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The daughter of a longtime friend of mine won a cupcake contest last week. It was an amateur competition – here are the rules:

• All decorations must be handmade and edible – no paper, plastic, or other decorations that cannot be eaten.
• You may use any of the following: Fondant; Food coloring (powder, liquid or gel); Buttercream (any type – quick, French, Swiss, Italian); ”Buttercreme” (but we would argue that it’s not truly “edible”); Gumpaste; Sugar; Pastillage (but why would you do that to yourself?); Piping gel; Water; Any tools necessary to achieve your design.
• Any decorations that you use must be made by YOU – no premade, purchased flowers, shapes, etc., with the exception of sprinkles used as an accent, not as the main element of your design.

I had a look at the competition, and wow wow wow – very impressive! I’ve lifted a few of the photos – check them out!

The Awakening

Ben’s Chili Bowl

Going Green

“Wide Stance”

Metro

DC Statehood

National Zoo

And finally, the overall and really cool winner from Cara Lee Heggi of Cara Lee Cupcakes & Cake:

You guessed it – Chinatown!

Yes, that’s a cupcake.

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One last, long excerpt from Dave Barry’s Homes and Other Black Holes ©1988. Illustrations by Jeff MacNelly.

No matter how perfect your new home seems when you first move in, you’ll gradually discover various shortcomings about it that get on your nerves, and ultimately you’ll come to hate it. This usually takes about two weeks. From that point on, you’ll be thinking about Trading Up.

Trading Up is the basic maneuver in real estate, dating back several million years to the prehistoric Catalytic Era. In those days, a typical couple would have to start out living in a small cave, but each day they’d go out and hunt for pretty stones, which they’d put in a pile, called Equity, in the center of their cave. When the Equity was big enough, they’d move to a larger cave, where they’d repeat the process and move to a still larger one, and so on until they moved into their Dream Cave, which was occupied by a saber-toothed tiger, or carnivorous humongous (literally, “huge payments”), which ate them. This is essentially the system we use today.

Before you can buy a new house, of course, you need to sell the one you’re in now.

The Best Way To Sell A House

The best way to sell a house is to walk down a city street and have a construction worker who is eating a sandwich fifty-five stories above you accidentally drop his lunch box so that it lands on your head in such a way that you are not seriously injured, but you do lapse into a coma, and you wake up four months later and the nurse says, “While you were in a coma, your house was sold.” This is also the best way to move, have a baby, and attend the opera. But things are rarely this easy. Usually you have to put quite a bit of effort into selling your house, starting with asking yourself the question

Do You Need A Real Estate Broker?

I touched upon this subject back in an earlier chapter, but I am quite frankly too lazy to go back and read what I said. Probably I said that there are pros and cons, because there almost always are, unless you’re talking about hemorrhoidal tissue.

On the one hand, if you sell your home yourself, you avoid paying a large commission*; but on the other hand, you have to deal with people calling you up and coming around to your house all hours of the day and night, pestering you and giving you no peace. I’m not talking about potential buyers. I’m talking about real estate brokers, trying to get your listing. The only way to get them to go away is to sign a contract with them. Then you’ll never see them again.

[* Kim's note:  I cannot let this go unchallenged. A good broker (agent) earns every cent of his commission by getting the best price, avoiding contractual issues, and/or assisting with all sorts of problems along the way to closing.]

Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. In the interest of fairness and decency and, above all, not receiving thousands of concerned letter bombs from the large and powerful real estate industry, let me state that I am sure that virtually all brokers out there are honest and highly competent professionals of the type regularly shown on TV wearing geek-style blazers. And even if it turns out that they’re not, I strongly advise you to use a broker, for the same reason that I’d advise you to pay somebody else to repair your automobile transmission, namely: No matter how incompetent or overpaid this person is, he or she can’t possibly screw things up as badly as you would if you did it yourself.

[Kim's note:  That's better.]

Before you sign a listing contract, you should talk to several brokers, to find out what they think your house is worth. What you want to be on the alert for here is a practice called “highballing,” which is when an unscrupulous broker deliberately overestimates the value of your house, just to get the listing:

BROKER:  Mr. and Mrs. Jones, based on thoroughly walking around your living room here, I would estimate that the market value of your house is a billion gazillion dollars.

YOU (suspiciously):  Wait a minute. Our name isn’t Jones.

BROKER:  Don’t worry about that. This is just a pretend dialogue in a humor book.

