next, Metamun himself cut two friends out of his life over politics—years apart, but the number is important.  The first hurt, but felt very justified.  The second haunted him.  Metamun was easily haunted, but by this point he’d started really struggling with intrusive thoughts.  Around and around they went in his head, and although there was extreme, maddening monotony, now and then he’d see angles he’d missed before. The number was important. Two friends he’d definitely lost (he was never really sure of the third).  Two friends he’d rejected.  Why did he reject them?  Because he figured they’d hate him if they knew he didn’t agree with them.  He figured they had made their positions so strident that it was just inevitable that they would cut him out if he didn’t cut them out first. And he realized, stupidly, after years of realizing nothing, that maybe that’s exactly how the people who left him had felt.  Oh, perhaps they didn’t.  But what if they did?  What did that say about what, ultimately, they had in common? We’re getting closer to the present, so I’m going to start talking about myself in first person again. I recognize this version of myself more easily. As time went by I grew more and more jaded with American conservatism, but I still thought of myself as a conservative.  A lot of people were like that, children of the Tea Parties who had thought that the Right was the only alternative to all the abhorrent things we saw on the Left. But familiarity breeds contempt, and soon we were well acquainted with abhorrent things on the Right.  It seemed as if there was a rot spreading, something that had started as a speck and was now growing.  The spirit of fellow feeling was starting to evaporate.  There were a few things going on, but by this point I was barely paying attention to any of them.  I hadn’t looked at a conservative blog in years.  I didn’t listen to Rush.  The fracture of American conservatism could probably be better documented by someone who still gives a damn, but we all know what was the final crack in the glass. Donald Trump’s candidacy split the Right seemingly overnight, and not neatly down the middle. The big question is, of course “love him or hate him”, but even people who don’t go to those extremes get caught up in the animosity.  This, really, was when I couldn’t call myself a conservative anymore—no, not because his election was an indictment of conservatism, but because as the jagged rift grew, I suddenly realized that literally everything that scared me about the Left was present in the Right, both the MAGAheads and the Never Trumpers. All the bile.  All the cruelty.  All the callous disregard for our shared humanity.  All the absurd stereotyping and reductionism. Everything I’d seen on the Left that made me feel that the Right, imperfect as it was, was my only refuge, was suddenly EVERYWHERE, from quarters I’d thought were safe.  A lot of my conservative friends were hit even harder than I was; a few people desperately tried to reconcile people who had once laughed and dined together, but were now swearing never to speak again, or worse, verbally assaulting each other on a daily basis.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  This was not the way we were supposed to work.And then, at last, I realized that the only reason I was just seeing all this awfulness NOW was because it hadn’t been directed at me and mine in the past.  And here we come to the main point I want to impress on everybody who’s bothered to read this far: My short-sightedness was in no way unique. We always try to show our best face to our friends—and to our Tribe.  We are thoughtful and considerate of people on our side.  We roll our eyes at the people on our fringe—silly things, aren’t they?  Imagine someone taking them seriously. Our enemies do not see our best face.  They see our war face.  We fight them tooth and nail.  We exult in their defeats, which become our triumphs—somehow.  And we see this horrible, poisonous crest at the top of their wave that threatens to engulf everything—their fringe. A leftist is not going to be threatened and insulted for being a rightist—at least not consistently outside of “purity” arguments.  A leftist will be more cognizant of the threat posed by rightist fringes, because those fringes are not attacking the Right, per se.  And you know, this goes for all conflict.  You don’t see a problem as clearly if it’s not directly shoved in your face every day.  And you will become convinced that the problems that ARE shoved in your face every day are the only ones really getting worked up about, because everything else seems so ephemeral. I read people scoff at their own fringes—“Oh, nobody REALLY believes that stuff, and people who complain about it are just showing their white fragility/race baiting/gay agenda/whatever the key phrase to stop critical thought is in a given situation”. Guess what?  Those fringes are constantly needling at the other side. THEY are what is representative of your tribe to the Other Tribe.  They are loud, and they are cruel, and ignoring them because the other guys “deserve it” or you hope “now they’ll know how it feels” is fucking insane.  And yes, one of the reasons the Other Tribe sees it so often is that they go looking for it, but they go looking for it BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF IT and they want to make sure they know what it’s up to. The only thing worse than seeing the devil is losing sight of the devil. I’m no longer a conservative because that ideology is poisoned by hate.  But I didn’t become a progressive, because that ideology is also poisoned by hate.  Or maybe both ideologies have actually been abandoned, and now we just have two flavors of hate in opposition to each other.  Please believe me, I do not WANT to be apolitical.  Everybody hates the apolitical—we don’t even like ourselves much. And anyway, I’m one of nature’s conformists; I like belonging to a group.  But at this point committing to ANY political movement feels like I would be sacrificing my integrity.  And I would not want to be part of a movement that accepts people without integrity. I call myself a localist these days.  Something risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb came up with.  Keep power close to the ground, don’t try to manage everything from the top down, resist interventionism in communities where you don’t have skin in the game.  Not aiming for a world without blowups, but keeping them at a smaller scale than we currently experience.  Forget fussing over socialism and capitalism; both are bad at large scales.  Both can work together at smaller scales.  The false dichotomy is a tool of tyrants. I want my country to get better.  But that’s not going to happen until people admit there are malicious, corrupting forces even in their own Tribes.  It’s not all the Other Tribe’s fault.  I still see people I love treating other people I love as subhuman.  And when I point this out, tentatively, people nod their heads and tell me I’m correct and then go back to thoughtless hatred. What I want people to understand, please, is that I want nothing to do with  political mass movements.  It’s all about different flavors of hatred.  It’s all about hurting people.  It’s all about hypocrisy and cruelty.  Fuck it. I am going to try to be a good person without hitching my ego to too many abstractions.  I am going to try to make the world around me a more pleasant place, and I am going to do that without giving a fuck about whatever sacred cows the Left Tribe and Right Tribe are busy genuflecting to. So.  I’m going to work harder not to deal with it here.

The Really Shitty Email

CW: religious crap, hommphobia, transphobia, sexual abuse

From: Papa Ted (my mum’s stepdad)

To: [email protected]

Subject: Transgender

Dear Deadname,

Since receiving your letter a few months ago, I have thought and prayed and talked to others about your decision which, because I love you as does God and many others do and because I am deeply concerned about your salvation, I write this.

