Mortgage Advice For People Looking To Purchase a Home – From a Purchaser

J.M., , , , , Leave a comment

Good Morrow, dear reader. I have been absent from this blog for quite a while now and I know that the depression and debilitating sadness which my absence brought upon my readership was probably more than anyone should be made to go through. For that, I apologize to all three of you. The fact of the matter is I simply didn’t have the time or energy to blather on endlessly about topics of which I am no expert. You see, last November my wife and I got the idea in our heads to purchase a house. We are looking to grow our family, we would like to build up some equity, if we are going to have a mortgage we would like to start on it now so that we will be finished paying it off before we are 90 and lastly; we wanted a home of our own. Something that we picked out together. A place where we can see ourselves welcoming our children home for the holiday’s with their children. We bought a house.

Perhaps you, dear reader, are looking to do the same. Or perhaps you have already gone through the process and are looking for a few laughs as you read and reminisce over your own time in the financial trenches of the process toward home ownership. But, this article is for the newbie. I am hoping that what you read here scares the living shit out of you to the point of grand-mal seizures in order that you truly understand what you will go through if you decide to take the plunge and attempt to buy a house. If, after what you have read here, you still desire to purchase your own home, then God be with you. Because no one else will.

What I am going to do in the next couple thousand words is layout to the prospective buyer what exactly they are going to need in order to facilitate a smooth mortgage process. I will do this with the experience fresh on my mind as we only closed on our home a month ago. The first list will be what you need before anything else in order to walk into the mortgage lender’s office and not be told that unfortunately at this time there is nothing they can do for you.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE

  1. You and your partner or you yourself will need pretty decent credit. The average credit score that most conventional mortgage lenders are looking for is at least 640. That is on the low-end. 680 is where you’d ideally like to be but that may be nearly unattainable for some people. Have no fear: FHA is here! A FHA loan is a home loan that is guaranteed by the US government. It is also the most popular option for first time home buyers. Therefore, they are a little more forgiving when it comes to the credit score required in order to qualify for a loan. In fact, technically the lowest score that would qualify for an FHA loan is 500. Think you’re in the clear now??? Guess again, flapjack! Good luck finding a mortgage company that handles FHA that will even talk to you without a score of at least 580. I can hear you saying, ‘but you just said that the minimum score required is 500!’ Yes, I did. However, that is the minimum score laid out by the dept. of Housing and Urban Development or HUD. That does not mean that a private company must be beholden to that particular number. Mortgage companies use what are called overlays. Let’s talk about those.
  2. Overlays are essentially stipulations put forward by individual mortgage lenders in order to protect their money. Let me break it down for you. If you have a credit score of 580, you basically qualify for an FHA loan. Which requires that you put down 3.5% of the sale price of the house after your offer has been accepted by the seller. So why are we worried about that 580 number when the minimum credit score to qualify for an FHA is 500? Because, quite frankly, if your credit is under 580, you basically have shit credit. Meaning, you are a huge risk. Therefore, most lenders will try to cover their asses and thus is born the overlay. The overlay is them saying; “yes, we know that you technically qualify… but we are scared to death of doing business with you so we are requiring 580 rather than the 500 the US Govt. sees as acceptable.” It is a fail-safe for institutions with more money than God. Now, with some conventional loans, the strength of your credit score will be enough to waive the need to put any money down as your score will give the lender the peace of mind needed in order to give you a loan in good faith. That is because overlays mightn’t always be based on credit.  Sometimes, if you have good credit but are attempting to purchase a rather pricey house you will need to have a serious amount of salary. Or equity.  So, if you have less than a 580 credit score, you are required to put down 10% after the initial contract agreement. But again, you have a snowball’s chance in hell finding a lender who will work with folks with credit scores in the low 500’s. Remember, while overlays seem to be pretty uniform across the board, the individual lender is a private entity operating independently from the government even though they are issuing government-guaranteed loans. Meaning, they can do whatever they’d like with their overlays.
  3. Clean Financial History. If you have defaulted on any government loans, such as student loans, you can pretty much forget your chances of getting an FHA loan unless the default was long enough ago that it fell off your credit score or if it was adjudicated. Defaulting on any loan will hurt you, but if you are a first time home buyer, you are more than likely going to be gunning for an FHA loan which means that you will need a very clean credit history with the government. My best advice; unless it is an absolute necessity, do not finance any large purchases for at least six months to a year prior to purchasing a home. Trust me on this one. Once the underwriting phase of your mortgage application begins, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Remember, the lender is looking at you as a risk. Do they want to take a big risk or a small risk? Make sure you are a small risk.
  4. Up To Date Payments. Seriously, I cannot stress this one enough. Missing a credit card payment, car payment, medical bill, student loan, cell phone, hell anything really…  even a small payment because you simply forgot or because you had something going on that kept your attention away from your finances can really do damage to your credit. Pay attention to absolutely everything you owe money on and beg, scrape and work your ass off to make sure everything is paid on time. You are going to be scrutinized to the point of misery once the mortgage ball gets really rolling and you are going to want to be ready for any question your lender has for you. Make your life easier by limiting the number of those questions by making payments on time.
  5. DO NOT PAY OFF COLLECTIONS – unless the collections agency agrees to immediately remove the derogatory mark on your credit report. For some reason, paying off bills in collections is basically a nothingburger. Unless the agency agrees to remove the mark you are basically throwing your money away. If they do agree to remove the mark, get the person’s name that you spoke to, a confirmation number of the transaction and the home address of the person you spoke to so you can send them an endless stream of pictures of you and your family crying via mail. (No, don’t do that.) If they do not agree to remove the mark, hang up the phone. No, I mean it. Just hang up.
  6. Have Some Money to Put Down. This should seem like a no-brainer but having a nice pile of cash to sweeten the potential pot is going to help motivate your lender, who by the way could not care less about you, your family, your need for a home, your future or even your existence no matter how much they smile at you and tell you that they do.
  7. Be Employed. This ain’t 2006, bucko. You’ll need a job and proof that you can actually make your monthly mortgage payments.
  8. DO NOT HAVE ANY LARGE DEPOSITS IN YOUR ACCOUNTS – that cannot be accounted for easily. The mortgage company will analyze you as a risk and any potential extra debt will be held against you. Maybe your parents gave you a couple grand as a gift or maybe you won some money playing blackjack… great but you’d better be able to provide documentation of the deposits, where the funds came from and if you have to pay the deposits back. If not, you’ve just added about another 5-6 hours of headache across the entire process.
  9. DO NOT make the mistake of believing the scores you see on Credit Karma or any other free credit site. They are usually way, way off. The truth is, the three major credit agencies; Experian, Equifx and Transunion are updating your score regularly depending on how frequently your outstanding account originators are reporting. But a credit report costs money.  Therefore, the best you are going to get on any free credit site is a good guess as to the movement of your credit. If you see your scores going up, then you at least have an idea of whether or not what you are doing is making a difference in your credit. If you see them going down, same story. Use these sites as a gauge for credit movement, nothing else.

What to take away from this: if you have lousy credit, put your aspirations of home ownership on the back-burner for a while and work on your credit. Use your desire for a house as fuel to get your financial house in order. It might be disheartening to read that, but in the end it’d be much more painful to get all excited and set your heart(s) on a house only to be told repeatedly that there is no way you can purchase said house. If you have money saved up for a house and need to dip into it to take care of some credit issues, go ahead and do it. The score is key to you even getting your foot in the mortgage door. In the end, if your credit is good enough but you’ve spent some of your savings to get it to that point, you can always offer less on a down payment for the home which will mean a higher monthly mortgage payment. That is when you have to ask the difficult question; are we / am I financially ready for this? It ain’t worth having your dream house if you have to sleep on a blanket on the floor of it and eat Alpo for dinner at your non-existent dining room table.

