“Heh. Heh-heh. Bwahahaha!”

That was the sound coming from my cube this morning here at work as I read this post by Pallas Renatus. It wasn’t just that it was funny, it was seeing myself in it. “Oh yeah,” I thought as I read along, “yep, that too. Uh-huh. Heh, yeah.” I especially loved the part where he boiled the tobacco, and nonchalantly offered alternative methods of extracting the tobacco essence later to avoid the smell, without mentioning the gagging, retching, and dry heaves that come from smelling boiling chewing tobacco.

I can’t post comments from work because they blocked blogger because SOMEONE here was posting a lot and they caught on. Can’t imagine who that was, but someone in Florida who logs in remotely ALSO complained about blogger being blocked, so it’s not just me. So to Pallas, I say, be careful. This psychotic Irish-Native American Asatru friend of mine once told me I could kill someone with the refined and extracted amount of pure nicotine from a single cigarette. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but you know, don’t drink the tobacco-camphor-ammonia tea you made, even if it does smell sooooo good.

But man, another thing reading through his post reminded me of was how messy I let things get in my life. While my office doesn’t give me a viral infection and it’s not infested with spiders (ok, not very many spiders), it could use some tidying. See, I’m a busy man, so I spend large chunks of time working on the things I have backed up, and I put off the little things for when I have more time, like filing paperwork, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the incense ash off the desk, and throwing out the hundreds of stubs from the stick incense I use in every rite. My wife says if I spent the two to five minutes it takes to clean up after my projects, I wouldn’t have to take two hours on a Saturday to clean everything up at once, and she could be right. So there’s physical stuff to clean up.

I also do a lot of magic. I would say on a slow week, I’ll go maybe 18 hours straight without doing something that involves conjuring a spirit into my crystal ball for something. I like to think the steady traffic tends to keep things pretty clear. I also recently did the Mercury Gate rite, and that’s cleaned out a lot of crap that was stagnating. But regular cleansings of my house are on my list of things to do that I rarely get around to doing.

And another thing, I think that because I do magic of a certain variety, it takes care of everything spiritually that my family needs. The truth is, there are psychic cobwebs that build up around the house that my regular angel magic just doesn’t affect, at least, not without making a specific request. The thing about angels is that they aren’t nannies. They’re co-workers, highly advanced, further up the ladder than you co-workers, with more experience and more power. You wouldn’t invite the CEO and all the Vice Presidents of a Universal Corporation over and expect them to pick up a feather duster and put on an apron and go around cleaning your house for you after the business meeting is over, would you? Naw, didn’t think so.

I’ve noticed some patterns of behavior that are being expressed in my family that indicate it’s time to clean out the psychic air. In the Home Pwnership post, I talked about how when people live too close together, their shit gets on each others’ nerves. The same is true in a family, though it’s strongly mitigated by the love we have for each other. Still, when you hear the bickerings of the kids and the mutterings of the spouse (and yourself) begin to consistently contain the phrase “always*” in a negative context, it’s a good indication that it’s time to do some psychic cleaning in the home space in addition to checking behavior patterns, and maybe reminding people that we all have personal responsibility to make our collective experiences positive by taking ownership of our own messes.

So it’s time to break out the aspergillum and sprinkle copious amounts of Holy Water about the house. I don’t think I’m in need of the full PRGTFO potion he created, but a good psychic cleansing is definitely in order.

And yeah, getting down on the old hands and knees and scrub the base boards too.

* As in, “You always break my stuff,” or “I’m always the one who has to clean up the bathroom,” or “You always say you’ll get to it Saturday.” Patterns of behavior that need to be addressed in multiple levels.

Spring’s here, and I get to play outside in the Kingdom. Since writing the Home Pwnership post, I’ve been craving delicious kabobs, so I made some. It’s easy, it’s delicious, and it’s fun. It’s only magical in that I’m a magician. If you’re looking for secret occult insights into greater enjoyment of your world, this could technically count, but that’s totally stretching it. I didn’t conjure anything, and the only holy rites I performed was saying grace before I ate. If you’re looking for cool magical stuff, this post isn’t for you.

And Deb, this is a tribute to your weekly recipe posts. To the regular readers who are looking for magic posts, I promise not to do weekly recipe stuff, but once in a while you can expect to see some flotsam and jetsam like this wash up on the blog.