At every assembly I have with my students I begin the same way: Life is hard, please don’t make it harder than it is. God gave us free will but with that freedom comes responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

My actions of the past have had serious consequences not just for myself but for many others. I am a Christian, which colours everything in my life. It is the lens through which I see. C.S. Lewis described it this way: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

I met Jesus during a time of great hardship when I was going to grad school. I was married to Beverly, your grandmother, and we had three small children: your mother, Robbin, and Erika. Life was unbelievably hard for us, harder than anything I’d every experienced. Growing up I had enough because my father worked hard to provide for us. He was only a corporal in the air force and didn’t make much money. He always had a second job. When my sister and I went to middle school, my mother got a job to help with things and get out of the house. That and other things ultimately led to her divorce from my dad, but that’s another story. At home we always had enough. I had new clothes but a second hand bike. We went on camping holidays every summer for two weeks. When I was in grad school, my family had none of those benefits. The only new clothes my kids got came from their loving, caring grandparents. I wore socks on my hands in the winter because I couldn’t afford mitts. I sold my blood twice a week for plasmapheresis to buy groceries. I couldn’t afford to buy heating oil for the furnace, so I cut down trees and collected broken skids from behind warehouses to burn in the fireplace in the old house we lived in without insulation. Your mother and I would scour the ditches on Saturday for cans and bottles to take to the store to buy popcorn seeds and candy if we had enough. Beverly was a great cook and made meals out of nearly nothing. We bought a lot of veggies from the going-bad cart in the grocery store. We drank only powdered juice and milk because it was cheap and even then I diluted it so much that still the kids don’t trust me to make juice! My uncle drove a truck for a wholesale food company and he would bring us broken bags of oatmeal or dented tins of food that could not be sold. Although I had scholarships and student loans, that was not enough money for a family to live on. We were desperately poor even though the kids didn’t know it because it was their environment and they didn’t suffer. Beverly and I suffered, though, because we had led different lives before and we knew the difference. My father bought us an old car from his work for a dollar and then paid for new brakes so it could pass a safety check. He paid for the insurance too. But we could only drive it a couple of times a week because we couldn’t afford the gas. I wanted to run away, Beverly wanted to run away—and did increasingly through alcohol—because life was unbearably hard. What was the point, why were we doing it? The answer? Because of a fantasy dream that I would write children’s stories and get my PhD and become a professor even though there were no jobs at that time or on the horizon. None of the doc students in my cohort got professorships. Most of us dropped out or didn’t finish. God in his mercy opened a temporary teaching job at Ashbury which against all odds I got.

It was in the midst of my suffering that Jesus called me. The call was classic as many converts attest to, only the details differ. Read Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven” if you’re interested. How did mine occur? Briefly, I unaccountably found that the Lord’s Prayer was often in my head as was Psalm 23, which I didn’t realize I knew. So too Sunday School lessons. As with most of us, most of the thoughts that come and go in our heads are not from conscious, but where were these specifically Christian thoughts coming from? I had stopped going to church when I was 15, about the same time that my mother stopped. My father continued to the end of his life, God bless him. I always believed in God because his existence makes more sense, fits the pieces of life far better than atheism. Jesus, however, was a different matter. Jesus makes very clear demands on your attitude and your actions. I was not ready to believe in Jesus as my personal savior and redeemer, the god who forgave my sins if I repented and promised eternal life with him and countless other believers. I resisted his call as long as I could and then said Yes. My life changed from misery to joy although I was still desperately poor and struggling to survive with my wife and three kids. On my conversion I took them to church where they were all baptized and grew up going to church every Sunday. Then they, like me, stopped their worship. Recently, your mother has recovered her worship. Sadly, your father never has. More sadly, your parents never created the habit of worship in you or Katie. I don’t know if you believe in God, Peter, or have welcomed Jesus into your heart and life. Are you Christian? Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit? Do you believe you are a sinner and believe that Jesus has paid the price of those sins by dying on the Cross and then rising from the dead to break the power of death?

The world we live in is a spiritual battleground between good and evil, between God and Satan. By the very books you have read growing up, you know the truth of that war going around us and in us. Harry Potter knows, Edmund and Eustace in Narnia know, and so do the other heroes of the books you read. St. Paul talks knowingly about that war in his letters, a war which Christ has won through his death and resurrection but which many battle skirmishes great and small continue. Satan does not give up easily and his minions continue their assaults on us with all manner of temptation. Read C.S. Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters” for an entertaining and insightful description of what’s going on. The struggles will all be finished, however, on the Day of Judgement at the end of time when Christ will rule supreme. C.S. Lewis’s “Last Battle”, the last book of Narnia, describes it marvelously, echoing much of the Bible in his descriptions. The material world we live in is not the final reality or even though many people say it is. We are spiritual creatures, not just physical ones. To deny that is, I believe, to deny reality. And once you acknowledge the spiritual reality of life itself and of your own life, then the choice of good or evil must be made continually. One of the arguments for the existence of God is the universal knowledge of good and bad in everyone’s heart and conscience. This is not some random accident of a spurious psychological evolution; it is the act of a creative God who made us in his image, part of which is to know good from evil.

I am a sinner. That’s why I’m a Christian. I need Jesus to forgive me my sins and free me to live truly and glorify my creator and redeemer. I can’t save myself on my own. I believe Jesus’ actions have rescued me from my sins and damnation. By faith I live. My outstanding sin is adultery. I committed adultery with your grandmother Beverly. The result of that was her pregnancy and her divorce from Bruce, Susan’s father. It doesn’t matter that their marriage was in tatters, it was still a marriage and my adultery broke it, which had many consequences, some good, some not. I committed adultery again, this time against Beverly when she was dying of her alcoholism. The great irony of our long marriage was that it began and ended in adultery, hardly some time to crow about. I had to face those sins and repent before I could be forgiven. The consequence of my last adultery was an unmarried relationship with Mallory, Tess’s mother. For her own reasons, Mallory refused to marry me, and Tess was born out of wedlock, a stigma that will never go away and will affect her future relationships. That is just one consequence of my sin. That too I have repented and continue to do so as the results of it march on. All sin has ramifications beyond the immediacy of the sinner himself. During Mallory’s pregnancy, I walked El Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route, praying that Mallory would not abort our child, and simply praying for my splintering soul.

A direct consequence of my adultery was to lose my job in the US. The school I worked at decided that a teacher who did not properly mourn his dead wife but engaged in an affaire and produced an illegitimate child was clearly not a teacher they wanted on staff. When I lost my job I also lost my work visa, which meant that staying in the US made me an illegal alien. Marriage to Mallory would have given me a visa, but she rejected me and I had to leave. In Canada I found a job in Kelowna as a substitute professor for professors on sabbatical. That lasted two years after which I was unemployed and able to get a small unemployment cheque, just enough to afford a room in the YMCA in Vancouver where I stayed for a year, blaming God for my troubles. But for those three years I held on to Psalm 23, repeating it a dozen times a day. It’s burned into my brain. I held onto that psalm which God gave me to keep hope alive. It has become my story.

I had been angry at God since Beverly’s death and the spiraling down of my life. Every year things seemed to get worse and my desire for happiness thwarted. I blamed circumstances, people, and God for the troubles of my life. Not once did I look at myself, at my attitude and my actions. I could not see myself with any objectivity at all. No one had the courage to confront me. I went to church every morning in Vancouver but confessed nothing to the priest or to anyone else. I felt utterly alone even from God but I kept talking to him. He let me stew in the consequences of my sin but protected me from the worst, keeping me off the street as a bum by giving me just enough money to live in the YMCA and eat two small meals a day.

As the limits of my unemployment insurance time approached, the Lord arranged for me to go to Korea to teach English through what I initially saw as a series of accidents but in hindsight was a clear plan of his grace. In Korea I met Kyeong, my new wife. I didn’t like her at first nor she me because each of us saw the heavy emotional baggage we were carrying, making neither of us fit for a sustaining and loving relationship, which involves a lot of sacrifice based on an objective view of yourself and your sins which keep you in the corral of selfishness. But, for only the second time in my life, I heard God’s voice telling me to love Kyeong. The first time I heard him was his call to faith. As with the first call, I didn’t want to obey. Eventually I did because I began to see how small I was shrinking my heart by not loving anyone but being angry instead. I was surprised that Kyeong resisted my love.