You’ve worked on your credit, you have a job, you have some money ready to put down. You found the house that you want to buy. You have been pre-approved for the mortgage and your offer has been accepted! Congratulations! Welcome to the worst few weeks /  months of your life. Now, some people will tell you that pre-approval means that you are basically going to get your mortgage. In theory, they are correct but that doesn’t mean that something won’t crop up in the time between the application is filed and the closing date nor does it mean that the underwriter won’t churn something up which could be a deal breaker for you. So gird your loins and prepare for the exhausting and at times potentially humiliating battle ahead. Keep whiskey on hand. Now let’s take a look at the mortgage process and what you can expect.

  1. You have your pre-approval or pre-approval letter (qualifying letter) and you have applied for the mortgage. Now comes the fun part; underwriting. Assuming that you have signed the initial contract with the seller and have put down either your 1%, 3.5%, 10% or 20% you are going to enter the hellish nightmare that is underwriting. The underwriter will scrutinize your financial history and current financial situation with laser-like focus. They will want documentation of EVERYTHING. What do I mean by everything? Literally everything. Did you get a bonus at work? Excellent! They will need documentation of the bonus and an explanation of whether or not the bonus was a one time deal or a recurring bonus sent from and signed by your boss or financial officer. Did you miss a car payment three years ago when you fell out of a tree whilst trying to retrieve a frisbee and ended up breaking your grandpepep’s neck with the fall thus putting you into a spiral of booze and depression for a few months which facilitated you forgetting to make one payment on a loan that you hadn’t until that point and never since that one incident been late on? Sucks, man… but they will need a letter of explanation for that. Did you ever pee in the shower? They won’t need to know that but by the end of the process it wouldn’t surprise you if they asked that question and then for a detailed report from a licensed plumber explaining after extensive testing if there are any trace amounts of piss in your shower pipes. Yeah, it gets that bad.
  2. You have been approved… with conditions! Phew! You have made it! You are approved… wait what? What conditions? Huh? Ok, here is the best analogy I can come up with. Let me set the scene; doctor’s office, rectal exam, doctor has stubby sausage fingers, cold lube. “Well, Mr.(s) so-and-so, looks pretty good to me from what I can see! We are almost done. I am going to pull my finger out now, take a deep breath in and exhale when I tell you to… ok now. Much better, right? Excellent. Almost done, things are looking good. Just oneeeee little condition left” Well, that’s a relief! That wasn’t so bad. I mean, it wasn’t great but not as bad as I thought it would… hey, wait. Um… what condition? Why do you have a street cone covered in superglue and broken glass? “Oh, no worries. This is the condition I was mentioning a second ago, now shut up because we are going mucho-deepo on this one, pally. Scream if you want to, you are here because you asked for it!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” *Ram*. That, dear reader, is being conditionally approved. The nightmare of underwriting on steroids. Your lender, whom you initially liked, began to sort of distrust and now semi-loathe has basically become your own personal financial Charles Manson.
  3. You will need; at least three months of pay stubs, two most recent years of W-2’s, proof of current employment, bank statements for at least three months, letters of explanation, gift letters (if necessary), pint of blood, the patience of a saint. The process become almost interminable at this point. You will routinely ask yourself if iit is all worth it. You may even want to throw in the towel from time to time. remember; you have come this far. Just see it out. I reached out to my realtor during this phase to vent about how I was essentially losing my mind and his response which I am parroting to you here: “please just give them whatever they ask for, it will be over soon.” He was right. Bite your tongue, scream into a pillow, punch a stuffed animal and move forward in the process. Don’t let the process beat you. Also, get ready for an emotional rollercoaster. Some days will be smooth and you’ll think you are on your way. Some days you will wonder if the sale will even go through. You will reach out to your lender almost daily because there will most assuredly be fresh hell on a daily basis. You will get cryptic responses if any at all. Basically, the worst of it is upon you; the waiting. A lot of the process is doing what you are told and handing over what you are told to hand over and then simply sitting there on your hands while to wait for the next shoe to drop. The waiting is without a doubt, the worst part of the entire process. Keep more whisky on hand.
  4. Pray to whatever higher power you believe in that the appraisal goes well. If the appraisal comes in too low, you are screwed. If the appraisal comes in too high you are screwed. If the home was built before 1975, and you are trying to get an FHA loan, and there is any sort of chipped paint on the exterior of the house or the interior of the house, you are screwed. I had to paint the outside trim of my windows on a blustery Winter day with the help of my realtor in order to have the appraiser come BACK to the house to see that we had fixed some chipped paint issues. Which of course, cost me another appraisal fee. I remember thinking to myself; “I am painting a house that I don’t even own. I am working on a house that I might not even get considering the endless pitfalls and booby-traps of the underwriting process. I am either crazy or I might be the dumbest motherfucker in the world.” And while that last part might be true, it doesn’t change the fact that the work needed to be done because before 1975 apparently everyone used lead paint. Meaning, that while your lead-painted house might impervious to the effects of kryptonite, it is still considered to be a potential health hazard. Even if the chipped paint isn’t lead-based… you are still going to have to fix the issue before the appraiser signs off on the property and assesses the value. So that’s fun.
  5. Once all of that crap is behind you, you are cleared to close. Which means that you can kiss every dime in your bank account goodbye. There will be disclosures that make you want to weep. There will be closing costs that make you want to puke. There will be inspections you have to pay for. There will be title insurance you have to pay for. There will be the fee your lawyer charges you which must be paid. There will be loan origination fees, a full year’s home insurance premium which must be purchased by the time of closing, there will be pro-rated taxes to pay, there will be much more heartache before the day comes when you sit there with your lawyer and sign forty-five minutes to an hour’s worth of paperwork.

But once it is done and you have a minute to take a breath, you will realize it was all worth it. This is just a brief glimpse into the wacky world of mortgages and indeed my story could fill out an entire book. Also, my story is unique in some respects and incredibly common in others. It is difficult to put into words what my family and I went through during this process. There were a lot of factors in play that made our hunt for the perfect home a bit more pressing and much more daunting than the average house hunter’s journey. Maybe I will write a book on it one day when I am not so traumatized. This long winded blog post is written to be a warning of what is to come for the first time home buyer. I can say, that our realtor was excellent in many respects but at the time I felt that he hadn’t adequately prepared us for the process. It is only now that I realize that no one can really adequately prepare you for the process. It is something that you can read about but until you are in the trenches yourself you will never really know how excruciating it can be. In conclusion, I wrote this because during the mortgage process I turned to the internet almost daily for advice and to read other people’s stories. Unfortunately, the majority of information on the process comes from mortgage lenders themselves or companies that deal with facilitating the mortgage process. You can’t get a truly straight answer from someone trying to sell you something so I thought I would explain what it was like and what to look out for from a purchaser’s point of view. I hope that it helps anyone out there looking to purchase a house.

We went through it and survived. So can you.

Mortgage Advice For People Looking To Purchase a Home – From a Purchaser

Midnight In Paris Syndrome

J.M.Leave a comment

MIPS, or Midnight In Paris Syndrome (a syndrome I just made up) is a hell of a thing. Named after the movie, Midnight In Paris, it is a syndrome that affects all of us at one time or another in our lives. If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you give it a watch. In my opinion, it is one of Woody Allen’s best films and I say that as a fan of Allen’s work. Not the work he did with his step-daughter, that’s just nauseating. But the man can make a movie. In a very brief nutshell; the film is about a man named Gil, (Owen Wilson) who travels to Paris with his fiancée (Rachel MdAdams) and her stuffy, wealthy, boorish-American family. While there, Gil is magically transported to the Jazz Age each night at 12, where he meets and mingles with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali and many more. Gil is enamored with this time period and when he eventually falls in love with a girl from the seemingly time-stuck parallel universe, he decides he would rather live that life in that universe rather than the life that he had in daylight reality. One of the most interesting conversations in the entire movie comes near the end. He and the girl he has fallen for are magically transported to late 19th century Paris or a time referred to as, La Belle Époque. This happens to be his new love’s favorite time period from the past. She makes it clear to Gil that she would rather spend the rest of her life there, rather than the 1920’s or the Jazz Age, which was Gil’s favorite time from the past. It is at this moment when the truth dawns on Gil and he realizes that people will always be nostalgic for the past, regardless of what generation they belong to. Again, excellent movie.

