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On Spells and Society, or how 5e spells completely change everyone's lives.

Today i have a confession to make: i'm a little bit of a minmaxer. And honestly, i think that's a pretty desirable trait in a DM. The minmaxer knows the rules, and exploits them to maximum efficiency.
"But wait, what does that have to do with spell use in society?" - someone, probably.
Well, the thing is that humans are absolutely all about minmaxing. There's a rule in the universe that reads "gas expands when hot", and suddenly we have steam engines (or something like that, i'm a political scientist not an engineer). A rule says 1+1 = 2, and suddenly we have calculus, computers and all kinds of digital stuff that runs on math. Sound is energy? Let's convert that shit into electricity, run it through a wire and turn it back into sound on the other side.
Bruh. Science is just minmaxing the laws of nature. Humanity in real life is just a big bunch of munchkins, and it should be no different in your setting.
And that is why minmaxing magic usage is something societies as a whole would do, specially with some notable spells. Today i will go in depth on how and why each of these notable mentions has a huge impact on a fantasy society.
We'll go from lowest level to highest, keeping in mind that the lower level a spell the more common it should be to find someone who has it, so often a level 2-3 spell will have more impact than a level 9 spell.
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Mending (cantrip).
Repair anything in one minute. Your axe lost its edge? Tore your shirt? Just have someone Mend it.
Someone out there is crying "but wait! Not every village has a wizard!" and while that is true, keep in mind any High Elf knows a cantrip, as can any Variant Human.
A single "mender" could replace a lot of the work a smith, woodworker or seamstress does, freeing their time to only work on making new things rather than repair old ones.
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Prestidigitation (cantrip).
Clean anything in six seconds. Committed axe murders until the axe got blunt, and now there's blood everywhere? Dog shit on your pillow out of spite? Someone walked all over the living room with muddy boots? Just Prestidigitate it away.
This may look like a small thing, but its actually huge when you apply it to laundry. Before washing machines were a thing housewives had to spend several hours a week washing them manually, and with Prestidigitation you can just hire someone to get it done in a few minutes.
A single "magic cleaner" can attend to several dozen homes, if not hundreds, thus freeing several hours of the time of dozens of women.
Fun fact: there's an interesting theory that says feminism only existed because of laundry machines and similar devices. Women found themselves having more free time, which they used to read and socialize. Educated women with more contacts made for easy organization of political movements, and the fact men were now able to do "the women's work" by pushing a button meant men were less opposed to losing their housewives' labor. Having specialized menders and magic cleaners could cause a comparable revolution in a fantasy setting, and help explain why women have a similar standing to men even in combat occupations such as adventuring.
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Healing in general (1st-2nd level).
This one is fairly obvious. A commoner has 4 hit points, that means just about any spell is a full heal to the average person. That means most cuts, stab wounds, etc. can be solved by the resident cleric. Even broken bones that would leave you in bed for months can be solved in a matter of seconds as soon as the holy man arrives.
But that's nothing compared to the ability to cure diseases. While the only spell that can cure diseases is Lesser Restoration, which is second level, a paladin can do it much more easily with just a Lay on Hands. This means if one or two people catch a disease it can just be eradicated with a touch.
However doing that comes with a cost. If everyone is instantly expunged of illness, the populace does not build up their immune systems. Regular disease becomes less common, sure, but whenever it is reintroduced (by, say, immigrants or contact with less civilized humanoids) it can spread like wildfire, afflicting people so fast that no amount of healers will have the magic juice to deal with it.
Diseases become rare, plagues become common.
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Continual Flame (2nd).
Ok, this one is a topic i love and could easily be its own post.
There's an article called "Why the Falling Cost of Light Matters", which goes in detail about how man went from chopping wood for fire, to using animal fat for candles, then other oils, whale oil, kerosene, then finally incandescent light bulbs, and more recently LED lights. Each of these leaps is orders of grandeur more efficient than the previous one, to the point that the cost of light today is about 500,000 times cheaper than it was for for a caveman. And until the early 1900s the only way mankind knew of making light was to set things on fire.
Continual Flame on the other hand allows you to turn 50gp worth of rubies and a 2nd level spell slot into a torch that burns forever. In a society that spends 60 hours of labor to be able to generate 140 minutes of light, this is a huge game changer.
This single spell, which i am 99% sure was just created as an excuse for why the dungeon is lit despite going for centuries without maintenance, allows you to have things like public lighting. Even if you only add a new "torchpost" every other week or month sooner or later you'll be left with a neatly lit city, specially if the city has had thousands of years in which to gather the rubies and light them up.
And because the demand of rubies becomes so important, consider how governments would react. Lighting the streets is a public service, if its strategically relevant to make the city safer at night, would that not warrant some restrictions on ruby sales? Perhaps even banning the use of rubies in jewelry?
Trivia: John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in history, gained his wealth selling kerosene. Kerosene at the time was used to light lamps. Gasoline was invented much later, when Rockefeller tasked a bunch of scientists to come up with a use for some byproducts of the kerosene production. This illustrates how much money is to be had in the lighting industry, and you could even have your own Rockefeller ruby baron in your game. I shall call him... Dohn J. Stonebreaker. Perfect name for a mining entrepreneur.
Whether the ruby trade ends up a monopoly under the direct supervision of the king or a free market, do keep in mind that Continual Flame is by far the most efficient way of creating light.
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Gentle Repose (2nd).
Cast it on a corpse, and it stays preserved for 10 days.
This has many potential uses, from preserving foodstuffs (hey, some rare meats are expensive enough to warrant it) to keeping the bodies of old rulers preserved. Even if a ruler died of old age and cannot be resurrected, the body could be kept "fresh" out of respect/ceremony. Besides, it keeps the corpse from becoming undead.
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Skywrite (2nd).
Ok, this one is mostly a gag. While the spell can be used by officials to make official announcements to the populace, such as new laws or important news, i like to just use it for spam. I mean, its a ritual spell that writes a message on the sky; what else would people use it for?
Imagine you show up in a city, and there's half a dozen clouds reading "buy at X, we have what you need", "get your farming supplies over at Joe's store" or "vote Y for the city council".
The possibilities are endless, and there's no way the players can expect it. Just keep in mind that by RAW the spell can only do words, meaning no images. No Patrick, "8===D" is not a word.
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Zone of Truth (2nd).
This one is too obvious. Put all suspects of a crime into a ZoT, wait a couple minutes to make sure they fail the save, then ask each one if he did it. Sure its not a perfect system, things like the Ring of Mind Shielding still exist, but it's got a better chance of getting the right guy than most medieval justice systems. And probably more than a few contemporary ones. All while taking only a fraction of the time.
More importantly, with all the average crimes being handled instantly, the guards and investigators have more time to properly investigate the more unusual crimes that might actually involve a Thought Shield, Ring of Mind Shielding or a level 17 Mastermind.
There is a human rights argument against messing with people's minds in any way, which is why this may not be practiced in every kingdom. But there are definitely some more lawful societies that would use ZoT on just about every crime.
Why swear to speak the truth and nothing but the truth when you can just stand in a zone of truth?
Another interesting use for ZoT is oaths. When someone is appointed into an office, gets to a high rank in the military or a guild, just put them in a ZoT while they make their oath to stand for the organization's values and yadda yadda. Of course they can be corrupted later on, but at least you make sure they're honest when they are sworn in.
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Sending (3rd).
Sending is busted in so many ways.
The more "vanilla" use of it is to just communicate over long distances. We all know that information is important, and that sometimes getting information a whole day ahead can lead to a 40% return on a massive two-year investment. Being able to know of invasions, monsters, disasters, etc. without waiting days or weeks for a courier can be vital for the survival of a nation. Another notable example is that one dude who ran super fast for a while to be the first to tell his side of a recent event.
But the real broken thing here is... Sending can Send to any creature, on any plane; the only restriction being "with which you are familiar". In D&D dead people just get sent to one of the afterlife planes, meaning that talking to your dead grandfather would be as simple as Sending to him. Settling inheritance disputes was never easier!
Before moving on to the next point let me ask you something: Is a cleric familiar with his god? Is a warlock familiar with his patron?
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Speak With Dead (3rd).
Much like Sending, this lets you easily settle disputes. Is the senate/council arguing over a controversial topic? Just ask the beloved hero or ruler from 200 years ago what he thinks on the subject. As long his skeleton still has a jaw (or if he has been kept in Gentle Repose), he can answer.
This can also be used to ask people who killed them, except murderers also know this. Plan on killing someone? Accidentally killed someone? Make sure to inutilize the jaw. Its either that, being so stealthy the victim can't identify you, or being caught.
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Note on spell availability.
Oh boy. No world-altering 4th level spells for some reason, and suddenly we're playing with the big boys now.
Spells up to 3rd level are what I'd consider "somewhat accessible", and can be arranged for a fee even for regular citizens. For instance the vanilla Priest statblock (MM348) is a 5th level cleric, and the standard vanilla Druid (MM346) a 4th level druid.
Spells of 5th level onward will be considered something only the top 1% is able to afford, or large organizations such as guilds, temples or government.
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Dream (5th).
I was originally going to put Dream along with Sending and Telepathy as "long range communication", but decided against it due to each of them having unique uses.
And when it comes to Dream, it has the unique ability of allowing you to put your 8 hours of sleep to good use. A tutor could hire someone to cast Dream on him, thus allowing him to teach his student for 8 hours at any distance. This is a way you could even access hermits that live in the middle of nowhere or in secluded monasteries. Very wealthy families or rulers would be willing to pay a good amount of money to make sure their heirs get that extra bit of education.
Its like online classes, but while you sleep!
Another interesting use is for cheating. Know a princess or queen you like? She likes you back? Her dad put 400 trained soldiers between you? No problemo! Just find a 9th level Bard, Warlock or Wizard, but who am i kidding, of course it'll be a bard. And that bard is probably you. Now you have 8 hours to do whatever you want, and no physical evidence will be left.
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Raise Dead (5th).
Few things matter more in life than death. And the ability to resurrect people has a huge impact on society. The impact is so huge that this topic needs topics of its own.
First, diamond monopoly. Remember what i said about how Continual Flame would lead to controlled ruby sales due to its strategic value? This is the same principle, but a hundred times stronger. Resurrection is a huge strategic resource. It makes assassinations harder, can be used to bring back your officials or highest level soldiers over and over during a war, etc. This means more authoritarian regimes would do everything within their power to control the supply and stock of diamonds. Which in turn means if anyone wants to have someone resurrected, even in times of peace, they'll need to call in a favor, do a quest, grease some hands...
Second, resurrection insurance. People hate risks. That's why insurance is such a huge industry, taking up about 15% of the US GDP. People insure their cars, houses... even their lives. Resurrection just means "life insurance" is taken more literally. This makes even more sense when you consider how expensive resurrection is: nobody can afford it in one go, but if you pay a little every month or year you can save up enough to have it done when the need arises.
This is generally incompatible with the idea of a State-run monopoly over diamonds, but that just means different countries within a setting can take different approaches.
To make things easier, i even used some microeconomics to make a sheet in my personal random generators to calculate the price of such a service. Just head to the "Insurance" tab and fill in the information relative to your setting.
With actual life insurance resurrection can cost as little as 5gp a year for humans or 8sp a year for elves, making resurrection way more affordable than it looks.
Also, do you know why pirates wore a single gold earring? It was so that if your body washes up on the shore whoever finds it can use the money to arrange a proper burial. Sure there's a risk of the finder taking it and walking away, but the pirates did it anyway. With resurrection in play, might as well just wear a diamond earring instead and hope the finder is nice enough to bring you back.
I got so carried away with the whole insurance thing i almost forgot: the possibility of resurrection also changes how murders are committed.
If you want someone dead but resurrection exists, you have to remove the vital organs. Decapitation would be far more common. Sure resurrection is still possible, but it requires higher level spells or Reincarnate, which has... quirks.
As a result it should be very obvious when someone was killed by accident or an overreaction, and when someone was specifically out to kill the victim.
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Scrying (5th).
This one is somewhat obvious, in that everyone and their mother knows it helps finding people. But who needs finding? Well, that would be those who are hiding.
The main use i see for this spell, by far, is locating escaped criminals. Just collect a sample of hair or blood when arresting someone (or shipping them to hard labor which is way smarter), and if they escape you'll be almost guaranteed to successfully scry on them.
A similar concept to this is seen in the Dragon Age series. If you're a mage the paladins keep a sample of your blood in something called a phylactery, and that can be used to track you down. There's even a quest or two about mages trying to destroy their phylacteries before escaping.
Similarly, if you plan a jailbreak it would be highly beneficial to destroy the blood/hair sample first. As a matter of fact i can even see a thieves guild hiring a low level party to take out the sample while the professional infiltrators get the prisoner out. Keep in mind both events must be done at the same time, otherwise the guards will just collect a new sample or would have already taken it to the wizard.
But guards aren't the only ones with resources. A loan shark could keep blood samples of his debtors, a mobster can keep one of those who owe him favors, etc. And the blood is ceremoniously returned only when the debt is fully paid.
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Teleportation Circle (5th), Transport Via Plants (6th).
In other words, long range teleportation. This is such a huge thing that it is hard to properly explain how important it is.
Teleportation Circle creates a 10ft. circle, and everyone has one round to get in and appear on the target location. Assuming 30ft. movement that means you can get 192 people through, which is a lot of potential merchants going across any distance. Or 672 people dashing.
Math note: A 30ft radius square around a 10ft. diameter square, minus the 4 original squares. Or [(6*2+2)^2]-4 squares of 5ft. each. Hence 192 people.
Getting hundreds of merchants, workers, soldiers, etc. across any distance is nothing to scoff at. In fact, it could help explain why PHB item prices are so standardized: Arbitrage is so easy and cheap that price differences across multiple markets become negligible. Unless of course countries start setting up tax collectors outside of the permanent teleportation circles in order to charge tariffs.
Transport Via Plants does something very similar but it requires 5ft of movement to go through, which means less people can be teleported. On the other hand it doesn't burn 50gp and can take you to any tree the druid is familiar with, making it nearly impossible for tax collectors to be waiting on the other side. Unfortunately druids tend to be a lot less willing to aid smugglers, so your best bet might be a bard using spells that don't belong to his list.
With these methods of long range teleportation not only does trade get easier, but it also becomes possible to colonize or inhabit far away places. For instance if someone finds a gold mine in the antarctic you could set up a mine and bring food and other supplies via teleportation.
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Major Image (6th level slot).
Major Image is a 3rd level spell that creates an illusion over a 20ft cube, complete with image, sound, smell and temperature. When cast with a 6th level slot or higher, it lasts indefinitely.
That my friends, is a huge spell. Why get the world's best painter to decorate the ceiling of your cathedral when you can just get an illusion made in six seconds?
The uses for decorating large buildings is already good, but remember: we're not restricted to sight.
Cast this on a room and it'll always be cool and smell nice. Inns would love that, as would anyone who always sleeps or works in the same room. Desert cities have never been so chill.
You can even use an illusion to make the front of your shop seem flashier, while hollering on loop to bring customers in.
The only limit to this spell is your imagination, though I'm pretty sure it was originally made just to hide secret passages.
Trivia: the ki-rin (VGM163) can cast Major Image as a 6th level spell, at will. It's probably meant to give them fabulous lairs yet all it takes is someone doing the holy horsey a big favor, and it could enchant the whole city in a few hours. Shiniest city on the planet, always at a nice temperature and with a fragrance of lilac, gooseberries or whatever you want.