• Meat cubes (I like red meat cubes. You can get enough to feed a family of 5 for $5.)
• Kabob sticks
• Baby bella mushrooms
• Vidalia onions
• Green pepper
• Grape or Cherry tomatoes
• Montreal Steak Seasoning
• Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue sauce
• Minute Rice
• Lipton pitcher sized tea bag
• Earl Grey single cup tea bag

1. Put the meat cubes in a bowl and season them thoroughly with Montreal Steak Seasoning.
2. Cut the peppers and onions into 1″ squares.
3. Build kabobs.
4. Throw them on a grill.
5. Put some barbecue sauce over them.
6. Close the lid.
7. Go put the water on to boil for the rice.
8. Put a cup of water in a microwave safe measuring cup, throw in the tea bags, and microwave it for two minutes.
9. While that’s cooking, go flip your kabobs. 
10. Put another layer of BBQ sauce on ’em.
11. Close the lid.
12. Go back in and the water’s probably boiling for your rice. Add the rice and mix it up and set it in the back burner, covered, to absorb the water and become instant rice-like product.
13. Take the tea out of the microwave and get the bags out.
14. Mix it in a pitcher with cold cold water and sweeten to taste.
15. Flip the kabobs again and add another layer of BBQ sauce.
16. Set the table, dish the rice out and get the cups and ice out.
17. Fetch the kabobs.
18. Gather up the family and serve.

So freakin’ good. Not that unhealthy. Took about half an hour altogether. Cost about $20 and fed all five of us and there were leftovers. Should have tenderized the meat a bit, but my wife was on the phone, and I didn’t want to make a ruckus.

Today on XKCD the alt text says that if you click the first hyperlink on any page in wikipedia that is not in parentheses or in italics, and repeat that process, you will eventually end up at Philosophy.

I checked Lake Trout. 13 clicks later I was at philosophy.

From Tauroctony, 24 clicks.

From Nachos, 19 clicks.

From Magick, 19 clicks.

Ok, so Mr. White is writing interesting things about magic, money, and apocalypse living for the rest of us. Very interesting things. The last installment I read addressed home ownership and how we’ve all been sold a lie for the last three generations.

I have a different perspective. I happen to own my home, and while I’ve been through some issues as a result, I still prefer it to renting for a living.

So I did some research. First off, I thought, it’s an investment. You buy a house, spend 30 years paying it off, and yeah, you spend a lot in interest, but you’d spend about that on rent anyway, and when it’s paid for, it’s worth more than when you bought it. It’s gone up in value, and you sell it at a profit! How can you go wrong?

That chart’s from Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller’s home price index. As you can see, the value of a home obviously does go up over time. If you bought your house in 1900, your investment would have doubled if you managed to sell it at the peak of 2008. You just have to have long term views, and, uh, know when the market’s going to crash again…

Ok, even I, with my amazing powers of bullshittery, couldn’t sell that to myself. Look at the figures! Pretty much, if you ever buy a house and pay for it for 30 years, you’re going to be lucky if you can sell it for what you paid for it. Once in a while the prices spike, but then they collapse. It’s a long shot, and chances are pretty good that you’re going to lose if you’re trying to get rich owning a home.

Ok, so what about taxes? I just filed a shitload of taxes, and I got back a lot of money because of my house. Repairs are tax deductible, interest is tax deductible, just about everything I spend that I can say is related to the house is tax deductible. Altogether I get back a lot of money by owning a house, and renters don’t get that, so nyah nyah nyah.

So I figured out how much I spent on my house in a year, including maintenance, mortgage payments and interest and taxes and all that, and the tax deductions I earned offset that a bit, but not really enough to make a solid case for home ownership.

So then I compared it to renting, straight up. I ran the numbers based on all the pros and cons from that Freakonomics article, and this is what I came up with based on my experience and actual numbers.

For a $200,000 house, you spend about $690,000 over the lifetime of your mortgage on your house. It’s mostly interest, which gets you a tax rebate each year, for now, until Obama cuts that deduction. Renting a place with as much space as I have here would cost me about $662,000 over 30 years, including the storage unit I’d need for all the stuff in the garage. You could argue I don’t need that stuff, but I’d argue back, so the fuck what, it’s my stuff and I don’t have to pay extra to be happy. At the end of 30 years, I will have spent $28,000 more than the renter, but I’d own the property, and it would probably be about worth what I paid for it, give or take a couple grand. So over 30 years, I’d be making $172,000, or $5,733 a year. That’s around $477 a month. Not bad for a side revenue stream. In bad times, I can get a low interest loan if necessary. And it’s 30 years of living in a house however I want to, not in an apartment, and no landlords rummaging through my shit when I’m at work.