This idea became very apparent to me a couple months back while having a conversation with one of my students. For some reason, this particular student is interested in the music of my generation. Namely; grunge and alternative from the early to mid-nineties. It is fun to talk music with him and dig up names, songs and ghosts from the past that I haven’t thought of in years or spoken of in ages. It is almost flattering to hear him speak in such glowing terms about the bands that became part of my everyday existence when I was his age. Flattering insofar as it is nice to know that someone appreciates the generation for what I love it for; the music of the time. For the entire lives of Gen Xers and millennials, we have had to endure endless hours of circle jerking and tearful remembrances of the 1960’s from our parents. Let me be clear; I enjoy the music of the 1960’s. I am not saying that the decade was not an incredibly important time in American history. As for the pop-music, I absolutely love a lot of the songs, bands, groups etc. that came about in that almost insanely talented and musically innovative decade. However, I couldn’t give a rat’s about the ‘movement’ that went along with it. Honestly, it just seems like everyone decided to become a whiny little wimp for a while until the harsh realities of looming adulthood eventually forced them to grow a few more layers of skin. For some, it was unfortunately too late and that is why we still have to endure people like Jerry Brown. So, it is nice to receive some credit for my generation’s contribution to pop-music for once. Even if it is from a kid who isn’t legally old enough to vote.

As life seems to have a twisted sense of irony, it was ’90’s weekend’ on a popular radio station out of Hartford a couple days ago. The wife and I had a few errands to run which gave me about an hour in total to annoy her with my off-key singing to such gems as ‘Big Empty’, ‘Plowed’, ‘Sex and Candy’, ‘Backwater’, ‘The Distance’, ‘Peaches’, ‘About A Girl’ etc. I should mention; she is 4 years my junior and so while she remembers the majority of the songs that I caterwalled to, she was a little too young to really embrace the spirit of the music at the time. Most 7-year-old girls aren’t interested in being sullen and telling their mothers and fathers that they don’t “understand the pain of this generation.” At least I hope they don’t. Strolling down memory lane was fun as it usually is but as it always seems to do it led to the dull ache of nostalgia. Which led me to think about the conversations about the 90’s and pop-music that I’d had with my student. It was sort of eye-opening in a bizarre and relatively harsh way. I realized that once I removed the sentimental hooey from my analytics of the time period and thought about some of the passing comments I had made to my student, it became clear; my generation was dangerous.

When I first started talking to my student about the 90’s and grunge, it was because I had made a passing reference in class to a Nirvana song which only this one particular student recognized. At first, I found myself being the preening generation groupie that I used to loathe. I gloated about how great the music was, how it was a time of rebellion and breaking cultural expectations and how for the first time kids got the idea that they were more than robots operating solely out of hormones and stupidity across to their parents. Yeah, pretty much a bunch of bullshit. The kid was eating it up. MIPS in full effect, he said something along the lines of, “I wish it was still like that.” I swelled with pride. The 90’s meant something to me. They were the decade in which I found music and more importantly, my own music. For the first time, driving around in the backseat of my parent’s car didn’t mean that I had to endure hours of their music whether I liked it or not. Now, when flipping around the dial, every once in a while I would yell, “LEAVE IT!” from the back of my dad’s Oldsmobile. I was officially plugged into the scene and I was hooked. I would watch hours and hours of MTV by myself or with friends because I was in the transitional time of life between watching cartoons and discovering sketch comedy like MTV’s The State. I knew more about pop music at 12 years old than Duke Ellington knew about Jazz at 30 years old simply because I was inundated with it. It was the only form of entertainment we had. Or at least that is what I thought. Clearly, I was aware of the existence of TV and movies and comic books and video games and blah blah blah, but none of them seemed as important to me. To illustrate this point, years ago, I was talking to a friend about shows that we used to watch when we were kids. He was absolutely astonished when he heard me utter the words, “I’ve never even heard of Thundercats.” I had no idea what the hell a Thundercat was nor could I tell you literally anything about WWF but I could tell you what the cover art for STP’s Core was and the songs that I liked and the songs that I disliked from Siamese Dream. I thought he was going to have a stroke when I told him that I had never seen The Goonies. Whoops.

I have friends my age who absolutely know what a Thundercat is and could tell you how much oil was used to make those WWF wrestlers as shiny as they were and they know a hell of a lot about music also. I pointed to the fact that I was borderline obsessed with the music of my generation and how oblivious I was to everything else to illustrate how proud I was when discussing those days with my student… at first. I say at first because after a few more chats I found myself saying things like; “yeah man, it’s good stuff but I mean… don’t listen to too much of it” or, “I don’t know dude but if you start to get depressed, put Incesticide down for a while and play some Blind Melon or something.” All I could think of was this poor kid going home and staring at his wall until his eyes started to bleed while listening to ‘Runaway Train’ by Soul Asylum. And that is what I ultimately mean when I say that the generation and its pop music were and could still possibly be dangerous. There is no doubt in my mind that the reason we only have Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan left of the ‘big’ frontmen is because when you peddle bleakness, hopelessness and depression for the better part of 25 years and throw in a healthy heaping of drugs there is a good chance it’ll all come back to string you up one day. Literally.

This is partly the reason, I think anyway, why my generation sort of skipped over the 90’s nostalgia and for some reason decided the 80’s were the end-all be-all of ironically cool fashion, music, movies etc. When I was in college (early 2000’s) there were a plethora of 80’s themed parties. It was almost like you couldn’t escape it. It grated on me. I was not the biggest fan of the decade for a number of reasons.

  1. I didn’t give a shit about being in the first grade nor do I look back on it and say, “those were the days.”
  2. The music overall was crap. However, my favorite band is still Tears For Fears and I have a robust library of 80’s songs and groups that I think are fantastic.
  3. I don’t really remember them other than … nah I don’t really remember them.

So there I was, in my early teens / late twenties surrounded by people pining for the days of Flock of Seagulls. I never understood, perhaps because I simply didn’t want to, the fascination with the 80’s and the nostalgic game of leapfrog my generation played which completely cropped out the 90’s. It is much clearer now. No one want’s to recreate being miserable whether it is genuine or ersatz misery. Case in point: arguably the worst episode of the Simpsons ever created was the flashback episode where Homer and Marge were supposed to have gotten together during the 90’s. The, ‘Sadgasm’ episode. *Shudder* Talking to my student for a few weeks about the 90’s put things in a much clearer perspective for me when it came to being honest about my generation and the music I loved. I find myself now thinking; I am glad that the 90’s are over and they need to stay over.

I am not going to attempt to lay out all the positives and the negatives from that decade or explain why I loved it as much as I did. That is not the point. The point I suppose I am trying to make is that MIPS is a real thing. Real enough to seduce a normal, modern teenager. Unfortunately a serious case of 90’s MIPS can produce more than just someone wearing outdated clothes and blasting music their parents like. It can produce a longing for a time when everyone was absolutely miserable for one reason or another. Even if you weren’t miserable, you had to pretend to be. Sullen was the name of the game and we who played it were fucking masters at it. A very real possible by-product of that mock misery is real misery. Make no mistake, the aftershocks of the 90’s can still be felt in our modern social justice warrior legions. We all need something to be miserable about or at least that is what the 90’s convinced us of and the parents of the college kids you sneer at for needing safe spaces are the people who grew up listening to the morbid shit we shoved in our ears constantly in those days. The only difference between the unchecked misery of the current generation is that they have to put some effort into finding music that fits their attitudes seeing as how pop music seems to have reverted to a modern version of Frankie Valli-esque, bubblegum crap. We were lucky. Our anger-fueling music was spoon-fed to us on a daily basis by major media confirming our right to be depressed and justifying our anger at a world that hadn’t done a fucking thing to harm us yet. What a time to be alive.

