And a short one, too.
It's been so long since I've bothered with this thing that people have gone so far as to actually stop asking me to update it. So now that everyone's quit their bitching, I can finally get down to work.
Lots of people step away from blogging and then say they're going to get back into it full force. And most of them don't. And I will probably be one of them.
But in the unlikely event that I manage to provide sporadic updates, they will probably be shorter and less picture-intensive. All that extra creativity, as weak as it was, seemed an awful lot like effort to me. And effort's not what blogging is all about, at least not for me.
More later?
Probably not.
Jan 18, 2008
May 29, 2007
Transformers
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have plenty of toys in my house. Some of them even belong to my children. The majority, sadly, are mine.
I've got the old G.I. Joe. Vintage He-man. Star Wars of all kinds. Various action figures representing characters from movies, TV shows, and video games. And if video games count as toys, then whoa, Nelly.
The only thing missing that hasn't been repurchased or simply hoarded since youth is the Transformers. Unfortunately for my wife, who for some reason is bothered that we don't have enough storage space because our closets are overflowing with toys, that's been changing lately.
Now, I never really played with transformers as a kid. I owned some, transformed them into whatever they were supposed to be and back again. But I never set them up and had them fight it out, never made up a story for them, never gave them voices. I watched the cartoon, but it was never on my must-see radar the way others were. In fact I never got into the "big robot" thing the way other kids did. I couldn't care less about Voltron, which makes me a heretic as far as some 80's enthusiasts are concerned.
I've always enjoyed toys with realistic detail and great color. Transformers added to that the sense that they were intricate, and therefore not meant for kids. They may have broken easily if you were the typical ham-handed youngster (a reason why the vintage ones are now generally more expensive than other vintage toys), but they weren't poorly made. Rather, they felt like they were made for adults, and lucky was the child deemed responsible enough to have such a finely-crafted thing.
Eventually I sold all my transformers to an adult collector (when I was 11, no less). Although I regretted letting them go I knew I would rather own more toys that I would actually play with, and for that I needed money to buy them. I raked in roughly $100 for my collection (a sizeable fortune for a kid in the 80's), a small fraction of what I'd make for it today.
Much later in life I began to regret that decision. I'd always planned to keep certain toys for as long as I could, telling myself I'd sell them when I was older, and they would be worth more. I tried to enact that plan last year by selling off my He-man collection, but alas, He-man isn't Transformers; they just weren't worth what my nostalgia was demanding. So, I figured my kids might enjoy my toys as much as I did, and I gave them the He-man collection. And they loved it. Consequently, I now find myself on ebay periodically looking for deals on old He-man toys I can pick up.
And I still play with them, usually with my kids. I don't get a lot of time, but at least I'm realistic about that. But my 10 year old self still pops up from time to time, and far more than one might expect in a supposedly well-adjusted adult. In fact, kids have been a great excuse to indulge my
toy-buying fanaticism. So while most of the toys in the house belong to "all of us", they really belong to me. Adults who spend a decent amount of time playing with toys and games eventually turn into (or already were) Nerds, whom other non-Nerds look at askance, and avoid if at all possible.
But the Nerd doesn't really care. My house, my nerdy compulsions. There's an AT-AT on my piano. Another one on the floor. A melange of figures set up next to my computer. A wicker chest full of plastic pirate ships, sitting atop a wooden shelf full of starships. And now the final frontier of 80's toydom (for me, anyway) is joining them -- transformers.
I found a cheap one on ebay, in pretty good condition. It arrived in the mail. I transformed it into a robot. Back into a corvette. Back into a robot. I showed my daughter. She wanted it to be a car. Then my son wanted it to be a robot. By then, the magic of transforming had done it again. Soon I was back on ebay, looking for the ones I used to have, trying to find a toy that cost my parents less than $10 in 1984 for less than $50 in 2007.
But then the one I bought broke. My kids were playing with it, and the arm fell off. I managed to fix it, mostly, but it reminded me of the fragility that vexed so many other kids twenty years ago. It was the only existing deterrent to quell my imminent online buying craze -- even the best-made old school transformers could break out of the box if an over-zealous 6 year old didn't want to finesse that wheel-arm out from under the hood just so. The problem wasn't spending money on a frivolity, it was wasting money on a frivolity.
But then I got to thinking . . . what about the new transformers? I saw them in stores, but had largely ignored them -- they didn't look like real things anymore, and that seemed to ruin the whole point. But I figured I'd look anyway, just in case they'd made any improvements.
And boy have they. For one thing, perhaps because of the upcoming movie, there are quite a
few realistic ones out there. They're just as complex as the old ones, but generally bigger, more flexible, and perhaps best of all, designed to break and
easily reassemble. That way if you accidentally stress a transforming point too much, it'll snap off before it breaks, and you can just snap if back on. They've accomplished this by making all the tougher movable spots hinged on metal rather than plastic, or reinforced with metal parts. That's not to say they couldn't break; I'm sure they could. But my wife "accidentally" knocked one off a high shelf yesterday, and only a single reattachable piece came off.
In fact, it seems like for all the many serious faults with modern culture, we've at least managed to improve on toys, even if the best ones are still just upgrades of older ones (modern culture still isn't very good at original ideas). But I'm not complaining -- it's a great way to combine my good old days with my grown-up days, and tie them to what will one day be my kid's "good old days."
Plus, it annoys my wife.