Soon after I had declared myself to Kyeong, I went to India to teach at an international school with a contract that had been set months beforehand. From there I courted Kyeong through emails and phone calls. Because she had just started going to Wooridle Church, we began sharing our lives, interpreting events through the daily Bible passage that Wooridle was using. Because I was reading Rick Warren’s A Purpose Driven Life, Kyeong got a copy and we used the insights and teachings in it to further explore ourselves and God’s will for us. On one of my visits to her in Korea, we married. I attended Wooridle Church with her and became a member.

When I returned to Korea, we did not have much money and Kyeong had a great deal of debt. Our first years were hard. We focused on our relationship with God and paying off debts. We lived frugally because there was really no true choice. We attended church on Sundays and Wednesday nights. We went to our small group meetings on Friday. We shared our sins and our life’s hurts in the small group meetings and listened to others sharing theirs. God’s mercy has no bounds. Slowly, by God’s grace, our small, hard life became a happy one. I joined the cleaning team at church and helped clean the buildings we rented every Sunday and Wednesday. I couldn’t speak Korean and the other people couldn’t speak English, but we came to understand one another. For years I would sit through sermons and testimonies with no translation until God blessed my patience with a budding translation service. I came to see my time of cleaning, worship attendance, small group sharing, and frugal living as badly needed training by God. It all helped keep my eyes on Jesus. Although the hardship is the blessing, God gave me many others.

I got a small paying job writing my stories, a wonderful experience for a year! Every week day I’d get on the subway with a paper notebook and write a story. When I’d drafted the story I would come back on the subway, illustrating the story. The subway was my office. Although the stories are not a runaway success, they led to my current job as principal. My school was the third one offering me a job, the first two in India that, with the prayerful help of my spiritual community, I turned down. I accepted the principalship of my school because I and my community recognized the will of God in the direction he wanted in my life. The blessing of a spiritual community to help keep you honest is one of God’s greatest gifts because to trust only yourself is to cut yourself off from objective examination and correction. In my new job, I quickly discovered that the training I’d received in my church was essential for how I was to create relationships, who to fire, who to hire, and how to direct the school according to God’s will. Continual prayer was and is essential. It took many years to transform the school, but by God’s grace it has been and is now internationally recognized as a great small school. God’s doing, not mine.

Despite my sinful lapses into arrogance, judgmentalism, and selfishness, God has continued to bless me. My school keeps extending my contract, we own a house and an apartment, our debts are paid, we have nice clothes and furniture, we are in reasonably good health, and I am finishing my PhD after a 40 year hiatus. And through this worldly blessing, God continues to love us by allowing us troubles in our small groups and in our families that we cannot handle on our own. It’s all training to keep us focused on our Lord and the love he has for us. This leads me back to you, Deadname.

Far and away the majority of homosexuals experienced sexual abuse as a child, discoloring their development because when they go through puberty that memory deeply confuses them and they scarcely understand their feelings, hard enough in adolescents without them being muddied by a history of sexual abuse. My question to you, Deadname, is did you have a pre-pubescent sexual experience with a man, perhaps at a camp? If not, what emotional lack in your environment led you make such a gesture?

I assume that, since you say you are transgender, you have had or are having homosexual relationships. If so, from a Christian perspective, that is a sin. You went to a Catholic school and read the Old and New Testament passages that categorically declare it as a sin. You would also have read in the first chapter of Genesis that God created us male and female. If you are Christian, then what you are doing sexually is a sin and needs to be repented. It is a great mercy that we have a loving God who has interceded on our behalf and will forgive us. God loves the sinner but not the sin. Unrepentant sin jeopardizes your salvation.

Please keep in mind that at the end of your life you will stand before God, the creator of the universe and your creator. Looking into the face of God, how will you be able to say that he made a mistake in your gender? The mistake is yours, Deadname, not God’s.

God loves you, Deadname, your parents love you, and your family loves you including me. But you are committing a sin that will have serious consequences not only for you but also for others, just as my sins had unhappy consequences for many others. In the name of Jesus Christ, I beg you to see yourself with more objectivity and see the sin you are committing because your salvation is at risk. The Father loved the world so much that he sent Jesus to redeem us from the results of our sins. He instilled in our hearts the knowledge of right and wrong and reinforced that with Scripture. He sent his Holy Spirit to guide us into all righteousness. Look to Jesus, Deadname, and come home to God. All us prodigal sons are welcomed back when we return.

Love,

Papa Ted

From: [email protected]

To: Papa Ted

Subject: Your Email

Hi Papa Ted,

I got your email, I want to make something explicitly clear, nothing you, or anyone else says will change the fact that I am a woman, and always have been.

My identity is not up for debate.

I didn't know how to express what I was feeling for most of my life before June of 2018, but that doesn't make the feeling any different. I had an epiphany where I finally put the concepts I had learned in my Queer Theory and Feminist Theory classes into practice, when assessing my own internal feelings.

I also want to make it clear to you that the choice I'm making is not to feel this way, but rather to do something about it, so that I can lead a more fulfilling life, because the alternative leaves me in a dark place, one that has claimed the lives of far too many trans, gender non-conforming, and other queer folks already. My choice is to transition, and become more comfortable with my body, and myself, and be more emotionally in touch with myself, and those I choose to have any sort of relationship with.

Going into a career already known for putting mental health at risk, I know that it's my responsibility to make sure I am emotionally healthy before I try to be a support for any of my patients in the future, so not transitioning would actually be professionally irresponsible.

You mentioned that we shouldn't make life any harder than it already is, but you also referred to struggles and hardship as blessings from god (presumably because they can teach us something). Is struggling with my gender identity somehow not a struggle that could qualify as a blessing? I know a number of trans folks, and they are all the kindest, most compassionate, and caring people I've ever met, they are important role models to me because they have figured themselves out, and achieved a level of inner piece that most people can only dream of. And all that despite the horrible, transphobic tirades, commentary, and articles that exist in our world, not to mention being regularly dehumanised by politicians determined to see us exterminated.

Is the Book of Job not explicitly about God allowing torment to be visited upon a man as a test of his faith? To prove a point to Satan? I would argue that, from a Christian perspective, queer folk exist to teach us all compassion, and to test our grasp of the golden rule. There is no group I can think of from more diverse backgrounds, who have consistently turned the other cheek. The Stonewall riots, which are commemorated by Pride every year, were the release of frustrations that had been building up since the creation of police in America. I would argue that the Stonewall riots have led to the world becoming a safer place for us all, but especially those who are visibly in the queer community.

I also think I should point out that the bible actually calls shellfish equally abominable as homosexuality, in the same passage, along with mixed fibres. Now, if you don't take the rest of the passage literally, why would we take any of it literally? Is the bible not supposed to be somewhat metaphorical?

And if we're going to take lessons from the bible, should we not focus on the ones that Jesus taught, like loving each other? Is that not the Whole Point of religion? to encourage love?