I found myself trying to sell the 90’s short in subsequent conversations with my student. Not because I dislike the music now and not because I have the power to dissuade him from heading down the 90’s rabbit-hole. I never once said to him, “well I was there, kid” in an attempt to sound like an expert or belittle his interest in the music. The fact of the matter is that I was there. They represent a special time in my life for a number of different reasons and that is why they will always be special to me. Remove those reasons and all I see is a bleak, pretentious, depressing, annoying, violent and kinda stupidly serious decade. My parent’s generation wanted to run away to San Francisco. Mine wanted to run away to Seattle. ‘Nuff said. I end up selling the generation and decade short now on purpose because of those awful aspects of it. There is no reason under the sun to fondly desire a time when if you didn’t tell people you hated your life, even if you didn’t, you would be ostracized for being, “lame.” Unfortunately, in true 90’s fashion, the more I shit on the decade the more my student seems to be interested in it. Eventually I am going to shake his hand at graduation and look him dead in the eyes and say; “it’s been awesome knowing you and talking to you about some of my favorite music. Now please go live your life and don’t kill yourself.”  If that isn’t a stinging indictment of my generation, one which I never thought I’d make, then I don’t know what is.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go watch Seinfeld and listen to Greta.

Midnight In Paris Syndrome

Let’s Talk Turkey

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With Thanksgiving quickly approaching I thought it would be prudent to teach you uncouth rubes the proper way to celebrate the holiday. Surely, there are many traditions associated with this wonderful day that we as Americans… and for some odd reason Canadians, although theirs falls on a different date I think, set aside to thank God for everything we have been given the previous year. Or, if you are some Godless, heathen POS, a day that is set aside for you to thank yourself for being you much like the other 364 days of the year in your calendar. Whomever you are thanking, it is a nice day. The traditions range from familial, to neighborhood, to municipal, to statewide, to regional and finally to national. That being said, some traditions are better than others. Namely; mine over yours. So I figured it would be a mitzvah if I were to educate you on how to truly squeeze all the drippings from Thanksgiving and make it a day worth looking forward to all year. Without further ado, let’s get started. To make it a bit more quaint… I will be using the traditional 17th century spellings of the foods and activities I will be listing for you.

  1. Turky (Turkey) – The honored guest! Now, I know most of you reading this are probably saying; ‘ummm I know how to cook a turkey, J.M.’ and you probably think you do, which is swell. But you don’t. First of all, how many of you are buying organic, farm raised, truffle-fed turkeys for your feast? I would wager not many. You are content with the frozen ball of meat in the plastic body bag and yellow nylon stocking that you heft out of the cooler at your local market for the plebs. Pathetic. You need to up your game, literally. Your bird should be treated as royalty while alive on earth and then, if the farmer is even halfway conscientious about the bird’s feelings, put to death in a gentle manner. Preferably in its sleep or mid-orgasm so the poor thing has no idea what hit it. Speaking of hitting it, if you are a real man like me, you hunt your own turkey. Now I know some of you hippie types and beta-males are going to call me a monster for hunting such an impossibly stupid, slow and easy-to-kill semi-flightless bird. But you have no idea what it feels like to be one with nature. To respect the land, the vegetation and the prey itself. To know that the animal you are about to kill is going to be used to feed a family and that the bird is going to be killed quickly and humanely is truly wonderful. To hunt as our ancestors did. To hunt as the noble native people of this land once did. To understand the primacy of nature and man’s place in its plan. It is truly transcendent. So when I raise that small homemade flamethrower to my shoulder and slowly pull down the welder’s mask that I’ve painted to look like the face of the Cookie Monster and take careful aim at that bird, the feeling I get is more of reverence than excitement. Murdering your own turkey will make the day feel so much more wholesome and dare I say, holy. Prep is the next step. Some people choose to brine their birds for periods as long as five to six weeks before the big day. That seems excessive to me. In fact, the whole brining process seems a little odd. I have never sat down to dinner with anyone only to have them turn to me and say; “mmmmmmm have you ever had something so viscous and slimy? It’s like heaven slithered right onto my plate!” Nor do I put much stock into any method of food prep which exists to essentially destroy the natural flavor of whatever it is that is being prepared. So skip the brine. Unless you want to brine your bird. I mean, I don’t care because I don’t plan on eating whatever dreck you are cooking that day. Moving along, we need to discuss the most important thing; cooking the bird. Again, there are a lot of different opinions on the best way to cook a turkey, but they are all mostly wrong. So I will tell you how to do it. Get a roasting pan, coat the outside of the bird in Bell’s seasoning, bring 9 pounds of butter to a boil and slowly dip the turkey in the butter for no longer than 3 1/2 to 4 seconds at a time, pulling out rapidly to allow to cool and drip for about 10 seconds. You will repeat these steps at regular intervals for about an hour or two, depending on your desired level of frustration. After the arbitrary dipping of the bird which the original Puritan colonists referred to as; “the most egregious example of frustration and the wasting of tyme carried out by mankynd, that Heaven itself cries out for the blood of the entire werld“, you are to place your bird in the roasting pan and cook at 170 for four to five hours a pound. You may want to start cooking your bird a few days after Halloween just to be sure it will be ready for your guests! Trust me; murdering your own bird, boiling it in butter and then slow cooking it to a carbon cinder is the only way to go and if you don’t believe me, try it for yourself! And if you are still not convinced, fuck you!
  2. Pyes (Pies) – I have decided to forego instructing you on the proper methods to cook your sides. Mashed potatoes, creamed onions, stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy etc. all of that stuff is wonderful, don’t get me wrong. However, if you do not know how to mash a potato or buy a packet of Knorr turkey gravy, you should probably check and see if either your local YMCA or homeless shelter is handing out food that day. I couldn’t, nay, I wouldn’t dare skip over the fan-favorite of this glorious day; the pies. Can you smell them now? Baking in the oven or cooling on a window sill? Which brings me to an observation I would  like to make. Who out there has ever cooled a pie on a window sill? By the way, why was this a thing? What genius thought that exposing freshly cooked pastry dough filled with macerated fruit to bugs was a good idea? You only ever see it done in cartoons. Old cartoons, at that. Were there no flies in the thirties and forties? From what I remember from high school, didn’t wild packs semi-ferrel hobos roam the streets looking for food because it was the Great Depression? Didn’t something like four out of every five kids either die or get polio by the time they were three? You’d think that people would have wised up and thought better than to expose their food to the elements in such an uneasy and truly dangerous time. But, I digress. Ok, back to pies for now. There are a few that are staples and by staples I mean we can’t seem to get away from them no matter how hard we try. The first is probably the crowned king of the Thanksgiving dessert table; the pumpkin pie. Which, like all things flavored with pumpkin, tastes nothing like pumpkin and is an affront to God. If you had no idea of what pumpkin pie was and I offered you a pastry shell filled with custard that had the color and texture of puppy shit which was supposed to taste like a gourd, would you eat it? Of course not. Let’s leave that one in the dust. The other two pies which make their appearances are the traditional apple and sometimes, if you are down south or are lucky, pecan. Apple pie is good because it’s dreadfully uninteresting. It is the vanilla ice cream of pies. Apples? Ok. Pastry crust? Ok. A sweet, cinnamony flavored binding sauce? Ok. Nothing wrong with apple pie. Good with ice cream and I am told that some people, probably communists, put a slice of cheddar cheese on it. Next is pecan. Pecan pie is good but after three bites your teeth start to hurt, your insulin levels do things that nature never intended and you start to feel the first pangs of diabetes. If you manage to finish the pie, which from what I can tell is plain gelatin, 9 sticks of butter, four sacks of sugar reduced and studded with pieces of pecan you can plan on losing a foot or hand to the gout within the next few days after the holiday. Pie is essential for the Thanksgiving table. It is easier than making a cake.
  3. Spirited Drink and Wyne (Alcohol) – Let’s face it; if you do Thanksgiving right, you probably shouldn’t remember it the following morning. However, the holiday is a marathon, not a sprint. This means that it would be in your best interest to start slowly and then work your way up to shots of whatever brown liquor you hide from your wife and keep in your car. Start with beer. Beer is delicious and most importantly, your stomach can hold a lot of it. It is a good sipping drink and if you buy only one kind of beer your guests will never be able to tell if you’ve had twenty or are still nursing the same one you were holding for dear life when you opened the door to grant them entry to your sublet. As for wine the question of what to drink with turkey is something that is thrown around a lot. Turkey is gamey and the foods that accompany it are so rich that you are probably safe with a bright, crisp Sancerre or white Bordeaux in order to cut through all the fat. That being said, if you have guts, instead of contrasting your meal, complement it with a heavier (Oregonian) pinot noir. Luckily for you, good wine is expensive and most people know that so cheaping out and just buying a box of something won’t garner too many sneers and derisive chuckles. Some folks like to have a signature drink in a punch bowl waiting for their guests to enjoy. This could include, spiked cider or… well… spiked cider. Not a bad way to go if you want to get your guests loaded relatively quickly and on the cheap. The punch bowl strategy works wonderfully because it allows you to buy bottom shelf everything. From “US GOVT. CIDER, RECIPE 3C”, orange juice you found at the bus stop and rum that “some guy that works with my cousin’s friend makes” you can pretty much hide the fact that you are a cheap bastard by blending a whole bunch of stuff together and diluting it with sugar and cinnamon. Don’t forget to hide the good stuff. Coming home after a long day of metal detecting on the beach or freelance crime-scene photography can only be made much worse by heading to your kitchen, grabbing your favorite wax, Daisy bathroom cup and reaching into your cupboard only to see that you only have a microscopic amount of Old Harper left. This would be positively life-shattering. If your family and friends are anything like mine, they will sniff out your liquor and demolish it within seconds of entering your lair. This fact has forced me to discover some ingenious methods of hiding liquor which I will disclose to you now. Old Faithful – Hide your liquor in the bowl of your toilet and tell your family that they have to use the bathroom at the 7/11 down the street because yours, “broke today and won’t flush and I only figured that out this morning AFTER I went.” Pennywise – tie a string to the neck of the bottle and lower it into a sewer grate. Tell your guests that your neighborhood has been recently terrorized by a gang of ornery teens in clown outfits and that you’ve been selected by your neighbors to periodically head outside to check and see if the coast is clear. Molon Labe – simply hold your liquor with you at all times and defiantly dare your loved ones to, “come and take it” whenever they start to salivate whilst spying the bottle in your pocket, hand, wherever.
  4. Gaiymes Uv Shportsh (football) – I don’t like football so I don’t have a rule or tip for this one. I will say that football is good for one thing on Thanksgiving; giving people excuses not to have to talk to each other. It’s impossible to watch a sweet pass or rush or wicked pick-6 or testicle tingling field goal or asshole puckering punt and talk to someone at the same time. Any red-blooded American male knows that or should know that and if they don’t then they should be politely, yet firmly be asked to leave and never return. Women who break this rule should be taken politely, yet firmly, into the kitchen and be made to apologize to the gravy for no longer and no shorter than 45 straight minutes, tears preferred.