I've got the old G.I. Joe. Vintage He-man. Star Wars of all kinds. Various action figures representing characters from movies, TV shows, and video games. And if video games count as toys, then whoa, Nelly.
The only thing missing that hasn't been repurchased or simply hoarded since youth is the Transformers. Unfortunately for my wife, who for some reason is bothered that we don't have enough storage space because our closets are overflowing with toys, that's been changing lately.
Now, I never really played with transformers as a kid. I owned some, transformed them into whatever they were supposed to be and back again. But I never set them up and had them fight it out, never made up a story for them, never gave them voices. I watched the cartoon, but it was never on my must-see radar the way others were. In fact I never got into the "big robot" thing the way other kids did. I couldn't care less about Voltron, which makes me a heretic as far as some 80's enthusiasts are concerned.
And yet the very nature of transformers is what made me want them. I may not have loved the Big Robot genre, but transformers in robot form certainly looked cool. They also looked pretty convincing, at least in the early days, as vehicles. You could only transform Optimus Prime so much before every mack truck on the road
suddenly looked ready to pop open . . .
suddenly looked ready to pop open . . .
. . . and hand you an energon cube.
I've always enjoyed toys with realistic detail and great color. Transformers added to that the sense that they were intricate, and therefore not meant for kids. They may have broken easily if you were the typical ham-handed youngster (a reason why the vintage ones are now generally more expensive than other vintage toys), but they weren't poorly made. Rather, they felt like they were made for adults, and lucky was the child deemed responsible enough to have such a finely-crafted thing.
Eventually I sold all my transformers to an adult collector (when I was 11, no less). Although I regretted letting them go I knew I would rather own more toys that I would actually play with, and for that I needed money to buy them. I raked in roughly $100 for my collection (a sizeable fortune for a kid in the 80's), a small fraction of what I'd make for it today.Much later in life I began to regret that decision. I'd always planned to keep certain toys for as long as I could, telling myself I'd sell them when I was older, and they would be worth more. I tried to enact that plan last year by selling off my He-man collection, but alas, He-man isn't Transformers; they just weren't worth what my nostalgia was demanding. So, I figured my kids might enjoy my toys as much as I did, and I gave them the He-man collection. And they loved it. Consequently, I now find myself on ebay periodically looking for deals on old He-man toys I can pick up.
And I still play with them, usually with my kids. I don't get a lot of time, but at least I'm realistic about that. But my 10 year old self still pops up from time to time, and far more than one might expect in a supposedly well-adjusted adult. In fact, kids have been a great excuse to indulge my
toy-buying fanaticism. So while most of the toys in the house belong to "all of us", they really belong to me. Adults who spend a decent amount of time playing with toys and games eventually turn into (or already were) Nerds, whom other non-Nerds look at askance, and avoid if at all possible.But the Nerd doesn't really care. My house, my nerdy compulsions. There's an AT-AT on my piano. Another one on the floor. A melange of figures set up next to my computer. A wicker chest full of plastic pirate ships, sitting atop a wooden shelf full of starships. And now the final frontier of 80's toydom (for me, anyway) is joining them -- transformers.
I found a cheap one on ebay, in pretty good condition. It arrived in the mail. I transformed it into a robot. Back into a corvette. Back into a robot. I showed my daughter. She wanted it to be a car. Then my son wanted it to be a robot. By then, the magic of transforming had done it again. Soon I was back on ebay, looking for the ones I used to have, trying to find a toy that cost my parents less than $10 in 1984 for less than $50 in 2007.
But then the one I bought broke. My kids were playing with it, and the arm fell off. I managed to fix it, mostly, but it reminded me of the fragility that vexed so many other kids twenty years ago. It was the only existing deterrent to quell my imminent online buying craze -- even the best-made old school transformers could break out of the box if an over-zealous 6 year old didn't want to finesse that wheel-arm out from under the hood just so. The problem wasn't spending money on a frivolity, it was wasting money on a frivolity.
But then I got to thinking . . . what about the new transformers? I saw them in stores, but had largely ignored them -- they didn't look like real things anymore, and that seemed to ruin the whole point. But I figured I'd look anyway, just in case they'd made any improvements.
And boy have they. For one thing, perhaps because of the upcoming movie, there are quite a
few realistic ones out there. They're just as complex as the old ones, but generally bigger, more flexible, and perhaps best of all, designed to break and
easily reassemble. That way if you accidentally stress a transforming point too much, it'll snap off before it breaks, and you can just snap if back on. They've accomplished this by making all the tougher movable spots hinged on metal rather than plastic, or reinforced with metal parts. That's not to say they couldn't break; I'm sure they could. But my wife "accidentally" knocked one off a high shelf yesterday, and only a single reattachable piece came off.In fact, it seems like for all the many serious faults with modern culture, we've at least managed to improve on toys, even if the best ones are still just upgrades of older ones (modern culture still isn't very good at original ideas). But I'm not complaining -- it's a great way to combine my good old days with my grown-up days, and tie them to what will one day be my kid's "good old days."
Plus, it annoys my wife.
May 3, 2007
MBNA is the Devil
Friends, this entry is not funny at all. It's not fun. It's not sad or tragic. It subject matter is important in a general sense, but the specifics are not. I just need to do what I can, because I am entirely pissed off and I can't punch the responsible parties in the face.