I won't be addressing your unfounded opinion that "homosexuals" (by the way, please never use that term to describe any member of the Queer Community again) other than to say that there is no evidence to support that, however, there is evidence that many queer folk are abused because of their non-conformity in hyper-conservative environments. These abuses, as with all abuses, are solely the responsibility of the abusers, and not the abused. This is non-negotiable, you will not bring this up again. 

I'd also like to remind you that sex, gender, gender expression, and sexual orientation are all separate, and discrete.

Sex: usually used to refer to a biological state, most often used for reproductive discussions. biological sex is determined though a combination of chromosomal status, gonadal status, and hormonal status (see the videos I linked to in my original email if you would like a more in depth exploration of this topic).

Gender: a social construct, nothing more, often linked to sex in western society, for the last 1,000 years, but outside of that, is significantly more fluid. Western society favours a binary construction, but many other cultures have 3rd or more genders, both linguistically and culturally.

Gender expression: the way one expresses their gender identity, you do it through traditionally masculine clothing, for example.

Sexual orientation: who you are attracted to, certainly not a binary, since gender is not a binary.

You say the bible states that we were created man and woman, but I'd counter that the bible was written, translated, and re-translated by men, who probably had some kind of agenda. If all of us are sinners, then those that wrote the bible onto paper certainly are not exempt.

For me personally, I don't put a lot of stock in the absolutes that the bible lists, because there are so many possible ways to translate ancient languages, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the fact that it has helped so many people see the light in our world, I'm happy for you that you find peace through your worship.

Now, there' a bit of a paradox in what you've accused me of, because I am a trans lesbian. That means that either you have to accept my gender, and with that the fact that I am "a homosexual" or, I'm doing nothing wrong at all, but I cannot be both homosexual, and "not actually a woman" at the same time.

Frankly, you're going to have to accept, or at least bite your tongue on all counts if you want to continue to have me in your life.

As for serious consequences, if you think I haven't weighed all of the downsides of coming out against the downsides of staying in the closet, then you're a fool. I am well aware of the transphobia, and homophobia I'm going to face, and frankly, I've been lucky so far, you're the first person who has said anything so shitty to me.

I want to make it clear what I'm asking of you, and what I was asking of everyone who received my coming out email. I have a new name I am using, use it, and I have new pronouns, use them. I don't expect you to understand, truly you can't, unless you've been through a similar experience with gender, I don't even need you to accept it, all I'm asking, is you grant me some basic human decency and use my correct name and pronouns. You may hold your reservations about my "lifestyle" in your heart and let them fester if you wish, but I do not wish to know. we never need to talk about my transness again if that topic makes you so uncomfortable, but in exchange, I ask that you not criticize my choice to live a fuller life.

If you cannot do this, then it will sadden me deeply, you've been a role model my whole life, I've always looked up to you, but if you cannot respect my name and pronouns, then I cannot interact with you, for my own well being. If you choose not to respect my name and pronouns, you will never see or hear from me again. Both of my parents have my back on this, because they want me to be able to live a full and happy life, and people not respecting my name and pronouns have no place in it.

On the topic of my parents, and their relationship with religion, as well as my own. My mum is a member of an Anglican church, a church that has joined the 21st century, and openly supports the queer community, especially trans folks. My father attended Catholic school, as Katie and I did, and all Catholic school has ever succeeded in creating are people who leave the church, if they ever joined, and religious zealots who would see me dead before granting me rights or healthcare, is that what you want? because it certainly seems like it's what you're advocating.

If I ever find that the church is the right place for me, then I may choose to discuss faith with you, assuming you've managed to respect my name and pronouns, but until that day, I don't really want to discuss theology with you. I do not wish to have you treat my father, my sister, or I with such disdain. Nor Tess, for that matter, this is the 21st century, not Victorian England. While it may not sit well with your conscience that Tess was born "out of wedlock" (excuse me while I clutch at my pearls), this reflects nothing on her character, she is strong, kind, independent, and is already growing into a wonderful human being. And frankly, if your respect for my mother is conditional upon her church attendance, you can bite your tongue about that too.

I almost decided not to read your original email, or even acknowledge it with any kind of response, because reading your email, and working on this response has taken a toll on me. I decided that I couldn't live with myself if I didn't give you at least one more chance to be a better person. In writing this response, I'm not expecting, or wanting any kind of reply from you, unless it's a message of support. I'm not asking for much, name and pronouns. You don't have to understand, just accept. -- With love, compassion, and hope,

Paislee

The Shrine Trip (Post 98) 7-22-15

Stephen and I made a mini-pilgrimage to a Lourdes Shrine in Cleveland over the weekend.  He really liked the one we visited a couple of weeks ago in Emmitsburg, Maryland, but I let him know that I was not driving south for the third weekend in a row so we settled on a commutable sanctuary.  I warned him not to expect a well-manicured spiritual venue frequented by scores of nuns in habit, solemn young priests and discalced Franciscan brothers like we saw at Mount St Mary's University.  Cleveland similar to many other Rust Belt cities and the majority of Europe has walked away from the Catholic faith.

There certainly are still Catholics in Cleveland, but they are a weak broth compared to the bubbling ethic piety that existed in most immigrant populated Mid-Western cities during the last century.  IHM is very lucky to have vibrant and thriving Phil-Am and Guadalupano communities within the parish.  In this area of the country there is nobody processing statues of Mary on her feast days, performing live Stations of the Cross in front of throngs of people, or waking up at an intimidatingly early time for Mass during the days of Simbang Gabi.  There is plenty of Life Teen activity and Pancake Breakfasts, but gone are all the ethnic Catholic festivities that you would associate with once predominantly Italian, German, Czech and Polish Catholic neighborhoods.  The cavernously empty amphitheater seating at the Lourdes Shrine in Euclid, Ohio stands as a testament to a flavor of Catholic spirituality that has been largely lost to my generation, but hopefully will interest younger folks that I think of as the Catholic generation of Chad.

I knew pretty much what to expect at the Euclid Shrine because I had visited there two years ago during a visit to Ohio to drop off Natalie for her summer vacation. It was a peculiar previous pilgrimage, because my father used the occasion to escape the house and dragged my mother along with us.  He was and is too challenged with regard to mobility to make the hike from the car to the familiar looking grotto manufactured to mimic its more famous cousin.  Dad rode along with the purpose of adding one subsequent stop at Geraci's, his favorite authentic Italian restaurant, and another at Gaelic Imports his repository for bangers and Yorkie bars.  I would have tried to impress upon him the irony of a man too hobbled to cane himself into a healing shrine, but Dad is not Catholic and I was pleased to have some private time in prayer bereft of paternal clock-watching.

I don't know how long I spent there or exactly what I thought about in quiet contemplation of my future, Stephen's health and my father's health on that day two years ago.  I probably came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea for me to write some stuff. While my particular prayers were a fuzzy blur open to speculative interpretation, I do clearly remember that I visited the gift shop and bought a print of the Our Lady of the Streets for my bedroom.  The portrait always reminds me of Pam.  I guess someone at IHM likes the image as well. 