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Simulacrum (7th).
Spend 12 hours and 1500gp worth of ruby dust, and get a clone of yourself. Notably, each caster can only have one simulacrum, regardless of who the person he cloned is.
How this changes the world? By allowing the rich and powerful to be in two places at once. Kings now have a perfect impersonator who thinks just like them. A wealthy banker can run two branches of his company. Etc.
This makes life much easier, but also competes with Continual Flame over resources.
It also gives "go fuck yourself" a whole new meaning, making the sentence a valid Suggestion.
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Clone (8th).
If there's one spell i despise, its Clone.
Wizard-only preemptive resurrection. Touch spell, costs 1.000gp worth of diamonds each time, takes 120 days to come into effect, and creates a copy of the creature that the soul occupies if the original dies. Oh, and the copy can be made younger.
Why is it so despicable? Because it makes people effectively immortal. Accidents and assassinations just get you sent to the clone, and old age can be forever delayed because you keep going back to younger versions of yourself. Being a touch spell means the wizard can cast it on anyone he wants.
In other words: high level wizards, and only wizards, get to make anyone immortal.
That means wizards will inevitably rule any world in which this spell exists.
Think about it. Rulers want to live forever. Wizards can make you live forever. Wizards want other stuff, which you must give them if you want to continue being Cloned. Rulers who refuse this deal eventually die, rulers who accept stick around forever. Natural selection makes it so that eventually the only rulers left are those who sold their soul to wizards. Figuratively, i hope.
The fact that there are only a handful of wizards out there who are high enough level to cast the spell means its easier for them organize and/or form a cartel or union (cartels/unions are easier to maintain the fewer suppliers are involved).
This leads to a dystopian scenario where mages rule, kings are authoritarian pawns and nobody else has a say in anything. Honestly it would make for a fun campaign in and of itself, but unless that's specifically what you're going for it'll just derail everything else.
Oh, and Clone also means any and all liches are absolute idiots. Liches are people who turned themselves into undead abominations in order to gain eternal life at the cost of having to feed on souls. They're all able to cast 9th level wizard spells, so why not just cast an 8th level one and keep undeath away? Saves you the trouble of going after souls, and you keep the ability to enjoy food or a day in the sun.
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Demiplane (8th).
Your own 30ft. room of nothingness. Perfect place for storage and a DM's nightmare given how once players have access to it they'll just start looting furniture and such. Oh the horror.
But alas, infinite storage is not the reason this is a broken spell. No sir.
Remember: you can access someone else's demiplane. That means a caster in city 1 can put things into a demiplane, and a caster in city 2 can pull them out of any surface.
But wait, there's more! There's nothing anywhere saying you can't have two doors to the same demiplane open at once. Now you're effectively opening a portal between two places, which stays open for a whole hour.
But wait, there's even more! Anyone from any plane can open a door to your neat little demiplane. Now we can get multiple casters from multiple planes connecting all of those places, for one hour. Sure this is a very expensive thing to do since you're having to coordinate multiple high level individuals in different planes, but the payoff is just as high. We're talking about potential integration between the most varied markets imaginable, few things in the multiverse are more valuable or profitable. Its a do-it-yourself Sigil.
One little plot hook i like about demiplanes is abandoned/inactive ones. Old wizard/warlock died, and nobody knows how to access his demiplanes. Because he's at least level 15 you just know there's some good stuff in there, but nobody can get to it. Now the players have to find a journal, diary, stored memory or any other way of knowing enough about the demiplane to access it.
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True Polymorph (9th).
True Polymorph. The spell that can turn any race into any other race, or object. And vice-versa. You can go full fairy godmother and turn mice into horses. For a spell that can change anything about one's body it would not be an unusual ruling to say it can change one's sex. At the very least it can turn a man into a chair, and the chair into a woman (or vice-versa of course).
But honestly, that's just the tip of the True Polymorph iceberg. Just read this more carefully:
> You transform the creature into a different creature, the creature into a nonmagical object, or the object into a creature
This means you can turn a rock or twig into a human. A fully functional human with, as far as the rules go, a soul. You can create life.
But wait, there's more! Nothing there says you have to turn the target into a known creature on an existing creature. The narcissist bard wants to create a whole race of people who look like him? True Polymorph. A player wants to play a weird ass homebrew race and you have no idea how it would fit into the setting? True Polymorph. Wizard needs a way to quickly populate a kingdom and doesn't want to wait decades for the subjects to grow up? True Polymorph. Warlock must provide his patron 100 souls in order to free his own? True Polymorph. The sorcerer wants to do something cool? Fuck that guy, sorcerers don't get any of the fun high level spells; True Poly is available to literally every arcane caster but the sorcerer.
Note: what good is Twinned Spell if all the high level twinnable spells have been specifically made unavailable to sorcerers?
Do keep in mind however that this brings a whole new discussion on human rights. Does a table have rights? Does it have rights after being turned into a living thing? If it had an owner, is it now a slave? Your country will need so many new laws, just to deal with this one spell.
People often say that high level wizards are deities for all intents and purposes. This is the utmost proof of that. Clerics don't get to create life out of thin air, wizards do. The cleric worships a deity, the wizard is the deity.
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Conclusion.
Intelligent creatures not only can game the system, but it is entirely in character for them to do so. I'll even argue that if humanoids don't use magic to improve their lives when it's available, you're pushing the suspension of disbelief.
With this post i hope to have helped you make more complex and realistic societies, as well as provide a few interesting and unusual plot hooks
Lastly, as much as i hate comment begging i must admit i am eager to see what spells other players think can completely change the world. Because at the end of the day we all know that extra d6 damage is not what causes empires to rise and fall, its the utility spells that make the best stories.
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Edit: Added spell level to all spells, and would like to thank u/kaul_field for helping with finishing touches and being overall a great mod.
submitted by Isphus to DnDBehindTheScreen [link] [comments]

This week 12 yrs ago--Lehman Bros collapsed......(Best Interest) Explaining the Big Short and the 2008 Crisis

edit: thanks for the awards. I'd be a dick to take credit. Go check out the one-man-band who actually wrote it---I've been reading for a couple months, good stuff https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
(Best Interest) This post will explain the Big Short and the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse in simple terms.
This post is a little longer than usual–maybe give yourself 20 minutes to sift through it. But I promise you’ll leave feeling like you can tranche (that’s a verb, right?!) the whole financial system!
Key Players
First, I want to introduce the players in the financial crisis, as they might not make sense at first blush. One of the worst parts about the financial industry is how they use deliberately obtuse language to explain relatively simple ideas. Their financial acronyms are hard to keep track of. In order to explain the Big Short, these players–and their roles–are key.
Individuals, a.k.a. regular people who take out mortgages to buy houses; for example, you and me!
Mortgage lenders, like a local bank or a mortgage lending specialty shop, who give out mortgages to individuals. Either way, they’re probably local people that the individual home-buyer would meet in person.
Big banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who buy lots of mortgages from lenders. After this transaction, the homeowner would owe money to the big bank instead of the lender.
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)—deep breath!—who take mortgages from big banks and bundle them all together into a bond (see below). And just like before, this step means that the home-buyer now owes money to the CDO. Why is this done?! I’ll explain, I promise.
Ratings agencies, whose job is to determine the risk of a CDO—is it filled with safe mortgages, or risky mortgages?
Investors, who buy part of a CDO and get repaid as the individual homeowners start paying back their mortgage.
Feel lost already? I’m going to be a good jungle guide and get you through this. Stick with me.
Quick definition: Bonds
A bond can be thought of as a loan. When you buy a bond, you are loaning your money. The issuer of the bond is borrowing your money. In exchange for borrowing your money, the issuer promises to pay you back, plus interest, in a certain amount of time. Sometimes, the borrower cannot pay the investor back, and the bond defaults, or fails. Defaults are not good for the investor.
The CDO—which is a bond—could hold thousands of mortgages in it. It’s a mortgage-backed bond, and therefore a type of mortgage-backed security. If you bought 1% of a CDO, you were loaning money equivalent to 1% of all the mortgage principal, with the hope of collecting 1% of the principal plus interest as the mortgages got repaid.
There’s one more key player, but I’ll wait to introduce it. First…
The Whys, Explained
Why does an individual take out a mortgage? Because they want a home. Can you blame them?! A healthy housing market involves people buying and selling houses.
How about the lender; why do they lend? It used to be so they would slowly make interest money as the mortgage got repaid. But nowadays, the lender takes a fee (from the homeowner) for creating (or originating) the mortgage, and then immediately sells to mortgage to…
A big bank. Why do they buy mortgages from lenders? Starting in the 1970s, Wall St. started buying up groups of loans, tying them all together into one bond—the CDO—and selling slices of that collection to investors. When people buy and sell those slices, the big banks get a cut of the action—a commission.
Why would an investor want a slice of a mortgage CDO? Because, like any other investment, the big banks promised that the investor would make their money back plus interest once the homeowners began repaying their mortgages.
You can almost trace the flow of money and risk from player to player.
At the end of the day, the investor needs to get repaid, and that money comes from homeowners.
CDOs are empty buckets
Homeowners and mortgage lenders are easy to understand. But a big question mark swirls around Wall Street’s CDOs.
I like to think of the CDO as a football field full of empty buckets—one bucket per mortgage. As an investor, you don’t purchase one single bucket, or one mortgage. Instead, you purchase a thin horizontal slice across all the buckets—say, a half-inch slice right around the 1-gallon mark.
As the mortgages are repaid, it starts raining. The repayments—or rain—from Mortgage A doesn’t go solely into Bucket A, but rather is distributed across all the buckets, and all the buckets slowly get re-filled.
As long as your horizontal slice of the bucket is eventually surpassed, you get your money back plus interest. You don’t need every mortgage to be repaid. You just need enough mortgages to get to your slice.
It makes sense, then, that the tippy top of the bucket—which gets filled up last—is the highest risk. If too many of the mortgages in the CDO fail and aren’t repaid, then the tippy top of the bucket will never get filled up, and those investors won’t get their money back.
These horizontal slices are called tranches, which might sound familiar if you’ve read the book or watched the movie.
So far, there’s nothing too wrong about this practice. It’s simply moving the risk from the mortgage lender to other investors. Sure, the middle-men (banks, lenders, CDOs) are all taking a cut out of all the buy and sell transactions. But that’s no different than buying lettuce at grocery store prices vs. buying straight from the farmer. Middle-men take a cut. It happens.
But now, our final player enters the stage…
Credit Default Swaps: The Lynchpin of the Big Short
Screw you, Wall Street nomenclature! A credit default swap sounds complicated, but it’s just insurance. Very simple, but they have a key role to explain the Big Short.
Investors thought, “Well, since I’m buying this risky tranche of a CDO, I might want to hedge my bets a bit and buy insurance in case it fails.” That’s what a credit default swap did. It’s insurance against something failing. But, there is a vital difference between a credit default swap and normal insurance.
I can’t buy an insurance policy on your house, on your car, or on your life. Only you can buy those policies. But, I could buy insurance on a CDO mortgage bond, even if I didn’t own that bond!
Not only that, but I could buy billions of dollars of insurance on a CDO that only contained millions of dollars of mortgages.
It’s like taking out a $1 million auto policy on a Honda Civic. No insurance company would allow you to do this, but it was happening all over Wall Street before 2008. This scenario essentially is “the big short” (see below)—making huge insurance bets that CDOs will fail—and many of the big banks were on the wrong side of this bet!
Credit default swaps involved the largest amounts of money in the subprime mortgage crisis. This is where the big Wall Street bets were taking place.
Quick definition: Short
A short is a bet that something will fail, get worse, or go down. When most people invest, they buy long (“I want this stock price to go up!”). A short is the opposite of that.
Certain individuals—like main characters Steve Eisman (aka Mark Baum in the movie, played by Steve Carrell) and Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale) in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film The Big Short—realized that tons of mortgages were being made to people who would never be able to pay them back.
If enough mortgages failed, then tranches of CDOs start to fail—no mortgage repayment means no rain, and no rain means the buckets stay empty. If CDOs fail, then the credit default swap insurance gets paid out. So what to do? Buy credit default swaps! That’s the quick and dirty way to explain the Big Short.
Why buy Dog Shit?
Wait a second. Why did people originally invest in these CDO bonds if they were full of “dog shit mortgages” (direct quote from the book) in the first place? Since The Big Short protagonists knew what was happening, shouldn’t the investors also have realized that the buckets would never get refilled?
For one, the prospectus—a fancy word for “owner’s manual”—of a CDO was very difficult to parse through. It was hard to understand exactly which mortgages were in the CDO. This is a skeevy big bank/CDO practice. And even if you knew which mortgages were in a CDO, it was nearly impossible to realize that many of those mortgages were made fraudulently.
The mortgage lenders were knowingly creating bad mortgages*.* They were giving loans to people with no hopes of repaying them. Why? Because the lenders knew they could immediately sell that mortgage—that risk—to a big bank, which would then securitize the mortgage into a CDO, and then sell that CDO to investors. Any risk that the lender took by creating a bad mortgage was quickly transferred to the investor.
So…because you can’t decipher the prospectus to tell which mortgages are in a CDO, it was easier to rely on the CDO’s rating than to evaluate each of the underlying mortgages. It’s the same reason why you don’t have to understand how engines work when you buy a car; you just look at Car & Driver or Consumer Reports for their opinions, their ratings.
The Ratings Agencies
Investors often relied on ratings to determine which bonds to buy. The two most well-known ratings agencies from 2008 were Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (heard of the S&P 500?). The ratings agency’s job was to look at a CDO that a big bank created, understand the underlying assets (in this case, the mortgages), and give the CDO a rating to determine how safe it was. A good rating is “AAA”—so nice, it got ‘A’ thrice.
So, were the ratings agencies doing their jobs? No! There are a few explanations for this:
  1. Even they—the experts in charge of grading the bonds—didn’t understand what was going on inside a CDO. The owner’s manual descriptions (prospectuses) were too complicated. In fact, ratings agencies often relied on big banks to teach seminars about how to rate CDOs, which is like a teacher learning how to grade tests from Timmy, who still pees his pants. Timmy just wants an A.
  2. Ratings agencies are profit-driven companies. When they give a rating, they charge a fee. But if the agency hands out too many bad grades, then their customers—the big banks—will take their requests elsewhere in hopes of higher grades. The ratings agencies weren’t objective, but instead were biased by their need for profits.
  3. Remember those fraudulent mortgages that the lenders were making? Unless you did some boots-on-the-ground research, it was tough to uncover this fact. It’s hard to blame the ratings agencies for not catching this.
Who’s to blame?
Everyone? Let’s play devil’s advocate…
​
To explain further, there are two things going on here.
First, Goldman Sachs bankers were selling CDOs to investors. They wanted to make a commission on the sale.
At the same time, other bankers ALSO AT GOLDMAN SACHS were buying credit default swaps, a.k.a. betting against the same CDOs that the first Goldman Sachs bankers were selling.
This is like selling someone a racehorse with cancer, and then immediately going to the track to bet against that horse. Blankfein’s defense in this video is, “But the horse seller and the bettor weren’t the same people!” And the Congressmen responds, “But they worked for the same stable, and collected the same paychecks!”
So do the big banks deserve blame? You tell me.
Inspecting Goldman Sachs
One reason Goldman Sachs survived 2008 is that they began buying credit default swaps (insurance) just in time before the housing market crashed. They were still on the bad side of some bets, but mostly on the good side. They were net profitable.