Now there are a lot of variables that can be thrown into this kind of argument. Most people own for five to ten years and then sell before they’ve really paid a lot on their mortgages. After the dust settles, they walk away with roughly what they started with when they bought the house, or less. Some get more, once in a while. Other people set up bi-monthly mortgage payments that drastically reduce the interest payments and get the house paid off a lot faster, and they walk away with even more money. Other people buy foreclosed homes and flip them, and I know a lot of contractors (I live in a blue collar neighborhood, and there are four contractors on my block doing this, plus a couple parents of my kids’ friends at school) who bought houses at auction that are making a killing even in this economy renovating them themselves and selling them cheap. There are more ways to skin this cat than I can think of.

So overall, owning a house can be a profitable investment, financially speaking, even if you spend three times what it’s worth over the life of the loan.

But on the down side, it’s a pain in the ass. The neighbors can complain about your cats shitting in their bushes. You’re going to have about $2500-$4000 a year in unexpected expenses (which I factored into the total cost) that you’ll have to figure into your budget. You have to file all those fucking Home Depot or Lowes receipts to get the deduction. You have to mow the lawn or the neighbors will call the city, so you’re going to need a lawn mower and a weedeater. You’ll have flower gardens and pools, if you have a spouse into making your house look good, or kids to entertain in the summer, and that’s more expense. You’ll need siding, a roof, and your gutters will fall off. And no one will fix it but you, unless you pay someone to do it, and chances are good that your DIY project is going to cost all the materials you buy, plus the contractor you hire to fix it when it gets all fucked up. The plumbing…

Jesus, did you know that plumbers just basically go into a house and plumb it however the fuck they want? As long as the water goes down the right hole, it’s pretty much legal. I’m pretty sure the people who plumbed this house over the last 60 years were dabblers in the Necronomicon. If I ran all the faucets and flushed all the toilets at the same time, Marduk would appear in the living room, no lie.

So there’s a lot of headache in home ownership. I spend probably 32 hours a month taking care of my house. If I’m making $477 a month, that’s only $15 an hour, and I won’t get paid for 30 years.

But you know, neighbors in general suck. Ever notice how many hot foot powder anecdotes involve neighbors?  Neighbors bitch about you no matter how close or far away they live. I lived in the country a mile and a half away from my nearest neighbor as a kid, and people bitched about my dog getting out and chasing their cows. It happened ONCE, and I heard about it for years. I was ten. Those old ranchers gave me shit about it til I moved at 13. “Keepin’ an eye on yer dog?” Fuckers.

But in apartments, the neighbors are right the fuck there. I hate that shit. The closer you are to someone separated from you by two sheets of drywall, the more irritating bullshit you’re going to hear from them and they’re going to hear from you. Condos are the same, and so are town houses or row homes. People too close bitch at each other. At least in my house, they’re far enough away that I only hear from them when the cats are shitting in their bushes. And I’ve only heard about that shit once in 4 years.  They’re cats. Cats shit in bushes. They also kill rats and those little bunnies you hate eating your hastas. But I’ll keep them inside, fine, see how you like it. I’m not bitter. Fuckers.

And I have a lot more privacy and freedom of choice about my immediate living environment. Yeah, I can knock down the walls when I feel like it, and I can do about anything I want as long as it’s safe and legal. I have fewer restrictions about how I can decorate my life. I can go out in my backyard and grill up a steak or barbecued chicken kabobs whenever I want, without having to go to some park that lets you use their grill. That Freakonomics guy writes that off, but fuck him. I like it, it makes me happy, and that has intrinsic value in and of itself. Making me happy is important to me.

I’m also rooted in one community. That’s important for people, especially people with kids. Successful people are generally not moved around every couple years of their lives as kids. They grow up knowing people who get ahead, and in turn help them to get ahead. They have somewhere they’re from. They have friendships that last lifetimes. Kids like me who moved around a lot growing up tend to be shiftless vagabonds all our lives. I’d still be nomading about if it weren’t for my Capricorn wife nailing me down to one spot. I had no idea how nice it is to be established in one place until she managed to do that. There are perks to working in the same area for a decade too.

Now the dude in the Freakonomics article says that renters have more cash in the bank than people buying homes. Uh, how many of you renters see that “extra money” you have? Anyone? Right. Because what you don’t spend on your rent, you spend on something else. Are you a brilliant savvy investor? Hell, can you even save money in an interest bearing account? I can’t.

But I can pay my mortgage.