So we have this credit card. We've actually had it since 2000, when I signed for it thinking I was signing for more information. Instead they signed me up for the card.
We sat on this card for years, not knowing we even had it, until they sent us an account update. "Well," I thought, "expenses are getting tight; it couldn't hurt to have a credit card." So, while I had originally thought to call them to cancel the account, I ended up requesting they send us a card. They signed us up for a promotional rate, so that our minimum monthly was around $15 so long as our debt was less than $15oo.
So far so good. We used the card sparingly, until recently when I had to make some major car repairs. We still made our monthly payments, and paid more at times so as to keep the debt as low as possible.
And then suddenly, a late fee. Why? Because I paid the monthly bill a day before their computer was ready to accept payment for that cycle, which rather than being monthly is some kind of idiotic "rolling cycle" that lasts anywhere from 3 to 5 weeks, depending on . . . I don't know what. They tell me over at MBNA that all credit card companies do this. Maybe so, but that just makes it even stupider, that an entire industry can't seem to get their lazy asses on a monthly schedule.
Even worse, back in February we had a late fee, which was remitted, because I had paid the bill too early that time, too. But during that conversation, the lady on the phone didn't explain this rolling cycle garbage. Instead, she told me if I just paid my bill on the 2nd of every month, I'd be fine.
Yeah.
So then when I call yesterday to find out why I had a late fee again, and was told why, I tried to explain that one of the MBNA representatives flat out told me to do exactly what I did, which ended up causing the problem. And this new rep then proceeds to tell me that the MBNA representatives aren't responsible for what they tell us -- she may get a rebuke from the head office, but I'm still stuck with the late fee. Why? Because technically, all this was spelled out in the fine print.
Which I'm sure it is, but it seemed wrong to me that their reps could basically say whatever they wanted on the phone and have no fear that it would come back to them.
Well, I ended up paying the late fee. And then, when I checked my email this morning, I find out that my monthly rate has gone from $15 to $60 a month. Turns out that promotional rate ended with the late fee, and while we probably won't be paying $60 a month every month, we sure won't be paying $15.
The final straw came when I called in today to find out what had happened. The snooty representative (the second snooty one in a row, now) told me:
- They couldn't waive this late fee
- I should just pay in advance
When I told him paying in advance caused the problem, he had nothing to say. Yes, he could verify that I paid in advance. Yes, he could see that it was more than was owed for the month. Yes, he had a record of the phone call in February (but couldn't access it; that's not part of their "business practice"). No, he couldn't help me. No, there wasn't a supervisor available: he was the account manager, and there was nothing he could do "at this time" (meaning, ever).
It does me no good to know that we can get a better card somewhere else and pay this one down. It doesn't make me feel any better knowing we don't actually owe them more money, we just owe them more per month. Nothing can change the fact that this huge multibillion dollar company has ridiculous practices designed to benefit them and screw their consumers, and that there's no accountability on their end. There's nothing I can do.
Except what I've just done -- attach as much negative feedback in cyberspace as I can to the name "MBNA", and hope that someone, somewhere, searching for them, finds me instead and realizes how much of a mistake it would be to go there for a credit card.
But ultimately it won't do any good -- they'll go somewhere else and get a card from a company equally as disreputable and just as unaccountable. As Wargames tried to teach us, the only way to win is not to play the game. Stay credit-card free as long as possible.
I suppose we should just be thankful we found this out by experience before the damage was severe, like it is for so many other people.
So we have this credit card. We've actually had it since 2000, when I signed for it thinking I was signing for more information. Instead they signed me up for the card.
We sat on this card for years, not knowing we even had it, until they sent us an account update. "Well," I thought, "expenses are getting tight; it couldn't hurt to have a credit card." So, while I had originally thought to call them to cancel the account, I ended up requesting they send us a card. They signed us up for a promotional rate, so that our minimum monthly was around $15 so long as our debt was less than $15oo.
So far so good. We used the card sparingly, until recently when I had to make some major car repairs. We still made our monthly payments, and paid more at times so as to keep the debt as low as possible.
And then suddenly, a late fee. Why? Because I paid the monthly bill a day before their computer was ready to accept payment for that cycle, which rather than being monthly is some kind of idiotic "rolling cycle" that lasts anywhere from 3 to 5 weeks, depending on . . . I don't know what. They tell me over at MBNA that all credit card companies do this. Maybe so, but that just makes it even stupider, that an entire industry can't seem to get their lazy asses on a monthly schedule.
Even worse, back in February we had a late fee, which was remitted, because I had paid the bill too early that time, too. But during that conversation, the lady on the phone didn't explain this rolling cycle garbage. Instead, she told me if I just paid my bill on the 2nd of every month, I'd be fine.
Yeah.
So then when I call yesterday to find out why I had a late fee again, and was told why, I tried to explain that one of the MBNA representatives flat out told me to do exactly what I did, which ended up causing the problem. And this new rep then proceeds to tell me that the MBNA representatives aren't responsible for what they tell us -- she may get a rebuke from the head office, but I'm still stuck with the late fee. Why? Because technically, all this was spelled out in the fine print.
Which I'm sure it is, but it seemed wrong to me that their reps could basically say whatever they wanted on the phone and have no fear that it would come back to them.
Well, I ended up paying the late fee. And then, when I checked my email this morning, I find out that my monthly rate has gone from $15 to $60 a month. Turns out that promotional rate ended with the late fee, and while we probably won't be paying $60 a month every month, we sure won't be paying $15.