Unfortunately for them, the banks that owed Goldman money were going bankrupt from their own debt, and then Goldman never would have been able to collect on their insurance. Goldman would’ve had to payout on their “bad” bets, while not collecting on their “good” bets. In their own words, they were “toast.”
This is significant. Even banks in “good” positions would’ve gone bankrupt, because the people who owed the most money weren’t able to repay all their debts. Imagine a chain; Bank A owes money to Bank B, and B owes money to Bank C. If Bank A fails, then B can’t collect their debt, and B can’t pay C. Bank C made “good” bets, but aren’t able to collect on them, and then they go out of business.
These failures would’ve rippled throughout the world. This explains why the US government felt it necessary to bail-out the banks. That federal money allowed banks in “good” positions to collect their profits and “stop the ripple” from tearing apart the world economy. While CDOs and credit default swap explain the Big Short starting, this ripple of failure is the mechanism that affected the entire world.
Betting more than you have
But if someone made a bad bet—sold bad insurance—why didn’t they have money to cover that bet? It all depends on risk. If you sell a $100 million insurance policy, and you think there’s a 1% chance of paying out that policy, what’s your exposure? It’s the potential loss multiplied by the probability = 1% times $100 million, or $1 million.
These banks sold billions of dollars of insurance under the assumption that there was a 5%, or 3%, or 1% chance of the housing market failing. So they had 20x, or 30x, or 100x less money on hand then they needed to cover these bets.
Turns out, there was a 100% chance that the market would fail…oops!
Blame, expounded
Ratings agencies—they should be unbiased. But they sold themselves off for profit. They invited the wolves—big banks—into their homes to teach them how to grade CDOs. Maybe they should read a blog to explain the Big Short to them. Of course they deserve blame. Here’s another anecdote of terrible judgment from the ratings agencies:
Think back to my analogy of the buckets and the rain. Sometimes, a ratings agency would look at a CDO and say, “You’re never going to fill up these buckets all the way. Those final tranches—the ones that won’t get filled—they’re really risky. So we’re going to give them a bad grade.” There were “Dog Shit” tranches, and Dog Shit gets a bad grade.
But then the CDO managers would go back to their offices and cut off the top of the buckets. And they’d do this for all their CDOs—cutting off all the bucket-top rings from all the different CDO buckets. And then they’d super-glue the bucket-top rings together to create a field full of Frankenstein buckets, officially called a CDO squared. Because the Frankenstein buckets were originally part of other CDOs, the Frankenstein buckets could only start filling up once the original buckets (which now had the tops cut off) were filled. In other words, the CDO managers decided to concentrate all their Dog Shit in one place, and super glue it together.
A reasonable person would look at the Frankenstein Dog Shit field of buckets and say, “That’s turrible, Kenny.”
BUT THE RATINGS AGENCIES GAVE CDO-SQUAREDs HIGH GRADES!!! Oh I’m sorry, was I yelling?!
“It’s diversified,” they would claim, as if Poodle shit mixed with Labrador shit is better than pure Poodle shit.
Again, you tell me. Do the ratings agencies deserve blame?!
Does the government deserve blame?
Yes and no.
For example, part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 mandated that the government mortgage finance firms (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) purchase a certain number of sub-prime mortgages.
On its surface, this seems like a good thing: it’s giving money to potential home-buyers who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for a mortgage. It’s providing the American Dream.
But as we’ve already covered today, it does nobody any good to provide a bad mortgage to someone who can’t repay it. That’s what caused this whole calamity. Freddie and Fannie and HUD were pumping money into the machine, helping to enable it. Good intentions, but they weren’t paying attention to the unintended outcomes.
And what about the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the watchdogs of Wall Street. Do they have a role to explain the Big Short? Shouldn’t they have been aware of the Big Banks, the CDOs, the ratings agencies?
Yes, they deserve blame too. They’re supposed to do things like ensure that Big Banks have enough money on hand to cover their risky bets. This is called proper “risk management,” and it was severely lacking. The SEC also had the power to dig into the CDOs and ferret out the fraudulent mortgages that were creating them. Why didn’t they do that?
Perhaps the issue is that the SEC was/is simply too close to Wall Street, similar to the ratings agencies getting advice from the big banks. Watchdogs shouldn’t get treats from those they’re watching. Or maybe it’s that the CDOs and credit default swaps were too hard for the SEC to understand.
Either way, the SEC doesn’t have a good excuse. If you’re in bed with the people you’re regulating, then you’re doing a bad job. If you’re rubber stamping things you don’t understand, then you’re doing a bad job.
Explain the Big Short, shortly
You’re about 2500 words into my “short summary.” But the important things to remember:
​
And with that, I’d like to announce the opening of the Best Interest CDO. Rather than invest in mortgages, I’ll be investing in race horses. Don’t ask my why, but the current top stallion is named ‘Dog Shit.’ He’ll take Wall Street by storm.
If you don’t mind my cussing but you do like this content, consider subscribing to the email list to get these articles (and nothing more) sent to your inbox every week.
I hope this post helped if you were looking for someone to explain the Big Short. Thanks for reading the Best Interest.
​
Source: https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
submitted by CrosscourtFade to investing [link] [comments]

[Sherlock Fandom] A Not-So-Short History of #TJLC, the Conspiracy Theory That Divided a Fandom

I looked to see whether anyone had done a write-up of the Sherlock fandom's most notorious source of drama, and I was surprised to find that there wasn't one already. So I went to the usual sources to try to get all my facts straight, and I found myself falling further down the rabbit hole than I had ever known was possible. Buckle in, folks. It's gonna be a long one.
Background: 2014 Tumblr Fandom and Superwholock
In order to understand how The Johnlock Conspiracy (or TJLC for short) got to be as influential and as toxic as it became, you first have to understand the state of fandom on Tumblr in 2014. That state was, to put it mildly, in flux.
From early 2013 to mid-2014, the undisputed top dog of fandom on Tumblr was the TV supergroup known as Superwholock. Made up of fans of Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock and often overlapping with other large fandoms such as Avengers and Harry Potter, they were a constant and sometimes annoying presence on everyone's dashes, hijacking normal posts with unrelated gifs from the shows, planning "apocalypses" where they would spam one particular photo everywhere on a planned day, and generally being way overenthusiastic in the opinions of everyone not in those actually rather limited fandom circles.
(Full disclosure: I was very much in the Sherlock and Doctor Who sides of the Superwholock fandom at the time. I'm still a pretty big Doctor Who fan, but Sherlock went downhill fast and the fandom ate itself in a truly bizarre and fabulous manner. When I'm talking about Superwholock cringe, I am talking about myself at age 14-15.)
And then, suddenly, it stopped. Superwholock, which had once dominated fandom conversation in a truly unique way, quietly faded away around August-September 2014. This Fanlore article goes into some more detail on the reasons, but it mostly had to do with long hiatuses, disappointing new seasons (the second half of season 7 and season 8 for DW, season 3 for Sherlock, season 9 for Supernatural), more critical examination of the shows' issues with race, gender, and homophobia/queerbaiting, and the horror that was Dashcon. Superwholock fell, leaving behind only an abundance of gifs and absurdly long Tumblr urls.
The Beginning of the End: January 2014
But the fall of Superwholock was still in the future. In January 2014, the Sherlock fandom was at the height of its strength and enthusiasm, with the show having finally started a new season after the massive cliffhanger of Sherlock faking his suicide and the 2 year hiatus that had followed. People went in with sky-high expectations, especially since they'd had that whole 2 years to create seemingly watertight fan theories and meta for how the season would go.
The first episode was something of a letdown, since it both failed to explain how Sherlock had faked his suicide and, crucially, introduced a character from the original Holmes stories, Mary Morstan, as John Watson's fiancee, which put yet another roadblock between the fan-favorite pairing of John/Sherlock, or Johnlock. It was the second episode, however, which featured John and Mary's wedding, that ended up providing the fuel for the TJLC fire. In spite of the fact that one of the characters involved, you know, got married to someone else, there were several moments in The Sign of Three that some people latched onto as signs that their ship was not sunk and Johnlock would be endgame.
Hence, The Johnlock Conspiracy.
So What the Fuck was TJLC? Why the Fuck was TJLC?
Since Tumblr's ability to allow you to, you know, look up specific posts is very limited, I'm getting most of my info on the early days of TJLC from this masterpost by multifandom-madness, which was put together in August of 2014. In it, multifandom-madness not only lays out some of the most common pieces of evidence cited by TJLCers, but they also mention the three Big Name Fans who would end up the center of most of the TJLC-related drama: joolabee, graceebooks, and loudest-subtext-in-television/loudest-subtext-in-tv.
In short, The Johnlock Conspiracy asserted that, contrary to what the creators and actors of the show had said many times, Johnlock was and had always been meant to be the canon endgame pairing. Therefore, the jokes and allusions to the possibility of the characters being romantically involved, which had started to be highly criticized by some members of the Sherlock fandom, were not "queerbaiting" but were rather breadcrumbs carefully planted by the creators in an elaborate plan to preserve the final twist ending.
It was also, and I cannot stress this enough, absolutely batshit insane. Notable elements of TJLC included loudest-subtext-in-television's "predictive" M-theory, the theory that Johnlock was a concentrated effort by the BBC to improve LGBT representation, and the theory that the last episode of season 3 (which ruined M-theory's predictions) was all inside Sherlock's head.
The Great Divide
As you might have guessed from the TJLCers going "it's all a dream" after it aired, season 3 and especially the season 3 finale were not popular in the Sherlock fandom. In addition to the already massive concerns over the treatment of the female characters and the queerbaiting, the end of the season had the twist of Sherlock being forced to leave the country, only to immediately undo that twist and instead bring Moriarty, who had shot himself in the head, supposedly back from the dead. Fans had more or less completely lost faith that the showrunners knew what they were doing - unless, of course, they believed that it was all some master plan to eventually get their favorite pairing together.
You see the problem here.
TJLCers were absolutely convinced, with some comparing them to a cult, and they had a very "us-vs-them" attitude even towards those who were fellow Sherlock fans. To TJLCers, anyone who didn't ship Johnlock was a "casual," while anyone who engaged with the pairing but didn't believe in TJLC was an "anti." The "BBC representation commission" theory was highly criticized by some members of the fandom, who pointed out that Johnlock, if it happened, would not be some huge groundbreaking thing, since there had been shows that had gay representation and that didn't have the queerbaiting and misogyny issues that more and more people were beginning to credit.
TJLCers also had a habit of derailing posts talking about gripes fans had with the show to preach about TJLC, causing them to gain a reputation as faux-progressive and dismissive of peoples' problems with the show's portrayal of women and LGBT people. This reputation reached its nadir at the 221b Con of 2015.
A Scandal in Georgia: April 2015
Oh, boy. This is where I knew that this post wouldn't just be flaired long, it would be flaired extra long. I knew some of this from my time in the Sherlock fandom, but I have to give credit to the fail_fandomanon group on Dreamwidth and Fandom Wiki for their excellent 2-part breakdown of just what exactly went down (part 1, part 2). I looked at a couple other sources, and I think that it's all mostly adding up.
Alright, let's get down to business. Content Warning: discussion of rape kink, childhood sexual abuse, and all that unfun stuff. Feel free to skip to the next section if you'd like.
In early 2015, one of the perennial fandom fights had started going around Tumblr once again: rape kink. On one side, you have people pointing out that it's making something horrible sexy, that there are minors in fandom who could be negatively impacted by fanworks containing it, and that it can be triggering to people who are survivors of sexual assault and rape. On the other side, you have people pointing out that rape kink is statistically one of the most common kinks/sexual fantasies, that minors shouldn't really be interacting with porny fanworks anyways, and that the most popular platform for fanworks, Archive of Our Own, makes tagging and warning for literally anything very easy. In addition, there's a smaller subset of that latter group made up of SA/rape survivors who use rape kink fanworks as a coping mechanism. Its an argument that gets very circular very quickly, and I wouldn't even bring it up except oh, yeah
TJLC got involved in that.
More specifically, graceebooks and loudest-subtext-in-television got involved, which meant that the rest of the TJLCers followed. Graceebooks and l-s-i-t (*deep breath*) started accusing people who wrote and drew top!Sherlock of being rape apologists and, in some cases, borderline child pornographers for drawing the characters in a simplified art style that didn't include wrinkles. The results of this were predictable, with various TJLCers harassing the artists and writers that were targeted. Now, this is fairly normal Tumblr fandom stuff so far, not admirable but not on the level of doxxing or making an illegal recording of you harassing someone in person at a convention.
I bet you can guess what happened next.
221b Con was held in Atlanta, Georgia the weekend of April 10-12, 2015. On the Saturday evening, a group of TJLC fans, led by graceebooks herself, crashed the 18+ panel titled “The Gender Politics of Fandom” and derailed the topic to rape kink fanworks and how problematic their creators are. One panelist, who had just talked about her status as a survivor of sexual violence and her enjoyment of fanworks that included rape kink, broke down crying. She posted her own perspective on the event on a throwaway Tumblr, and it's really brutal. What's more, one of the TJLCers took video of this event and posted it on Youtube (it was later taken down), violating both 221b Con's harassment policy and, um, Georgia state law.
Graceebooks eventually posted about what had happened at 221b Con. The whole thing's really long, but it's a far cry from an apology. She maintained that "We did not bully anyone at 221B Con this past weekend. We went to 221B Con because we wanted to see one another and have fun, and because many of us wanted to meet in person for the first time. We went after it was made bone-shakingly clear that we were not wanted there and that the idea that we were going was truly horrifying to many, which, while not a problem for me, was really intimidating for plenty of my friends... I have not tormented you. Michi (note: one of the panel moderators) herself has confirmed that my behavior during her panel was respectful. We can have a discussion about the ethics of posting that video, but I think it really goes to illustrate why I made the choice I did that you acknowledge the video’s existence and yet STILL continue to characterize what happened at that panel as us 'being incredibly cruel and intolerant of others’ views.'"
So, basically, she denied, deflected, and made herself out to be the victim. Charming.
221b Con Aftermath and the Lead-up to Season 4
In the aftermath of the 221b Con mess, there was a sort of mass exodus of non-TJLCers from the Sherlock fandom. TJLC had been seen as kind of nutty but ultimately harmless, and this was so far beyond the pale that plenty of people saw it as ruining the fandom as a whole. Most significantly, mid0nz, a prominent meta writer who was known for interviewing various creatives who worked on Sherlock, wrote a post denouncing TJLC before moving all their meta to a personal website and deleting their Tumblr. Others tried to engage with TJLCers, with one user, songlin, trying to give her perspective on the situation as a sexual assault survivor and getting doxxed and called a "dangerous survivor" and "a threat to children" for her troubles.
By this point it's August 2016, and the Sherlock creators and actors have started a new round of interviews and publicity, hoping to drum up enthusiasm for the Christmas special and season 4. What happens instead is that the TJLCers ask them repeatedly about the supposed conspiracy, and when they repeatedly said that there was no such thing the TJLCers behave so badly there's an article about it in Vox. Seriously.
The Not-So-Last Bow: January 2017
We're almost through, I promise.
After a three-year hiatus, which had seen TJLC go from a funny fringe theory to a powerful clique of doxxing, harassing assholes, Sherlock was back for its fourth and (as of writing) last season. And it was bad! It was really really bad! It made season 3 look good. It featured Mary Watson getting shot for no reason except men being sad, Sherlock's secret evil sister, and a dead best friend who was for some reason remembered as a dog.
And, crucially, Johnlock didn't happen, and TJLCers went nuts.