Well, folks… That’s it. I hope your Thanksgiving is filled with joy, thanks and most importantly, giving. Because without thanks we have nothing to give and without giving no one would be thankful. Without the thankfulness of those we give to, we would never even begin to be thankful or even endeavor to give thanks, to those who have given us so much to be thankful for.

Thanks!

J.M.

Let’s Talk Turkey

Everyone Is Sorta … Icky.

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I used to think that there was nothing more skin-crawlingly icky than watching an industry known for vice and debauchery feign surprise when said vice and debauchery got exposed. That was a long time ago. About two weeks ago. A simpler time. I have since learned that I was dead wrong. There are far ickier ickies out there in the world. Namely; the arrogant enablers.

I am not going to say anything in this post that hasn’t been more eloquently said already by far more interesting and accomplished blowhards than myself. But I feel compelled to express how absolutely disgusted I am by the behavior of Hollywood in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations. So why now? What was the catalyst for my unquenchable desire to write about this? Three words, dear reader. Three words.

Kevin. Fucking. Spacey.

Not because he tried to seduce an underage actor. That isn’t enough to inspire me to write. That is enough to inspire me to want to see Kevin Spacey castrated with a broken whiskey bottle, not write. I was inspired to lose my mind in a few hundred words because of the absolutely vomit-inducing arrogance of a man who believes he can cover up the fact that he is an enormous pimple with a receding hairline who happens to have a history of trying to sexually abuse kids with the excuses: ‘I don’t remember, I was drunk and oh yeah, I’m gay.’ But where does that arrogance come from? Truly, if Spacey decided that these excuses were his best bet because there wasn’t already a solid safety net of media-types and blind eyes, he would be the stupidest son of a bitch to ever walk the earth. However, that was not the case. Fun fact; if you google search, “Reuters Kevin Spacey” you will see a link about five clicks down entitled, “Actor Kevin Spacey declares he lives life as a gay man” but if you click the link it takes you to an article entitled, “Kevin Spacey Embroiled in Hollywood Sex Scandal”. The initial post is from a day ago. The newly updated re-route from the link is from 8 hours ago. It took a lot of pressure from being called out on their deflection in order to force Reuter’s to forget about the fact that Spacey is gay and focus on the fact that he’s currently in a lot of trouble over being a disgusting asshole.

The truth is; Spacey was totally fine with throwing the entire gay community under the bus and reenforcing the antiquated and awful stereotype of the gay predator not because he doesn’t care about his own community… but because he was relatively certain the deflection would work. And why wouldn’t he be? He exists in a world where the perception of oppression means more than moral virtue and where women have to face the prospect of legal pressure and career ruin before they can even think to open their mouths about being treated like pieces of meat by beta-male losers. The guys who got the ever-living shit kicked out of them in high school but got lucky enough to get high-paying and more importantly, high-powered, jobs in the entertainment industry after years of dorm room masturbation between spirited games of Dungeons and Dragons. He exists in a world where being a member of a seemingly marginalized group makes you a martyr without having to ever spill a drop of your own blood. It is the world in which he lives that deserves the blame for the horrific excuse of sexuality as a cover for pederasty. It is gross, annoying, infuriating and most of all it is painfully transparent. That is how stupid media elites think their customer base is.

Luckily most Americans are smarter than Hollywood thinks we are and hopes we are.

At least I think we are.

 

Everyone Is Sorta … Icky.

Last Post Before Summer, the Fishing Calls

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Well, it is that time of year again. When I hang up my teaching shoes and pick up the … summer shoes. I guess. I also take a hiatus from this blog which I admit I have been neglecting. The neglect stems from a number of reasons but the most glaring I suppose is what I can only describe as a sense of political malaise that has washed over me. I do not mean to say that I no longer care about what our elected officials do or how they lead our great nation. I just find it mind-numbing these days. The left would claim that this attitude was a product of the ineptitude and bewildering piffle released daily from the President and his staff. The right would claim that it is a product of the never-ending political witch hunt and attempted character assassinations carried out daily by a news media which solely exists as a Marxist propaganda outlet. In reality, it may very well be a mixture of both coupled with the ebbing of the lunacy tide after the general election. Whatever the main cause of the dampening of my enthusiasm to write about anything political may be, it’s immaterial. The fact is; jimmy-crack-corn and I don’t care.

So, to end another school year and another blog year, I’ve decided to talk about something I truly love yet am dreadfully unsuccessful at; fishing. 

Yes, that is correct, dear reader. Yours truly is quite the avid angler. Yet, despite his numerous attempts his yield would make St. Peter weep. There have been days, nay, weeks of time where I have gone nearly everyday and have not even come close to bringing something home to eat. However, living on Long Island Sound, that might actually not be such a bad thing. I am going to discuss four different types of fish and the correct ways to catch them. Hold on to your seats, it’s mild excitement time!

