Fannie & Freddie....Rearranging Deck Chairs

Here's an article that broached the subject of buying a foreclosed home from a *bank*:

Foreclosures Can Offer Deals, but Buyer Beware

Fannie Mae does give prospective homebuyers a leg up. Last month, it introduced a program that shuts out investor buyers for the first 15 days a home is on the market. Moreover, Fannie also has a financing program, which allows buyers to put down as little as 3 percent and doesn’t require them to carry mortgage insurance. It also provides loans that allow borrowers to wrap in costs for home renovations.

Freddie is testing a program that also initially shuts out investor buyers, and it is currently offering consumers who buy one of its properties up to 3.5 percent of a home’s purchase price, which can be used for closing costs, moving or even furnishings. The program was recently extended to buyers who submit a purchase offer by Jan. 31 and close by March 26. Primary homebuyers are also eligible for a two-year warranty on certain home repairs.

The title - Buyer Beware - is obviously ridiculous.

It's more like - Buyer Rejoice!

Rejoice because they don't have to compete with *investors*, Fannie will *finance* the purchase (i.e. merely change the name on the house!), no mortgage insurance is needed, AND Freddie will even donate what amounts to a taxpayer-backed HELOC on top of the taxpayer-backed no-money-down mortgage!

This country is doomed.

My Analysis = Money In The Bank

Last week, in reference to Wells Fargo's sham *trading* profits I wrote:

Bond markets have rallied in the past year. Most of these Big Bank earnings from the likes of JPM, BAC, WFC, are from simply marking up the paper value of their fixed income - much of which is still very toxic. They aren't dumping any of these securities, so the risks of these long-term instruments have not been eliminated or even mitigated. Note the banks deceptively refer to these unrealized, and unsustainable gains as *trading profits*...

And financial blogger Reggie Middleton confirmed that. He writes:

Other income was higher owing to fair value option impact on Merrill Lynch structured notes (the highly suspect, level 3 asset, non-market price based opinion of management) which resulted in 1Q10 gain of $226 million against loss of $1.6 billion in 4Q09 as well as minimal write downs on legacy assets (again, the highly suspect, formula driven opinion of management) against write-down of $1.0 billion in 4Q09. Although it shouldn’t be necessary, I will still state that gains in these areas during an era of highly suspect asset values should be viewed with a very jaded eye.

Why mention this?

To make a point. Realize that I didn't read Reggie's - or anyone else's - analysis before offering my own. Without even going near a news story or a balance sheet I KNOW what the banks are doing. They are playing games with the *mark-to-model* license granted them by Big Government incumbents. Again, Bank of America is not selling those Merrill Lynch *assets*; they are just marking them up. They aren't selling them for the same reason those overpriced McMansions are just sitting there on the market - because the sellers don't want to hit the *reality* bid.

I was at dinner a couple of weeks ago with some highly compensated *analyst*. He was singing the praises of the big banks, particularly Bank of America. I scoffed and told him it'd be trading at $5 a share yet again. He scoffed back; told me that it most certainly would not; that banks were *what he covered*.

What he *covered*? Was I supposed to bow in deference?

CaptiousNut - Did you short Bank of America at $40, like I did? Did you predict it was going to $2.50?

CaptiousNut - How leveraged are the banks? What happens to the value of their collateral with 7% mortgage rates?

The self-proclaimed expert had no answer to that. And we made a gentlemanly bet about the future path of the stock.

Look, just because the Federal government is bailing out the banks, that doesn't mean common shares of their stock will maintain value - no less appreciate. Consider Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Feds have made their bondholders 100% whole and still their stocks essentially went to zero.

Obviously, the Feds have demonstrated that plutocrats people with money in the bank....their money is safe in the sense that Big Government will simply print (more) currency and hand it over to the banks should they suffer a *run* or become functionally insolvent.

So rest assured, your nominal wealth is safe. Just don't ask about its *purchasing power*.

Later in the evening, I hit the expert one more time:

CaptiousNut - Look, you can focus all you want BAC bouncing from last March....but the fact remains, the stock is at a 14 year low, has no dividend, and has enough unrecognized losses for the next decade.

Airing Out Allergies

I'm up late early today. Because I fell asleep at 9pm, my standard four hours had me wide awake at 1:18am. Laying there, I had to hear my poor son coughing in the other room intermittently.

He's got *asthma* or whatever. Spring-time pollen is rough on him.

In fact, it's been so bad the past couple of nights that we've had to stir him and give him his more potent inhaler around midnight.

Then, just now, I come to my MIL's computer and see this headline:

Scourge Of Asthma Is Acute In New England

Not only does New England have the nation’s highest rate of asthma, but the disease remains poorly controlled in most patients — routinely causing trips to the hospital and lost days at school and work, according to a study being released today.

The Asthma Regional Council of New England, an independent agency underwritten by the federal government and foundations, finds that roughly two-thirds of New England’s 1.3 million people who have asthma regularly forfeit sleep, wind up in the emergency room, and frequently puff on inhalers intended as drugs of last resort.