Some claimed to have been traumatized. Some accused the show of queerbaiting, the very thing they had mocked and shut down discussions of for the past three years. But some held out hope, hope that there was a secret fourth episode that would tie everything together and make Johnlock canon. They called it The Lost Special, and they knew exactly when it would happen.
Apple Tree Yard was a TV mini series that started airing in the Sherlock timeslot after Sherlock wrapped up. Before its premier, TLJC fans were convinced Apple Tree Yard wasn't actually a real show but a cover for the secret 4th episode of Sherlock. All they would have to do was wait a week, and then everything would be as it should have been.
Obviously, Apple Tree Yard wasn't some cover for a secret episode of Sherlock. It was a completely normal show... called Apple Tree Yard. Some TJLCers were so upset that they launched Operation Norbury, a social media campaign that flooded the show's creators and the BBC with complaints about Johnlock not being canon. Obviously, nothing ever came of it.
After the Aftermath
With The Lost Special proving to be nonexistent, TJLCers were left rudderless. Some drifted to other fandoms, especially Yuri!!! On Ice and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where they maintained the reputation of being annoying and completely devoted to whatever ship they decided to back. Some stayed in the Sherlock fandom, an increasingly small and isolated group.
As for the Sherlock fandom itself, it had absolutely crumbled. Two terrible seasons and three years of constant infighting had driven away all but the most devoted of fans. It was a quiet and somewhat sad end to what had once been one of the Big Three Fandoms on Tumblr.
submitted by urcool91 to HobbyDrama [link] [comments]

The story I'm about to tell you is true. 100% documented and proven.

Marc Dutroux The story I'm about to tell you is true.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this story is that every single person reading this post - every single one of you - was alive when this story became news in 2004.
That fact is intriguing because everyone reading this post has either never heard this story, or forgot about it (I'm betting on the first one, because it is truly unforgettable).
Furthermore, once you hear this story in its entirety, I can promise it will be seared into your memory forever.
Our main character is a man named Marc Dutroux. He was born in Belgium in 1956. He was twice convicted of kidnapping and raping underage children. The first time was in 1989. The second time occurred in 1996.
That was not a typo - you read that correctly. He was convicted and served a (much too brief) sentence in 1998. He served only 3 and a half years of his 13 year sentence because he was released for good behavior. Less than 10 years later, he was arrested again on the same charges (different victims).
In the second round of charges, he was convicted of kidnapping, torturing and abusing victims, some of them to the point of death.
What I am about to tell you comes from the statements made by his surviving victims (called the X Files), Marc Dutreox himself, and evidence from law enforcement. I've also added references/citations at the very end of this post.
Here we go.
Marc confessed to kidnapping, raping, drugging, torturing and filming children for many years. He also claimed he was doing it at the behest of a political elite who financed his career as a professional trafficker.
Not only did this political elite finance his efforts - they made specific requests of him. Sometimes they requested specific types of children (they were called "party favors" and he was asked to deliver kids of certain age, sex, race). Sometimes they requested specific means of torturing the children to fulfill their desires (orgies, satanic rituals involving sacrifices, torture games).
And sometimes they requested he film certain influential people engaged in these acts, for later use as blackmail.
He claimed many of his customers and financiers were world leaders. This was not a stretch of the imagination because he lived in Belgium, where the EU and NATO headquarters were located. This statement was also corroborated by victims who were able to identify specific politicians.
Anneke Lucas was one of his victims who testified against him. She claimed she was 6 years old when the cleaning lady hired by her mother sold her to the pedophile network in 1969. Her claims were extraordinary:
-She was raped over seventeen hundred hours before turning 12 years old. -She was 6 years old when she was forced to participate in her first orgy, which included wearing an iron dog collar and eating human excrement. -She would actually be delivered back to her parents from time to time. However, her parents themselves were complicit in the crimes and always sent her back to her abusers. -Torture included being strapped to a butchers block used to execute other children. Other victims were forced to torture her for hours as part of their initiation. -She was considered attractive and that made her preferred by her abusers. She claimed that she tried to use that to her survival advantage to the best of her ability, but by the age of eleven, she had become so broken that she was slated to be executed and disposed of. -She said she was saved when one of her abusers negotiated for her freedom. That abuser would later sit as a defendant in the trial.
Other witnesses and victims would soon come forward, describing such things as “Black Masses,” with child and adult sacrifices taking place in front of observers and participants, which included prominent politicians and figures. This would be corroborated by a note found by police at the house belonging to Bernard Weinstein—a man who previously worked with Dutroux, but whom Dutroux had murdered. The letter contained very specific requests for certain types of victims for satanic sacrifices.
The letter was signed by a man who called himself 'Anubis'. It turned out 'Anubis' was the high priest of a satanic cult called 'Abrasax' whose real name was Francis Desmet. Police obtained a warrant and seized computers, documents, mail, actual human skulls, jars of blood, and all sorts of Satanic items - but none of this was enough to make an arrest.
As the Dutroux trial went public, other victims stepped forward and confirmed the testimony, offering up descriptions of sexual abuse and human sacrifice.
They also described “hunting parties” where elites would release naked children into the woods to hide, so that the elites themselves could hunt them down and slaughter them. Many of the stories from victims contained so many similarities, they were impossible to deny. For example, the hunting parties were often held at castles, where victims could not escape and were hidden from the public eye. Those not killed in the hunt were usually chased down and mauled/killed by Dobermans.
All of these victims echoed the testimonies of other, older survivors of ritual Satanic abuse from around the world.
It is also notable that Dutroux owned 10 homes valued at 6 million dollars.
It is also notable that Dutroux was not employed.
It is also notable that Dutroux received $1,200 per month in public assistance.
It is also notable that documents released by Wikileaks show large sums of money in various currencies were deposited into his wife's bank account.
It is also notable that those deposits coincided with reported kidnappings and missing children reports.
It is also notable that before his removal, judge Jean-Marc Connerotte was on the verge of publicly disclosing the names of high level government officials who had been recognized on video-tapes of sexual torture that took place in Dutroux's dungeon.
It is also notable that 20 potential witnesses for this case have died without explanation.
Does any of this sound familiar? Are there any headlines today that sound like history is repeating itself?
Guys, not one single thing in this post is theory. It's all proven and on record.
You see the pictures attached to this post? Those are images of hunting games. They're paintings that people like Tony Podesta buy, and hang in his home, and invite others over to enjoy.
We all know Epstein was a sick sob who had friends in high places - the same friends that hang out with Tony Podesta.
You think Epstein was the only one? That he's somehow unique? Or was he the low level one they were willing to sacrifice to protect everyone else involved at a higher level?
Do you realize now that when it comes to trafficking, satanism, pedophilia, human sacrifices, organ harvesting, adrenachrome - that it is art imitating life? That these people who are so obsessed with the art that glorifes these things might actually, themselves, be engaged in these things?
Do you think normal, non-pedo, non-cannibal, average Joes would hang that garbage up in their homes?
Suddenly the claims that world leaders and governments being involved in this satanic horror show isn't so far fetched after all.
Suddenly its not so crazy to say that world agencies who claim to stop these crimes (WHO, UN) are actually facades that cover up the real work of procuring and enabling - yes, even participating - in these crimes.
Suddenly the whole house of cards comes crashing down.
With this one case, all the unbelievers are silenced.
For crying out loud, this trial was in 2004! Did you remember it? If not, do you wonder why it was not front page news across the world?
And if you're asking yourself HOW DO THESE PEOPLE GET AWAY WITH THIS - have you not yet figured out that the very people who are supposed to end it, are doing it?
Most everyone has watched an Epstein documentary on Netflix - I think there's been maybe 3 or 4 made since his death. And the one thing I heard people say over and over and over again was this: "Where is Epstein's girlfriend and why hasn't she been arrested yet?"
Did anyone asking that question even try to find the answer? Or did you just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, it is what it is and there's nothing I can do about it" and go on with your life?
Let me help you out.
Did you hear the news story from two weeks ago that President Trump fired federal prosecutor Geoffrey Berman? He was the prosecutor in charge of the Epstein case.
AG Barr requested Berman step down, and Berman refused. So Trump fired him and Berman was replaced with prosecutor Audrey Strauss. And then suddenly BAM! Maxwell is in custody.
You now get a front row seat for the horror show that is about to come out.
You will not believe who is involved and how deep it goes. And you will not believe the lengths they'll go to in order to protect their secrets.
https://cwasu.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Confronting-An-Atrocity.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1iFppDKV9fKTovmv9zLfWBQduNSavsSNA4_4fuavxF6Y5u0n8tB7JfI60
http://archive.is/SFRGD
http://archive.is/jxiLV#selection-3715.53-3715.70
https://www.euronews.com/amp/2019/10/27/explainer-paedophile-marc-dutroux-and-the-horror-case-that-united-a-divided-belgium
submitted by Fantastic-Reply to conspiracy [link] [comments]

Hawk And The Billboard-Sized ID Card

Hawk is like a box of of Meals Ready to Eat (MRE); you never know what you are going to get, but you are pretty confident it will make you shit your pants. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." Kudos to Mrs. Roosevelt for that well articulated adage. She clearly never met Hawk though, because that fucker said, "Hold my beer!"
We are about to embark on another journey with Hawk. The typical paths for mankind are either the straight and narrow or wide and crooked. This does not apply to Hawk though; Hawk is a trailblazer. Hawk came to that proverbial fork in the road, and instead of taking the clearly marked routes, Hawk decided to break brush, butt naked, through thorny vines and poison ivy. Some of you have arrived here and are likely wondering, "What the fuck is OP talking about?" I could tell you to go back and read the Hawk prequels, but I don't think you will. Therefore, I might as well briefly explain Hawk.
Imaging three Service Members are conducting a mounted patrol through Death Valley. They are hours into their trip through Satan's grundle-region, but the vehicle breaks down. They have to abandoned the vehicle and continue on foot. They are exhausted and understand the desert sun is going to rape their souls. They each decided to take one item to assist with surviving the blistering heat. The breakdown is below.
  1. Marine: Water
  2. Sailor: Food
  3. Hawk: Car Door
The three men travel for hours before deciding to take a much needed break; it's Death Valley people! The break was the first opportunity they had to discuss the item each person brought, and elaborate on why they chose said item.
  1. Marine: I brought water in the event we get thirsty.
  2. Sailor: I brought food in the event we needed energy.
  3. Hawk: I brought the car door. We can roll down the windows when it gets hot outside.
Hey OP, did this really happen? No. I repurposed a Polish joke. I don't mean to be rude, but my intent was not to make you laugh. I am merely doing my best to explain how unbelievably oblivious Hawk is to commonsense or a rational thought process. It may have been a joke, but shit like this is perfectly feasible for Hawk. Still not convinced? I will assume the majority of us have played at least one video game in our life in which were able to create a character. The game is irrelevant. Imagine you have a total of 100 points to allocate between Attack, Speed, Confidence, Power, and Stupidity. Now imagine allocating all 100 points to Stupidity. Trust me when I say the character you created is at least 100 points smarter than Hawk on an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test. Still don't believe me? Read the other stories. If you don't believe me after that, I simply want to say I am sorry. I am sorry you now know I am posting about you on Reddit Hawk.
The setting is Iraq. I was a leader at war with the terrorist that inhabited Iraq, and the nearly constant stupidity Hawk continually displayed. Hawk has just informed me that he had lost his Identification card (ID). Nobody that has lost and ID enjoys it, but please understand that the process is different between civilians and Soldiers. I have never lost one, so I am not entirely certain, but I know they are different. I had to counsel (wrist-slap/discussion) Hawk regarding his lost ID. I needed the Company Commander to counsel Hawk, and sign documentation in order for Hawk to receive a new ID card. We can't simply go to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and replace it. The military process requires a couple wrist-slaps and a fuck-ton of paperwork.
The fact that we were deployed made this process more difficult. We did not have the ability to reissue ID cards within our Battalion. We had to venture to a larger Forward Operating Base (FOB) that had an ID card facility. The process was not complicated, but it was certainly a pain in the ass. Our particular Operations Tempo (OPTEMP) did not allow me to send an underpaid babysitter; Hawk was going solo. This would not be a problem with any other Soldier, but this is Hawk. I would feel more comfortable sending my preteen to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch for a sleepover than I do sending Hawk anywhere without adult supervision. I was forced to allow Hawk to spread his wings, and pray he didn't fly into a fucking window.
OP: Hawk. You are manifested to leave with Battalion Headquarters (HQ) tomorrow. You will be departing at 1000 hours, but need to report to Battalion HQ tomorrow at 0930. Any questions?
Hawk: No.
It was fucking cut-and-dry. There was no room for subjective mental retardation on behalf of Hawk. I was not requesting a dissertation in thermonuclear astrophysics. I just needed Hawk to exit the rear of the barracks, walk 50 feet, and stand there before 0930. Still, that doesn't mean Hawk wont fuck it up. Hawk was a football-bat in a soccer game. Hawk fucked it up. Hawk mentally computed, "Go to the chow hall at 0900 and eat. Then go to port-a-john at make an underwater sculpture, and then report to the wrong side of the battalion headquarters building around 1000. Cool. Hawk did not maliciously miss the trip, but his potato-brain outwitted himself. I had a Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) escort Hawk back over to Battalion an manifest him for a for the dinner trip.
This time I had a Team Leader ensure Hawk was properly nestled inside a departing vehicle. All Hawk needed to do was report to the ID card facility and get a new ID card. Too easy. Right? Hawk made it though. I called the ID card facility to ensure Hawk received a new ID card. He did! I was happy, but my confidence in Hawk was short lived. Any confidence in Hawk has an incredibly short shelf-life. The 30-minute trip between Hawk getting a new ID card and arriving back to our FOB was too much.
Hawk enters Team Room
OP: Hawk! Great to have you back brother. Show me your new ID card.
Hawk: Okay Sergeant.
Hawk is rifling through his wallet. No worries. He must have misplaced his new ID card. It's brand-fucking-new. He must have accidentally stowed it in a different spot in his wallet. We waited, and then we waited some more for Hawk to produce a less than one-hour old ID card. No dice though! Hawk lost it. Again.
Hawk: I am going to run back to the vehicles Sergeant. It must have fell out.
I knew better though. I was fairly certain it didn't fall out. I didn't know where it was, but I was fairly certain the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had better odds of finding the boogieman, than Hawk had of finding his ID car. The race was on! I don't know how the FBI fared, but Hawk failed. I wasn't even mad anymore. Hawk was now just living up to my very low expectations. Still, what the fuck was I going to do as a leader to rectify this situation? We have to repeat the counseling process, and have the Company Commander sign more documents in order to get another ID card. I know it was not purposely lost, but I still have to punish the kid.
I decided to walk in the footsteps of those before me. Hawk was going to make a new ID card. It was not going to be as precise as a real Army ID card, but it would suffice for me. Hawk was going to make his own ID card. The template for his design was going to be the side of an MRE box. His ID card was about to be at least eight inches wide and sixteen inches long. I placed the materials on Hawks bed and instructed him to make a new ID card, loop 550 cord (cordage) through it, and wear it around his neck.
Hawk looked like an idiot walking around the FOB with a billboard sized ID card. It was working though. The door-checker at the chow hall thought it was funny, and Hawk didn't leave his new ID card at the phone-tent or internet-tent either. He went a full two-days until there was an issue. The Regimental Command Sergeant Major (CSM) was at our FOB that day. He wanted to greet the Soldiers and get a general sense of our morale levels. He was not happy when he seen Hawk wearing his giant ID card in the chow hall. I typically spend my days providing very, very detailed guidance to Hawk, and typically expect him to fuck it up anyways. It was a giant kick in the nuts when Hawk pulled a reverse card and gave me instructions.