The final straw came when I called in today to find out what had happened. The snooty representative (the second snooty one in a row, now) told me:
- They couldn't waive this late fee
- I should just pay in advance
When I told him paying in advance caused the problem, he had nothing to say. Yes, he could verify that I paid in advance. Yes, he could see that it was more than was owed for the month. Yes, he had a record of the phone call in February (but couldn't access it; that's not part of their "business practice"). No, he couldn't help me. No, there wasn't a supervisor available: he was the account manager, and there was nothing he could do "at this time" (meaning, ever).
It does me no good to know that we can get a better card somewhere else and pay this one down. It doesn't make me feel any better knowing we don't actually owe them more money, we just owe them more per month. Nothing can change the fact that this huge multibillion dollar company has ridiculous practices designed to benefit them and screw their consumers, and that there's no accountability on their end. There's nothing I can do.
Except what I've just done -- attach as much negative feedback in cyberspace as I can to the name "MBNA", and hope that someone, somewhere, searching for them, finds me instead and realizes how much of a mistake it would be to go there for a credit card.
But ultimately it won't do any good -- they'll go somewhere else and get a card from a company equally as disreputable and just as unaccountable. As Wargames tried to teach us, the only way to win is not to play the game. Stay credit-card free as long as possible.
I suppose we should just be thankful we found this out by experience before the damage was severe, like it is for so many other people.
May 1, 2007
Not one of those updates
I never wanted to be one of those people. The ones that updated their blogs with "it's been so long since I've updated my blog because I'm sooooooo busy" blog entries. And that's all they put.
I hate those people.
So here's a picture:
I hate those people.
So here's a picture:
Apr 20, 2007
Just a quick note for all those people badgering me to update my blog:
Shut up.
While you're shutting up, listen to these great podcasts from Christendom College:
http://christendom.mypodcast.com/
Shut up.
While you're shutting up, listen to these great podcasts from Christendom College:
http://christendom.mypodcast.com/
Mar 26, 2007
The Fault of Default
This article makes me sick:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070325/bs_afp/useconomypropertypolitics_070325063724
I don't know how long it'll be active, so let me summarize. Mortgage companies are foreclosing and people are losing their homes. What makes me feel ill is that it's the fault of everyone involved, but they're all going to blame each other.
Let's start with the obvious: the mortgage companies are at fault for charging interest rates that should be criminal. The entire business of mortgage loans borders on usury, and it's clear that they don't want you to own a home so much as they want you to pay them for it for 30 years. That's the nature of big business. And we're supposed to feel sorry that some mortgage companies lost up to $15 million in mortgage-related deals last year. Gee, they only took in a few hundred million in profits after overhead expenses. Poor guys. They should just get out of the business, since it's so bad for them. Oh, but I forget -- those mortgage companies are dedicated public servants, doing us all a favor offering us such nice loans. Why, they're practically giving us our houses for free. No matter how much they complain about all that money they're losing, they'll stay in the game. To help us. To help you, worthy citizen.
Now why don't you go call your lender and say "thank you"?
Anyway.
We can't just blame mortgage companies. The government facilitates the problem, and for several reasons. For one thing, extreme overregulation of the home-building industry, combined with the inability of people to truly own their own land, makes it basically impossible to save money by avoiding the mortgage companies. Example: my friend Bill tried/is trying to build a home. From what I understand he is a competent building-fellow. And I think we would all understand if a few regulations existed to ensure he wasn't building a toxic waste dump, or wiring the house to explode.
Unfortunately he has been beaurocraticked into the ground. He is not a "liscensed and bonded" construction company, incorporated and paying all the Big Boy taxes such companies have to pay in order to grease the wheels with the local heehaw authorities (who, in my opinion, are still better to work with than the metrosexuals that operate towns like Manassas and Alexandria). His choices, therefore, are either to take out a loan to pay a construction company to build his house, take out a different kind of loan to become his own construction company, or take out a more different kind of other loan to just buy an existing house.
Whatever path Bill chooses, he's stuck with a high-interest loan from a mortgage company, or more accurately, a company that offers different types of loans, including mortgages.
My own fiasco with the town of Front Royal is bad enough: to put in a stupid T-wall upstairs I was required to rewire my house, and have four different contractors come and give the town's stamp of approval.
On a T-wall.
At least they let me do it myself, or more to the point, hire whomever I wanted to do it. And believe it or not, given the current state of things, they are generous to do so. Because of ridiculous federal laws and regulations, the town is partially responsible for what happens if my house collapses from being improperly built. It's a wonder they don't force me to use only "government-approved" builders for my twenty feet of drywall. Never mind that far fewer tax-payer dollars would be spent clearing away collapsed houses (assuming the owners couldn't pay for the clearing) than is spent on the staffing necessary to regulate the construction of every single piece of wall in every single structure ever built anywhere in America.
The government's other fault in this is in letting terrible mortgage and loan laws exist, especially the ones allowing front-loading of interest. I think I can speak for every American that doesn't run a mortgage company when I say that we would be perfectly happy with smaller, more numerous mortgage companies than fewer huge ones. That's what you get when you allow them to charge ludicrous amounts of interest, force you to pay it all up front based on the assumption that you won't pay it all in the long run so you have to take all the risk, and then buy out smaller companies and basically become oligopolies.