The report is the third since 2003 to show that New England adults have the highest rate of asthma in the nation. But this year’s study is the first to portray with such precision the breath-robbing consequences of asthma in the region, where nearly 1 in 10 residents have the disease.

Of course the article is *alarmist* and definitely *propagandistic* - the funding cry of a financially interested public health officials.

But the subject is also broadly relevant for me, given my son's allergies.

It is curious, however, that here in New England, home of the *most educated*, home of the *best healthcare*, and all these self-styled *environmentalists*, we have the highest rate of asthma in the nation.

Perhaps our status as most asthmatic is a result of having the most *diagnostic* organs?

Or perhaps it's because New England is essentially the oldest region of the country. I believe asthma rears its head in 'old coots' and 'old bags' - on people that never had a respiratory problem in their entire lives. (Were they former smokers?)

Maybe it's all the old, dusty, moldy buildings? There sure ain't nothing green or environmental about old construction!

One problem with my son is that he's still young and inarticulate. If he were a little older he'd be able to tell us when he was having trouble breathing. Then we could pinpoint it better. For example, my wife and some quack allergist say he's allergic to cats/dogs - in fact that line of thinking led to the inhumane slaughter of my dear feline.

I don't know. Until my son can walk into a house and tell me he smells or senses the presence of a cat/dog....I won't fully believe that he's allergic to pets (or to any of the other 86 things the *allergist* alarmed us about).

Dust, they say, is a big deal. In fact, I have a family member who rented an apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. The long carpeted corridors of the building turned out to be so dusty that he couldn't bear to sleep in his apartment. I believe he had to crash at his mother's house until the 1-year lease ran out. And there went $24,000 down the drain! (He probably could have legally broken that lease, now that I think of it.)

I had been thinking, hoping, that my son's so-called asthma was getting better each year. In the past it's been so bad that he'd wake up at night wheezing violently - so bad that he almost couldn't breathe. My wife would try to give him that Benadryl or whatever and he's gag it right up. Episodes like that were truly scary for us young parents. Thankfully, we haven't had a case of that in a while - hence my optimism.

But the past few days have been rough. We're down on Long Island this week where it's a tad warmer and they are further into spring with all its pollen and whatnot. Plus we are staying at my MIL's house which has a bunch of old carpets.

Before we move in, at least a couple of those will be removed.

In the meantime....I'm going to google for holistic, all-natural asthma remedies!

Anywhere? Yeah Right.

...if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere...???

Actually, I think that popular shibboleth is factually incorrect.

It's easier to *make it* in the New York Metro area because there's so much more opportunity. Sure in some industries the competition is cutthroat; and sure, those mediocre restaurants in your hometown would be bankrupted out of Manhattan in a New York minute...

But still, I know plenty of Morons in New York who have done really well - economically anyway.

There's just so much darn money and capital floating around. The only secret to success in NY is to get your hands into a pool of it.

So a lot of the people who've allegedly made it here....I submit they'd be hard-pressed to do as well in not just in flyover country, but even in smaller cites.

Remembering In The 'Golden Years'

Here's a local rumor/story from Boston's South Shore.

Some dude sold his house on Jerusalem Road (wealthy oceanside byway) a little while ago.

Then one day recently he approached the new owners and asked if he could dig something up that he left on the property.

They consented and the octagenarian 'old coot' proceeded to exhume a cache of Krugerrands (gold coins) and whatnot that he had apparently buried years ago!

I don't know how one forgets that - especially with a market price of gold today that almost justifies the long-term investment! Perhaps he had so much other money that the buried gold had slipped his mind?

Or perhaps he's just the typical napping, lose-his-glasses-13-times-a-day 'old coot'?

After Brown and Yellow....Green

It's always an adventure, you know, in these *comfort stations*.

Will there be manually-dispensed paper towels, an automatic dispenser, or an empty dispenser?

Or will it be one of those ridiculous air-dryers? One of those supersonically loud ones....or one of those weak-a$$ older ones where you have to shake and rub your hands with abandon to get them half-dry?

Long ago I decided that I just couldn't take the all the mysterious excitement of how I'd have to dry off in unfamiliar bathrooms. So I go with a shake, trouser-wipe, and drip-dry methodology everytime, no matter the cornucopia of options.

All these places are trying to be *green* or *cheap* with air-dryers...

I just can't imagine those air-dryers don't use up a lot of electricity - especially that new one that so disturbingly powerful it could blow your merkin off - the so-called XLERATOR.

I say let everyone do as I do - let them dry off on their own slacks. Is it in the health code or something that public bathrooms must provide some device for drying?

They say that one-third of men don't even wash their hands in the bathroom.

I'll take the (way) OVER of that!

Recycling Will Put Food On The Table...

Take-Your-Kid-To-Work Day Loses Steam

CHICAGO—More than a decade after it began, take-your-kid-to-work day appears to be losing steam. Now it's keep-your-kid-in-school.

Thursday marked the 17th year for Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day. But some school districts sent strongly worded letters or e-mails to parents explaining that taking a child to work would put the youngster's education at risk.