Hawk: Sergeant OP.
OP: Yes Hawk?
Hawk: I have some guidance for you.
OP: (This is going to be good.) Really? You're going to give me guidance?!? Hit me with it then!
Hawk: The Regimental CSM wants to see you tonight at 2000 hours in the Battalion CSM's office.
OP: Why? (Fuck my tits! I didn't think I did anything wrong, but I was going to find out.)
Hawk: He was mad about my ID card and...
OP: (Cool. We agree on something!) Me too. Seeing how you can't keep track of something that was less than an hour old.
Hawk: The Regimental CSM said my punishment was demeaning and humiliating.
OP: Roger. Thanks for the information.
What the fuck? I understood where the Regimental CSM was coming from, but he was wrong. Hawk is too stupid to be humiliated. Hawk lacks the mental wherewithal to understand he was actively being humiliated. I understand this sounds rude as fuck, but Hawk is just too oblivious to understand when he is the butt of a joke. He is a goldfish brain trapped inside a human body. Making matters worse, Uncle Sam, issued this troglodyte an assault rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher. Fuck. The more I think about it, the more I believe I should be mad at the Regimental CSM for humiliating me by assigning me Hawk, type one each! However, informing the Regimental CSM of this would have gone over like a fart in church.
I immediately informed First Sergeant to ensure he was aware of the situation. First Sergeant had a smile on his face and told me, "I can't wait to go to Battalion with you and see how this plays out." I walked over to Battalion at 1950, and just waited outside the CSM's door. I could hear my Battalion and Regimental CSM bullshitting back-and-forth. It was better than overhearing angry-talk. I knocked on the door at 2000, and was told to come in. First Sergeant accompanied me inside the office as well. I was "on the carpet" in front of "the man" and I was about to have a sizeable chunk of my ass chewed-off without any anesthetic.
OP: Sergeants Majors. How are you doing this evening?
RCSM: Well, I was good until I seen one my Soldiers wearing THE SIDE OF A MRE BOX AS AN ID CARD. That's just humiliating and uncalled for. What made you think this was an acceptable recourse?
OP: He lost his ID card Sergeant Major.
RCSM: (Now a bit more irritated.) Then why didn't you just get him a new ID card then? WHY DID YOU FIND IT ACCEPTABLE TO EMBARRASS HIM?
OP: I did Sergeant Major. He went a couple days ago to get a new card. He had it for less than an hour and lost that one as well. That's why he is walking around with the MRE box ID card.
RCSM: Oh!
BCSM: Hawk is a little different Sergeant Major. (Said with a big grin and a chuckle.)
First Sergeant: That is an understatement Sergeant Major!
RCSM: What do you mean?
BCSM: Why don't you elaborate OP NICKNAME.
OP: He is an idiot Sergeant Major!
BCSM: (Laughing.) I said elaborate. Why don't you tell him what you told me at the Promotion Board!
OP: Okay Sergeant Major. Please be cognizant that I a merely trying to explain Hawk the best way I know how. Sergeant Major, picture a room with no windows and only one door. Hawk is in that room, with one cat and one dog. I give Hawk very explicit and simple instructions. "Hawk, I will be back in five minutes. Make sure the dog doesn't eat the cat". Sergeant Major, you could go back in that room 30 seconds later and there would be no cat, no dog, a dead fucking elephant and Hawk is clueless about how the fuck it happened. That is Hawk Sergeant Major.
Now 75% of the occupants in the room are laughing hysterically. Guess who is not happy with that analogy? Wrong. The Regimental CSM is laughing. OP. OP is not laughing. The analogy is no longer funny to me at this point. It is a said reality of my life. Hawk is my Soldier. I deal with this heavy mouth-breathing Simple Jack human every single day. I was deployed and there was no reprieve from Hawk.
This is the shit I deal with on a nearly daily basis:
OP: Hawk. Why are you wearing DIFFERENT SOLDIER NAME uniform top?
Hawk: The laundry place fucked up.
OP: What?
Hawk: The laundry facility accidentally gave me DIFFERENT SOLDIERS clothes.
OP: So, rather than take it back and get your shit (LONG "I AM FUCKING DUMBFOUNDED" PAUSE) you decided to just wear another persons clothes?
)YES! Yes, these are the type answers I get in return.)
Hawk: I am not wearing his underwear Sergeant OP. (Hawk smile. The "I am mentally deficient" smile) I am free-balling Sergeant.
OP: Goddamn it Hawk. I bet DIFFERENT SOLDIER will be happy to hear that your dick-meat is funking up his uniform bottoms. Take off his uniform and put on YOUR PT (Physical Training) shorts. Then take his fucking clothes back to the laundry facility and get your shit.
Shit like this is a constant. He fucks up Promotion Boards. He can't keep track of newly printed ID cards for more than an hour. He is now wearing another Soldiers uniform. My god, I have accidentally interrupted him milking his snake while on guard duty. Scratched that, interrupted would imply he stopped. He didn't he continued without missing a stroke. THIS. THIS IS WHY I WAS NOT AMUSED OR LAUGHING!
RCSM: Is it he really that bad Sergeant OP?
OP: Oh No! Sometimes it's worse. We take our dose of Hawk one day at a time Sergeant Major.
BCSM: (Phone Call.) SSG OPERATIONS NCO. Call over to OP's Operations Center (OPCEN). Tell them to send Specialist Hawk over to my office.
The Operations NCO calls back and informs the Battalion CSM that Hawk has arrived at Battalion. The Battalion CSM instructs the Operations NCO to, "send him to my office."
The door to the office is still closed. We can hear the shuffling of feet in the hallway. We are all waiting for Hawk to knock on the door. Who knows, he might even be wearing his own uniform. We wait, and then we wait some more. We finally hear knocking. The knocking was not on Sergeant Majors door though. The knocking echoed from an office down the hall. I am about to excuse myself and go retrieve my "special" Soldier, but the phone rings. It was the Battalion Commander. He is wondering why someone knocked on his door and let himself into his office while he was on a conference call with the Regimental Commander and other Battalion Commanders. It was Hawk! The door sign that said "Command Sergeant Major NAME" must have confused him.
I can see the Regimental CSM now coming to the slow realization that the dead elephant analogy was not intended to be funny at all. It truly, and accurately, described what 5'9 and 150 pounds of stupidity looks like. We again hear the shuffle of feet down the hall, and finally there is a knock at the correct door.
BCSM: Enter!
Hawk just walks in. Then he sees the amount of rank in the room and pauses. He opened his mouth as if he was about to utter something ridiculous stupid, but his brain was smart enough to know better. I personally think he needed to let the abundance of drool escape his mouth.
RCSM: Hawk good to see you again. Glad you are not wearing the largest ID card I have ever seen. Hawk! I have had a conversation with your leadership, and I see why they are irritated with your lack of situational awareness. Son, you need to get your shit together or I will find you a job I am certain you won't like. You understand where I am coming from?
I heard it. He heard it. The Regimental CSM gave a pretty simple warning. "Stop fucking up or else!" All Hawk had to say was "Roger" or "Understood Sergeant Major." Something the Regimental Sergeant Major said must have peaked his interest though. I was about to gently rest my face inside the palm of my hand and wonder what I did in life to deserve this creature. What poor choices led me to this moment in time in which I am truly wondering, "What the fuck are you doing with your life OP?"
Hawk: What's the other job Sergeant Major? (Goddamn it Hawk. Fuck my tits. Why? Fucking why Hawk?)
RCSM: I was implying that you would not want the "other" job. It was a threat Hawk. I will have you sweeping the Regimental headquarters building and pulling Kitchen Patrol (KP) duty for the remainder of the deployment. Get your shit together Hawk. You tracking?
OP BRAIN: Please. Please only utter one word or the name Roger. PLEASE. I beg you.
Hawk: Yes Sergeant Major. (YES. It was a small victory in an otherwise long day.)
RCSM: Hawk. I am going to personally take you over to LARGE FOB tomorrow to get an ID card, and then return you, WITH THE ID CARD, to Sergeant OP.
Hawk: Roger Sergeant Major.
RCSM: Hawk. What happened to the MRE box ID card?
I look at Hawk and I think I see a little turd-nugget exit his wrinkle-grommet (asshole) and tumble down the leg of his trousers and come to rest above his boot. It was either that or his peanut size brain had finally managed to dislodge itself and roll down his neck-hole. It was probably the brain.
Hawk: (Drum roll. The anticipation in the air was as thick as a surgically enhanced Kardashian butt.) Um. Ah. I think I lost it Sergeant Major. I set it on my bed, and when I came back it was gone.
Well, would you look at that. Hawk managed to lose an ID card that was larger than an eight-by-ten sheet of paper. Wow. Just fucking wow.
We were eventually dismissed from the meeting, and returned to the Team Room. I needed to ensure Hawk was prepared to get another ID card while the Regimental CSM babysit. On-the-other-hand, I prayed Hawk acted Hawk-like. I wanted the Regimental CSM to return Hawk back to me, scratching his head, and apologizing for verbally reprimanding me.
Regarding the billboard-sized ID card; Hawk lost it. He said he set it on his bed before walking over to Battalion, and taking a pit-stop in the Battalion Commanders office. I suspect he threw it in the trash and forgot. Maybe the Regimental CSM took it, or trashed it while in the chow hall? Maybe aliens stole it? I don't know. I just know it was never found again. I was not mad though. I just laughed it off. Nothing, and I mean nothing, surprised me if Hawk was involved.
UPDATE: Hawk is still dumb. Hawk will forever be a brainless shell of a human. He is a genuinely a kind and caring person though. He will give you the shirt of his back if you need it. However, you will need to provide step-by-step instructions, and have a bucket-load of patience in order for him to put it back on, inside-out and backwards. Even that would be a small victory though.
Some of you may be happy to know that I reached out to a handful of people I am still in contact with. I currently have 17 stories on-deck. They are not all about Hawk, but he does make retarded cameos in some of the stories. I also have not-funny stories, like my first Improvised Explosive Device (IED) encounter or the time I took a fair amount of mortar shrapnel to the face. Fear not though. I have my own unique way of conveying stories and I assure you there will be at least one chuckle hidden within.
I appreciate all the kind comments, and really enjoy the back-and-forth conversations and story-sharing with you, the Reader. I hope you got a laugh. Be safe, drink beer, take a knee, and face out!
I will continue to spread-out the Hawk stories weekly. The title may change, but there at least three on deck!
07 SEP 20: Hawk's Hot Tub Excursion
14 SEP 20: Hawk Walks Home, IN IRAQ
21 SEP 20: Hawk Drives; We Shoot
​
Cheers!
submitted by SloppyEyeScream to MilitaryStories [link] [comments]

I am 53 years old, have a combined $210,000 annual income, live on Long Island, NY, and work as a Project Coordinator

First, I'm sorry this is so long. Second - please be nice. We have debt, bad habits, and are Catholic. So if any of those things are going to get you spun up, just skip this one.
Section One: Assets and Debt Use this section to explain your current financial picture at large.
Everything here is joint – “M” and I have been married 22 years and we’ve had “smashed money” that whole time (and really for about a year before that).
Retirement Balance (and how you got there): Approximately $500,000 in a variety of IRAs and current 401(k)s.
Equity if you're a homeowner (and how much you put down and how you accumulated that payment). Bought our house in 2001 for $239,000 with 20% down (some aggressive saving and a gift from each of our parents). We refinanced, took some cash out for some home repairs, and reduced it to a 15-year loan in 2009 – our current equity would be about $195,000, but similar homes in the neighborhood are listed at $475,000-$525,000, so if we ever sell, we’re probably coming out ahead.
Savings account balance: $6,000
Checking account balance: $6,500
Credit card debt (and how you accumulated it): I hope you’re sitting down. Approximately $40,000. Yes, you read that right. How we accumulated it? The house is 90 years old and constantly falling apart, so we’ve had to charge things that needed to be done (some we wanted to have done, but some – like the time our oil burner stopped working in December – were needs). We had two dogs with numerous medical issues – I don’t want to calculate what they cost me, but they each had surgeries that were about $5,000 (each), plus other chronic and acute medical issues. And yes…for a while, we were doing and buying things we probably shouldn’t have (not bad things, just vacations, clothes, and non-essential home improvements) So…when I’m 100 and greeting people at Wal-Mart, I’ll at least have some good memories. That said, I can’t tell you the last time I used credit – if we can’t afford to pay cash, we don’t do it (and I say that fully realizing most people would feel that I shouldn’t do anything).
Student loan debt (for what degree): None – my husband went to the military and then to work after high school and I went back to community college later in life and paid as I went.
Anything else that's applicable to you: If my ex-husband dies before me, I’ll have about $6,000 in a money market that he must have forgotten about. When we divorced, he was supposed to liquidate all those accounts and give me half. He was an accountant and a SOB, so I never knew exactly what we had, but what I got seemed accurate (it paid for furniture, my wedding to M and part of this house, so I was OK with it). Lo and behold, a couple years ago, I found out we still have this money market account in both names. I tried to find him so we could liquidate/split it, but he’s missing. I get the statements here now, and the good part is he’s older than me, so I’m holding out hope he predeceases me and it will be mine.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I've been working in my field for a year and a half, my starting salary was $100,000. I did a salary story with the entire progression – long story short, I’ve made more, and I’ve made less, but this is probably about the average of the last five years.
My husband has been at his job for 14 years – he started there making around $75,000 and now makes $110,000. They usually give him a $10,000 bonus at the end of the year, but are always crying poverty if people ask for a raise. Prior to that, he worked for a company that paid very well and he had a 15-minute commute, but he got out one step ahead of their bankruptcy.
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
Me: $5,152
J: $6,230
Side Gig Monthly Take Home:
M is paid $1,300/month by our parish for serving as Youth Minister.
Any Other Monthly Income: $16.00
I get quarterly dividends on stock I was given when I was born (I may not have been born into money, but apparently my grandparents had friends who thought this was a good baby gift). The last few were around $50, so I divided by 3.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent / Mortgage / HOA fees (please specify how you split it if living with a partner): $3,043, which includes the property taxes and homeowner's insurance
Savings contribution: $500/month without fail (my bank transfers $100 if we get over $500 in, so once each paycheck and once when we put the church check in). More if I feel the savings needs a boost.
Debt payments:
Donations: OK – anyone who isn’t screaming because I owe $40K is going to start now.
Electric: $110
Gas (stove/hot water): $50
Oil: $250/month in the winter
Wifi/Cable: $179
Cellphone: $252 for both of us (I get mine expensed except $26 for my phone payment)
Subscriptions:
Car payment / insurance: $295/month for my car (leased). My husband is driving a 10-year old car that is paid off. $128/month for auto insurance
Lawn care: $50/month
Commuting: Now that we’re in COVID times, I’ve been buying a 10-trip off peak railroad ticket every five days for $78.75. Pre-COVID, M and I each bought a monthly ticket for $270, and I took the subway most days for an additional $100/month. I fill up the car about once a month (~$36) and M fills his about every other week (~$70/month)
Saturday, September 26, 2020
7:45 am: Up and at ‘em! I get up, get coffee, check emails and social media and start the day.