Once you’ve selected a broker, you’ll be asked to sign a standard contract, which will read as follows:

Standard Real Estate Listing Agreement

1. The BROKER gets FIVE PERCENT.
2. Even if the BROKER doesn’t do SQUAT.
3. Even if the BROKER is off somewhere like MAUI, drinking EXOTIC TROPICAL DRINKS with names like KAMIKAZE KAHLUA when a WILLING BUYER, acting totally on his OWN, appears on the SELLER’S doorstep carrying a SUITCASE full of CASH MONEY, the BROKER still gets FIVE PERCENT.
4. In return, the SELLER gets to bitch about the BROKER at social occasions.
5. “My damned BROKER couldn’t sell mascara to TAMMY FAYE BAKKER*,” is the kind of snide comment the SELLER is allowed to make.
6. But the BROKER still gets FIVE PERCENT.

[* Tammy Faye Bakker on Wikipedia]

How Much Should You Ask For Your House?

This is a very difficult question, but top real estate experts from all over the world agree that you should ask $127,500 and ultimately settle for $119,250. Also you should throw in the outdoor gas barbecue system with the charcoal-roasted spiders permanently bonded to the grill.

Getting Your House Ready to Show

Once you’ve signed up with a broker and have decided on an asking price, you need to fix your house up so it looks as though clean and tasteful grownups live there, instead of ourselves. Take a hard look at your house and furnishings, and ask yourself how they’ll appear to prospective buyers. Chances are that with a minimum of time and effort, you can make a number of dramatically superficial improvements. For example, suppose you have an ugly old sofa in the living room with a leg missing from one corner, which you’ve propped up with a copy of The Sex Lusters, by Harold Robbins. You’ll make a far better impression with an acknowledged classic such as Moby Dick, by Jackie Collins. You can also make a big improvement in the appearance of dirty, crayon-marked walls by buying a can of flat white latex paint and using it to stand on while you install a lower-wattage light bulb. And of course, it’s always a good idea to nail all your bathroom doors shut.

The overall effect you’re trying to create with these “homey” little touches is that your house is a warm, welcoming, and—above all—real kind of place, similar to the set of a 1962 situation comedy. You may want to create the impression that, at any moment, Ricky Ricardo might come bursting through the front door and get a great big welcome-home kiss from Mary Tyler Moore.

But the most important ingredient in the home-selling equation is you, the homeowner, because only you have a really inmate, detailed knowledge of the house; only you, who have lived there, know all the interesting little idiosyncrasies it has—all the special features and hidden secrets that make you want to dump it lie a grocery bag full of armpit hair. Your job is to help your broker make sure that prospective buyers view these things in the proper light.

Unfortunately, brokers don’t always appreciate receiving help from sellers. In fact, most brokers won’t even want you hanging around when they show the house. They’ll let you know this by dropping little hints such as, “Please don’t hang around when I show the house,” and “If you hang around when I show the house, I will kill you.” The broker is concerned that if you’re always hovering in the background like some kind of desperate street person, the prospective buyers won’t feel free to speak their minds.

There is some basis for the broker’s concern. The last time we sold a house, whenever I was in the room, the prospective buyers would always describe everything as “interesting.”

“Hmmmm,” they’d say, looking at one of my Home Improvement Projects. “How interesting!” Meaning:  “I can’t wait to tell the people at my office about this!”

So on the one hand, you don’t want to make the buyers feel uncomfortable, but on the other hand, you want to be available to explain features of the home that the broker might not be familiar with. The solution is to hide in closets when prospective buyers come around.

PROSPECTIVE BUYER:  What is this greenish slime dripping from the ceiling everywhere and eating holes in the floor?

BROKER:  Well, it’s, um, er, it’s, ahh . . .

VOICE FROM CLOSET:  It’s nothing to worry about!

PROSPECTIVE BUYER (vastly relieved):  Whew! Because for a moment there, we were concerned!

Sooner or later, if you continue to engage in savvy sales techniques such as these, a buyer will become interested enough to make an offer on your house. The important thing, during these negotiations, is to remain calm. Do not become emotionally involved. Remember that even though you and the buyers are on “opposite sides of the fence,” the odds are that they are just regular everyday human beings like yourself, the only difference being that they’re trying to screw you out of all your worldly goods. So while on the one hand you want to be reasonable, in the sense of frowning thoughtfully at the buyers’ opening offer, you also want to be firm, in the sense of hurling it disdainfully to the floor and inviting friends and neighbors to help you spit on it.

Price is not the key issue in these negotiations. What you’ll do is get into serious, heavy duty negotiations over which side gets to keep various home accessories such as:

• Ugly light fixtures
• Dingy draperies, and above all,
• Minor grease-encrusted kitchen appliances that nobody really wants

These are the areas in which you want to be as petty as is humanly possible, in an effort to establish that you are a Tough Customer Who Will Not Be Taken Advantage Of. You want to stride in a forceful manner around your family room, cigar in hand, shouting instructions to your broker, such as:

“All right, they can have the Veg-O-Matic, but the sons of bitches are not gonna get the optional grape-peeling attachment!”