I also purchased a liter plastic container to fill with the spring water stream that dripped across the authentic rock brought from the original grotto in actual France.  I was pleased to buy something from the well-accoutered but mostly unpatronized shop of curios manned by what seemed to be the last VHM sister from the adjoined dormitory that apparently could have housed seventy women or more.  A thoroughly lonely experience, I think I stood nearly solo at the altar rail of the outdoor sanctuary that could have provided adequate seating for 9:00 AM Sunday Mass at IHM.  That might have been one or two other people praying quietly as the water slowly filled my bottle at the speed of a kitchen spigot almost shut.  A white statue of St Bernadette watched me kneeling quietly and reminding me that neither she nor Pam had been physically cured by the wondrous water that healed so many people but not all depending on God's many faceted plan not human whim or desire.

But like a spider sense I felt the hourglass sand of my father's patience slipping from the upper chamber through the neck of the glass and down into the nether portion.  I possess a pretty good inclination of how long Dad can quietly read a novel in the car when his mind is considering which type of pasta and sauce he is currently favoring.  At any minute I expected my mother to get sent on a scouting mission from the silver Tahoe that lay calmly at anchor in the nearby parking lot.  So I booked it with only a partial sacramental fill in the white plastic half jerry can I had previously purchased.  Of course he yelled at me when I slipped back into the driver's seat to my mother's silent amusement because I had returned with less than everything that I had purchased, a Donnelly nono, although as a Protestant my Dad doesn't actually consider minor league Lourdes water as any more valuable or beneficial than bottled Dasani product. I explained to him that my beaker was actually half full rather than half empty which brought a guffaw from him.  As I remember, he shook his head in disbelief as if I had returned to the car cow-less with a half-handful of magic beans.  Dismayed at my lack of sacramental savvy, Dad ordered me to resume my duties as chauffeur so I turned his land yacht in the direction from which the tightly tuned divining rod in his stomach detected marinara sauce.

 With my own wheels this go around, I didn't have to worry about my father's impatience to leave - just my disquiet and fatigue.  I had worked with the third shift crew for the week so I had only recovery from extreme sleep deprivation planned for both Saturday and Sunday.  We drove up to the Euclid shrine on a quiet Saturday afternoon without anything else on the agenda.

Stephen was fully prepared;  he had cleaned out the residue of decades old Kool-Aid from a gallon-sized picnic thermos that he had discovered in my parent's basement or garage and planned to put my half-liter water supply to shame.  I decided that I would find something else to do in the largely deserted vicinity in case the septuagenarian sister from the gift shop should discover Stephen filling up his unofficial container at the little font.  I expect unpurchased containers were allowed, but I don't know that Stephen would have the sense to let someone else break in to fill up one of the little paper cups dispensed nearly the tiny spout of water coming off the rock.

Based on the remembered rate of flow from my previous visit, I figured that I had a half hour at least so I climbed up an asphalt path following a sign in the direction of some Stations of the Cross.  The trail was in better shape than I expected and I liked the plaster scenes, but the woods by the path were overgrown and the mini-sheds that protected the statuettes had not been painted recently.  It was a little like camp houses at Copperopolis - if you can't picture my reference, sign up for the next Emmaus retreat.  In a couple of cases there were Beebe gun holes in the protecting glass for the statues.  Greater Cleveland is not really a city that you expect to see hillbilly shenanigans, but maybe there are a few Hill Williams about.  The statuettes were all intact, but I was perplexed that anyone would use sacred art for target practice.  Several deer did happen by while I walked the path, so maybe it was just kids with really bad aim.

Because the glass and cabinets were sort of dingy, I snapped a few desultory pictures of the scenes and promenaded onward not expecting to burn the full half hour on the walk. Then I stumbled upon stations twelve and fourteen which were full sized statuary not mini-scenes.  Unexpectedly resplendent, both of the stations brought tears to my eyes. I realized at that point that I had stumbled into an experience that I was intended to have.  I didn't stay as long as I would have had I been alone; it makes me nervous to leave Stephen by himself.   I found that my son was fine when I got back to the grotto so I sat down next to Bernadette of white plaster and spend some time asking for some help with the unlikely house purchase that I am about to make. 

It was a good afternoon.  Stephen asked me about his water jug that contained a good amount of brownish water; I told him that it was very authentic with regard to how Bernadette's spring probably originally flowed.  Stephen bought me a book about angels in the gift shop so we contributed to the upkeep of a Shrine that I have come to value.  I recommend acts of piety and Traditional Catholic practice of the faith beyond mere Mass attendance to all of the generation of Chad.  I run into a lot of people that attend Mass once, twice or nonce a year.  I have heard a description of other Catholics that clock-in to their faith with holy water upon entering the sanctuary on Sunday and then clock-out of their faith again as they leave 60 minutes later.  There is so much more of God's love available to us.

I have found that living my life has required every inch of the spiritual roots that I have cultivated.  In retrospect every hour I ever spent in Eucharistic Adoration seems more necessary than just helpful.  A friend of mine spend hours and hours prostrate in Adoration; he tells me that he is still standing because of the practice.  I have another friend that I grew up with that is now a math teacher.  His mother, who I remember as a very devout Catholic, has now suffered a debilitating stroke.  My friend, unfortunately, probably only attended Mass as a kid under threat of corporal consequence.  The other day he posted on Facebook that he feels it is unjust that his mother should be rewarded for her faith with calamity.  I wanted to respond to him that he ought to formulate an inequality with infinite happiness times infinite eternal time on one side and a finite amount of temporal suffering on the other.  I didn't message that to him.  He wouldn't have understood.   Having never made any effort to gain roots in the faith, my friend is rudderless and may drift into the shoals of functionalism.  In the times we live, we all need strong Catholic roots, the sooner and deeper the better.

The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind?

TorontoRealtyBlog

Folks, it’s been a while.

Maybe I’m mellowing as I get closer to obtaining true “middle-aged” status.

Or maybe I simply reached a point where nothing in the world of real estate fazes me anymore.

But here’s something new: there are buyers in the market that didn’t know the price of real estate could fluctuate, and now they’re upset.

This is the p-e-r-f-e-c-t time for me to revive a classic TRB feature, The Friday Rant…

I don’t understand the world today.

And while I know that sounds like something an old man says, I just really, truly seem to have lost touch with the world around me.

The Prime Minister of Canada.  Wow.  This guy!

Interrupts a young speaker at a town hall meeting, who had the audacity to say “mankind,” to tell her that “we,” whoever we are, prefer to use the term “people-kind,” since it’s more inclusive.

The pendulum has swung so far one way, that it’s about to break through the other side of the universe on the way back.

Sorry, but I don’t like Mr. Trudeau.  I think he’s of below-average intelligence, his low self-esteem, ego, and desire to be admired is at the forefront of every decision he makes on behalf of 33,000,000 people, and he has no experience, or ability, to lead.

This is a microcosm of where we’ve gone as a society, and while some think this is steering us in a better direction for peoplekind, I think it’s making us feeble, weak, and eventually we’ll all be incapable of self-care.

The public school systems have done away with “enriched” programs, such as the enriched English programs I took throughout high school that helped make me the writer I am today, so that “everybody can get an equal opportunity.”  So in the race to the bottom that has become public education, we’d now rather have a so-called “level playing field,” than ever see an advanced child flourish.