8:00 am: M leaves the house for a long list of errands, the payment for which will be shown below. I put in a load of laundry and discover…a leak! There is a large pipe between our powder room sink (which I used when I woke up) and the outside world that runs through the basement and is apparently leaking. Yay whee. If you get one thing from this diary, let it be these words of wisdom – don’t buy an old house! No beautiful feature is worth the aggravation! I get the water (I hope it’s water) cleaned up, a load of laundry in, take a shower, do some picking up around the house, get dressed in a Rangers t-shirt and cut off distressed jeans, do my makeup (Olay microsculpting serum and Miracle Blur over the bottom of my face, pink, gray, and violet eyeshadows, a swipe of foundation under my eyes, black eyeliner, black mascara, and dark brown eye pencil. This is standard everyday makeup for me and will be repeated each day. I put volumizing mousse in my hair and blow dry it (also routine).
In the meantime, M gets a haircut ($30 including tip), sets up the video equipment at church, goes to CVS for passport photos that he needs for an application ($18.87), and goes to the religious goods store for a book of the Liturgy of the Hours ($42.31). He is starting formation for the diaconate (the process of becoming a Deacon in the Catholic Church) today, and they said he’ll need that book. He also needs the photos for his application, and he stops at the bank for two money orders – one to send with the background check request and one for his high school transcript ($26). On the way home, he picks up breakfast (brunch?) for us – classic New York BEC, SPK (bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll with salt, pepper and ketchup) for him and egg whites, turkey and swiss cheese on a whole wheat wrap for me ($10.78), as well as cigs for him and vape cartridges for me ($36).
The washing machine isn’t causing any additional leakage, so I move the wash to the dryer and start moving the winter clothes from the portable closet in front of the leaking pipe upstairs (they’re not wet, but we’re going to have to move the closet when the plumber comes).
After eating the egg sandwiches, we get changed for deacon class – I look like a good church lady in black slacks, a black and white flowered shirt with a black tank underneath, and black sandals with a chunky 2.5” heel. M goes with the classic golf shirt and dockers. While we’re getting changed, he mentions he needs new underwear, so I whip out the phone and order him some ($18.64).
6:30 pm: Home from deacon class and Mass and the groceries show up! I ordered them yesterday, but I don’t think the charge went through till today, so here goes. Asparagus, broccoli, celery, bananas, cucumber, lime, grape tomatoes, peaches, carrots, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, zucchini, frozen burgers, ground turkey, chicken breasts, whole chicken, fried chicken and a pot pie for J’s lunches, yogurt, sugar free pumpkin spice creamer (YES! I’ve been looking for it for weeks!), milk, heavy cream, OJ, k-cups, frozen green beans, cauliflower rice, stuffing mix, microwave rice, cake mix (the good ones were on sale), chicken broth, potato chips, and trash bags. Spent $154.95 including delivery, saved $14.50 (very low for me), tipped the delivery guy $10.
7:00 pm: After putting away all that food, what do we do? If you guessed order dinner, you’d be right! I don’t cook on Saturday unless we’re having company. We order from a new taco place – three each and “Mexican wings”. The wings were meh, but the tacos ranged from good to outstanding. $53.78 including tip. After dinner, M starts post-production of the Mass video and I do some laundry, watch the NASCAR race and the hockey game, and play games on my iPad. Remember, you’ll be old someday too!
11:00 pm: I go to the basement to pick up laundry and remember I wanted to order a new garden flag (this isn’t as random as it sounds – all my seasonal decorations are stored in the basement). I have had a cart set up for days with two garden flags ($6.99 each) and four magnetic mailbox covers for my parents for Christmas ($11.99 each) – they’ve talked about having a different one for each season, and I saw them when I was looking for a garden flag. Total with tax and free shipping: $61.94. I love Christmas and generally spend way too much on gifts so I’m trying to start shopping before December and at least spread out the pain. We went to a crafts fair a few weeks ago and I picked up a few things and now I’ve got this done – go me!!
12:30 pm: The hockey game is over (2 OT!) and I go to bed. M is napping waiting for his video production to finish.
Daily Total: $463.27
Sunday, September 27
7:00 am: The alarm goes off – ugh. It’s the first day of Religious Ed (virtual, but I have to do a 9:45 zoom with my 4th graders). Coffee, social media, shower, dress, makeup. Put on a black eyelet dress because we’re going back to church today so M can videotape First Communion. Do the usual makeup/hair thing.
10:30 am: My 4th graders are great and we’re ready to roll (M has on a shirt and tie in honor of the First Communion), and we’re off to Mass. Drop off the food I bought for our food pantry last week and help him video. Of course, the kids are adorable!
12:00 noon: We’re starving after church, so we stop at our favorite local pizza place on the way home. Get a variety of slices for $22.62, including a tip (we’re getting it to go, but I’m tipping everywhere, because I know restaurants have been hurt badly by the pandemic. These folks are in NYC and still haven’t opened inside dining.)
1:30 pm: Ate, ran more laundry, changed into the jeans I wore yesterday and a Yankees t-shirt and call the nail place. Of all my expenses, nails are probably the most non-negotiable – I’ve been getting my nails done for 40 years, and when I couldn’t do so during the lockdown, I was miserable. They can take me right away, which makes me happy.
3:00 pm: All 20 nails done – gel on the fingers and a regular pedicure with callus removal ($75 plus $15 tip = $90). I went with an autumn theme and got copper on the fingers and bronze toes – the nail polish looked in the jar like it would match the toes, but it doesn’t. Stop at CVS for eye cream (Olay for tired eyes) and mascara (L’Oreal Voluminous) - $27 with coupons. M asked me to pick up cigs on the way home, so I do, as well as vape cartridges, which I don’t technically need yet, but it will save a trip later in the week ($36).
3:30 pm: While at the nail place, I saw that one of our favorite local restaurants had a fire, which consumed an entire block of restaurants and small businesses. The Chamber of Commerce is doing a GoFundMe, and I donate $25 to the cause - $28.75 including the charge. I also notice that the weekly charge for my church donation went through ($75).
11:30 pm: Took a quick nap (the highlight of my week every week), put some fall decorations out, had our family Zoom call, laundry, got the end of the winter clothes moved upstairs, had dinner (roast chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and roasted asparagus), made an apple crisp (I’m not a huge dessert person but M is and I like making desserts, so it works), watched baseball, football, the NASCAR race, and basketball, and took a quick shower. Bring a Light & Fit Toasted Coconut Vanilla yogurt (the best!) to bed, finish my book (“Next Stop, Chancey”) and find the next in the series on my iPad – I’ve read them all before, but I’m in the mood for something cozy, especially after reading about the Current Occupant’s taxes – ugh!) , and turn off the lights around midnight.
Daily Total: $279.37
Monday, September 28
6:45 am: I work from home M/W/F and so I can sleep in. Relatively speaking, anyway. Get dressed in a sleeveless top and shorts (despite the fall decorations, fall nails, and roast chicken/apple crisp, it feels rather summery out there), do makeup, have some coffee and scroll through emails/socials, move yet another load of laundry (I’m trying to get it all done before the plumber comes), find the number for the plumber and give it to M to call, get the trash out, and boil some eggs for breakfast this week. I’m sitting in front of the computer by 8:15, which is ok (technically, my hours are 8:30-5:30 – it’s usually more like 8:30-6:00, and on WFH days, starting at 7:30 is not unheard of). M drops off the car at the shop – I think I forgot to mention this, but he mentioned yesterday that when he was driving around Saturday, there was a grinding noise when he backed up. More joy to come, I’m sure.
9:45 am: I hear M on the phone with the garage – apparently, they can get a used part and do the job for $450. Not great, but it’s better than it might have been! He works from home basically every day except when he has to see customers, but thankfully we’re separated enough that we can hear each other but it’s not intrusive.
10:30 am: Between cursing at people on the phone, M calls the plumber and I grab some cheese and more coffee! I’d tell you about my job, but honestly, it’s not worth talking about. Basically, I go to meetings, take notes on meetings, and send follow-ups (I do other things, but that’s most of it). When I get off my 11:00 am meeting, I’ll find out when the plumber is coming. You guys are getting a much more exciting week than I expected!
12:30 pm: What a miserable day – it seems like everyone is annoyed! Take a break to eat a slice of leftover pizza and a Diet Coke (M finishes some rotisserie chicken from last week). He says the plumber may come today to look at the situation but can’t do the work till tomorrow.
6:00 pm: Keep my head down and get some work done in the afternoon and knock off for the day. Run downstairs and make dinner – “tacos” with strips of beef grilled with Korean barbecue sauce, shredded cabbage, cheddar cheese, pineapple salsa, cucumber slices, and lime inside warmed tortillas. Delicious, if I say so myself!
7:30 pm: I get on a Zoom faith sharing meeting and M gets on a Zoom religious ed class.
11:59 pm: Contemplated Sunday’s Gospel with my small group, watched Tampa Bay win the Stanley Cup, took a shower and set clothes out for tomorrow, and off to bed. M picked up the car after Religious Ed.
Daily Total: $450.00
Tuesday, September 29
5:45 am: Ugh. Up and out – I’m wearing a green dress with a black jacket and have black slingbacks in my bag. I have to walk 30 short blocks and five long blocks once I get off the train, so I’m traveling light. I used to take the subway to my office, but since COVID, I try to limit that as much as possible.
7:45 am: Off the railroad and walk uptown. I actually don’t mind the walk, because when I WFH, I walk very little – at the beginning of the lockdown, I had a nice walking routine, but lately the work seems to start the minute I wake up, so walking to work takes care of getting in those STEPS! I forgot my boiled eggs and I’m starving, so I end up buying an egg sandwich. $5.43
12:30 pm: Because I only go to the city twice a week and I have to walk uptown with all my work stuff, I don’t bring lunch often (pre-pandemic, I used to bring breakfast and lunch every day, but I also took the subway). Decide to run to Pret and my boss and co-worker both ask me to pick something up. Of course, no one (including me) has anything but a $20, so they both say they’ll get me next time. I get my favorite chicken parm wrap and a Diet Coke. $32
12:45 pm: I look at my personal email and discover that J’s car registration needs to be renewed. Hop on the DMV website and take care of that. $158.50. I also realize I never took out the sausages for tonight’s dinner and call M to ask him to do so. He mentions the plumber has still not shown up.
5:45 pm: Leave a little early to get to the Fed Ex office and make my train home. I’m a little later than I’d like to be and it’s raining, so I get the subway, which is thankfully empty, reasonably clean, and quick. $2.75
7:15 pm: M picks me up at the train station and mentions that he was so busy working that he didn’t take the sausages out. He asks me what I want to eat and we end up at Wendy’s. Cheeseburger, fries, and (surprise, surprise) a Diet Coke. He gets the same thing, but bigger. $19.75
11:30 pm: Avoid the debate by watching the Yankees pound the Indians. Usual routine (plus ironing a shirt for J, because he has to go to a customer tomorrow) and off to sleep. I’m up to Book 3 in the Chancey series, for those keeping score.
Daily Total: $218.43
Wednesday, September 29
5:30 am: Double ugh. Woke up to use the bathroom and couldn’t get back to sleep, so here we are. Get dressed (long-sleeved Yankees t-shirt, straight leg jeans), do the face, have some coffee, and try to avoid the fact that my boss sent me an email at 11:00 pm last night looking for changes to a document, which I said I would do today. Get the trash out, pick up a little around the house, and get to work by 7:00. OH, and despite the lack of plumber and his lack of general motivation, M moved the plastic closet…in front of the washing machine! Glad I bought him underwear, because I won’t be doing laundry any time soon. Now I’m wondering if he looked at the menu (I am an obsessive meal planner and post it on the fridge weekly) and that’s why he didn’t take the sausages out – he’s avoiding zoodles! He can run but he can’t hide – I have zucchini and I’m going to spiralize it sooner or later!
8:00 am: The document my boss needed is out, the agenda for our 9:00 am meeting is done, the morning emails are sorted (for now), and I got a link to our parish survey up on the Facebook page, so I make an egg and cheese on a tortilla and eat at my desk.
12:50 pm: Wednesday is conference call hell – I have recurring calls every Wednesday at 9:00, 10:30, and 11:30, and the added fun today of a 10:00. There’s also a webinar every Wednesday that I try to tune into. Grab some chips and a Diet Coke and go check it out.
2:15 pm: Still no damn plumber, but I’ll let M worry about that when he’s home tomorrow. My garden flags arrived, so that’s good. Hoping to get out and put the pumpkin one out before it gets dark, but the way today is going, that might not actually happen. However, I realize I never put dinner in the crockpot. Luckily, it only takes 3-4 hours on high, so I take care of that. It’s Tuscan Chicken with sun-dried tomatoes and spinach. By 2:30, I’m back at my desk with another Diet Coke and hard at it. Nightmares of rescheduling meetings, missing documents, etc.
6:45 pm: Still at my desk! OK, I took some time to send an email to the parish webmaster about the survey, update this, and read the R29 money diary of the day. But overall, I’ve been working with no apparent end in sight – I could easily be here all night, but I won’t be because (a) I’m falling asleep at my desk and (b) I have a 7:30 Religious Ed teachers meeting. Hopefully I won’t fall asleep during that. Make a list of things for my boss and I to review tomorrow and finish prepping dinner.
7:15 pm: Dinner was delicious – we had the chicken with rice for M and cauliflower rice for me, sautéed broccoli, and a basic salad (bagged spring mix, cherry tomatoes, cucumber). Now off to Zoom!
11:45 pm: The Yankees game is still on, but I’m showered, my clothes are set out for tomorrow, and I’m fading. Turn off the light and hope for a win.
Daily Total: $0.00 (bet you didn’t see that coming!)
Thursday, October 1
5:45 am: You know it…ugh. Get up, coffee, very quick scroll through the Yankees score/e-mail/social media. Get dressed in a black v-neck sweater, black and gray plaid skirt, and black jacket (not the same one I wore the other day). Am grateful the skirt fits – I gained some weight and am trying to resist buying clothes. Make sure I have the right shoes in my bag – I’m wearing high-heeled gray suede Mary Janes today.
8:15 am: At my desk and ready to go – I remembered to bring 2 hard-boiled eggs today, which I eat with coffee while looking through emails.
12:30 pm: Call after call after call, but I have a half-hour to eat. Run to the fancy buffet place that just re-opened for 2 meatballs, brussels sprouts, broccoli, salad, and the inevitable Diet Coke ($15.75). Manage to eat before my 1:00 pm call – go me!
3:30 pm: Leave to go to a job site and pick something up that has to be shipped to Italy. Something that's almost as tall as me, but thankfully not heavy. Taxi down there because I’m in a hurry and I can get reimbursed ($14.04, including tip), expensed.
4:00 pm: I get a cab to the Fed Ex office – thankfully the first one I see is a minivan, so I fit in just fine ($12.74, including tip), expensed.
5:30 pm: Well, that was harder than it needed to be – the Fed Ex office I went to didn’t have a box that would fit the item, so they suggested another Fed Ex office about 6 blocks away, so I had to walk through midtown Manhattan carrying an object almost as tall as me (it's 5' long and I'm 5'3" tall) while dodging oblivious people. Thankfully, the other office had my box, and they were super-sweet and helpful, but it took them forever to get it done. Bought the box and bubble wrap, which will be expensed (I brought the Fed Ex label, but I don’t remember the account number) ($43.54). Get a nice early train home, though!
6:45 pm: Wow, we’re eating when I’m usually getting the train! Cheeseburgers, tots (tater for J, cauliflower for me), green beans, and vinegar coleslaw with the end of the shredded cabbage. Get the kitchen cleaned and the dishwasher run and settle in to watch the Jets – I’m not holding out much hope, but you never know!