Though many kids still accompany a parent to work, some employers say the event increasingly conflicts with high-stakes standardized testing in schools. And this year, it was overshadowed by Earth Day, which celebrated its 40th anniversary on Thursday.

In Phoenix, the superintendent sent out a letter telling students that missing time from school, even one day, means "his or her learning achievement suffers."

Though many kids still accompany a parent to work, some employers say the event increasingly conflicts with high-stakes standardized testing in schools. And this year, it was overshadowed by Earth Day, which celebrated its 40th anniversary on Thursday.

In Texas -- at Dell Inc. in Austin and Southern Methodist University in Dallas -- most of the focus was on Earth Day, not Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.

Hah!

I find that last line pretty ironic. At Dell Computer?

A young Michael Dell was working his tale off from age 10 up. He started out making tens of thousands selling newspaper subscriptions to newlyweds. Then he was madly dissecting and rebuilding computers before dropping out of useless college to start his multi-billion dollar international business. I sincerely doubt he'd deprecate a child skipping school to visit a real-world workplace for a single day. And I sincerely doubt he was focusing his energy, back in the day, on acid-rain or nuclear arms protests - or whatever the nonsense of his specific youth was.

Thanks to my Grumpy golf buddy for this link!

Nice Slide

Just saw this on Christopher Fountain's blog:



Man, that Fountain guy is prolific. I had 360 *unread items* from him in my Google Reader yesterday. I believe he gets 10,000 hits a day. Check him out.

Mean Obscurantist Parents!

So it's all but a done deal that we are moving to Long Island.

We most certainly HAVE NOT told our children - the 5.42 year old Prince and the 3.85 year old Princess yet.

Why exactly should we?

They certainly aren't old enough to warrant *full disclosure*.

And I don't need to deal with any more tears than I get from them on an everyday basis. They'll find out at the last minute and without any dramatic delivery. It'll be presented as *matter of fact* and *of necessity*. There may be a fib in there if need be - I might say it's *just for a little while*.

I really can't stand these parents who baby their babies but then ask them their opinion on stuff that, quite frankly, 4 year olds don't get a vote on.

The only time to really complain about a move is AFTER it takes place. And only AFTER the new home has been given a fair shot. If it pales in comparison then yeah, anyone and everyone can legitimately cry out, "WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT!"

Not for anything, forget my little brats, I have my own tears to manage. My 2.70 years here on Boston's South Shore have seriously been the happiest of my life.

And now I'm moving in my with MIL!!! To Long Island, a golfing wasteland!!!



At least I know I'll eat well....and bars are open until 4am.

Side Note - We are actually heading down to Grandma's (my MIL) house tomorrow for a visit and to throw out 3/4 of her stuff in a dumpster that we secretly ordered. I told the kids yesterday that we were going to see their grandmother in New York and my little angel offered this:

PrincessC-Nut - Are we going to the house with the pool? (the summer house)

Dad - No. To the other one.

PrincessC-Nut - Ahhhhhh....I hate that one.

Dad - [gulp] Why?

PrincessC-Nut - I hate that one. IT'S BORING.

Palladium - Better Than Gold!

I already mentioned how I tragically dumped by palladium position at $226 in May!

And look, it's gone up another 100 points in the last few weeks. Oh well...

Someone asked me about shorting this metal.

NO WAY. I told him a quick look at a rhodium chart ought to scare him out of that trade. That rare metal went from $350 to $10,000 an ounce a couple of years ago!

A better play, for the insistent palladium bear would be to short the mining stocks - SWC and PAL. Miners across all metals have lagged the underlying commodities, badly at that over the past decade. You watch, palladium will downtick a little and the miners will come in 30%. It took me a long, long time and thousands upon thousands of dollars to learn that miners are real POS.

And within that learning process I learned to get long the commodity, as I did with palladium last year. Only I got in too late and out too early. Timing is beyond everything!

Personally, I won't be touching any of those trades short or long at these levels. I just wanted to say that for insistent shorts, miners have historically been a much better play than futures contracts.

Cover That Short Celtics Position!

The Celtics have held serve, winning the first two playoff home games against the Miami Heat. All of a sudden they look like the powerhouse team that started off the year.

How'd they do it?







Well they listened to me!

Here's what I suggested, amidst their woes, at the start of February:

For all their flaws, I say start Tony Allen and Glen Davis. Have KG and Ray Allen come off the bench. Athletic young guys may commit annoying turnovers, but they also keep constant pressure on the other team by banging the boards and running the floor. And both of those 'young coots' have proven they can play when they get consistent minutes.

Both players have, as the headline states, sparked the Celts. Davis I believe had 24 points last night.

I put the blame here squarely on the coach. He's too *conservative*, too deferential to the overpaid 'old coots' like Garnett and Ray Allen. Davis only put up those numbers yesterday because KG's suspension FORCED Doc Rivers to give him the minutes he deserves and has been denied.

These two guys should rightfully be subbed in at the 6:00 mark of the first quarter each game - way sooner than what Rivers usually does.