Striped Bass / Striper / Shiny A**hole Fish that Doesn’t Bite for Sh*t : (Pescado douchebago) This absolutely delicious fish can be caught from mid-Spring to early Autumn in Long Island Sound. They go south in the warmer months much like half of the geriatric population of this state. They have a firm, white flesh that makes chicken taste like gutter water. It is my favorite fish. So good. I want some now. Problem… is that they had a meeting three years ago and decided to leave me out of the loop. For too long have I toiled at landing one of these delectable beasts. I have used striper rigs, fish finder rigs, I’ve done bottom fishing, jigging, surf casting, I’ve tried going for them at the mouths of rivers in brackish water, up the rivers during the right time of year, from the beach, along sea walls, from boats, in high sun, under clouds, during the incoming tide, slack tide, using bunker chunks, mackerel chunks, clams, sand worms both synthetic and real, surface lures, bottle poppers, bucktails… Kids, I have done it all. These little awful bastards mine as well be unicorns. They are my white whale. That being said, plenty of people do catch them and my best bet is to offer to buy them once caught. However, I feel that this year I may get lucky. Why? I don’t know but without hope the fisherman is just a dope with an expensive stick swearing at the water on the beach. Best Rig: prayer

Bluefish / (pesce oily-disgusto-matic) Don’t really give a damn about catching these. When they are snappers, they are fun as all get out to catch. They put up a fight and it’s not unheard of to catch 10+ snappers in a single fishing session. Tailors and Cocktails (juvenile blues) are fun as they put up more of a fight and I am told they are delicious. Big blues put up an enormous struggle and are really fun to fight once you get a good set with your hook. Problem; is that they have teeth like Jaws and will bite the ever-living shit out of you if you don’t have a decent hook extractor. Also, they taste like what low-tide smells like. Oily, dark and fishy. Blech. The people who love the taste of bluefish make me laugh. Every one of them starts their personal bluefish recipes with the following statement: “you have to soak it in lemon juice or buttermilk overnight to extract that fishy taste”. Boyos, if you have to nuke your protein to make it edible, I’ve got news for ya; It sucks. Best Rig: bottom fishing with a fish finder and wire leader, chunks of mackerel / bunker. 

Summer Flounder / Fluke (pesce swimming-dinnerplatus) These little jerks like to hang out at the bottom of the Sound and go after whatever falls off of rich dude’s boats. They nail the bait quickly and take off so if you’ve baited your hook correctly, you won’t need to set the hook as the little moron does the job for you. Fluke tastes like nothing. It is basically a big, flat, ugly cod. But buying fish isn’t a cool thing to do for super studs like me, so basically what you’re going to need to do is get yourself a nice, shiny flounder rig. Get some minnows and go nuts. Unlike all other types of saltwater fish that I attempt to catch (only one basically, the shithead striper) I have actually had decent luck going for fluke. If you are on a boat, or even from the shore, your best bet is to string a leader off of the bottom of your rig and set up a good 1-2 ounce sinker and bounce it off the bottom gently every few seconds. If this method doesn’t work, then re-rig for something that is biting. Bluefish, blackfish, weakfish, sea robins and stop complaining. Best Rig: I already told you.

Trout (pescado this-is-a-waste-of-timo) Living where I do, I have the blessing of being within walking distance to saltwater fishing and if I am feeling particularly saucy, I can take a five-minute drive and do some freshwater fishing. Freshwater fishing is a different animal altogether and while patience is a virtue in all types of angling, you really need to have a basic mastery of zen in order to maintain sanity while freshwater fishing. Trout have their big months in the Spring but you can catch them all Summer if you follow these basic steps. 1. Get yourself a freshwater pole and setup a rig so you have a small weight holding your bait in place and set your bait about a foot off the bottom. 2. Get Powerbait trout eggs or dough bait. Stifle vomit from the smell, pinch your bait to your hook, let it sit in the water for a minute to harden around the hook, cast that sucker and prepare for boredom. I have found, that usually the best method of trout fishing is to give up after about a half hour, re-rig with a shiny bucktail and go for pickerel or bass which are fun to catch and I actually do pretty well on. The only problem is that they swallow the lure each time and trying to extract the hook usually takes surgery-like precision. I have not lost a chainsides yet, and I’ll be damned if I will this year. You see… I have a rule: If you kill it, you must eat it. Which sounds noble but in practice sucks because sometimes you end up killing some pretty unappetizing stuff. I would rather not chow down on a long, green tube of dinosaur-fish meat and that is why I am careful as hell not to hurt the fish when I land a pickerel. Best Rig: wait, for trout or for pickerel? I forget. 

So, dear reader, I bid you adieu for the summer. I hope you catch lots and lots and lots of fish. But no more than me. Because, seriously that would anger me. I am off to search for the elusive white whale yet again. And if I don’t catch one by August, then … I’ll order one from Stop and Shop.

Be well.

J.M.

Last Post Before Summer, the Fishing Calls

Writing For The Sake Of Writing

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As this school year mercifully limps towards the finish line, I am beginning to feel the first bits of excitement for the long, hot Summer ahead. Having the Summers off is one of the big draws to becoming a teacher. In fact, for many it is their first draw. Then by the end of their first or second year the new teacher will either fall by the wayside and come to the conclusion that the “life” isn’t for them and pursue other interests or they will realize that connecting with kids and at the very least, attempting to make a difference for said kids is one of the most wonderful ways to make a buck in this increasingly confusing world. Then the Summer vacation clause becomes the cherry on the sundae. So here we are; a mere few weeks away from the final bell of the last day of school and everyone is getting antsy. Poor us, right?

Like last year, I plan on taking a hiatus from this blog for the Summer to explore other ways of voicing my thoughts and opinions to the ether. Which leads me to the point of this post; when you write a blog that very few people read, the best you can hope for is to make someone laugh, smile or think out there in internetland. The only weapon you need against the idea that your efforts are futile bordering on laughably narcissistic at best and a horrible time waster at worst; is the ability to understand and be OK with the fact that you’ll never know if anything you’ve written will actually make someone smile, laugh or think. It is an odd feeling. Odd insofar as that once you have that support infrastructure in place, you are able to write freely with little concern about if only one person reads what you have scribbled down or in fact anyone for that matter. Writing is an exercise. It can change the course of human history as in the case with the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence. Or, as in the case with this blog, be little more than an outlet for an ornary, opinionated, kinda funny, incredibly attractive in a classic archetypal-hero sense, guy to vent his frustrations and talk some smack.

So as I look to shut this Hindenburg of a blog down in a few weeks, I feel it important to reminisce over the previous year. However, I don’t want to. That is the best part of having your own blog. You don’t have to do anything at all other than sign up for the account if you dont want to. One thing that sticks out though; every once in a while I ask myself, “if no one is reading this thing, what is the point”? Again, you must have armor at the ready, which once put on, allows you to slough off the slings and arrows of frustration when endeavoring to partake in amateur punditry. The answer to the, ‘what’s the point’ question is a satisfying albeit safe and relatively self-aggrandizing idiom: if you are writing to make other people happy, you are writing for the wrong reason. So while that is self-serving and exists to offer the individual writer a self-made pedestal of stolen artistic integrity, it doesn’t destroy the truth that writing is really only important when the author thought it important enough to write what they thought was an important story to tell and stayed true to their own honesty. In a perfect world, measurable honesty. Very Hemingway, I know.

I will post a couple more times before this school year crosses the finish line and the white checkered flag is waved. Maybe. Right now, I am enjoying my writing over at Premier Punditry. Sports writing offers me an outlet in which I can test out whether or not I have the chops to type out some words that aren’t based solely on ideology (the politics of this blog) and actually write something about results, both good and bad. It remains to be seen what happens with this blog or with whatever I churn out and whoever decides it’s worthy of note. That’s what makes it both fun and tedious, equally.

You may be asking yourself; what kind of guy writes about his pseudo-second career as an amateur blowhard in this kinda way? Who cares about this dude? The answer to that is: the kind of guy who has his own barely-read blog and still tries to post regularly. And I like me. So, poo on you.

J.M.

Writing For The Sake Of Writing

First Thoughts on Last Night’s Strikes

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“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” – Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton’s famous quote is as true now as it was then. Last night, the USS Porter and USS Ross, both Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers fired a total of 50 tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria. Intelligence reports allegedly claim to show that this base launched the chemical attacks on Tuesday that killed 70+ people. I will lay out a couple of first thoughts here as I continue to read as much as I can on last night’s strikes.