We don’t keep score in children’s sports games anymore.  Somebody might get upset to learn that in sports, as in life, there are winners and losers.

Cue the “December Seasonal Concert.”

Change the lyrics to “O Canada,” because it’s one of the worst things plaguing our country today.

Have we ever become softer as a society?

Many of you are already disagreeing, so I won’t go on, with countless more examples, and perhaps better ones, of where our municipal, provincial, and federal leaders have taken us.

But I fear it’s this “guidance” that has brought us to a point where most people in society today refuse to take any responsibility of their actions, especially when those actions are misguided, uninformed, or have consequence of any sort.

As it pertains to real estate, I’m seeing this more and more.

And how could it not transpire, with what we have inflicted upon ourselves?

Recall the story of the “Museum FLTS” condominium project in Toronto, which was cancelled back in November.

The newspapers picked up the story, and made martyrs of these poor souls who entered into legally-binding contracts with a developer who then exercised his right to terminate the project.  I wrote about it on my blog, and I was extra nice:

Another Pre-Construction Condo, Cancelled. Who Is To Blame?

And despite being told by many that I was too nice, I still received hate mail from people who bought into the project – many of them who were obviously well-versed enough in contract law to not spend the $3,000 on a lawyer that might have educated them on the pros and cons of the stack of paper that was thrust upon them by a salesperson, representing the developer.

Oh, the heat I took!  Wow!

I try to take the high road folks, I do.  And it took every ounce of strength I had not to share with you the self-pitying, naive, wishful-thinking emails I received from buyers into the project, who read my blog, and took issue.

You wouldn’t believe it, if you tried.

But as bad as that example of “not taking responsibility for your actions” truly was, I think we reached a new low point.

Some of you pointed this out last week, so I know I already have your ear.

“What did the neighbours pay? Whitby homebuyers just found out the answer: a lot less”

This story first appeared on the CBC website on January 24th, and to attempt to read it without shaking your head at least once is a fool’s errand.

The very first paragraph tells you all you need to know:

Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago.

Right.

Sooooo……….what’s the story?

A person who can tell time, tie their shoe, and breathe in-and-out, could probably ascertain that the price of real estate, believe it or not, can fluctuate.

Prices go up, prices go down.

Like the stock market, or spot gold.  Bonds, or treasury bills.  Corn futures, or Bitcoin…

But the story here, folks, is that some of the buyers who purchased real estate last year, and who saw the value decrease, are, well, upset.

“It’s painful,” Astrid Poei said in an interview. (from the article)

That’s fair.  Nobody is expecting this person not feel the sting of an on-paper loss, for a property not built, which in effect, doesn’t really mean anything.

“There are no building materials on site, there is no foundation poured, so I don’t understand how we are paying more than someone who bought a couple of weeks ago.” (from the article)

Here’s where things go off the rails a little bit.

The idea of there being “no building materials on site,” and “no foundation poured,” simply goes back to inexperience, and naivety.  It’s pre-construction; delays are automatic.  I’m not going to belabour this point.

But then somehow attaching the fact that the project hasn’t started building yet to the idea that “we’re paying more than somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago,” doesn’t make sense to me.

What’s the issue here?

That somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago paid less?

God help us, folks.

This is what we’ve done to ourselves, as a society.

By removing scores from children’s soccer games, automatically passing high school students who receive failing grades, and electing left-wing governments that promise everything to everyone, we’ve allowed people to believe that they can’t fail.

Failure is a reality in life.

And when you buy real estate, you should know that the price can go up, or down.

Again, from the article: “To come back a year later and see the same house that we bought is now $90,000 cheaper, that’s not cool,” Thompson, 52, said in an interview.

Not cool.

Is that an economic or legal phrase?

Imagine that, folks.  The audacity of a developer to sell properties for prices, as they see fit.

The irony is, if the properties were selling for more money, these people wouldn’t be complaining.

But then what about the second-phase of buyers?  Could they complain?

What if somebody said, “To come back a year later, and see the same house that this guy bought only 12 months ago is now $90,000 more, that’s not cool.”  Would we accept that?

And now, the kicker:

“…Poei and Thompson, who are not looking forward to meeting their Phase 2 neighbours, knowing they paid tens of thousands of dollars less for the same homes.”

Ain’t it the truth, folks?

I remember once when my best-friend of 22 years bought a set of Callaway irons for $750, for which I had paid $1,000 the previous year.  So I did what any normal person would do under those circumstances: I kicked his dog, and then never talked to that motherf*cker again…

I know, I know, I’ve said too much.

But guess what?

I’m far from finished…

The Toronto Star also picked up this story, for some odd reason, since I really don’t think it qualifies as news.

“Price drop crushes pre-construction home buyers’ dreams”

Important point here – I’m not faulting the writer.  I think she’s awesome, I’ve done a ton of stories with her, and as I’ve learned over the years – sometimes, the story picks you.

But it’s the quotes in here that really get me.

And even worse than the CBC article – this one shows not only the absolute disillusionment of the buyer, but also the complete and utter lack of qualification!

Mariam Boni was among the buyers caught up in Toronto’s scorching property market last January. She says she got an email from Mattamy when the first phase of the development was released. On the appointed date, she waited three hours in line to get a ticket to return to the sales centre the following day.

When she went back, there were only two lots still available and Boni ended up spending $899,000, plus additional money for upgrades, exceeding her target price of $500,000 to $600,000.

Although she owns a home already, she said Queen’s Common would be a better place to raise her son.

Wow.

A lot going on here…

So first, we have a woman that stood in line to get a ticket to buy a home.  Can you say, “mania?”  I hear Bitcoin came down from $20,000, btw…

Second, she spent $900,000, with a budget of $500,000 – $600,000.

And last but not least, she already owns a home.  This was a second property, and while she was probably going to sell the first one, it doesn’t remove the speculative nature of the adventure.

The woman added:

“I have a 3-year-old. I’m thinking about his future, I’m thinking this is a good investment. It’s going to go up in price, I’m going to do something nice for my child.”

Exactly!

You thought it was a good investment.  You thought it would go up in price.

You thought.

That’s it.

That’s all you need to know.

There’s no guarantee, nor should there be.  If the prices went up, as you thought, would the developer come back to you and cry foul?  Would Mattamy Homes go to the Toronto Star to describe the hurt and anguish they feel about selling properties that went up in price, when all the while, they could have held them and made more money?

The developer offered this explanation, which is like explaining to a child how boys and girls are different:

“When (the market) is moving upwards, we obviously raise our prices and when it’s moving downwards, in order to continue to sell and to build and complete the communities, we have to lower our prices to a price point the market will bear.”

Yes, when the market goes up, prices go up.  When the market goes down, prices go down.  What’s that, Marigold?  It’s half-past four?

I honestly can’t believe these stories went to print.

Our imaginations could run wild with the analogies.  In fact, some of last week’s readers already beat me to it.

So tell me I’m wrong, folks.

Tell me that these stories were newsworthy.

Tell me that the buyers in these articles have a legitimate beef.

Tell me that peoplekind should be able to buy real estate with absolutely no fear of the price dropping, but with the full expectation that the price will rise.