Now perhaps you blind-eye conservative types may claim that "capitalism works!" Well yes, it does, in theory and sometimes in practice. And I'm all for capitalism. But in this case, as in many others we could name, the system has run amuck. It needs to be deregulated in some areas, and more stringently regulated in others. We are, after all, talking about houses, where people live. The pure essence of capitalism, competition, should be facilitated, while the unfair business practices that creep in from time to time should be removed. Since they haven't been, it turns out that pure capitalism in the mortgage market doesn't really exist. Certainly companies can offer various types of loans and compete on those grounds. But what would happen to a company that offers a much lower interest rate, or didn't front-load the interest on the loan? Even within those different types of loans, what if someone offered a 17-year-fixed, or a 22, or a 35? Is any of that even legal?
By no means should mortgage companies assume all the risk. But if we consumers are expected to assume most or all of it, the government should at the very least allow us other reasonable options to assume other kinds of risk that don't involve financial slavery to the company store. As it is there's no way to legally live in a house you own, or are trying to own, without dealing with an interest-sucking moneylender like HSBC. If we prick them they don't bleed, they sue.
Finally the poor old lady in the article is, like so many others in her situation, also at fault. Her testimony before congress included that statement that she didn't know her $700 a month payment could become $1100 a month with an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM). Well, so I guess that just makes it OK to default then, doesn't it granny? You didn't know the loan was adjustable because you didn't read the fine print, or perhaps you didn't know that "adjustable" meant "able to be adjusted". Well shit, ma'am, we're real sorry about that. Let us just swallow up that nasty ol' default with our little ol' taxpayer funds and higher interest rates, you kind ol' ignorant leech. You can just pay us back in time-tested wisdom and the experience of age.
Of course, she's not entirely at fault for being forced to take out a friggin' loan with a friggin' mortgage company just to live in a house (although, you know, if her kids still loved her they might consider taking her in. Assuming she'd go, and isn't living with delusions of independence). I suppose she could have rented, but not all areas are rent-friendly. Maybe she lost some income and was forced to refinance a mortgage she's had for years. I don't know.
What I do know is that she's a typical example of an idiot consumer who essentially lets themselves get taken advantage of and then goes crying to congress because she was too old to be bothered with reading a dictionary. Perhaps her loan advisor lied to her. Well, that's grounds for criminal charges, to be sure, but I doubt there's an industry-wide problem of loan officers dealing with people too stupid to know what "adjustable" means.
More likely people take these mortgages knowing more or less what they're getting into, but feeling like they have no choice (about which they are at least partially correct) and hoping they'll never be called in on it. I understand that not everyone can afford a fixed loan. Of course they shouldn't have to -- fixed loans wouldn't cost so much if the interest regulations were changed. And so we come full circle.
So to recap: we have mortgage companies that rape the system by abusing loopholes and poorly-constructed laws in order to charge criminally high interest rates and live like kings in order to screw the rest of us. We have a government that allows those loopholes and bad laws to exist while forcing states to adopt wicked-huge beaurocracies in order to deal with them all, because the government is too busy worrying whether it's going to elect "Free Abortions" Giuliani or "No-Cost Abortions" Hillary to bother changing silly old laws. Finally, we have a consumer-base that leaves itself more or less purposely uneducated about the way things work in order to claim ignorance later, living according to the old Faustian maxim: when you deal with the devil, better to just close your eyes and turn the other way while you sign the paper you haven't read. Sure, it says he owns your soul, but don't worry, he won't call it in. He never does.
That's what everyone else says, anyway.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070325/bs_afp/useconomypropertypolitics_070325063724
I don't know how long it'll be active, so let me summarize. Mortgage companies are foreclosing and people are losing their homes. What makes me feel ill is that it's the fault of everyone involved, but they're all going to blame each other.
Let's start with the obvious: the mortgage companies are at fault for charging interest rates that should be criminal. The entire business of mortgage loans borders on usury, and it's clear that they don't want you to own a home so much as they want you to pay them for it for 30 years. That's the nature of big business. And we're supposed to feel sorry that some mortgage companies lost up to $15 million in mortgage-related deals last year. Gee, they only took in a few hundred million in profits after overhead expenses. Poor guys. They should just get out of the business, since it's so bad for them. Oh, but I forget -- those mortgage companies are dedicated public servants, doing us all a favor offering us such nice loans. Why, they're practically giving us our houses for free. No matter how much they complain about all that money they're losing, they'll stay in the game. To help us. To help you, worthy citizen.
Now why don't you go call your lender and say "thank you"?
Anyway.
We can't just blame mortgage companies. The government facilitates the problem, and for several reasons. For one thing, extreme overregulation of the home-building industry, combined with the inability of people to truly own their own land, makes it basically impossible to save money by avoiding the mortgage companies. Example: my friend Bill tried/is trying to build a home. From what I understand he is a competent building-fellow. And I think we would all understand if a few regulations existed to ensure he wasn't building a toxic waste dump, or wiring the house to explode.
Unfortunately he has been beaurocraticked into the ground. He is not a "liscensed and bonded" construction company, incorporated and paying all the Big Boy taxes such companies have to pay in order to grease the wheels with the local heehaw authorities (who, in my opinion, are still better to work with than the metrosexuals that operate towns like Manassas and Alexandria). His choices, therefore, are either to take out a loan to pay a construction company to build his house, take out a different kind of loan to become his own construction company, or take out a more different kind of other loan to just buy an existing house.