  1. A lot of Americans are unhappy with this course of action. Namely; liberals who will oppose Trump no matter what he does and the alt-right or alt-right types who see isolationism as the best course of action for the world’s preeminent super power. Lets focus on the alt-right. They view this as a betrayal for a number of reasons. First, because they love Putin and see him as a person for our president to emulate. Which is funny, because the alt-right has adopted an isolationist ideology that would make Woodrow Wilson incredibly proud and Putin just sort of invades stuff when he gets bored. Assad just got bitch slapped by the United States. God forbid we insult Russia’s pal. Second, because they are naturally dubious of any US interaction into any conflict at any time anywhere for any reason because at their core, they are a bunch of cowards. They are the Alex Jones, tin-foil hat crowd. They are the, “I mean I’m not saying shes right but my sister did seem pretty convincing when she was describing the ‘squatch she saw chasing her dog to the cops” crowd. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their twitter avi’s. How many use their actual pictures? Next to none. Its easy to be a doofus when no one can call you out on it.
  2. Liberals have no idea how to spin this. They will focus on the constitutionality of ordering the strikes without Congressional approval. Fair enough because that is a fair enough concern. However; one can’t help but chuckle at them desperately trying to figure out how to respond to a strike which crippled an airfield from which attacks were launched that gassed children. They will all cry, “WAR, WAR!!! HE IS LEADING US INTO WORLD WAR III!!!” All the while, none of them will cop to the fact that we wouldn’t be in the current situation with Syria if it wasnt for the inaction of President Obama and the now infamous, “line in the sand”. Obviously, the problems in the Middle East boiled up way before Obama came into office but that doesn’t change the fact that the current situation with Syria has a lot to do with his administration sitting on its hands. So how do they counter that argument? “THE GOP CONGRESS WOULDN’T ALLOW HIM TO DO ANYTHING!” This is true. And considering Obama’s long, noble resume of procedural fortitude and absolute disdain for unilateral decision-making, this particular argument is clearly air-tight. (My eyeball fell out of its socket on that roll.)
  3. America has to ask itself the question; what is worth fighting for? Every American needs to examine their conscience for that answer.  Liberals who call everyone and their pets, “racists” these days have to ask themselves why they don’t care about brown kids being gassed to death across the globe. Is it because you are war-weary? Fine. Your war-weariness isn’t a global ‘time out’ to nefarious regimes and dictatorships. If you are going to be a liberal and extol the virtues of the global community, cite Christianity or a lack their of in the principles of modern American conservatives who claim to be Christian, then you’d better have the juevos to nut up or shut up when the time to put your activism to work shows itself. Or is it because you just don’t like Trump? If it is the latter: you are incapable of separating action, policy or initiative from a person. Which means you have brainwashed yourself. Which means you are a complete jidrool. Conservatives who constantly bemoaned Obama’s lack of action in the Middle East and our diminished role in the world need to either decide they have the guts to back the play or keep their mouths shut. They should also remember that at the core of any sort of military intervention there are American business interests at play. To what degree they shape the actions of this particular administration when it comes to focused foreign policy remains to be seen. That could simply be my cynicism coming to the forefront of my thinking on the matter. However; we don’t shoot unless there is some sort of payday in it for us either financially or politically. In this instance however, bloodying the nose of the world’s biggest POS outweighs whatever business concern is currently licking its choppers watching the oil it bought cheap shoot through the roof today.
  4. This is a win-win for Trump. He has shown the military community that he is willing to listen to the Joint Chiefs and act swiftly. He has shown the American people, at least partly, that his ties to Russia aren’t binding enough to move him to a position of inaction. He has gut-punched a dictator. How he maneuvers the rest of this course is a mystery as of now. Luckily, the unfunny reincarnation of W.C. Fields, the gin-blossomed buffoon, Steven Bannon isn’t sitting on Daddy’s lap anymore. That’s about the best I can say for the policy portion of this situation moving forward.

To reiterate the point which I believe to be the most important. America; what do you believe is worth fighting for? The answers to this question tell us a lot about ourselves, and most frighteningly, what we will become.

First Thoughts on Last Night’s Strikes

Approaching Holy Week

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Each year, millions of Catholics make promises of personal sacrifice during Lent. Most of us keep to these promises but some of us break down and decide to give something up that is less important to our daily lives. This is natural, unfortunately. Our sacrifices which are intended to help keep our focus squarely on Christ and His sacrifice usually become nothing more than minor inconveniences for us during the course of Lent. There are ways to combat this. I find the most effective method of combating what can only be characterized as spiritual malaise is to steel yourself against it by going through some spiritual training. By fully engaging in Holy Week, not only will you give yourself a support infrastructure for the rest of the year but you will finish your Lent with a profound insight into Jesus’ last week before His crucifixion. So here are a few suggestions for the Catholic who feels that he or she may have fallen a little short in their Lenten sacrifices or for the Catholic who simply wants to be with Jesus during that last, sorrowful yet hopeful week before the salvation of humankind was attained on the Cross.

  1. Go to Confession: I can’t stress this one enough. Cleaning the window between you and the Holy Spirit is the only way you will be able to see through it more clearly. If you are trepidatious about going, remember that Christ was trepidatious about accepting the Cross. Holy Week is the one week during the year where we see Christ’s humanity magnified and we see our fears and anxieties reflected in His. Go to confession. Don’t trust me on it; trust Christ on it.
  2. Say the Rosary: Especially on Good Friday. The profound suffering of the Blessed Mother is sometimes overlooked during Holy Week as the suffering of Christ which is on full display is so absolutely horrific. However, Blessed Mother’s heart broke repeatedly that Friday and it broke because for one reason she knew that her Son had chosen this fate for the very same people who were nailing Him to the cross. Praying the rosary can show Our Lady how grateful we are for that sacrifice and how much we love her Son. It isn’t much, but it’s the least we can do to show her that, yes, we do care. We can tell her; “it hurts me too, Blessed Mother. Today we can cry together if you’d like.”
  3. Go to Holy Thursday Mass: Everyone has memories of a farewell. Maybe it was a dinner, a party, a small get together, whatever. All masses are uplifting. This one however, is sad and it should be. The disciples, who by this time most assuredly knew something was up, were still largely in the dark. Literally and figuratively. We see Christ installing the Sacrament of the Eucharist as a way to stay with His friends and with us after He is gone. John lays his head on Jesus’ shoulder. They go off to pray. Yeah, they knew something was up. Two thousand years later, we as modern disciples know what the following day brings. It is a small gesture in contrast to the gravity of the memory of that night but we are given the chance to stay with Jesus. We are given the chance to say; “I know what tomorrow is. I will stay with you while you pray in the garden and I have learned from the mistake of the disciples; I will not fall asleep.”
  4. Go to Good Friday service: Tradition dictates that Mass is not celebrated on Good Friday. At three o’clock, the time when Jesus gave up His life for us, at every Catholic Church we commemorate His passion and death. It is a tough service to get through. It is exceedingly sad and the Gospel reading is long. Think Palm Sunday long. The veneration of the Cross is very moving and the entire service is designed to teach the person there that not only should be sad about what happened to Jesus, but to also be sad about the times in our lives when we put Jesus out of our minds and relegated Him to secondary importance. All of this for us… and we still don’t appreciate it at all times.
  5. Tenebrae Service: A Tenebrae service is an intensely personal and focused devotion. I can’t do it justice so I am posting a link which better explains what it is at the end of this paragraph. Pro Tip: be prepared to cry a bit. Tenebrae. 
  6. GO TO MASS ON EASTER!: Don’t skip it because you’ve, “already been so much this week.” Remember, while the crucifixion saved us from sin, the resurrection assured us eternal life. Lent, the triduum and everything the church asks of us during this time are all in preparation for Easter Sunday. That is the focal point of our religion and the focal point of the purpose of humanity. Don’t. Skip. Mass. I don’t care how many people you have coming over for the egg hunt, or if you want little Mortimer to open his basket and get his chocolate in the morning, or if you have an early reservation for brunch, make time for Mass. DO IT. Sorry for yelling. Another option if your Easter Sunday is hopelessly hectic; attend the Easter Vigil. I personally go this route. This fulfills the Mass obligation and quite frankly, it is awesome. Exultet, the blessing of the fire, the lighting of the paschal candle, the vigil by the tomb anxiously awaiting the triumph of the risen Christ, the ringing of the bells and the burst of light that erupts when the church is re-illuminated, the removing of the dark cloths from the statues, the flowers, the lighting of all the candles… It is absolutely amazing.
  7. Try to Be Nice: Do something nice for someone you love, someone random and then yourself. Jesus died for us because ultimately He wants us with Him in Heaven. Not because He wants us to be miserable. While it is important to be adequately bummed during this penitential season, I believe that Jesus would stop us if we were going too far to say, “ya know… I did this so you’d be happy in your life.” The thing is; He can stop us. It is up to us to be open to Him. So yes, mourn His death, mourn your sins but counter that with MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF LOVE AND JOY! That’s the whole point.