I remember those Detroit Piston teams of the late 80s/early 90s. They had some great talent in the starting line-up, BUT it was their super-subs Vinnie Johnson, Dennis Rodman, and John Salley that routinely annihilated the opposition.

You have the deepest team in the league by far. Use the bench, Doc.

April Pic Folder Cleaning

You might have to click a few of these to enlarge them.

Reality - Still Postponed Indefinitely

Wells Fargo reported its fantasy-land earnings today. Here's the money quote which is worth preserving for future reference:

"We believe quarterly provision expenses and quarterly total credit losses have peaked," Chief Credit and Risk Officer Mike Loughlin said in a press release.

Bond markets have rallied in the past year. Most of these Big Bank earnings from the likes of JPM, BAC, WFC, are from simply marking up the paper value of their fixed income - much of which is still very toxic. They aren't dumping any of these securities, so the risks of these long-term instruments have not been eliminated or even mitigated. Note the banks deceptively refer to these unrealized, and unsustainable gains as *trading profits* - as if they have a legitimate business operation, one that will consistently generate *profits*. Just wait and see. Once the bond market jitters return, all of a sudden their so-called traders will be wildly unprofitable, again.

Of course, that's not the extent of the financial legerdemain. ALL OF THESE BANKS have billions upon billions of loans held *off the books*. And guess what....those aren't exactly their *good loans*!

The banks are flat-out BANKRUPT. They misrepresent lie about profits and hide losses.

AND they are leveraged to the hilt! See prior post - Capitol Thievery - where Wells Fargo clearly admits they are levered 15 to 1 - meaning they only have $1 in the bank for every $15 of liabilities.

I don't know about y'all, but I'll take the OVER of that 15 multiple.

I bought more puts today. 2012 January 25-strikes for just under $2 apiece.

See also - Greek For Moronic Bankers.

Hoofing It On The Homefront

Over the last couple of years I've been experimenting with *self-denial*.

Instead of my normal 5 pieces of pizza....how about 3?

Instead of my normal brimming bowl of ice cream....how about two-thirds as much?

I've whittled down color TV viewing; replaced some golf rounds with practice sessions; skipped daily showers(!); and cut back sundry other little indulgences.

In particular, going to bed at night without the TV was hard - not to do, but to attempt to do. Not long ago I would shudder at the prospect of spending the night in someone's guest room that didn't have a cable hook-up. I'd often choose to sleep on the floor of the living room!

Realizing this intense dependence I actually became scared. Am I just an incipient set-in-their-ways 'old coot'? Surely this is how my father's queer unbreakable routines began.

So here's my latest idea. Try to spend one day a week either entirely at home or at least without using the car.

I gave it a go on Monday AND made it until 5:32pm before folding. I broke down and took the kids to the park at Nantasket Beach.

While I've more than once Marginalized those harried off-dropping parents, I've acknowledged that I too have a dependency on the combustion engine. I am dependent on rapidly eliminating physical distances at a whim. And that describes most of us non-urban dwellers anyway.

Now the last thing in the world I am is GREEN. Heck, I'll idle my 12 mpg Chevy Suburban all day long just to prove it. So this has nothing to do with *climate un-changed*, emissions, or the eco-pagan religion.

I just think that under the surface of all our dependencies and prosperity there lies some suffocated humanity, some unrealized potential. Eating less makes me appreciate food and taste more; hitting golf balls with only my left hand (no right hand bailout!) has improved my golf swing; and less color TV means more productive time web-surfing, blogging, and reading.

Mix it up a little. You're going to turn into a robotic 'old coot' or 'old bag' eventually....but resolve to fight the process as best as you can.

I'm going to try again to stay completely homebound one day next week. Hopefully this new ascetic endeavor will be more successful than my last one.

The Expert-Religion, Losing Parishioners

Natural News, one of my new most favoritest sites, has its list of 10 Biggest Healthcare Lies In America. There are no surprises there - to anyone who's ever read Health Ranger Mike Adams before. I just wanted to highlight this particular one:

Lie #3) Doctors are experts in health

Doctors don't even study health; they study disease. Modern doctors are taught virtually nothing about nutrition, wellness or disease prevention. Expecting a doctor to guide you on health issues is sort of like expecting your accountant to pilot a jet airliner -- it's simply not something he or she has ever been trained in.

That's not to say doctors aren't intelligent people. Most of them have high IQs. But even a genius can't teach you something they know nothing about.

This is an important point. One doesn't ask a 30-on-1 government school teacher for advice on homeschooling or individualized education - no matter how many *years of experience* they claim.

One doesn't ask a sharp-dressed, middle-aged, flippant real estate agent for her outlook on the housing market - nor a commission-collecting stock broker financial adviser skimmer for his S&P 500 forecast.

And only a Moron would consult a pear-shaped doctor in matters of preventative *health*!

A Diversified Attack, On Scum

I found out that my scumbag landlord has scored himself a job, sort of.