And:

“They want the ice cube trays?! Over MY DEAD BODY!!”

Using this aggressive approach, you should be able to retain possession of many of your prized home accessories, which will fetch you a handsome $1.85 when you hold your garage sale.

How You Will Feel After You Finally Sign The Agreement Of Sale

You’ll experience a feeling of almost unbelievable elation, even better than the way you felt the time Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on national TV and it was empty. This feeling will last for as long as seven tenths of a second, at which point you’ll remember the clause in the sales agreement, put there by some writhing little insect of a lawyer, that states:

The SELLER agrees that if, at ANY TIME prior to the actual sale of the house, SOMETHING BAD happens, like for example let’s say that on THE VERY MORNING OF THE SETTLEMENT, through NO FAULT OF THE SELLER, a TREE ROOT that for 127 years has been totally benign, suddenly, as if guided by DESTINY, decides to block the MAIN MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER LINE in front of the SELLER’S HOUSE, causing a veritable VOLCANO OF RAW SEWAGE to erupt right in the SELLER’S GUEST BATHROOM and quickly flow THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE while the SELLER is out at the SUPERMARKET picking up a bottle of WINDEX so as to put the last few finishing touches on the HOUSE so that it will be neat as a PIN for the NEW OWNERS, then HA HA the SELLER has to give the BUYER all his DEPOSIT MONEY back and the SELLER can now kiss the whole deal GOOD-BYE.

So for the two months, or whatever, between the time you sign the contract and the time you actually close the deal, you’ll experience a condition that famed psychologist Sigmund Freud identified as Agreement of Sale Paranoia. You’ll be afraid to use the heating or air-conditioning systems; afraid to use the water faucets, turn on lights, or close doors firmly; afraid even to speak too loudly, for fear that you might set off some kind of sympathetic vibration that will cause the whole house to fall down. In short, you will become a crazy person. “YOU FOOL!” you’ll shriek, leaping out from behind your hedge and tackling the UPS man just as he’s about to ring your doorbell. “Are you trying to KILL US ALL?”

This is a natural reaction, but the truth is, you probably have nothing to worry about. The odds are that nothing bad will happen, and when you finally get to the Ritual Closing Ceremony, when you realize that the whole thing is going to work out after all, you’ll experience a feeling of relief, a feeling that will grow stronger and stronger until, moments before the sale is legally finalized, you are knocked to the floor by the shock wave from the gas main exploding directly underneath your house.

But you’re not gong to let a little thing like the total destruction of your house, seconds before you were about to sell it, get you down. No, you are made of sterner stuff than that; you are a Homeowner. You’re not a particularly bright one, given the fact that you bought this book, but nevertheless you are going to pick up the pieces of your life, as soon as they come down out of the sky, and get on with your life. Because you know that you’ll have plenty more homes to own before you finally shuffle off what we in the real estate profession call “this mortal coil” and go up to that Great Subdivision in the Sky. I’m willing to bet there will be nothing in your price range.

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Another long (but worthwhile) excerpt from Dave Barry’s Homes and Other Black Holes ©1988. Illustrations by Jeff MacNelly.

If you want to come out a winner in the negotiations for your new house, you have to be tough. “This is not a time for human decency,” are the words of Wayne Savage, the internationally renowned lecturer and author of the best-selling book on negotiating strategy, Leave Them Bleeding in the Dirt, which retails for $178.63 and not a penny less. Which is why you need to know:

How To Negotiate Like A Real Slimeball

A fine example of the kind of negotiating approach you should take can be found in the excellent corporate training film The Godfather, where, as part of his negotiations with a movie producer, Marlon Brando gains a subtle psychological advantage by arranging to have the producer wake up in bed next to the head of a deceased horse.

This is not to suggest that to get a good price on a house, you need to go around decapitating domesticated animals. No indeed; wild animals are more than adequate for most residential transactions. But the point is, you have to be firm.

At the outset of your negotiations, it is very important to create the impression that your really don’t want to buy the house at all, that in fact you hate the house, and the mere thought of it makes you physically ill. Your opening offer should convey this. It should be worded as follows: “We don’t want your house, so we will give you X number of dollars for it, including all major appliances and the children.” (Note that you should not name a specific amount. You should actually use the term “X number of dollars,” so as to avoid tipping your hand.) The broker will take your offer to the seller, who at this point has a number of options, such as:

1. He can accept your offer.
2. He can reject your offer.
3. He can give back the dinette set, the pool table, and the Epcot Center vacation in exchange for whatever is behind curtain number two.