11:30 pm: I’ve showered, set out clothes for me and M (he’s seeing customers tomorrow), I prepped for Youth Group, which I’m leading because he’ll be working, and the Jets are winning, so I decide it’s time to sleep. Up to Book 5 of the Chancey series. I find series usually go downhill after about the third or fourth book, but I’m not sure what I feel like reading, so here we are. OH, at some point M must have gone to the convenience store, because there are vape cartridges on the table ($36).
Daily Total: $122.07; $70.32 expensed
Friday, October 02, 2020
6:00 am: Wake up, grab coffee, find out the Jets lost after all, do the morning e-mail/social media scroll. Leaving early to deal with that work errand has left me with a ton of stuff to do, so I get dressed (long-sleeved v-neck gray t-shirt, white tank because the v-neck is halfway to my belly button, dark wash skinny jeans), put out the trash, peel two hard-boiled eggs, and head to my desk.
12:30 pm: As always, call after call after call. Plus a bit of aggravation when my boss asks me at 10:30 for an agenda for the 11:00 call, which I sent him at about 7:30, and which he returns at 10:59 with the formatting looking like nothing on earth. Yay whee! And a project was mentioned that he forgot to tell me I’d do. So in case I thought I’d have nothing to do (that never happens on Fridays), that’s not happening. Anyway, between calls, I run downstairs for the lunch of champions – a Hot Pocket and a Diet Coke. Just that kind of day.
6:15 pm: Realize I have to run Youth Group at 7 and I haven’t even done my haimakeup. Get that done, heat up some frozen cauliflower rice/broccoli/cheese combination and add some leftover chicken. With a green salad on the side, surprisingly yummy.
8:15 pm: I am not a good youth leader…couldn’t get anyone talking about the subject of the day, which I thought would be a good one. I did make them laugh a few times, so that’s something.
M is going to have some expenses because he went to see customers today, but I don’t know what they are and his company will reimburse him, so I’m just leaving them out.
Daily Total: $0.00
This is the Week That Was:
Food + Drink: $326.06
Fun / Entertainment: $108 (if people can put drugs in as entertainment, I’m putting our nicotine in)
Home + Health: $61.94
Clothes + Beauty: $165.64
Transport: $638.03 (some of it will be expensed)
Other: $234.47
Lastly, reflect on your diary! How do you feel about your spending? Was this a normal week for you? Has this inspired you to make changes or has it given you a “wow I’m doing pretty good” confidence boost? Is there anything you’re actively working on? No need to answer any or all these questions but just use this space to write any thoughts you have!
This was a fairly normal week except for the car breaking and needing to be registered – we're saving some now that we WFH more because M will not bring food from home, but I used to bring breakfast and lunch at least four days a week. I know we should make changes, but I also know we don’t want to – honestly, if you looked at the way I lived 15 years ago, I’ve made a lot of changes already. We’re working on the credit cards – I’ve gotten rid of several already (paid off, not just moved balances around) and we don’t use them at all anymore (I can honestly say I don’t remember the last thing I charged). The bad news is that M’s car is on its last legs, and so I see car payments in our future. Hopefully, he’ll get something used – we have my car when we want to look good going somewhere (mine isn’t super-fancy, it just wasn’t hit by a bus and full of stuff for his job).
OH, and the plumber still hasn’t shown up! But that will be for next week’s expenses.
submitted by allybear29 to MoneyDiariesACTIVE [link] [comments]

Feed The Veg

Her name was Martha Llyod, she killed vegetables and made me call her mum.
She wasn’t my mother. She was something else. Something I can’t even begin to put a finger on. But she certainly wasn’t my mother.
It was in the winter of 2014 when myself and a few friends went off camping. I was sixteen and trusted by my real parents to be allowed to stay away from home for the weekend. I wasn’t a bad kid. Completely the opposite. I imagine that’s why my parents let me go.
The camping site was in Wales, 230 some miles away from my home in the South-east of London. A concrete jungle compared to the lush rolling countryside of Wales. There were four of us on the trip all loaded into my friend's small Vauxhall Corsa.
It was on the last night it happened.
A dusting of frost coated the tent's fabric and our shoulders as we drank around a campfire. The warmth of spirits and beers kept the chill dampened by our drunk coats. I would tell you about my three other friends but they play little part in this tale other than they were the reason for my presence in the Welsh countryside. After that fact, they had little choice but to leave me.
It’s not their fault and I don’t blame them. They thought I got lost drunk somewhere and did the right thing by calling the police. Apparently, and I didn’t know this until after, a search party ranged for three days. Bless them, they looked, just not hard enough.
I did get lost. I was inebriated, in a dark forest, surrounded by trees, going to get more firewood. I suppose I wasn’t paying attention. I collected some, moved on, got a few more sticks, repeat, repeat. When I looked up, I couldn’t see the glow of the fire anymore. I was disorientated. Off-balance. So I decided to just pick a direction and see if I could remember anything about the path.
I stumbled around for about an hour. It was super cold. Fridged. My fingers were turning blue, like my lips. I couldn’t stop the chattering of my teeth as I stumbled down a steep decline.
I remember falling. I remember the flash of moonlight. I remember a face. But after that, well, that’s when the nightmare began.
“There ye go, nice and warm. How ye feeling my love?”
I cracked open an eye. My head hurt. I knew vaguely that drinking played a part. But something else more painful was trying to beat its way into my mind. Had I fallen? I couldn’t remember.
A lady hovered over me. The lady I would later know as Martha. Her bright green eyes and lock of curly brown hair waved in my face.
“Ah, there ye are. I thought we lost ye.”
I tried to rise, but a firm hand pressed me back down.
“Oh no, deary. Ye’ve had a bad fall. Ye must stay put. We’ll have ye better in no time.”
“My friends?” I croaked. “They will be looking for me,” I swallowed the bile in my mouth. It tasted of blood. I wondered if I had broken or dislodged a tooth.
Martha bustled around me clicking her tongue.
“Friends? On a night like this? If ye friend will be leaving ye in a pile of snow, I think ye need to get better friends.” Hail pelted the roof. Martha glanced at the window worriedly and then busied herself around a tray. “The storm is fast upon us. Mark my words, this will be a long one too. Here, drink this.”
I felt a gentle hand lift my head, then my lips touched warm broth and I drank greedily. I forgot how hungry I was. I closed my eyes letting the warmth defuse through my body. Martha clicked her tongue some more. I heard the clatter of china and pots, and her fretting around the room speaking to someone. Gratefully, I let the sounds drown out the pain in my head and slipped back into unconsciousness.
From the darkness, a faint sound of classical music lured me awake. Like a cat toying with string, it pulled me forward, spun me around. Slowly a room swam into focus. I was on an old couch. The sides draped with patchwork blankets. The room was small but jammed packed with oddity. Each wall held a magnitude of Bric-a-Brac on shelves. Porcelain ducks, dogs, ballerinas, old iron horseshoes, crystal figurines, pots, plants, pictures. You name it, the room had it.
A clinking sound filtered through the door. The paint cracked and peeling. I thought maybe it led to the kitchen, so I rose off the couch. I fell back, instantly. My head hurt terribly, but my body hurt more. My ankle was swollen, the bruising black and blue around the lower calf. Gingerly I touched it and was rewarded with pain.
“Ouch,” I pulled my jumper up exposing my ribs. Thick ribbons of bruises ran up the left side of my torso. I lifted the other side to inspect it and was grateful that only a light bruising coloured the top part of my hips. I glanced around the room some more and noticed for the first time something that had me perplexed.
The couch I sat on was one of four such spaces curated for the derriere. And each one was taken by an enlarged vegetable. I first thought maybe it was a contest sort of thing. You know, the first prize at the village fete sort of deal. But, each of them was wearing clothing. The carrot looked more like a mandrake root, its arms, spindly runoffs, poked out of the knitted jumper it wore, likewise did the malformed legs through tiny shorts.
It wasn’t just a carrot. A parsnip took place next to the carrot. A beetroot the size of a basketball stained a chair off to the right and a blossom of broccoli wearing a ruffle dress sat poised on a lap chair. Across from them was a marrow wearing a nightcap. Only one seat didn’t hold any vegetables, but it once had. The indent and staining suggested so.
It was strange. I knew that. But at that time, I didn’t know the full picture.
The door banged open. A small, curvy lady holding a tray backed into the room. Her clothes looked old but neatly mended. The patches sewn in using other materials. Her hair was a ferocious bob of brown curly hair that swung around as she placed the tray on a coffee table before me.
The aroma of fresh tea and rosemary baked potatoes made my mouth water.
“Ah, good. Ye awake,” Martha said, opening the lid of the potatoes. I leaned forward sniffing the air. “I’ll bet ye hungry,” she said matter of factly, piling a plate full of the potatoes. She added a scoop of butter on the top and then served them to me.
Like a rabid animal, I tore into the dish expressing my gratitude around the mouthfuls of masticated potato. Suddenly embarrassed, I stopped remembering my manners.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just I’m so hungry.”
Martha waved away the comment and poured the dark tea.
“It is what it is. Tell me, what is ye name?”
“Jordan,” I said, watching her expression change to mild surprise.
“Is that so,” she said, placing her fist on her hips. Silent stretched for a moment as she thought about something. Then she huffed. “I like it. Jordan it is.” She turned on an old TV that crackled to life. She laughed mirthlessly and then came to sit beside me.
I thought it a bit strange at the time, but the tea took the thought away. The china cups floral design appeared faded with age. The other, equally as old, had a slight crack at the lip. She selected the better one and placed it before me, and poured the tea. The steam wafted in the cold air.
“This will be good for ye, warm the heart and soul.” She took a folded square of paper and poured the powder into the tea and stirred it.
She noticed my gaze and explained.
“Something for the pain. Easier than swallowing the tablets.”
I took the tea and drank deeply. Again a blissful warmth spread through my body. I drained the last of the tea and leaned back.
“That’s it, Jordan. Ye go to sleep. Mammy will watch over ye.”
Drowsiness crept around the corners of my eyes and my head began to feel heavy. I let the warmth pull me under as she stroked my hair.
“That’s it, lovely, go to sleep.”
I woke to a commotion. Martha stood in the centre of the room screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Who did it!” She screamed at the other couch, the one with the carrot and parsnip on it. “Who broke Mammy’s china”
Groggily, I glanced at the floor. A cup laid shattered, it’s content spilling across the floor and onto a dirty green rug. It was the same cup I had used to drink the tea. I pulled my leg back into the couch, away from the coffee table.
The tv crackled static in the corner. I wasn’t aware of the time. Not knowing how long I had slept, but it couldn’t have been long.
“Jacob? Veronica? Which one of you did it?”
Martha’s ruffled dress shook with anger. I didn’t know who she was addressing. The pull of the drugs lured me under again and I suddenly didn’t care. Instead, I fell back into the blissful darkness
I woke again sometime later. The curtains were pulled and the black of night reigned outside them. I sat up and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. A single candle burned on a shelf by the door. The shadows danced around the room like mischievous spirits. My head still hurt, as did my ribs and ankle. Gingerly, I swung my legs off the couch and prepared to stand.
It took me a few attempts but I finally got up. There was a faint smell in the air. It reminded me of sitting in the living room with my family while mum made a Sunday roast. Hungry gnawed at me. With my belly in my mind, I crept to the door and pulled it open.
The glow of a candle in my face surprised me. I stumbled back as Martha clicked her tongue.
“Going somewhere?” She asked, wrapping a hand around her shabby dressing gown. I felt like I was being scolded by my mum such was her venom.
“N-no,” I stammered. “I, uh - was looking for the bathroom.”
“No bathroom here laddie. Ye’ll use the pan.” She pushed past me. I watched helplessly as the door closed slowly behind her.
“Here,” she said, producing a metal bedpan. “Use this,” she handed it to me and placed her hands on her hips.
“Uh, here? Now?” I asked, shocked.
“Ain’t nothing Mammy hasn’t seen before.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I stood dumbfounded as she gestured for me to urinate in front of her.
“I, uh, I can’t,” I said. The thought of relieving myself the furthest thing from my mind.
“My god,” she said, turning away with a tut.
I looked around in sheer panic. She wasn’t going to leave. I had to live up to my lie. I adjusted my footing to better accommodate my ankle, unbuttoned my trousers, and glanced at her back. A small divot appeared at her cheek as the sound of my piss hit the pan. A few seconds later and it slowed to a stop.
“There,” she said, turning and taking the pan from my hand. “That wasn’t so hard was it,” she said, smiling.
I swallowed the slowly creeping dread climbing my throat. I winced at my ankle. Martha saw and tutted again.
“Here,” She said, taking a small pink pill from her dressing gown pocket. “For the pain.”
I held out my hand, but she bypassed it. I froze as she pressed the pill between my lips. It went in with a pop, closely followed by her finger. I didn’t know what to do. Awkwardness, confusion, and the sense of violation rooted me to the spot. She pulled her finger out slowly. The divot in her cheeks pronounced further with the shadows.
I felt sick. Both physically and emotionally.
“Now, it’s back to bed with ye, ye ankle won’t heal if ye keep standing on it.”
“Uh, in the morning,” I asked, while she guided me back to the couch. “Can I use your phone to call my parents, I think I lost mine in the accident.”
Martha chuckled and pulled the thick cover up to my chin.
“Wouldn’t do ye any good even if I had a phone, laddie. The storm has cut off the power. Ye rest up, and let Mammy take care of ye.”
“Mammy?”
“Aye, my poor child. You must have banged ye head more than we thought,” she chuckled again and patted my shoulder.
I was lost. I tried to remember the fall, I was out in the woods. I knew that. I vaguely remembered a fire and, and… the thought trailed off. I couldn’t remember, it was fuzzy and congested.
My eyes flicked up as Martha bustled around the other couch. Darkness was creeping at the corners of my eyes again. They whispered promises of escape from the pain. Martha leaned down and kissed the parsnips on its perceived head and tucked it in.
“Good night, Veronica.”
She did the same to the other vegetables as I drifted into sleep. But even in my drowsiness, I noticed the carrot had vanished.
Over the next week, the bruising yellowed. My ankle, although wrapped tightly, sent prangs every now and then that left my leg a spasming mess. I sat on a chair in the kitchen while Martha hobbled around the stove cooking up a stew.
I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, although I didn’t tell her that. If she knew she would up the dose of my medication as she did when I told her I remembered camping.
Martha placed a cup of tea in front of me and I inspected morosely. Two pink pills sat off to the side like pieces of candy. She nudged me to take them and I faked a smile.
I slipped the pills into my mouth as she watched. Clenched then between my cheek and my teeth and raised the tea to my lips. As I swallowed she beamed and turned back to the stew pot.
I felt disgusting. The smell of spice filled the room. The slow bubble of the stew held my attention. Last night “Mammy” had a fit of rage. The relic of the tv had blown up and she couldn’t watch her favourite show. In all her explosions I was never accused of the wrong deed. Instead, her other children held her wrath.
Mammy brought the cleave down on the rabbit. The muscles glistening with fresh blood. I watched the wicked blade chop up the meat imagining it being used against me if I tried to leave. She scraped the chunks into the pot and pulled over the parsnip which had been made to watch the spectacle.
“Now, this is your last chance, Veronica,” she warned.