So today I contacted his new employer and had a nice 10 minute discussion with him. Items of discussion included: integrity, debt, bankruptcy, fraud, lying, etc.

His new employer was very interested in the discrepancies between what he had thought about my landlord, and what I had just informed him of!

Next I called a State *loan regulator* with whom I wanted to discuss what might be *illegal* self-advertising on the part my landlord. I didn't get through today but will try again later this week.

Then I issued a formal letter of complaint to my local housing authority about some *ordinance violations* by my landlord. A formal letter requires a formal response - which can be appealed and publicized. (I've done a fair amount of leg-work on this one. And it's additional to my already filed Board of Health complaints.)

After that I contacted the office of the bankruptcy judge who is presiding over my landlord's appeal for a *clean financial slate*. I was told they have considerable discretion in meting out leniency. And I was told to write to the judge and convey the whole story of my landlord's theft/crime/fraud/harassment. Except the woman there (a clerk) essentially blew me off. She told me to go bother the *trustee*. So I did.

I called him up and discussed a couple of *misrepresentations* that I found on my landlord's bankruptcy petition. Though the petition is written under an explicit penalty of perjury, the trustee wasn't very receptive to my Captious input. He shrugged his shoulders and half-scoffed that he handles 600 cases a year. But he did tell me precisely the type of evidence he was looking for. So I'll see what I can do.

Now the C-Nut family is moving on and out of this rat-infested house very soon. So why should I care about this clown?

I'll tell you why - BECAUSE no one else does. BECAUSE that's what he's banking on. He sticks his elbows out, screams loudly, and the invertebrates back off.

Most everyone I've contacted about him (banks, utilities, law enforcement, etc.) has stiff-armed me. They simply don't care. They are large bureaucratic entities funded by third party pools of money.

I really enjoy being the ONLY ONE who cares as it sets me apart, as it elevates me into the saddle of a high white horse.

Understand that my landlord does everything in his power to game the system.

So I'm going to match him and do whatever I can think of to see that he loses!

Like a dabbling entrepreneur....I only have to be right but once.

Guess what his new job is?

He's become a *loan originator* for a distressed debt fund!

So he went from pushing toxic loans on minorities in Dorchester, Brockton, and Worcester...

And personally stealing millions from banks with unsecured HELOCs....

To now being essentially a vulture of the very toxic, now-defaulted loans that he helped proliferate (and profit from) in the first place!!!

He may be only one guy in Boston and perhaps couldn't even get a job as a boot-black in Lower Manhattan...

But his career path is nearly a microcosm of what happened on Wall Street these past several years. They trafficked in junk the entire the way up, and will on the entire way down.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of Work

Do you know when it's easiest to find a job?

It's when you already have one!

When you're out of work and the bills are piling up it's near impossible to get hired.

My wife interviewed for a position in Manhattan a little over a month ago. They said they same BS that firms always say, "We'll let you know next week."

Only they didn't, of course. Or the next week...

But yesterday they did offer her the position and it looks like she'll sign on the dotted line - once the non-small issue of compensation is addressed.

And that's when these surprises appear, when neither she nor I was watching the pot. Heck we'd almost totally forgotten about this position.

But that's in stark contrast to the recent experience of a friend of ours.

This breadwinner been out of work since November and undergone a torturesome 6 or 7 interviews with an interested new employer. Still, after 8(?) weeks of this process they haven't made a decision one way or another.

That's just cruel. Four formal interviews is where you have to draw the line.

After that, put the potential job out of your mind and get back to looking far and wide for other positions.



One more thing.

In your giddyness, don't forget to negotiate *vacation* before signing anything.

Because if Mrs. C-Nut hears one more story about someone 35-45 years old taking a job with only 2 or 3 weeks vacation....she's going to blow her lid!

It's almost like when someone dies - there's too much emotion to haggle with the gouging funeral director (and he knows it!).

Homeschool your kids. And turn them into entrepreneurs that they may never know the agony of a job search.

The Backbone Of Pop Music

This is kind of funny - and well done even if there are a couple of unnecessary naughty words uttered in it:

Punishing My Kids

I just screamed at my kids for the extra-curricular smut I caught them with on my PC.

I took a screenshot of the *game* so y'all can appreciate my anger:



There's no computer for either of them for the rest of the day!

Eviction Chronicles - Served Again!

In January, my wife and I decided not to pay rent. We took pre-emptive action against our landlord who was going to just *steal* our un-escrowed security deposit on our way out. The Moron kicked and screamed, served us a notice to quit and then tried to take us to court. At the last minute he capitulated in the face of my threatened counter-suit.

In March, with our house scheduled for *auction*, we decided to not pay rent. More accurately we told him that our pre-paid *last month* would have to suffice for March. Displeased with that, the scumbag had us served with a notice to quit on March 2nd!

Recall that gripe of HIS ended up with HIM writing me a $1,200 check in court-sponsored mediation!

April came and we had no hot water due to his negligence (also clogged sinks, a bee hive in our shed, a malfunctioning stove, etc.) so we weren't going to pay him a dime, no less a nickel. He kicked and screamed yet again. Though curiously, he hadn't initiated legal action against us.