Another possibility is that he will make a counteroffer, which your broker will bring back for you to consider. “We don’t want to sell the house,” it might say. “We only put it on the market because we joy having total strangers come around and test-flush all our toilets. But we are willing to let it go for Y number of dollars, plus you can have little Deirdre, provided you raise her in a religious environment. We get the microwave.”

And then you send the broker back with another offer, and they send you another counteroffer, and so on until the broker, his fingers bloodied from typing up the various negotiating positions, drops dead in the street from exhaustion, which is the signal for the buyer and seller to settle on a price equal to the original asking price minus about five percent. This is the price that everyone always winds up at, and if we all just agreed on it at the beginning, there would be a lot less hassle and inconvenience in the form of dead brokers. But we have to ask ourselves if this would really be such a desirable outcome.

In any event, now that you and the seller have set a price, you need to sign the agreement of sale, which should be worded in standard legal terminology, as follows:

WHEREAS the Seller wants to sell, and the Buyer wants to buy, and they think they got a price that’s not too low or too high; and the Buyer gave the Seller a down payment to hold, now he’ll try to get a mortgage ‘fore they BOTH grow old; and the Seller’s gonna see if he got termites in his place ’cause if he does, the Buyer’s gonna tear it right up in his face; but if everything’s cool and nobody’s late, then the deal will go down on the Settlement Date.

CHORUS

Oooh baby baby

We gon’ have a transaction tonight

Of course I realize you probably don’t understand some of this “legal jargon,” but this is only because you are stupid. This is why it’s important to ask several lawyers to give you contradictory advice before you sign anything, including get-well cards.

Meanwhile, however, it is time to go around to some banks and see if you can find one foolish enough to lend you some money.

Are You Financially Fit?

The first thing you need to do is perform a detailed financial analysis of home much money you have versus how much you’re going to need to buy your house. The way you do this is to draw up what professional accountants call a “Balance Sheet,” which should look like this:

Money You Have

• Savings Account:  $927.62
• Checking Account:  Conceivably as much as $83.15, provided that the check you wrote to Mr. Muffler has not been cashed yet.
• Other Assets:  Primarily canned goods and undeveloped photographs of the airplane wing take during your trip to Disney World:  $44.02

Total:  $1,054.79

Money You Need to Buy a House

• Cost to pay random lawyers for God knows what (see “The Ritual Closing Ceremony”):  $6,765.90
• Cost to have various inspectors come around and hold clipboards and shine flashlights at things but fail to notice any sign that the heating system is going to explode moments after you take possession of your new home:  $1,250.00
• Taxes:  $3,856.90
• Additional taxes that nobody ever mentioned to you:  $4,847.89
• Taxes that are just now being rushed into law and will only to your specific house purchase:  $5,563.92
• “Points,” which is technically defined as “money that for some reason you have to give the bank, even though you are the one trying to buy the goddamn house, and no matter how many time you ask, you will never be given an intelligible explanation for this”:  $8,745.00
• Other (phone deposit, cost of actual house, etc.):  $126,436.06

Total:  $157,465.67

So we can see from this financial analysis that your are definitely going to need the bank to give you a lot of money in the form of a mortgage. The bank is willing to do this because, the way mortgages are set up, no matter how many payments you make, you still owe the bank all the money you ever borrowed. Really. This explains why, in all your wide circle of friends, you don’t know a single person who ever came close to paying off a mortgage.

It may seem as though the banks are taking unfair advantage of consumers here, but they really have no choice. A few years ago, they lent billions and billions of dollars to the Third World, which had promised to spend the money on factories and heavy machinery, but which in fact lost it gambling on rooster fights. And since the banks can’t very well march down to the Southern Hemisphere and repossess, for example, Brazil, you can understand why they have no choice but to get the money from average everyday unarmed consumers such as yourself.

All mortgages work basically the same way:  you sign a bunch of papers, then you make large monthly payments until the Second Coming. Nevertheless, the top Consumer Money Geeks all recommend that you “shop around” for your mortgage, because there are a number of different kinds available. Some of the more popular ones are:

• The Fixed-Rate Mortgage
• The Variable-Rate Mortgage
• The Mortgage Whose Rate Is Based On What Order The Teams Finish In The National League East
• The Mortgage with a Real Low Rate That Is Advertised in Huge Print in the Newspaper But Nobody Ever Actually Gets It
• The Balloon Mortgage
• The Party Hat Mortgage
• The Mortgage That is Really the Expired Warranty for a 1966 Sears Washing Machine
• The Mortgage of the Living Dead

Here’s an important piece of advice to bear in mind when you’re shopping around for a mortgage:  Don’t be intimidated. Sure the bank is a great big, rich, powerful financial institution and you are a small, worthless piece of scum. But that doesn’t mean you should walk into the bank with your hat in your hand, like some kind of beggar! Not at all! You should crawl into the bank!

Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. You have nothing to worry about. All the bank will ask you to supply the home phone number of everybody you have ever known, even casually, since the fourth grade. Then you’ll have an interview with the Loan Officer, who’ll ask a few standard screening questions, such as:  To get this mortgage, are you willing to lick the gum wads off my shoe bottoms?”

Assuming that you come up with the correct answers (“yes”) to these questions, your mortgage application will be sent on to the Committee to Hold Up All Mortgage Applications for Several Months. This will give you time to practice signing checks in preparation for

The Ritual Closing Ceremony

This is an important and highly traditional part of the home-buying process, the last major hurdle you must clear before you become on Official Homeowner. It is comparable to the initiation ceremonies at major college fraternities, where, to prove he is worthy of the privileges and responsibilities of membership, the pledge must perform some feat such attending a Papal Mass wearing only a softball glove.

Essentially, what you must do in the Ritual Closing Ceremony, is go into a small room and write large checks to total strangers. According to tradition, anybody may ask you for a check, for any amount, and you may not refuse. Once you get started handing out money, the good news will travel quickly through the real estate community via joyful shouts: “A Closing Ceremony is taking place!” Soon there will be a huge horde of people—lawyers, bankers, brokers, insurance people, termite inspectors, caterers, photographers, people you used to know in high school—crowding in the closing room and spilling out into the street. You may be forced to hurl batches of signed blank checks out the window, just to make sure that everyone is accommodated in the traditional way.

Another ritual task you must perform during the Closing Ceremony is frown with feigned comprehension at various unintelligible documents that will be placed in front of you by random individuals wearing suits:

RANDOM INDIVIDUAL:  Now, as you can see, this is the Declaration of your Net Interest Accrual Payments of Debenture.

YOU (frowning):  Yes.

RANDOM INDIVIDUAL:  And this is the Notification of you Pro Rata indemnities of Assumption.

YOU:  Certainly.

RANDOM INDIVIDUAL:  And this is the digestive system of a badger.

YOU:  Of course.

Once the various officials present are satisfied that you truly wish to become a homeowner and have no checks left, they will award you a mortgage, which will spell out your new duties and obligations in standard legal terminology:

Mortgage

Hear ye, hear ye, everybody listen up because the MORTGAGOR, hereinafter referred to as the MORTGAGEE, has, by duly picking up this piece of paper and putting his JOHN HANCOCK thereontofore, committed himself and his family and his distant relatives and unborn children and domesticated animals body and soul to the terms and conditions of this MORTGAGE, whether these terms and conditions are actually stated right here in print on the MORTGAGE or exist only in the form of vague concepts in the minds of LAWYERS working for the BANK, to wit:

1.  The money has to BE THERE on the first of the month, rain or shine.

2.  If the money is not THERE, the BANK is going to get VERY ANGRY.

3.  The BANK is going to want to GET EVEN.

4.  The BANK is going to make SOMEBODY wish he was naked and tied down spread-eagled on an anthill with ants eating his EYEBALLS because that would be a lot more pleasant than what the BANK has in mind IF THE MONEY IS NOT THERE.

5.  Specifically, the BANK is going to get a pair of NUMBER SIX KNITTING NEEDLES and heat them up to 11,000 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT, and then the BANK is going to  . . .

And so it continues, in technical legalistic detail. It’s really nothing to concern yourself about. The important thing is:  at last you’re a homeowner. Now you can immerse yourself in the many rewarding and traditional activities that new homeowners engage in, such as trying to figure out how to make the mortgage payment and, simultaneously, not starve to death.

Coming soon, our final excerpt from Homes and Other Black Holes – Getting Some Fool To Buy Your House.

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Continuing my series of Dave Barry excerpts, here are further selections from Homes and Other Black Holes ©1988. This is a long one . . .

How Many Houses Should You Look At?

Most experts recommend that, for maximum effectiveness, your should look at forty-five or even fifty houses per day. Experienced home shoppers often reach the point where they can leap out of the real estate broker’s car, look at a house, and get back into the car before it reaches a complete stop.

If you follow this procedure, by nightfall your brain will be tightly packed with hundreds of thousands of bit of important real estate information, and you and your spouse will be able to have useful decision-making conversations like this:

YOU: I kind of liked that contemporary with the fireplace in the kitchen.

