Just this past week, Vice President JD Vance said space aliens are real but are actually demons. While Gregg Phillips, appointed in December to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, claimed he’d been magically teleported to a Waffle House 50 miles from his home. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around all of this because I believed these two mainstream news pieces were surely The Onion or ClickHole-style satire. Except, well, they are both absolute legitimate reporting.
The crazy has gotten so over the big-top circus, because for me to know whether the space-alien demons and magic Star Trek teleportation were not some fake news but literally reality, I had to ask ChatGPT if the shit was real.
Wednesday at 6:27 pm, with trepidation and fear, I watched alongside my kid the launch of Artemis II. Before the launch, while we did the dishes together, Aaron talked my ear off about what it’d be like to live on the moon. In 1986, my eighth-grade social studies teacher, Mr. George, rolled the TV into the classroom. At first, Challenger rose normally into a hard, clean blue sky. A sudden, almost spherical white-orange fireball blooms. The shuttle bruised into flame and vapor. In the spreading cloud, there are these fierce, concentrated tongues of fire. The great branching white tracks clawed across the blue with the twisting, falling, delicate lace trails.
In that moment, everything explicitly human had gone so very wrong.
I don’t remember a single sound in that classroom until Mr. George straightened his red bow tie, cleared his throat, clicked off the television, and said, “Right.” I think we turned our books to the chapter on manifest destiny, the specific brand of American early 20th-century imperialism aimed at transforming us into a modern world power.
Thursday, I bought groceries. Hannaford’s had some amazing sales. Bacon for under four bucks, and you never see that anymore. Still, I spent $245, and yet I was proud of myself for keeping the bill under $300, because the shopping trip before that I spent nearly $350, and vomited a little bit inside my mouth when I handed over the Citizens’ bank card. I was being super careful, trying to be good. But then I forgot city garbage bags and prescription drugs, had to double back, and the bill magically Star Trek transported to over $300. And somehow, despite the two packages of bacon, I seemed to have purchased less food than I had on the last grocery spend. Then I filled up my gas tank for over thirty dollars. If you’ve seen me drive around my little purple jellybean of a car, you know thirty dollars is way more gas than what I should be putting in the tank. I am furious about this situation.
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I’m even madder that I’m more upset about gas prices than I am about the 170~ children killed by American Tomahawks. And I’m enraged that my 25-year-old daughter, who should still be on our health insurance plan, was dropped without notice, and her out-of-pocket Urgent Care sliding scale bill cost less than if she had a co-pay with the insurance.
Did I mention how we now have ICE agents patrolling airports because we’ve stopped paying TSA employees, which does not seem like a viable solution for reopening the government, as much as a concrete move toward hiring scabs with guns. And oh, the No Kings protest this past Saturday–there were 3,100 events across cities nationwide, with total attendance estimated at 8 million. New Hampshire alone had somewhere between 20,000 and 29,000 people in the streets with signs and banners, which I am completely 100% certain wrecked my open house numbers that day.
I told my friend the other day over coffee at Breakaway Cafe in Dover that I like selling real estate because houses are a lot like toilet paper. “What do you mean?” he said.
This is the fifth straight week mortgage rates have climbed since the war in Iran. Before the US-Israeli attack, the average 30-year mortgage rate was 5.98%, which gave people a brief hope for that 3% to 4% comeback album that we all remember from 2020. Except we still have under 2000 single-family homes for sale in New Hampshire. Condos add a measly 669 homes for sale. Mobile-manufactured? 215. The average statewide cost is $890,194–and we can break that number down, slice it, dice it, cover it anyway you want, buying a home is still an expensive endeavor.
I heard the other day that in America, the difference between the lower class and the middle class wasn’t even determined by money anymore, but by housing stability, and I thought damn.
I told my friend, “Just like toilet paper, no matter what the economy or the state of the world, everybody still needs housing.”
“Not since the Pandemic. A lot of people purchased bidets.”
I am, by the way, a bidet evangelist. Get one, it’ll change your life. “Well,” I said. “We were in between paychecks when the TP ran out on the shelves. When our cash finally hit, the shelves were wiped. The Amazon delivery on a bidet was like two days. Seemed like a good option. But I still use toilet paper.”
“Why?”
“You gotta still dry yourself off.”
He nodded like he should have known that. He told me how he watched Artemis with the same kind of fear and trepidation as I did. Only except, he didn’t remember the Challenger. The Columbia’s reentry is what he remembered: a brilliant leading glow, a widening spray of incandescent fragments, feathered contrails flattening, spears of light peeling away.
We both watched the TV and held our breath when the white-gold wound opened underneath the rocket. Artemis climbed on a pillar of fire and exhaust boiling outward into muscular clouds riding upon the very edge of evening sky where the blue finally begins surrendering to the darker ink of night. With the final lurch out of the atmosphere, the rear cameras blinked on, and we looked back upon the earth.
In that moment, everything explicitly human had gone so very right. Except, of course, the toilet.
Ahead of the apogee raise burn, Christina Koch reported a problem with a urine filter and then a blinking amber fault light after the power cut out when water was turned on. Mission control walked her through the fix, and the next words out of her mouth we hear are, “Houston, Integrity, good checkout.”
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About this publication.
Coffee with Steve is an independent publication by Steve Bargdill. Views are my own and do not represent Keller Williams Coastal & Lakes & Mountains Realty (“KWCLM”) or any other organization. Each Keller Williams Office is Independently Owned and Operated.
Not advice. Content is informational and educational; it is not legal, tax, or financial advice and does not guarantee results. Talk to a licensed professional who knows your situation before you act.
No agency created. Reading this does not create an agency relationship or agreement for services. Brokerage representation requires a separate written agreement with KWCLM.
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You can reach Keller Williams Coastal and Lakes & Mountains Realty at 603-610-8500 or Steve Bargdill directly at 603-617-6018.
Steve Bargdill | Realtor & Author | Seacoast NH | Licensed in NH as Stephen Bargdill Jr., with Keller Williams Coastal & Lakes & Mountains Realty.
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