That is until today. This morning I was served with my third notice to quit! I expect him, in 10-14 days or so, to attempt to legally *vacate* the terms of our mediation - i.e. demand payment and/or eviction.

It is interesting that he waited until April 19th to *re-start the process*. His uncharacteristic hesitation suggests some exhaustion PLUS, perhaps, a non-optimistic view of what a judge might say.

I'm fairly confident that he'll get buried in court but it almost doesn't matter.

In the rare event a judge says something ludicrous like I didn't sufficiently notify my landlord of the problems and makes me pay....I don't care. The money isn't the issue for us; it's about moral principle. I'd be happy to pay rent to the bank or to donate it to charity. If this dirtbag wants the money I'm going to make him work for it (pay filing fees, pay servers, and pay an attorney).

My wife and I have agreed that we'll happily go to court with light preparation (in terms of not hiring a lawyer, documenting the neglect, etc.) Again, if a judge rules against us....we don't care as we're moving on anyway.

Plus, should I be ordered out I can always just force the broke-a$$ Moron to physically evict me. That will cost him $4,000 out of his empty pockets.

He can't win and I'm trying to pound that reality into his dense skull.

We just don't want the end of our stay here marred by too much animosity. So we're taking a laid-back approach to whatever happens.

I just called to confirm the new auction date and was told that *none is scheduled*. So the scam artist has successfully delayed the authorities, yet again. By rights and the laws of other eras he'd be in jail for $4 million in mortgage debt plus another 500k in unpaid credit card bills.

The problem, for us, with him having punted the auction to who knows when is that it's probably given him more *false hope* and hence more energy to battle us.

Unfortunately for him, I have a rather large reserve tank of fuel myself!

For background see:

War And Peace

Eviction Chronicles - Brimming With Schadenfreude

Do YOU Have Anyone In Mind?

Would You Remarry?

A husband and wife are sitting quietly in bed reading when the
Wife looks over at him and asks the question....

WIFE: What would you do if I died? Would you get married Again?

HUSBAND: Definitely not!

WIFE: Why not? Don't you like being married?

HUSBAND: Of course I do.

WIFE: Then why wouldn't you remarry?

HUSBAND: Okay, okay, I'd get married again.

WIFE: You would? (with a hurt look)

HUSBAND: (makes audible groan)

WIFE: Would you live in our house?

HUSBAND: Sure, it's a great house.

WIFE: Would you sleep with her in our bed?

HUSBAND: Where else would we sleep?

WIFE: Would you let her drive my car?

HUSBAND: Probably, it is almost new.

WIFE: Would you replace my pictures with hers?

HUSBAND: That would seem like the proper thing to do.

WIFE: Would you give her my jewelry?

HUSBAND: No, I'm sure she'd want her own.

WIFE: Would you take her golfing with you?

HUSBAND: Yes, those are always good times.

WIFE: Would she use my clubs?

HUSBAND: No, she's left-handed.

WIFE: -- silence --

HUSBAND: $hit.

From Propaganda To 'Public Relations'

Interesting clip here:

Honor Thy....Even If Willfully Ignorant

Yesterday I blogged on C.S. Lewis.

Growing up he had great difficulty dealing with his crazed father. Join the club, right?

Here's an excerpt from Surprised By Joy that testifies to that frustration:

One conversation, held several years later, may be recorded as a specimen of these continual cross-purposes. My brother had been speaking of a reunion dinner for the officers of the Nth Division which he had lately attended. "I suppose your friend Collins was there," said my father.

B - Collins? Oh no. He wasn't in the Nth, you know.

F - (After a pause) Did these fellows not like Collins then?

B - I don't quite understand. What fellows?

F - The Johnnies that got up the dinner.

B - Oh no, not at all. It was nothing to do with liking or not liking. You see, it was a purely Divisional affair. There'd be no question of asking anyone who hadn't been in the Nth.

F - (After a long pause) Hm! Well, I'm sure poor Collins was very much hurt.

Lewis described his father as:

...not so much incapable of understanding anything as determined to misunderstand everything.

Ever meet anyone like that? Work with anyone like that?

Are you related to anyone who's thoroughly impossible to communicate with on even the simplest terms? With whom even *the weather* is a treacherous subject?

'Yes' on all counts for me.

Most tragically, some even marry their conversational nemesis:

Who Wants To Be An Exterminator?

My back has been aching so I did a rare thing and laid down in front of the color television this afternoon.

And I came across a great new show:



Since I've been battling rodents in my rental house I have somewhat of an interest in this subject now. Heck, one of my buddies found a mouse and the first thing he did was call me, an incipient expert, for infestation advice!

But this show was stomach-turning awesome. They're based in semi-tropical Louisiana so they have a wide variety of critters crawling through the cracks: snakes, beavers, bats, roaches, armadillos, alligators, etc.

They ran three shows in a row so I got a nice taste of the vermin. In the first one, Billy trapped a skunk and got sprayed trying to collect the trap!