So what’s the value of renting? Really, the things that are best about renting instead of owning boil down to preference. You’re not making as much money, unless you’re disciplined with your cash, but you have fewer responsibilities. You have fewer liberties too. And you’re right up your neighbor’s (or landlord’s) asshole all the time, and they’re right up yours, and generally not in a pleasant way.

So yeah, there could be a three-generation ad campaign that’s programmed me to think a certain way, but when I do the math and look at my life, my preferences, my skills, my goals, and my responsibilities to my family, home ownership is a better option. Gordon’s life is better suited for renting, and his mind is better suited to taking advantage of all that extra cash he’s got from renting than mine. My brain power that would go towards that is spent on kid-management and such. If I were single and disciplined, maybe I’d find his approach more appealing, but I’m not. I’ll take the home.

And for the record, I’m aiming to go on the bimonthly mortgage payment that gets me out of the interest 15 years ahead of schedule, so when the dust settles, I’ll be making a lot more than $15 an hour for this investment. It just takes strategy.

Once in a while, I stumble upon something really awesome in this occult stuff that changes my world. The Planetary Gates series I’ve been writing has been one of those experiments. Drawing down the powers of the spheres, focusing them into my “kingdom,” taking responsibility for and authority over the things in my life that I needed to has been an incredible process.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been in the manifestation phase, where all the work I’ve done up Above gets hammered into place here Below. It’s the process of integrating and manifesting the powers from the heavenly spheres. So I’ve been busy, and I haven’t had a lot of left over bandwidth to write blog posts.

On the plus side, I have started my rose bush garden in my back yard, I’ve hauled away two truck loads of useless junk in my garage, and I’ve taken major strides towards achieving fiscal responsibility. You know all those little pieces of paper you’re supposed to keep track of? Filing them away really does help you out a lot. In large, financial ways. And failing to file them away properly in the moment means that later on, when there are three or four piles of envelopes to go through looking for a tax paper you should have filed, there will be heck to pay. Hoo. Ha. Heck, I tell you.

Kingdom management, man. It’s good to be the king… most of the time. When you’ve improperly managed the kingdom, the subjects rise up in revolt, and it’s your neck on the chopping block. And your best friend will be holding the axe. And you’ll deserve it!

Name:

Spasmodius.

Rank:

Marquis

Serves under Elemental Prince:

Paymon

Attributes:

Can totally make you feel all insecure and nervous, makes you laugh a little too loud at social gatherings when you think you’ve said something witty, but also makes you aware that everyone is just sort of looking at you and trying to think of a way to go get something to drink or eat or somefuckingthing to get the hell away from you before anyone thinks you’re together.

Also responsible for whipping up political paroxysms among bleeding heart liberals and their mouth-breathing inbred white tea bagger mortal enemies over such trivialities as sexual preference or the relative amount of melanin in someone’s dermis and the impact that has on their right to answer the call of God in their lives as they see fit.

Indications of the presence of Spasmodius: gross insecurity, infectious drama queenery, increased caffeine intake, fervent postings on Facebook of political articles hyperbolizing the issues to increase their own sales, head-for-the-hills-the-sky-is-falling advice presented in intelligent and even-tempered, but maniacally persistent discourse, or the posting of five or more blog posts of more than five paragraphs each on a given topic within three days.

Seal:

Banishing rites:

Spasmodius cannot abide the forces of the sphere of Saturn. Something about a vision of eternity and the beginnings and endings of all things just seems to snap things into perspective, robbing him of his ability to create anxiety, angst, or low-level fear and paranoia over STUPID-ASS BULLSHIT.

On the cover of Jason Miller’s Protection and Reversal Magick, it says the book is part of the “Beyond 101” series of books they offer at New Page. I love that phrase. I like to think I write at that level. I figure if you’re reading this blog and keeping up, you’ve been through all the intro stuff a few times and you’ve got some basic definitions that don’t need to be reiterated.

As a result of this approach, I’ve gathered a readership of really intelligent, experienced, and gifted magicians. That was why I started blogging in the first place, and I’ve totally succeeded.

Me FTW!

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got to say right now. See, I’m cutting down on my nicotine consumption at the moment, and I really want to just rip someone’s fucking head off for sport. So I’m thinking about nice things. Good things. My smart readers. My practicing magician friends who get the Work, and mold their theories on observation instead of the other way around. Not the idiot. Not thinking about him. Nope. Not that other one either. Breathing… breathing… Ahhh… peace. Acid Peace. Peace that travels up the spine like jagged lightning spikes, herkin’ left, jerkin’ right. Highly energized frenetic peace that just wants to beat something’s face in because it’s just that time already…

fuck it. quitters never win.