But do so in the comments below, because I have to leave; I need to go find something sweet.  This blog has left me really goddam salty…

The post The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2nNRXsU

Incredulity towards media reports: a distraction within a distraction?

MUH INDEPENDENT MEDIA THO REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This was shared in an Anonymous Facebook post. I do not support, nor oppose Anonymous as an organisation, because as a friend suggested, they are simply too diverse to judge. In fact, I empathise with the notion Anonymous is peddling. Anonymous, along with various other organisations such as The Anti-Media and my personal favourite, The Bruce Morgan Report, actively resist corporate media (though The Bruce Morgan Report’s reasons deviate from those of the other two).

 This resistance of the media is by no means a new thing, however, through social media platforms, it has gained staggering strength in the past decade. Anonymous, for example, has nearly seven million Facebook likes. There is an exceptionally large profile of people that are subscribed to this resistance. In fact, in a survey undertaken with funding from the American Press Institute in early 2016, only 6% of Americans stated they have a “great deal of trust” in the media, which makes sense, considering the majority of headlines regarding the aforementioned survey selectively excluded the words “great deal of” from the findings[1]. Irony and the Yezhoving of important information aside, as the survey suggests, media outlets have largely lost the trust of the public. Not only that, this incredulity towards media reports has resulted in large factions of people not purely distrusting media, but further becoming anti-media. Take the group, The Anti-Media’s description as a definition for this “anti-media”:

“The “Anti” in our name does not mean we are against the media, we are simply against the current mainstream paradigm. The current media, influenced by the industrial complex, is a top-down authoritarian system of distribution”[2] 

Excellent. We need people challenging corporate media, or else it becomes an even stronger tool for the elite to maintain their hegemony over society. This is problematic, though, when there is a failure to recognise that there still exists mainstream media independent of these corporations… y’know, independent media. Here lies one concern I have with this intransigent contempt for the media.

 Many of those that are anti-media seem to hold a widespread inability to distinguish between independent and corporate media, as if all mainstream media is owned by the elite of society, and as if it only serves this purpose of distracting the populous. If you want evidence of this, wait for the next big Western tragedy to occur and watch the standard Facebook statuses emerge concerning the media’s lack of coverage about what is occurring in developing nations; particularly Syria.

 The notion that mainstream media lacks coverage of the conflict in Syria is a fairly dubious one when a leisurely visit to the “World” section of the ABC News website has already supplied me with two articles directly relevant to Syria.

Furthermore, searching articles containing the word “Syria” from the past three months on the ABC News website will nab me 121 articles from between November 19 and December 22, 2016 alone[3] (idk why the search doesn’t show more recent articles, but I can assure you that they exist). I, sadly, am not willing to go to the effort of also finding how many allusions the SBS News website makes to Syria, but such monumental effort was never required anyway.

 All you really have to do for coverage about the conflict in Syria and other events in developing countries is change the bloody channel. ABC News Evenings at 6PM and SBS World News at 6:30PM, yo. You can even dig a little deeper if you like, it’s not like we are short of media outlets in the Western world.

 I’m flogging at a dead horse here, because if people REALLY wanted coverage of the conflicts in Syria, they would find it themselves, instead of complaining about what various other media outlets were reporting.

 I fear many people will simply refuse to recognise that there are many ways to gain coverage of what is happening in developing nations, because it exempts them from actually giving two shits, as if there is an unforsaken responsibility to do so. To me, hiding behind this veil of “the media doesn’t report the real issues” reeks of people wanting a reason to not care about these “real issues” they are allegedly being distracted from, while still maintaining some moral high-ground.

Note: Thankfully this article has nothing to do with Bolt, but I will never not meme this image.

Yet, even beyond those that enjoy exploiting grief for credibility, I fear this narrative of the media being a distraction will, in itself, become a distraction from real world issues. Ironically, major anti-media groups have been exposed for reporting sensationalist bullshit in the past.

 In 2014, The Anti-Media published a story with the title: “CDC Admits Ebola Could Become Airborne”[4] which is amusing because it is the same baseless fearmongering that they strive to oppose.

 This story was basically derived from a quote from the Director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention stating that it was not “impossible” for Ebola to become airborne[5]. Well, thank you, Captain Obvious.

 The Anti-Media later confessed to their mistake, preluding the article with the following message:

“This story is not 100% accurate but we are leaving it on our site for the sake of transparency. We published this article without fully fact checking it.” 

Huh, sounds just like corporate media: contriving an issue out of nothing and running a fear campaign to gain an audience.

 So, if sensationalist media is a distraction from real issues, does that mean this The Anti-Media article is a distraction from the distraction from real world issues?

 I guess this is the part where I attest to slacktivism, and admit my efforts to solve world issues have been ineffective at best, but at least discourse provides a foundation.

 Don’t get me wrong, being anti-media is not a bad thing. But let’s not let staying woke, fam, distract us from everything else that is happening in the world.

 Things I gone and referenced:

[1] https://www.rt.com/usa/340124-americans-trust-media-plummets/

[2] http://theantimedia.org/about

[3] http://search.abc.net.au/s/search.html?query=Syria&collection=news_meta&form=simple&gscope1=10&f.Date|d=d%3E18Nov2016%3C19Feb2017&period=Past%203%20Months&start_rank=1

[4] http://theantimedia.org/cdc-admits-ebola-airborne/

[5] http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/220046-cdc-airborne-ebola-possible-but-unlikely

The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind?

TorontoRealtyBlog

Folks, it’s been a while.

Maybe I’m mellowing as I get closer to obtaining true “middle-aged” status.

Or maybe I simply reached a point where nothing in the world of real estate fazes me anymore.

But here’s something new: there are buyers in the market that didn’t know the price of real estate could fluctuate, and now they’re upset.

This is the p-e-r-f-e-c-t time for me to revive a classic TRB feature, The Friday Rant…

I don’t understand the world today.

And while I know that sounds like something an old man says, I just really, truly seem to have lost touch with the world around me.

The Prime Minister of Canada.  Wow.  This guy!

Interrupts a young speaker at a town hall meeting, who had the audacity to say “mankind,” to tell her that “we,” whoever we are, prefer to use the term “people-kind,” since it’s more inclusive.

The pendulum has swung so far one way, that it’s about to break through the other side of the universe on the way back.

Sorry, but I don’t like Mr. Trudeau.  I think he’s of below-average intelligence, his low self-esteem, ego, and desire to be admired is at the forefront of every decision he makes on behalf of 33,000,000 people, and he has no experience, or ability, to lead.

This is a microcosm of where we’ve gone as a society, and while some think this is steering us in a better direction for peoplekind, I think it’s making us feeble, weak, and eventually we’ll all be incapable of self-care.

The public school systems have done away with “enriched” programs, such as the enriched English programs I took throughout high school that helped make me the writer I am today, so that “everybody can get an equal opportunity.”  So in the race to the bottom that has become public education, we’d now rather have a so-called “level playing field,” than ever see an advanced child flourish.

We don’t keep score in children’s sports games anymore.  Somebody might get upset to learn that in sports, as in life, there are winners and losers.

Cue the “December Seasonal Concert.”

Change the lyrics to “O Canada,” because it’s one of the worst things plaguing our country today.