In that same episode, some young girl living in a trailer on a zoo complained about mice. Billy went out and found evidence of mice everywhere and set traps. She has also reported having a mouse problem in her *lingerie drawer*! Can you imagine that?

So Billy set a trap in there too.

He came back and found dead mice in all his traps. Up in her bedroom he reached under a dresser to check a trap when he GOT BIT BY A DECENT SIZED SNAKE! It's fangs went right through his glove and his brother had to grab the snake and de-fang him. The chick? She ran so far out of the room they had to go looking for her. Can you imagine a young lady that not only had to grab her panties each morning out of a *shared* drawer, but she also now has to go to sleep knowing there was a king snake in her bedroom? (Apparently, it followed the mice up through the hole in the floor they made.)

Billy also hit two *shacks* that were overrun by thousands of cockroaches. People were actually living in these houses at the time. There was trash everywhere and dead rats whose corpses were picked down to the bone by roaches.

I set up my DVR to grab the upcoming shows.

See also where my adventure began - Rodents.

Another Lazy Saturday

I just had to go upstairs at 9:54PM on a Saturday night and tell my 5.41 year old son to put his book down and go to sleep.

On her way to yet another bar(!), my wife tucked him in at 8:40PM and told him he could stay up and read to himself - and that's precisely what he did - blazing 40 pages into Book 2 of the The Secrets of Droon.

I took that video a few weeks ago. It's funny because for sometime he read to himself ALOUD. He must have really been parching his throat until just now when he figured out how to read silently.

He was up early this morning - not painfully early but soon enough. So I kicked him out of our bed, told him to go turn on my computer, and go to ThatQuiz.org. You never saw him run so fast as when I tell him he can go on the PC - even if strictly for *educational* purposes only.

For a good thirty minutes he brushed up on South and Latin American geography, gave it yet another unsuccessful stab at cell structure, before moving on to coordinate geometry (graphing points is within his ken).

After breakfast his mother sat him down for some seatwork. I believe they did several pages in his Gifted & Talented workbook and then a mapping exercise. They were there for probably more than an hour while I put the 3.83 year old Princess on StarFall.com for her phonics *work*.

While he brushes his teeth, I ALWAYS make the Prince *skip-count*. We do *thirty-counts*. For example, today was easy; he had to count to 10 by one-thirds. Then I make him repeat the count twice more on paper when he's done in the bathroom. A more difficult exercise in his curriculum is say counting backwards from 180 by 6s. A lot of adults can't even do that! I also make my daughter count now EVERY TIME she/we brush her teeth as she's climbing the ladder of numeracy these days. In fact she has almost completed Kumon's Simple Addition workbook.

Next, my son was directed to go read one of his books but for some reason that didn't take. So I told him to go do his daily *piano work* for 10 minutes and off he ran - setting the oven timer and then practicing the Star Wars Imperial March which he loves.

Then Mrs. C-Nut took them to a great children's library a couple of towns over. The Prince came back with 10 audiobooks and who knows how many other books. Put it this way, I did the library *return* today at our local library for last week. There must have been 30 items in the bag my wife gave me; I could barely carry it!

This afternoon, while his mother was at yoga(!), we decided to officially start playing chess (while I was simultaneously cooking dinner!). So he grabbed the set he got a while back for his birthday and I had him read a bit of the rules. Then I taught him how all the pieces moved but it seemed like he was already somewhat acquainted with the parameters, perhaps from having watched me tie/lose to his great-grandfather a few weeks ago.

After dinner, I had him do a blog post on chess, which he did. For a longer post like that, we write it out beforehand. I interview him and try to get him to logically articulate a summarizing post. Usually I tell him we have to *write 5 sentences* or *seven sentences*. I make him read and re-read whatever it is we have scribbled down so he can learn about *flow*. Once it's written up, he has to go over and post it on his own; he can upload pics, spell-check it, title it, and everything. Today it took a solid 45 minutes of work.

For that he earned a homemade milkshake!

Then it was bed. See the beginning of this post.

Keep up with my son's blog here - The Youngest Blogger.

Meatball Frustration

I'm about at my wits' end trying to make some passable meatballs.

Over the last several months I must have tried 10 times to make them edible to no avail. In fact, my latest batch was terrible.

I've tried a lot of parsley, and no parsley, heavy on breadcrumbs, and light on breadcrumbs, two eggs up to 6 eggs, with Parmesan cheese and with a whole lot more cheese...

I've tried frying them and I've tried baking them.

I've even tried expensive organic beef!

I've Googled for recipes....and I've interrogated good cooks I know. All to no avail.

My latest tinkering, in hopes of reproducing the out-of-this-world meatballs some homeschooling *mom* I know makes, involved ultra-lean beef, Worcestershire sauce, and of all things - jarred sauce! (All three ingredients were novel in my experimentation.)

I did just about everything she told me but mine came out, like I said above, the worst batch yet.

There are still some variables I can tweak - like my brand of breadcrumbs (homemade), my brand of cheese (pecorino romano), etc. But my frustration is so high I'm about ready to quit on this one, for now anyway.