I swung my gaze up from the pot expecting her temper toward me, but instead, she held the knife threatening over the vegetable. “Ye tell me now young lady or god help ye?” Her eyebrow rose. The impending doom was already sealed.
I winched as she cleaved off the head of the vegetable. The grassy sprig rolled off and fell to the floor. I swallowed.
“Well, I did warn ya, didn’t I? And now look what ye made me do.” She wipes away a stray tear as she venomously chopped away. Frozen to my seat I watched her slide the pieces of parsnips into the stew and slam the chopping board and knife down on the countertop.
“Forgive me,” she said as she swept out of the house.
My thoughts returned. I quickly pulled the pills out from my teeth, wrapped them in the paper containing the other pills, and slipped them back into my jean pocket.
I rose, darting forward to open the cupboards and drawers looking for anything useful to aid my escape. I hefted a long knife considering it. I let it fall back into the drawer. I wasn’t a killer. Hope was fleeing as I pulled open the last drawer. But that hope came back in full force. Inside was my phone.
I couldn’t believe it. She had my phone? I heard the scrunch of footfall and quickly closed the drawer and shot into my chair. Mammy returned.
She sniffed and wiped her nose on a tissue, then dabbed at her eyes
“Onions,” She said. “They always get me.”
I nodded and smiled.
“Listen, Jordan. I need to go out to town today. I would take ye, but ye ankle is still bad.”
My Christmases and birthdays had come at once.
“I can come,” I ventured. “My foot isn’t that bad,” I said, wiggling my foot. The pain was excruciating, but I didn’t let it show. Town equalled people. People equalled help.
“No no. Ye’ll stay here and mind ye brothers.”
It took me a moment to realise she was speaking about the vegetables.
“But I -“
“But nothing! Ye will stay home!”
The echo of her rage dispelled into silence and my plan for escape did the same. My head fell.
“Ye will stay home,” she began again, quieter this time. “And I’ll bring ye something nice back from the market.”
I nodded slowly as she grabbed her coat off the back of the door and gathered up her keys.
“Now, what will ye do?”
I kept my eyes to the tiled floor. “I’ll stay home and watch my brothers,” I mumbled.
“And ye’ll keep an eye on the stew too. Don’t let it burn now, ye hear?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?” She asked, hand on hips, eyebrow raised.
“Yes, Mammy,” I forced out.
Martha huffed and left. I strained in my seat waiting for the start of a car engine. I rose in expectation as the revs increased and it slowly disappeared.
I pulled out my phone and turned it on. I can’t begin to explain the joy at seeing it light up. But it soon drained away as quickly as it came. Wherever I was, it didn’t have any reception. I cursed my bad luck flicking through my apps. Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger, Snapchat, none of them worked.
The bubble of stew drew my attention, I raced over, turned the dial right down and gave it a quick stir. I needed time. I hobbled to the door and opened it to the bitter cold air, and stepped out. My feet slipped out from underneath me and /I banged my head hard, I surrender to the darkness.
I came to with a sheet of snow on my face. I didn’t know how long I had been out but I still grasped my phone. The forest was covered in snow. The trees sagged with the weight of it on their branches. Robins and other small tits bobbed about in the white tundra as I got up and held my phone to the sky to get better reception.
The shingled ground scraped under my feet as I limped around the house. My head hurt but thankfully no blood came away when I touched it. The phone danced in the air while I looked for better coverage. As I rounded a corner I stopped. The forest ringed the garden from north to south, but at the western edge of the clearing stood a greenhouse partially covered with snow. Curiously I stumbled over leaving a small trail behind me.
I peered inside the greenhouse with morbid curiosity. Whoever Martha was, she could definitely grow vegetables. A marrow as long and fat as a large dog sat on one counter. Beside it on a similar table was another carrot. It was bigger than the one I had seen in the house but equally as deformed. The more I looked the more I saw giant veg.
Suddenly I remembered my phone and held it up. A single solitary bar lit up and the carriers logo flashed in the corner.
“Yes!”
I raced back outside, opened Snapchat, snapped a picture of the house and wrote a quick note. Not dead, please find me. And hit send, it didn’t go through. The distant sound of a car made my heart race. Anxiety nearly strangled me. Somehow I managed to pull myself together and raced back over to the greenhouse. I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it even if the price was getting caught.
I placed the phone under a large leak in the furthest corner and stumbled back outside. The car was getting closer. I didn’t know if Martha had neighbours but I highly doubted it. I raced forwards again as fast as my legs could carry me but halfway to the door I tripped and fell. Pain flared in my ankle again. I was sure it was broken.
Through gritted teeth, I rose and pushed on. I couldn’t afford to be caught outside. Especially if Martha found out I had found my phone and called for help.
Breathlessly I managed to get to the door and stumbled inside. The bubbling stew on the shove greeted me. The aroma was amazing. Again I found myself hungry beyond measure. Relief flooded me as I regained my chair. The crunch of wheels on gravelled snow sent my nerves up my back. The cold wash of anticipation, dread and guilt all playing their part in making me uncomfortable.
I rose quickly and began to stir the stew before Martha’s keen eyes spied through the window of the backdoor. I swallowed the fear and smiled.
“Good trip?” I asked.
Martha eyed me suspiciously, a bag of shopping in either hand. She pushed into the room, slamming closed the door with her foot and placed the bags on the table. My heart was in my throat. Without a word, she darted out into the other room. My hands grew slick with sweat as I waited. My heart pounded in my ears.
I heard the shuffle of feet and turned back to the stew as if nothing was a miss. Martha came beside me and turned my chin.
“How do ye feel?” She asked, her eyes searched my face for a reaction.
“Tired,” I said, the ladle in my hands almost forgotten. “But I have to stay awake to watch my brothers and not to let the stew burn.
Martha’s face twisted from a scroll to a smile. The dimples in her cheeks returning. I smiled weakly and fainted a yawn. Martha clicked her tongue and bustled around the shopping.
“I don’t know if ye liked the dark chocolate I got ye last time, but I got some again…”
Chocolate? I thought.
“I also got some harelip tarts! They’re old Murphy’s recipes,” she said rubbing her belly. “I know how much you like them.”
I let her ramble as I thought about the possibility of escaping this place. My thoughts were interrupted by silence. My daydream popped. Martha stood, hands-on-hips, glaring at me with a savagery I had only witnessed on my first night here.
Martha’s eyes flicked from my face to my legs and back again. I shifted my weight slightly so more was on my good foot, and looked down. I cussed under my breath. How could I have been so stupid?
“So, where were ye going?” Martha came to stand beside me. Her small build seemed to encompass me. I was like a tadpole in the Atlantic sea.
“I, uh - I was curious,” I said, hoping that my semi truth would register with her.
“Ye know what curiously managed to get herself into, don’t ye? Ye’ve been outside,” her eyes narrowed. “Have ye been trying to escape.”
I swallowed. “N-no!” I stammered. “I’ve saw -s-saw a rabbit. I, uh, thought I could capture it for dinner.”
I knew I was fucked. The lie was stupid. It may have worked on a ten-year-old but even I didn’t believe it.
Martha eyed me intently again. From the wet patches of snow on my legs to the dirty marks on my wrist and hands. I swallowed again.
Time stretched under her quizzical gaze. Then she burst out laughing.
“Ye catch a rabbit? On that leg?” Martha howled with laughter and I slowly joined in.
“Ah, that’s a good one my boy.” Her laughter died to a panting gaggle. “Ohhh, I needed that. Ye was always a joker.” Martha bustled around the kitchen pulling open drawers and cupboards to put stuff away. I continued to stir the stew.
“Where the hell?”
For the second time dread clamped down on my throat. I swallowed and glanced over my shoulder envisioning her standing by the last drawer.
Instead, Martha’s leaned over a bag on the counter, her hand fishing inside for something.
“I could’ve sworn I bought a leak? Can’t have rabbit stew without one. Oh well, I’ll just use the one I’ve got.”
I nodded dumbly and continued to stir and fake yawn. Martha brushed passed me, her musky scent cloying my nose. I followed her gaze as she reached for the outside door handle.
I froze.
“Stop!”
Martha turned, her eyebrows thick and angled in indignation.
“What’s a matter with ye? Ye stupid boy,” she said, the door slightly ajar.
The cold air wafted in chilling the cold sweat on my forehead. I was sure I had a fever, but I didn’t want it to show. I had to think fast and the pain from my ankle wasn’t helping.
“I’m allergic to leeks,” I managed, hoping that my lie would seem genuine.
“Allergic? Since when?”
“Uh - that time last year, remember?” I crossed my fingers hoping that her delusions would aid in my lie. “You made leek and potato soup, and I was sick for a week.” I clenched my teeth and winched. Had I gone too far?
Martha’s eyes roamed around her head in thought. Those green orbs flickered to me and held me pinned to the spot. I was had. She knew I was lying. I could tell.
“Ok, then,” she said. I let go of my pent up breath. “No leek, but it will be a tad bland if ye ask me.”
Martha came over and took the ladle from my hands and shooed me away.
“Ye go and lay down, Ye don’t look too good,” she said, placing the back of her hand against my forehead. “Ye adventure has got ye a fever now,” she clicked her tongue. From her pocket, she produced three pink pills and popped them one by one into my mouth. Each time letting her finger slid in and out over my tongue.
“Swallow.”
“Can I have some water?”
“Swallow,” she said again.
I dry heaved and opened my mouth. The pills tucked securely in my cheeks like a squirrel.
Martha slapped me hard around the head. The concussion sent my eyes into spasm along with my mind. She grabbed my hair and forced my head to one side ramming a finger inside my mouth.
“Do ye think I’m stupid?” She asked, prizing a pill from its confines. “If that is? Ye think Mammy is a stupid woman that don’t know what’s best for her babies? Right? Isn’t it!” She yelled, lapping my face again.
Tears swam in my eyes as drool dripped from my open mouth to the floor. I sucked in a breath, trying to control my heartbeat. She knew. She knew everything. I was never getting out of here.
Martha’s heaves of anger slowed. I watched her go to the sink and fill a glass with water.
“Now, let’s try this again,” she said, holding out her palm
I reached down and picked a pill up and placed it in my mouth. Then I took the proffered water and swigged the pill down.
“Good,” she said watching me.
I took another and repeated the process, pop, swig, gulp. As the last went down, I could already fill the pull of the drugs. I knew why she was doing it, yes they helped with the pain, but they also made me compliant. My eyes began to close as the warmth of the pills and the darkness crept in. Martha’s face grew long, and rose as I fell to the floor.
Groggily, I cracked an eyelid. I was back on the couch. Martha was searching frantically around the room, upending cushions and pillow muttering under her breath. I closed my eyes again, diving back into the darkness.
Movement aroused me but I was too deep in my head to climb out. Somehow I knew it was the pills and at the same time, I knew I was being moved. I fought the darkness, trying to zone out everything but the scraping of loose gravel. I became aware of the cold biting at my face.
It took all my efforts to crack one eye, my lashes filled with snow inhibited my vision. Martha’s cruel twisted face was focused on something up ahead. Her snorts of breath clouded the air. I twisted as best I could to see where we were bound. I blinked away the snowflakes and saw the corner of the greenhouse.
Panic forced the drugs to retreat. More of my senses kicked in. The scraping amplified. The birds chirping in the trees screeched like banshees. The drone of engines shook my head.
“No,” I muttered, digging the fingers of my free hand into the gravelled path. Martha grunted at the sudden resistance and turn to see what had happened. Her surprised gaze left my gorging fingers and trailed to my face. I didn’t recognise the women who had held me captive for over a week.
Martha’s eyes were cruel and empty, those soft dimples in her cheeks were gone, instead, they were hitched up as she bared her yellow teeth in a snare. My eyes caught the flash of steel as it rose and fell with each stride. The blade swished at her side as she struggled to pull me along.
“No,” I said more forcefully
“Don’t ye no me, ye bloody git! It’s all ye fault! It always has been! If it weren’t for ye, ye father would still be around, ye - ye - damned demon! Ye was too much for even him to handle. Bloody deformity.”
She let me go. The back of my head smashed into the gravel path and I momentarily saw stars. Martha looked around wildly, a worried expression on her face. The sounds of cars were almost upon us. I shuffled backwards on my arms, the pain in my ankle flared again so much that it took my breath away.
Martha looked back down at me as if she had forgotten about me. She snarled and brought the cleaver up and over her head.
“It’s ye fault!” She screamed, swinging the blade toward my head.
I kicked out with my good foot and caught her knee. It wasn’t much but it was enough to knock her off balance. I felt the passing air from the cleaver as it missed by millimetres. The momentum of her swing made Martha overextend and tumbled by my side. I didn’t have the strength to wrestle her but I did have enough to snatch the cleaver as it fell from her hands.
“Get the hell away from me!” I shouted, the roar of wind, adrenaline, and my own voice sounded in my ears. Anger welled inside me. All the pain she had put me through. The days missing my real family. They were all her fault. Martha rose slightly, blood leaking over her lip. She saw the cleaver, gazed back at my angry eyes and rolled away.
“Ye won’t hurt ye Mammy, will ye?” She asked, pushing herself up onto her knees.
I shuffled back some more as she kicked one leg under her to rise.
“You’re not my Mammy,” I spat “Don’t move! I swear I’ll use this.”
I felt braver than I probably looked hefting the cleaver back over my shoulder, but it did the trick. Martha stopped, palms up facing me. I didn’t know if she knew I wouldn’t use it? I sure as hell hoped she didn’t because the anger wasn’t enough to hold my fear at bay. The drugs were slowly kicking back in and my hand was growing heavy. I heard the sound of snow being crunch by tires and began to scream for help. Martha looked quickly in the direction of a silver Ford, jumped to her feet and shot back into the house. Men piled from the car in thick winter clothes. Relief flooded my body, and I started to weep.
I was saved that day. The men were police officers. The snap I sent was enough for them to trace and rescue me. Martha was detained and taken for a psychological evaluation after my testimony. She was sent to a psychiatric hospital where she died three months later by suicide.
The house was sold to a young couple who started to renovate due to their first child fast approaching. When knocking down the greenhouse they found a single homemade headstone underneath. The police exhumed the unknown body.
The skeleton, identified to be a child of around thirteen to fourteen years old, was riddled with broken bones. The legs had been repeatedly broken and allowed to fuse back together causing them to be crooked. Likewise, the arms share similar defects. Only the deformity was a birth defect.
Across the shoulders, legs, arms and head were numerous chips and notches suggesting trauma infected by a heavy pole or stick. The child had been repeatedly beaten. Heaven knows what other injuries the child suffered at the hands of his mother. Martha’s child was never registered. With a home birth and being far out in the Welsh countryside the birth of her child easily went unnoticed. Perhaps that was why the death was never caught.
I went to the psychiatric hospital to see Martha a few days before she died. I didn’t really know why I had to go? Maybe it was the morbid curiosity of seeing the women getting help? Or, in reality, it was more to do with seeing her suffering in a place she deserved? However, I did thank her for saving me, and she did save me. It may have been the tiniest of a coincidence that did the saving, but I could have died out in the snow.
The doctors said she often bundled clothing together and spoke to them as if alive. There were always five. Jacob, the carrot, Veronica the parsnip, Trevor the marrow and Claire the broccoli. I’ve been thinking about the fifth a lot.
The name on the headstone was Jordan, my name. That was the coincidence that saved my life. I know Martha would have transgressed back to the event that would have triggered her to kill me. That I have no doubt. But, she did save me, and for that, I’m always thankful.
Despite a thorough search of the Llyod estate, no other bodies have ever been found.
.
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