YOUR SPOUSE: No, the contemporary had fire damage in the kitchen. You’re thinking of the split-level, the one where the garage floor had a Rust-Oleum stain shaped like the Virgin Mary.

YOU: No, that was the colonial, remember? With the big white pillars out front and no toilets?

YOUR SPOUSE: No, you’re thinking of Monticello. Remember? We went there on vacation in 1979?

YOU: No, it was 1978.

Using this logical elimination process, you’ll begin to narrow down your list to the three or four dozen houses that you are truly interested in. These are the ones you should go back and inspect in a thorough manner, using this convenient

HOME INSPECTION CHECKLIST

The Roof

This is a “must.” So the first think you should do is go up and crouch in the attic and see if you get bit by a bat. This is usually an indication that the house contains bats, which, depending on your lifestyle, could be a negative factor, especially if one tries to suck out your blood, because that means it’s a vampire bat, which means the house is located in South America, so right away we are talking about a fairly long commute to work.

Also while you’re up there you should look around and see if you notice any of the following important house parts:

You will recognize these objects instantly, because most of them are pieces of wood. Make a note of them.

The Floors

These should be sturdy and level. The only proven way to check for sturdiness is to drop a men’s standard sixteen-pound bowling ball (always carry one with you!) onto the floor from a height of seventy-five feet through a hole drilled in the roof, then carefully note the results. (No, the seller will not object, unless he has “something to hide.”)

To check for levelness, you will need a standard piece of string and a standard rock. Using a standard knot, tie one end of the string to the rock, then, holding the other end of the string, stand in the middle of a room, and carefully note which way the rock points. Ideally, it will point toward the floor. If it points somewhere else, such as toward a wall, this is often an indication of nonlevelness. (SEE DIAGRAM –>)

The Electrical System

The most important thing to find out about the electrical system is whether it contains enough “volts,” which are little tiny pieces of energy shaped like arrows so you can tell which direction they’re moving in science class diagrams.

The standard measurement for volts is “amps,” also called “watts,” which travel around in what is called a “circuit.” A typical circuit works as follows:

At the electric company, fuel oil is burned to set fire to a generator, which gives off electrical energy in the form of sparks, which are put into wires and sent to your home, where the electricity waits in the wall until you turn on your toaster, at which point it rushes through the wire and into your English muffin, and from there into your stomach, where it remains until a cool, dry day when you are walking down a hall scuffing your feet on a carpet and you go to open a door, causing the electricity to leap into the doorknob, where it remains forever, building up over time to tremendously high levels, which is why scientists are now concerned that if some unscrupulous entity like Libya or God forbid an adolescent male ever figures out how to release the power, he could, using only the latent doorknob energy contained in an older ranch-style home, vaporize Oregon.

But your immediate concern, as a potential buyer, is making sure that the house has the right number of volts. Following is a chart depicting the most popular voltages currently available in the housing market:

POPULAR HOME VOLTAGES

120

220

9*

*Requires a 9 volt battery (not included)

Which voltage is right for you? This, more than anything else, is a matter of personal taste; and like most matters of personal taste, it is best left in the hands of a qualified interior designer.

Insects

Make no mistake about it: there will be insects in the house. The entire planet is teeming with insect life; scientists now estimate that there are over 60,000,000,000,000,000,000 different species living under my kitchen sink alone.

Fortunately most insects pose no threat to homeowners. All they want is to eat your food and have babies in your sock drawer and maybe crawl up your nostril while you’re sleeping. In exchange for this, many of them gladly perform useful household services, such as pooping on your toothbrush. “You scratch my back, and I’ll suck blood out of yours”- that is the insect motto.

The exception, of course, is termites, which are small socialist insects that eat houses. (We don’t know what they ate before houses were invented. We think maybe garages.) Termites live in large colonies ruled by a lady termite with an enormous butt, called the Queen, which governs over a strict termite hierarchy consisting of: the Biters, the Chewers, the Spit Makers, the Soldiers, the House of Commons, the Nannies, and the Cute Little Baby Eggs. each of these colony members has specific duties and responsibilities that are clearly posted on the Bulletin Board, although of course, being insects, they are much too stupid to remember what these duties and responsitbilities are, so they basically just scurry around at random. Nevertheless, as I noted earlier, they can eat your prospective house, so it is very important that you inspect carefully for the Two Telltale Signs of Termite Infestation, which are:

1. Termites walking around with pieces of your prospective house in their mouths
2. No sign whatsoever of termites, because they are hiding

If all the items on this checklist check out to your satisfaction, it’s time to make the standard Insulting Opening Offer on the house, which we will cover in the next chapter.