Whatever path Bill chooses, he's stuck with a high-interest loan from a mortgage company, or more accurately, a company that offers different types of loans, including mortgages.
My own fiasco with the town of Front Royal is bad enough: to put in a stupid T-wall upstairs I was required to rewire my house, and have four different contractors come and give the town's stamp of approval.
On a T-wall.
At least they let me do it myself, or more to the point, hire whomever I wanted to do it. And believe it or not, given the current state of things, they are generous to do so. Because of ridiculous federal laws and regulations, the town is partially responsible for what happens if my house collapses from being improperly built. It's a wonder they don't force me to use only "government-approved" builders for my twenty feet of drywall. Never mind that far fewer tax-payer dollars would be spent clearing away collapsed houses (assuming the owners couldn't pay for the clearing) than is spent on the staffing necessary to regulate the construction of every single piece of wall in every single structure ever built anywhere in America.
The government's other fault in this is in letting terrible mortgage and loan laws exist, especially the ones allowing front-loading of interest. I think I can speak for every American that doesn't run a mortgage company when I say that we would be perfectly happy with smaller, more numerous mortgage companies than fewer huge ones. That's what you get when you allow them to charge ludicrous amounts of interest, force you to pay it all up front based on the assumption that you won't pay it all in the long run so you have to take all the risk, and then buy out smaller companies and basically become oligopolies.
Now perhaps you blind-eye conservative types may claim that "capitalism works!" Well yes, it does, in theory and sometimes in practice. And I'm all for capitalism. But in this case, as in many others we could name, the system has run amuck. It needs to be deregulated in some areas, and more stringently regulated in others. We are, after all, talking about houses, where people live. The pure essence of capitalism, competition, should be facilitated, while the unfair business practices that creep in from time to time should be removed. Since they haven't been, it turns out that pure capitalism in the mortgage market doesn't really exist. Certainly companies can offer various types of loans and compete on those grounds. But what would happen to a company that offers a much lower interest rate, or didn't front-load the interest on the loan? Even within those different types of loans, what if someone offered a 17-year-fixed, or a 22, or a 35? Is any of that even legal?
By no means should mortgage companies assume all the risk. But if we consumers are expected to assume most or all of it, the government should at the very least allow us other reasonable options to assume other kinds of risk that don't involve financial slavery to the company store. As it is there's no way to legally live in a house you own, or are trying to own, without dealing with an interest-sucking moneylender like HSBC. If we prick them they don't bleed, they sue.
Finally the poor old lady in the article is, like so many others in her situation, also at fault. Her testimony before congress included that statement that she didn't know her $700 a month payment could become $1100 a month with an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM). Well, so I guess that just makes it OK to default then, doesn't it granny? You didn't know the loan was adjustable because you didn't read the fine print, or perhaps you didn't know that "adjustable" meant "able to be adjusted". Well shit, ma'am, we're real sorry about that. Let us just swallow up that nasty ol' default with our little ol' taxpayer funds and higher interest rates, you kind ol' ignorant leech. You can just pay us back in time-tested wisdom and the experience of age.
Of course, she's not entirely at fault for being forced to take out a friggin' loan with a friggin' mortgage company just to live in a house (although, you know, if her kids still loved her they might consider taking her in. Assuming she'd go, and isn't living with delusions of independence). I suppose she could have rented, but not all areas are rent-friendly. Maybe she lost some income and was forced to refinance a mortgage she's had for years. I don't know.
What I do know is that she's a typical example of an idiot consumer who essentially lets themselves get taken advantage of and then goes crying to congress because she was too old to be bothered with reading a dictionary. Perhaps her loan advisor lied to her. Well, that's grounds for criminal charges, to be sure, but I doubt there's an industry-wide problem of loan officers dealing with people too stupid to know what "adjustable" means.
More likely people take these mortgages knowing more or less what they're getting into, but feeling like they have no choice (about which they are at least partially correct) and hoping they'll never be called in on it. I understand that not everyone can afford a fixed loan. Of course they shouldn't have to -- fixed loans wouldn't cost so much if the interest regulations were changed. And so we come full circle.
So to recap: we have mortgage companies that rape the system by abusing loopholes and poorly-constructed laws in order to charge criminally high interest rates and live like kings in order to screw the rest of us. We have a government that allows those loopholes and bad laws to exist while forcing states to adopt wicked-huge beaurocracies in order to deal with them all, because the government is too busy worrying whether it's going to elect "Free Abortions" Giuliani or "No-Cost Abortions" Hillary to bother changing silly old laws. Finally, we have a consumer-base that leaves itself more or less purposely uneducated about the way things work in order to claim ignorance later, living according to the old Faustian maxim: when you deal with the devil, better to just close your eyes and turn the other way while you sign the paper you haven't read. Sure, it says he owns your soul, but don't worry, he won't call it in. He never does.
That's what everyone else says, anyway.
Mar 22, 2007
"Patrick" -- A Book Review
Some of you may be familiar with the author Stephen Lawhead, probably most well-known for his Pendragon Cycle. I read the entire thing and for the most part, it was quality reading, at least in terms of fantasy fiction.
I was especially impressed by how well the church was treated -- it was a while ago that I last read them, but I remember nothing but respectful approaches to monks and other religious figures who were almost uniformly good guys.