Have we ever become softer as a society?

Many of you are already disagreeing, so I won’t go on, with countless more examples, and perhaps better ones, of where our municipal, provincial, and federal leaders have taken us.

But I fear it’s this “guidance” that has brought us to a point where most people in society today refuse to take any responsibility of their actions, especially when those actions are misguided, uninformed, or have consequence of any sort.

As it pertains to real estate, I’m seeing this more and more.

And how could it not transpire, with what we have inflicted upon ourselves?

Recall the story of the “Museum FLTS” condominium project in Toronto, which was cancelled back in November.

The newspapers picked up the story, and made martyrs of these poor souls who entered into legally-binding contracts with a developer who then exercised his right to terminate the project.  I wrote about it on my blog, and I was extra nice:

Another Pre-Construction Condo, Cancelled. Who Is To Blame?

And despite being told by many that I was too nice, I still received hate mail from people who bought into the project – many of them who were obviously well-versed enough in contract law to not spend the $3,000 on a lawyer that might have educated them on the pros and cons of the stack of paper that was thrust upon them by a salesperson, representing the developer.

Oh, the heat I took!  Wow!

I try to take the high road folks, I do.  And it took every ounce of strength I had not to share with you the self-pitying, naive, wishful-thinking emails I received from buyers into the project, who read my blog, and took issue.

You wouldn’t believe it, if you tried.

But as bad as that example of “not taking responsibility for your actions” truly was, I think we reached a new low point.

Some of you pointed this out last week, so I know I already have your ear.

“What did the neighbours pay? Whitby homebuyers just found out the answer: a lot less”

This story first appeared on the CBC website on January 24th, and to attempt to read it without shaking your head at least once is a fool’s errand.

The very first paragraph tells you all you need to know:

Planned homes in a new Whitby subdivision are on sale for up to $90,000 less than similar homes in the same development were a year ago.

Right.

Sooooo……….what’s the story?

A person who can tell time, tie their shoe, and breathe in-and-out, could probably ascertain that the price of real estate, believe it or not, can fluctuate.

Prices go up, prices go down.

Like the stock market, or spot gold.  Bonds, or treasury bills.  Corn futures, or Bitcoin…

But the story here, folks, is that some of the buyers who purchased real estate last year, and who saw the value decrease, are, well, upset.

“It’s painful,” Astrid Poei said in an interview. (from the article)

That’s fair.  Nobody is expecting this person not feel the sting of an on-paper loss, for a property not built, which in effect, doesn’t really mean anything.

“There are no building materials on site, there is no foundation poured, so I don’t understand how we are paying more than someone who bought a couple of weeks ago.” (from the article)

Here’s where things go off the rails a little bit.

The idea of there being “no building materials on site,” and “no foundation poured,” simply goes back to inexperience, and naivety.  It’s pre-construction; delays are automatic.  I’m not going to belabour this point.

But then somehow attaching the fact that the project hasn’t started building yet to the idea that “we’re paying more than somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago,” doesn’t make sense to me.

What’s the issue here?

That somebody who bought a couple of weeks ago paid less?

God help us, folks.

This is what we’ve done to ourselves, as a society.

By removing scores from children’s soccer games, automatically passing high school students who receive failing grades, and electing left-wing governments that promise everything to everyone, we’ve allowed people to believe that they can’t fail.

Failure is a reality in life.

And when you buy real estate, you should know that the price can go up, or down.

Again, from the article: “To come back a year later and see the same house that we bought is now $90,000 cheaper, that’s not cool,” Thompson, 52, said in an interview.

Not cool.

Is that an economic or legal phrase?

Imagine that, folks.  The audacity of a developer to sell properties for prices, as they see fit.

The irony is, if the properties were selling for more money, these people wouldn’t be complaining.

But then what about the second-phase of buyers?  Could they complain?

What if somebody said, “To come back a year later, and see the same house that this guy bought only 12 months ago is now $90,000 more, that’s not cool.”  Would we accept that?

And now, the kicker:

“…Poei and Thompson, who are not looking forward to meeting their Phase 2 neighbours, knowing they paid tens of thousands of dollars less for the same homes.”

Ain’t it the truth, folks?

I remember once when my best-friend of 22 years bought a set of Callaway irons for $750, for which I had paid $1,000 the previous year.  So I did what any normal person would do under those circumstances: I kicked his dog, and then never talked to that motherf*cker again…

I know, I know, I’ve said too much.

But guess what?

I’m far from finished…

The Toronto Star also picked up this story, for some odd reason, since I really don’t think it qualifies as news.

“Price drop crushes pre-construction home buyers’ dreams”

Important point here – I’m not faulting the writer.  I think she’s awesome, I’ve done a ton of stories with her, and as I’ve learned over the years – sometimes, the story picks you.

But it’s the quotes in here that really get me.

And even worse than the CBC article – this one shows not only the absolute disillusionment of the buyer, but also the complete and utter lack of qualification!

Mariam Boni was among the buyers caught up in Toronto’s scorching property market last January. She says she got an email from Mattamy when the first phase of the development was released. On the appointed date, she waited three hours in line to get a ticket to return to the sales centre the following day.

When she went back, there were only two lots still available and Boni ended up spending $899,000, plus additional money for upgrades, exceeding her target price of $500,000 to $600,000.

Although she owns a home already, she said Queen’s Common would be a better place to raise her son.

Wow.

A lot going on here…

So first, we have a woman that stood in line to get a ticket to buy a home.  Can you say, “mania?”  I hear Bitcoin came down from $20,000, btw…

Second, she spent $900,000, with a budget of $500,000 – $600,000.

And last but not least, she already owns a home.  This was a second property, and while she was probably going to sell the first one, it doesn’t remove the speculative nature of the adventure.

The woman added:

“I have a 3-year-old. I’m thinking about his future, I’m thinking this is a good investment. It’s going to go up in price, I’m going to do something nice for my child.”

Exactly!

You thought it was a good investment.  You thought it would go up in price.

You thought.

That’s it.

That’s all you need to know.

There’s no guarantee, nor should there be.  If the prices went up, as you thought, would the developer come back to you and cry foul?  Would Mattamy Homes go to the Toronto Star to describe the hurt and anguish they feel about selling properties that went up in price, when all the while, they could have held them and made more money?

The developer offered this explanation, which is like explaining to a child how boys and girls are different:

“When (the market) is moving upwards, we obviously raise our prices and when it’s moving downwards, in order to continue to sell and to build and complete the communities, we have to lower our prices to a price point the market will bear.”

Yes, when the market goes up, prices go up.  When the market goes down, prices go down.  What’s that, Marigold?  It’s half-past four?

I honestly can’t believe these stories went to print.

Our imaginations could run wild with the analogies.  In fact, some of last week’s readers already beat me to it.

So tell me I’m wrong, folks.

Tell me that these stories were newsworthy.

Tell me that the buyers in these articles have a legitimate beef.

Tell me that peoplekind should be able to buy real estate with absolutely no fear of the price dropping, but with the full expectation that the price will rise.

But do so in the comments below, because I have to leave; I need to go find something sweet.  This blog has left me really goddam salty…

The post The Friday Rant: Has The World Lost Its Mind? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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