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Continuing with excerpts from Dave Barry’s real estate-related books, our second excerpt is also from Homes and Other Black Holes ©1988. Illustrations by the late great Jeff MacNelly.

It is possible to buy or sell a home without a broker, as will be discussed in a later chapter, unless we forget to write it. But most people prefer to use a broker, because of the many advantages, such as:

1. If you have a real estate broker, you an excuse to fend off the other brokers, who will otherwise follow you around and hurl rocks through you window with notes taped to them explaining the many advantages of using a broker.
2. Brokers always have nicer cars than you do, a phenomenon that will become more understandable when we get to the section on commissions.

This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list of all the advantages of using a broker. The only reason I’m not listing all the others here is that they don’t spring immediately to mind.

The best place to obtain a broker is at a junior high school, where you’ll find that virtually all the teachers obtained real estate licenses once they realized what a tragic mistake they had made, selecting a profession that requires them to spend entire days confined in small rooms with adolescent children. Often it is sufficient to just drive by the school and beep your horn; within seconds, brokers will come swarming out of doors and windows, eager to abandon their lesson plans on the Three Major Bones of the Inner Ear so they can help you find a home.

There are many factors to consider in selecting a broker, such as competence, honesty, vertical leap, and placement in the Evening Gown Competition. But the most important factor is an intangible quality called “professionalism,” by which I mean “car size.” You want to select the broker with the largest possible car, because you’re going to spend far more time in this car than in whatever home you ultimately buy.

Next you should tell your broker what your Price Range is, so he or she can laugh until his or her official company blazer is soaked with drool. What your broker finds so amusing, of course, is that there is virtually nothing, outside of the Third World, available in your Price Range. I don’t care if your Price Range is a hillion jillion dollars, there will be nothing available in it. This is a fundamental principle of real estate.

At first you will probably insist on looking at something in your Price Range anyway, which will result in the following comical dialogue:

YOU: This is it? They’re asking $89,500 for a refrigerator carton?

BROKER: Yes, but I think they’ll take $85,000.

This process is called “getting a feel for the market.” Once you’ve undergone it, your broker will explain a creative new financial concept that has been developed to enable people such as yourself to enjoy the benefits of home ownership, called: Spending Way More Than You Can Afford. Usually you have to talk yourself into going with this concept. Here are some sound financial arguments you can use:

1. Although you may not really be able to afford a more expensive home at your current income level, it makes sense to buy it anyway, because in just a few years, at the current rate of progress in your career, you’ll probably be dead.
2. There are major tax benefits to owning a home. The law, written by wise lawyers and bankers, permits you to deduct all the money you give to lawyers or bankers, which will turn out to be virtually all the money you have.
3. Owning a home is a smart investment. As inflation pushes up the cost of living, you will build up equity* in your home, so that, when you eventually sell it, you will have made enough profit to be able to afford to pay the points** and closing costs*** on your next home!

So, as you can see, you really can’t afford not to buy a home that you really can’t afford. It’s time to sit down with your broker and take a serious look at the listings.

The listings are computerized lists, or “listings,” of all the houses that all the brokers in your region have been trying to sell since the Carter Administration. Listings are always written in a special real estate code. For example, this listing:

CHARMING¹ RANCH² 4BR³ 3B⁴ 2TD⁵ FULLY LANDSCAPED⁶ NEWLY RENOVATED⁷

can be decoded as follows:

1. Rooms the size of nasal spray cartons.
2. IN URBAN AREAS: No attic or basement. IN RURAL AREAS: Also, cattle have wintered in the foyer.
3. Four bedrooms.
4. Three bathrooms.
5. Two turtle doves.
6. Extensive comical lawn statuary including minority groups holding lanterns; also large, permanent, fully mechanized, spectacularly illuminated display of Santa’s Workshop.
7. The walls have been pretty well scraped clean in the room where the demonic beings from another dimension came through the TV set and cause the previous occupants’ heads to explode.

Study the listings carefully and make a note of any houses that look right for you, so your broker can confirm that they were all sold just that morning. This is actually good, because it will help to get you into the proper highly desperate frame of mind where you will do almost anything to get a house, including paying large sums of money you really don’t have to people you really don’t know for reasons you really aren’t sure of. Which is the essence of real estate.

Next Excerpt (when I get around to it):  How To Pretend To Look Knowledgeably At Houses

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As part of my rather warped sense of humor, I will be taking the opportunity to post a few excerpts from real estate-relevant pieces by one of my favorite authors, Dave Barry. That is, until his lawyers decide I have posted too many excerpts.

Today’s excerpt is from Homes and Other Black Holes ©1988. Illustrations by the late great Jeff MacNelly.