Prior to Patrick, the only other Lawhead book I'd read was Byzantium, which likewise started off well regarding religious figures (the main character is an Irish monk who leaves his monastery on a journey with his superiors), although part of the way through I got a vague sense that Lawhead was perhaps not a fan of "the Church" so much as he was of Christianity. Still, there was nothing pervasively offensive, and it was a decent read (Lawhead is also the author of a trilogy on the Crusades, but I haven't read it and can't comment on his religious sensibilities regarding those books or the historical events).
Apart from any religious aspect, Lawhead is really very good at his early social history, painting what seems like an accurate picture of what life may have been like, and also seemed to have his historical trappings well-researched. In short, it felt very much like you were where the story was taking place.
The only thing I've ever discovered to be anachronistic about Lawhead's work in general is the attitudes he gives to his main characters -- quite a few are either very modern in their sensibilities (although their ideas are still couched in a generic kind of archaic "history-speak"), or come off like how a fan of the New Age would render the thoughts of characters who happened to be Druids, or supposed Wizards (like Merlin, for example), or whatever. It was easy to excuse these departures as done for the sake of a modern readership, though, so it really wasn't a problem.
I was interested to see, then, how Lawhead would handle the story of St. Patrick. Unfortunately everything that didn't go wrong before was glaringly problematic this time, and everything that wasn't quite right before got worse.
In particular, Lawhead demonstrates almost a hatred for the traditional church. I'm not sure whether this attitude was adopted since his previous writings or whether he held them but they never came out in his writing. It seems more like the former, because he had ample opportunity in those earlier writings to villify the church and didn't really take them.
This time, though, he goes overboard, which is especially inappropriate in a book about a saint.
Essentially, the last half of the book ends up being an attempt at historically rehabilitating the heretic Pelagius, making him the good guy against those stodgy, self-absorbed priests of modern liberal (and angry Protestant) legend. It's all the more shameful because the first half of the book really is a good read, although my first clue-in that something was wrong came when there was a more-or-less graphic sex scene early on. It was unexpected, but when you find something like that it's easy enough to pass over if you can safely assume it would be the only one.
It wasn't. In fact, all the others involved Patrick himself fornicating with a woman he barely knew. She ends up being the main "girl interest" in the book, but the fornication continues when Patrick leaves her for a time and eventually finds another girl. The whole idea of giving a churchman a wife and son, although certainly not unknown or even necessarily looked down on back in those days, seems a particular anachronism the way it's treated here. And of course when Patrick eventually repudiates his past bad behavior, not a word is wasted in questioning whether premarital relations should parhaps be repudiated as well.
What little we know of St. Patrick includes nothing like this. In fact there's very little of what we know in here at all, other than that Patrick was captured by the Irish, enslaved, and forced to be a shepherd for years. But instead of saying hundreds of prayers a day, as Patrick himself tells us happened in real life, this fictional Patrick spends the time alternately learning Irish, laying around bored, or fornicating.
What an inspiration.
The anti-Catholic interpretation isn't the only difficulty; Lawhead also has a soft spot for druidism that gets in the way here. It isn't usually a problem in his other works, as pretty much every time he has a subplot about how the druids recognize the truth of Christianity and more or less incorporate it to varying degrees in their religious practice. As Lawhead presents the druids, they aren't really a problem for a Christian reader -- Lawhead's druids are basically scientists, naturalists, and doctors. In the case of Merlin in the Pendragon Cycle it was easy enough to accept some mysticism, since after all it was a fantasy story tinged with history.
This time around though it was a historical novel that inexplicably had bits of weird fantasy tied to it, for no good reason. The druids here make use of Power Words, which would be fine alongside Christianity if such powers were presented as a fantasy, where we are to suspend disbelief about things like native magic. In Patrick, though, the druidical powers, no matter how muted in use, stick out like a sore thumb and ultimately detract. Lawhead didn't see the need to include things like this in Byzantium, so I don't know why he did it here.
A particular weakness of all Lawhead's writing is that after a time he becomes predictible within his own works. He has some original ideas, but he reuses the same ideas for each story. By this time they were easy to spot, and besides were particulary unsatisfying. In fact there is one Deus Ex Machina scene, involving the climax of all things, that destroys any virtue the read had up until that point.
Finally, Lawhead drops the ball in plot choice. This reads less like historical fantasy and more like a Harlequinn novel from a man's perspective. And in fact, all Lawhead's male main characters are so sympathetic and wise as to verge on overly sensitive. At least characters in previous novels were still manly; here Patrick, while not effeminate in any way, nonetheless doesn't demonstrate much in the way of manly virtue, at least not until the very end. To some degree that seems to be the point, but it contrasts poorly to all the romance novel conventions Lawhead applies to other parts of the plot.
The story also ends when Patrick returns to Ireland to convert the Irish over to his brand of druidic quasi-Christianity, which Lawhead has him spout. In that light all that Patrick says about Christ comes off as mere relgious platitudes, afterthoughts that have no real power or meaning to the story or the character.
Prior to this novel I assumed Lawhead was a serviceable writer and a historically knowledgeable well-meaning Christian; perhaps he was, or still is but really, really hates Catholicism. Whatever his motivations, Patrick starts with promise but soon devolves into a poorly-crafted waste of time.
