The Conspiracy

(This was written in the summer of 2007. I am posting it here for the first time for a comrade in arms. Thanks for the saw, Doug!)

I am a home owner. Or as the saying goes, the home owns me. Taking out a mortgage is somewhat like buying yourself into slavery. Would people clamour and shop for just the right loan, at just the right interest rate and look for the just the right neighborhood with just the right house if they really understood the reality of the transaction? I am not even really talking about the monetary slavery that we willing run towards like lemmings to the sea. After all it’s the American dream…and we sign our names on the dotted line. The real nature of the servitude is not the money, no… I submit that it’s the incessant demands of the house itself.

Yet I am not alone in my confinement. My enslavement isn’t individual in nature, it’s a way of life for most of the country. A lifestyle propagated and encouraged by our peers, the government, lending institutions and major retailers. It’s a conspiracy, a sham and damned con-job. How bitter is the irony that the very instrument of our slavery is seen as a symbol of our independence? It’s been cleverly woven it into our world view, our very ideals of the “good life.” Home ownership is seen as a rite of passage, a sign of financial security.

I can see the room full of powerful men, a secret society that quietly behind the scenes runs the entire country. They are thinking of ways to retain their power when someone suggests, “The tattered masses will be too busy to revolt, if they know they have to paint the fence this weekend!” The Freemasons or whomever they are chuckle in their secret lair as they count their money.

I remember when I moved in to my current home and I thought, “WOW! I’ll have to put my tools away – I’ll never need them here!” I was like a teenager in love, and I was completely blind to any faults the object of my affection might have. When you first move in, you see nothing but the glittering potential.

“One day we’ll get new countertops!!,” you exclaim breathlessly.

After a few months of living together, the veneer begins to peel away.

“Why does this door stick?”

“Why is the basement flooding?”

“How many different types light bulbs does this fucking house have and are they having a contest to see how many can burn out at once?

And then there is the outdoors.

“25 god damned flower beds and the only thing that grows well are the fucking weeds!”

“I swear to God, if that pool doesn’t clear up, I’m going to fill it with sand.”

“Well, at least crabgrass could be construed as a type of grass.”


I admit that part of the problem is the current American obsession with DIY, or Do-It-Yourself. Home Depot seduces you with the tag line, “You can do it, we can help!” (The clever co-conspiritors!!) I admit to being susceptible to this message. I even subscribe to Handyman Magazine, and I have Peg Board up in my garage to organize my ever burgeoning tool collection! I am embarrassed at just how desperate and lame I have become. But how could I not! Consider my heritage! Take the fact that my Dad can do just about anything when it comes to “home improvement”. He was doing DIY when most guys in the 80’s where busy buying Members Only Jackets! I swear to God if we dropped him in the woods with an ax, a hammer and a crate of nails he would have erected a 10,000 square foot cabin, with running water and electricity up within a week. I would stop by to check on the progress and he would have already started a putting green right off the massive, fresh-stained back deck. How do you keep up with that? (The answer, I am beginning to discover is…you cannot!)

Why do you think immigration is such a hot topic now? The Free Mason, Illuminati, String-Pulling, WASP Bastards, know that the Mexicans waiting outside Home Depot represent for many of us homeowners, our only hope at ever getting caught up. They are like soldiers for hire in our struggle for true independence. Soldiers who work very…very cheap. For a hundred bucks and a sack of McDonalds, I could get 9 or 10 things off my list in one day! With Jesus and Hector by our sides, I and the countless other home owners have a chance. But that chance is perceived at being to dangerous to those in control, and so each day the INS rounds up thousands of willing soldiers and sends them home, and a few more miles of fence go up. Soon they will all be gone! The Cabal will sleep better at night and middle class, home owning America will toil on alone.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and as I look around the house and all I see are things which need to be done. I begin to make a mental list and as it grows longer my mood darkens.

“Look at that bullshit! There must be a leak in the master bath shower….I wonder how long this fridge is going to last, look at this goddamned carpet…disgusting, I have to replace it, that curtain rod is loose. Scratches in hard wood floors…..”

My wife will come down and see the look on my face, “ What is wrong with you? Oh Chris! Dammit! Don’t tell me you’re thinking about the house again. I can’t handle this today!”

She half threatens, half pleads.

“I can’t help it!” I explain, “Look at this…this….crap shack! We’re living like animals!! I could work on this house everyday for my entire life and never be done! ”

I jump up and grab my keys.

“Where are you going?!” she asks chasing me down the hallway towards the front door.

“I have to find some Mexicans before its too late!” I shout as I head for the car.

At this point it is appropriate to feel pity for my wife. She’s a very talented, intelligent woman who happened to marry a very strange man. Well….A strange man who happens to be on to this massive charade in which we all live.

In the end, it’s the constant erosion of time that gets you. For even if you do repair every little thing, update and improve all the flowerbeds, doorknobs, faucets and counters, you realize that the Unholy Cabal enslaving us, has a silent partner in their venture. A devious and cunning addition…Time itself. Time is the catalyst, it’s the hand that stirs the pot. Even as we sleep it continues to work, undoing what we have done and creating new projects. Its like a malignant currency in which we trade and barter through out our daily lives. The constant balancing act between Work, Family and Home Improvement.

“I cannot tackle that project today! Our kid has baseball practice and we are supposed to go the park today.” There is always a reason, always a commitment that keeps you from tackling the List. Time snickers at us as we back out of the garage. I look in as the door rolls shut and add another item to the list, “This garage is trashed, I have got to organize that!”

I have two great hopes in my personal revolution. For the only way to win, is to finish. The only way to finish is to get help. And if I cannot find a Mexican, then there is only one other way. Thus, my great remaining hopes. One is my son Jonathan. He is only 4 right now, but I hope one day to enlist him in my battle. He could weed, mow and skim the pool, maybe do some cleaning inside as well. That will allow me to focus on the stuck door, the leaking shower and the cracking chimney. Maybe I’ll even get to that damned garage! The other hope currently resides in my wife’s belly with an anticipated arrival date of October. Sometime as I set on the couch, with my wife by my side, surveying the crap shack I pat her stomach.

“Bring me a son!” I think to myself. “It’s our only hope. With two son’s and myself, I just might have a chance.” I glance across the room and see a light bulb has just burned out, I mentally revise my list for 9th time that evening.

Even in my greatest hope, the seeds of my destruction lie. It takes years to make a child truly useful in this epic battle, and by then they may be too “busy” with school or college or girls or whatever to help their old man out. Even what help they do bring will be begrudging. They’ll never be true believers. It will never be a personal struggle for them. That is, until it’s too late and the cycle repeats itself with them.

I can see Jonathan with his future wife now, touring developments with a realtor Realtors are also in on this scam big time.

“ My dad used to do all sorts of projects and I would help. We can fix this place up!”

His sweetie will hug him and silently think about how lucky she is to have a beau who is good with his hands.

My Dad used to tell me, between expletives as he worked on my childhood home, “ Don’t ever by an old goddamn house!” He should have said, “ Don’t ever buy a house!” But it wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t listen to him and my son won’t listen to me.