My wife laughed her hiney off at me the other day as I cursed this last batch botch. The 100% guidette said I was just proving that there's no way a Polack such as myself could ever concoct a decent meatball!

What kills me is that I can really cook otherwise.

See also - Pasta Rotation - Bolognese.

Book Rec - Surpised By Joy

Personally, I realized the worthless of *the news* years ago. And I've fastidiously shielded myself from all that nonsense since then. It couldn't be more true, that expression I heard:

"Trying to find out what's going on by reading newspapers is like trying to find out what time it is by watching the second-hand of a clock."

Here's C.S. Lewis waxing on the same subject, many decades before newspapers descended to the joke they are today:

Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be know before he is twenty to be have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand. (p159)

That was from Surprised By Joy - an autobiographical sketch of his early life.

While I have next to no other quotes from that book highlighted in my notes, I found it a most enjoyable and most edifying read. My notes are, however, filled with many obscure words that I have to look up: ergastulum, cantle, nonce, batrachise, piebald, dyarchy, eructation, pother, slag, corvée, askesis, longueur, anthroposophist, hypostasize, numinous, stile, dram...

Alright here's one other deserving excerpt that addresses "Wyvern" the high school C.S. Lewis attended:

But the essential evil of public-school life, as I see it, did not lie in either the sufferings of the fags or in the privileged arrogance of the Bloods. These were symptoms of something more all-pervasive, something which, in the long run, did most harm to the boys who succeeded best at school and were happiest there. Spiritually speaking, the deadly thing was that school life was almost wholly dominated by the social struggle; to get on, to arrive, or, having reached the top, to remain there, was the absorbing preoccupation. It is often, of course, the preoccupation of adult life as well; but I have not yet seen any adult society in which the surrender to this impulse was so total. And from it, at school as in the world, all sorts of meanness flow; the sycophancy that courts those higher in the scale, the cultivation of those whom it is well to know, the speedy abandonment of friendships that will not help on the upward path, the readiness to join the cry against the unpopular, the secret motive in almost every action. The Wyvernians seem to me in retrospect to have been the least spontaneous, in that sense the least boyish, society that I have ever known. It would perhaps not be too much to say that in some boys' lives everything was calculated to the great end of advancement. For this games were played; for this clothes, friends, amusements, and vices were chosen. (p 108-109)

I guess I'd always had an inkling of the cruel hierarchies of the old British schools, but I must say I was rather shocked reading about the Bloods and the fags. Lewis had to blacken upperclassmen's boots whenever they demanded it!

Though the scariest part of it was the fact that this suffocating student social scene had the explicit backing of school administrators. It was a power alliance not unlike what we have today between Big Business, Big Medicine, Big Education, Big Media, and Big Government - where unlikely partners conspire to retain power; where experts and custodians subjugate unwitting serfs via invisible walls and reduced opportunity.

It's not wonder why over the years so many millions have fled the prison of aristocratic Europe to come here....where they could, heretofore anyway, freely erect their own little jails.

See also - Introducing C.S. Lewis.

Honey-Do List

The last couple of days I've been busy, er re-deployed.

My wife has ordered me to write up (in book form) everything we've done so far in raising and homeschooling our kids.

Could you even sell that?

I don't think so. Maybe. I guess it depends on how informative it ends up being and, potentially, how our kids turn out. For example, if the Prince aced the SAT at age 9 or something....I'll bet that such a book, if ever finished, would become instantly marketable.

Still, parenting and education books are a dime a dozen. The ebook route has the advantage of *profit margin* but also runs the risk of piracy. Traditional paper books have possibly greater reach, but might fetch a mere $1 or so in profit. One idea I have to increase the economic viability of such an endeavor is to bundle an option for personal email support with the text. Raise the book up to $50 but that will buy email/phone support as well. I don't know; that's really looking too far ahead. Job one is to write it up and see whether or not I even have enough insightful content.

In fact I'd already been cataloging my homeschooling insights in some Google Docs, but was convinced I didn't have enough to fill up too many pages. After all, what I do is rather simple and well within the capabilities of most parents. I just enforce more discipline and put in more effort. But my wife convinced me, or at least got me to re-assess how much content I really do have - and I've come to agree with her. And if it only turns out to be 50 pages then that's fine. I have several other book ideas.

One thing I've discovered is that while I've covered most of what I do with my kids on this blog, the content is IMPOSSIBLE to find. Heck, if I can't find it then who could?

A year ago I resolved to write a work of fiction. I did get started on a few ideas, one of which went quite far in the outline process. But of course that *pipe dream* stalled out. I've just got too many ideas and insufficient focus. Should I start a private school? Should I pimp myself out as a high-end tutor? Should I try to ramp up this blog? Etc. As my kids get older, my free time is returning!

Realize at the same time I'm trying to homeschool my kids and enjoy a mild dose of peace here and there. I need focus. That's the alleged shortcoming of this blog. And that was the explicit accusation from Mrs. C-Nut. Even if it goes nowhere, this *next* first book that is.