I was especially impressed by how well the church was treated -- it was a while ago that I last read them, but I remember nothing but respectful approaches to monks and other religious figures who were almost uniformly good guys.
Prior to Patrick, the only other Lawhead book I'd read was Byzantium, which likewise started off well regarding religious figures (the main character is an Irish monk who leaves his monastery on a journey with his superiors), although part of the way through I got a vague sense that Lawhead was perhaps not a fan of "the Church" so much as he was of Christianity. Still, there was nothing pervasively offensive, and it was a decent read (Lawhead is also the author of a trilogy on the Crusades, but I haven't read it and can't comment on his religious sensibilities regarding those books or the historical events).Apart from any religious aspect, Lawhead is really very good at his early social history, painting what seems like an accurate picture of what life may have been like, and also seemed to have his historical trappings well-researched. In short, it felt very much like you were where the story was taking place.
The only thing I've ever discovered to be anachronistic about Lawhead's work in general is the attitudes he gives to his main characters -- quite a few are either very modern in their sensibilities (although their ideas are still couched in a generic kind of archaic "history-speak"), or come off like how a fan of the New Age would render the thoughts of characters who happened to be Druids, or supposed Wizards (like Merlin, for example), or whatever. It was easy to excuse these departures as done for the sake of a modern readership, though, so it really wasn't a problem.
I was interested to see, then, how Lawhead would handle the story of St. Patrick. Unfortunately everything that didn't go wrong before was glaringly problematic this time, and everything that wasn't quite right before got worse.
In particular, Lawhead demonstrates almost a hatred for the traditional church. I'm not sure whether this attitude was adopted since his previous writings or whether he held them but they never came out in his writing. It seems more like the former, because he had ample opportunity in those earlier writings to villify the church and didn't really take them.
This time, though, he goes overboard, which is especially inappropriate in a book about a saint.
Essentially, the last half of the book ends up being an attempt at historically rehabilitating the heretic Pelagius, making him the good guy against those stodgy, self-absorbed priests of modern liberal (and angry Protestant) legend. It's all the more shameful because the first half of the book really is a good read, although my first clue-in that something was wrong came when there was a more-or-less graphic sex scene early on. It was unexpected, but when you find something like that it's easy enough to pass over if you can safely assume it would be the only one.
It wasn't. In fact, all the others involved Patrick himself fornicating with a woman he barely knew. She ends up being the main "girl interest" in the book, but the fornication continues when Patrick leaves her for a time and eventually finds another girl. The whole idea of giving a churchman a wife and son, although certainly not unknown or even necessarily looked down on back in those days, seems a particular anachronism the way it's treated here. And of course when Patrick eventually repudiates his past bad behavior, not a word is wasted in questioning whether premarital relations should parhaps be repudiated as well.
What little we know of St. Patrick includes nothing like this. In fact there's very little of what we know in here at all, other than that Patrick was captured by the Irish, enslaved, and forced to be a shepherd for years. But instead of saying hundreds of prayers a day, as Patrick himself tells us happened in real life, this fictional Patrick spends the time alternately learning Irish, laying around bored, or fornicating.
What an inspiration.
The anti-Catholic interpretation isn't the only difficulty; Lawhead also has a soft spot for druidism that gets in the way here. It isn't usually a problem in his other works, as pretty much every time he has a subplot about how the druids recognize the truth of Christianity and more or less incorporate it to varying degrees in their religious practice. As Lawhead presents the druids, they aren't really a problem for a Christian reader -- Lawhead's druids are basically scientists, naturalists, and doctors. In the case of Merlin in the Pendragon Cycle it was easy enough to accept some mysticism, since after all it was a fantasy story tinged with history.
This time around though it was a historical novel that inexplicably had bits of weird fantasy tied to it, for no good reason. The druids here make use of Power Words, which would be fine alongside Christianity if such powers were presented as a fantasy, where we are to suspend disbelief about things like native magic. In Patrick, though, the druidical powers, no matter how muted in use, stick out like a sore thumb and ultimately detract. Lawhead didn't see the need to include things like this in Byzantium, so I don't know why he did it here.
A particular weakness of all Lawhead's writing is that after a time he becomes predictible within his own works. He has some original ideas, but he reuses the same ideas for each story. By this time they were easy to spot, and besides were particulary unsatisfying. In fact there is one Deus Ex Machina scene, involving the climax of all things, that destroys any virtue the read had up until that point.
Finally, Lawhead drops the ball in plot choice. This reads less like historical fantasy and more like a Harlequinn novel from a man's perspective. And in fact, all Lawhead's male main characters are so sympathetic and wise as to verge on overly sensitive. At least characters in previous novels were still manly; here Patrick, while not effeminate in any way, nonetheless doesn't demonstrate much in the way of manly virtue, at least not until the very end. To some degree that seems to be the point, but it contrasts poorly to all the romance novel conventions Lawhead applies to other parts of the plot.
The story also ends when Patrick returns to Ireland to convert the Irish over to his brand of druidic quasi-Christianity, which Lawhead has him spout. In that light all that Patrick says about Christ comes off as mere relgious platitudes, afterthoughts that have no real power or meaning to the story or the character.
Prior to this novel I assumed Lawhead was a serviceable writer and a historically knowledgeable well-meaning Christian; perhaps he was, or still is but really, really hates Catholicism. Whatever his motivations, Patrick starts with promise but soon devolves into a poorly-crafted waste of time.
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