Make Holy Week, not just Good Friday, the focal point of your Lent and I guarantee you will not be sorry.

Make Easter the focal point of your life and not just the Springtime and Jesus guarantees you won’t be sorry.

Approaching Holy Week

J. M.’s Lenten Survival Guide

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Good day. In lieu of a Friday observation which I haven’t really done in a while anyway, I have decided to post a bullet-proof guide to surviving Lent. Why should you listen to someone who isn’t a member of the clergy when it comes to something so important to Christian formation? Easy. Because I have a degree in Theology and obviously having a degree in anything makes you a Jedi-level expert. Enjoy.

  1. When Do We Abstain From Meat, When Do We Fast?: This is a biggie. According to Canon 1250-3, Catholics are to abstain from eating meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays throughout Lent. Catholics are also required to fast on both Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Fasting is the practice of having one large meal plus two small meals not equaling one large meal throughout the course of a day with no snacks in between mealtimes. This seems arduous to many Catholics. They look at these dietary rules and shy away like a cat from a vacuum cleaner. The commonality shared by these particular Catholics is an almost alarming desire for meat at all times and a cabinet full of organic, holistic gout medications. There are also some Catholics who don’t seem to understand the purpose of this fasting and abstinence and decide that since they can’t have meat on Fridays, a four pound lobster and quart of melted butter is a decent substitute. QUESTION: Will Catholics who do not observe these rules go to Hell? ANSWER: Yes.
  2. What Should I Give Up for Lent?: Tough decision. We need to examine our lives and pick out the one thing that hardly ever crosses our mind, the one action we only undertake once every two months, the one joy that we forget that we like when we don’t have it directly in front of us, the one food or drink that we sorta like but don’t really care about and give that up. WRONG. Hell-bound, soulless bastards and she-bastards! Let benevolent Uncle J. M. edumacate you. We are supposed to give something up which we actually like. The point of this, is to be reminded more than once a day that it is Lent and when our desire for whatever we have given up shows itself in our minds, to replace that desire with thoughts about Jesus and His sacrifice for us. Also; giving up cheating on your spouse, serial killing, heavy meth use, peeping and armed robbery are not acceptable things to give up for Lent. You should just give those up anyway, ya know?
  3. How Long Does Lent Last?: Eternity. It lasts for eternity.
  4. Kids and Lent / Easter: I can hear you asking, “J.M., my kids are small and although I want them to understand the true meaning for the penitential season and the feast of Easter, I don’t want to get too heavy and ruin all the fun for them. What do I do”? Have no more worries, my silly, stupid, ignorant friend. Uncle J has the answer. First, tell your child about Jesus. Talk to them at an early age about the importance of God in our lives and the importance of the Church as a guide directly to Jesus Himself. You don’t have to rip the Easter bunny away from your child when they are little. However, if your child is approaching 13 and still believes in the bunsman, it might be time to put an end to it with the following story: Last night the Easter bunny was caught in a high-profile drug bust and was coked out of his mind. He charged the cops and they opened fire. He’s dead. Now go to sleep. Problem, meet solved!
  5. Do I Need to Go to Confession During Lent?: Who sees you when you’re sleeping AND knows when you’re awake? Who knows if you’ve been bad or good? If you said, “Santa” then you should reexamine your sick, twisted, Godless mind for goodness sake. The answer is God. The Church teaches us that we must go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a year during the Easter season if I read Canon 920 correctly. However, someone like you should try to go at least once a day. God’s love and mercy is infinite, mercifully for you. I’m not going to lie here; I try to go at least once a month. Which clearly makes me a better person than you. Sin of pride, you say? Not if it’s true.
  6. Lent Seems Kinda Sad: It’s supposed to be. You’re catching on.
  7. What Should I Make For Easter Dinner?: This is getting pathetic now. Just get some Spam and a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread. Instant classic.

So there it is, folks. You are most welcome.

Disclaimer: This was obviously a joke. Use Lent to bring yourself closer to Our Lord. Reflect on His sacrifice, His love for you and how lucky you are to take a breath each day. Use Easter to take all of that reflection and turn it into an expression of Christ’s love. Give to charity, help others, love your family, love your friends, love yourself, be nice, be happy, be confident and above all, say thank you. Many people have written about why we should say thank you to Jesus. I believe that one of the most important reasons why we should eludes many people. We should say thank you because He never asked us to say thank you. Humility, kids. Live it.

J. M.’s Lenten Survival Guide

They Just Don’t Get It

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Sunday night saw yet another Oscars come and go. The now infamous gaff of announcing the wrong winner for the best picture award will be all that anyone ever remembers of the gala spectacle, mercifully. There was one moment that stands out in my mind as absolutely horrific on many levels. For months now, both conservative and liberal pundits have been trying to explain Trump’s election. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now completely clear to me and to anyone else who watched the Oscars. The Hollywood elite, composed of the most vocally liberal group of Americans outside of the DNC, who the DNC has annointed to speak for the party, treats regular folks like circus freaks.

If you didn’t watch the telecast you missed when they dragged a bunch of tourists off a bus to parade them in front of the glitterati. It was like watching a scene from Salo. Let that sink in. They brought these people in to give them a thrill. To give them a glimpse into the world of the super-celebrity. Now, I am not going to make the idiotic claim that celebrities don’t create excitement in their fans. So I’m sure the folks that were traipsing around the Dolby Theatre were adequately excited but that doesn’t change the fact that these people were used by the producers of the event as a spectacle.

They just don’t get it. Case in point; the incredibly talented but equally full of herself Viola Davis, who perfectly illustrated the absolutely baffling lunacy that permeates Hollywood when she said, “we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life” in her acceptance speech for the Best Supporting Actress award. This woman obviously either has no sense of irony or just doesn’t know what words mean. On behalf of all teachers, nurses, counselors, farmers, fishermen, mail carriers, pilots, armed service personnel, bus drivers, janitors, foremen, construction workers, lawyers (yeah even them…) cops, firefighters, bartenders, chefs, photographers, tech-people, secretaries, software engineers, salesmen, designers, writers, painters, sculptors, veterinarians, clergy of all religions, store clerks, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, vintners, taxi drivers, deli workers, grocery baggers, and every other profession under the sun;

Dear Viola,

Go fuck yourself.

Yours,

Us

Playing a doctor doesn’t mean you’re curing cancer. Playing a character from the 1960’s doesn’t mean you marched from Selma to Montgomery. You are actors. Literally the lowest of the low. You are paid to play make-believe and entertain us. You exist because we are stupid enough to pay you to exist. Having no other skill than being able to pretend to be someone you’re not doesn’t make you superior to the people who pay the ticket price for your movies. Dragging a group of tourists through your shiny circle-jerk does nothing but make you look like the elitist bunch of douchebags that you are.

“We have deigned that you should gaze upon us, o rabble. Enjoy your short time among your betters and return to your villages with tales of how we are benevolent and merciful to all. Even to servile peasants such as yourselves. What a blessing you have received!”

It was awful to watch and almost other-worldly in its idiocy. Much like most of the garbage Hollywood churns out these days.

 

They Just Don’t Get It