Deciding Which House To Buy

In deciding which house to buy, the first thing you have to do is determine your Price Range, using this simple formula:

1. Take your total annual family income, including coins that have fallen behind the bureau and any projected future revenue you have been notified about via personalized letters from Mr. Ed McMahon stating that you may already have won fourteen million dollars.
2. Count up the number of children you have and note how many of them are named Joshua or Ashley. That many? Really? Don’t you feel this trend toward giving children designer names has gone far enough? Don’t you think we should go back to the old system of naming children after beloved uncles and aunts, even if we in fact hate our beloved uncles and aunts and they have comical names such as Lester? Can you imagine having an aunt named Lester? These questions are not directly related to your Price Range. I’m just curious to know how you feel.
3. Now take these figures (No! I’m not going to tell you again which ones! Pay attention!) and multiply them by six; which will tell you, in thousands of yards, how far away the lightning bolt was. No! Wait! Sorry! Wrong formula! You want to take these figures and multiply them by something other than six. This should give you a very strong idea of what your Price Range is, although we shall soon see that it doesn’t matter because there are no homes in it anyway.

There! Now you’re getting somewhere! But you’re not done yet: you need to decide what style of house you’re looking for. The major styles of houses in the United States are:

• OLDER HOUSES with many quaint and charming architectural features such as that during certain phases of the moon the toilets flush up.
• NEWER HOUSES built by large developers using modern cost-cutting efficiency measures such as hiring semiskilled derelict felon gypsy work-persons who are prone to forgetting to install key architectural elements such as windows and those large pieces of wood, “rafters” I believe they are called, that hold up the roof.
• REALLY NICE WELL-BUILT, WELL-LOCATED AFFORDABLE HOUSES that are not for sale.

Another very important factor is neighborhood. Ask any real estate broker to name the three most important factors in buying a property, and he’ll say: “Location, location location.” Now ask him to name the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he’ll say: “Location, location location.” This tells us we should not necessarily be paying a whole lot of attention to real estate brokers.

If you have school-age children, by far the most important factor in selecting a neighborhood is, of course, the proximity of the nearest Toys Backwards “R” Us store. You will be spending a great deal of your time and disposable income there, because from kindergarten through about sixth grade, the average child attends approximately 36,500 birthday parties.

Once you have selected several potential neighborhoods, you should drive around to evaluate them, using this convenient

Neighborhood Checklist

Note What the Residents Do with Cars That No Longer Function

• Good Neighborhood: They get rid of them.
• Bad Neighborhood: The keep them all forever, arranged tastefully on their lawns, as if expecting the Car Fairy to come one night and whisk all the cars away and leave everybody a nice shiny quarter.

Note What Kind of Names the Local Streets Have

• Good: Jasmine View Court Terrace
• Bad: Interstate 95

Note What Kind of Businesses Are Operating in the Neighborhood

• Good: Arthur A Wutherington IV, Investment Banker
• Bad: Earl’s All-Night Nude Revue & Motorcycle Repair

Note What Neighborhood Youths Are Doing

• Good: Selling lemonade
• Bad: Selling you your rear wheels back

Note What Kind of Bumper Stickers the Neighborhood Cars Have

• Good: “SCHOOL’S OPEN! DRIVE CAREFULLY!”
• Bad: “I  MY PIT BULL”

Note the Types of Neighborhood Social Activities

• Good: Barbecues
• Bad: Cockfights

Next Excerpt: Choosing A Real Estate Broker

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Big Johnson fans – another season has come and gone, so we have to make do with pro sports, fantasy football and what-have-you until college bowl season comes around.

Here are the winners of the 8th Annual Big Johnson Coed Basketball Tournament . . .

Men’s Big Johnson:
Congratulations to John Beck, $75 iTunes credits; and for Ron Frazier, Mike Merrick, BJ & Kim Johnson, Kathryn Hoodecheck, Eve Waring, Saejoon Kim, Katherine Zak, Dave Clarine, and Paul Vallett, CHOCOLATE in the form of huge Chunky bars!

Women’s Big Johnson:
Congrats to Ben Denison, winner of $75 iTunes credits – and emperor-sized Chunky bars to Dresa Wainwright, Fred Heggi, Biff Deems, D. Busby, Joel Rosen, Jacob Becklund, Chris Hannemann, Donny Samson and Jon Coggins!

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The 8th Annual Kim’s Big Johnson Coed College Basketball Tournament is open for business!

The Group Name on ESPN is “Big Johnson” for each tournament, and the group password is: kimsentme. That’s right, kim sent me, one word.

You can get there through the following URLs:

Men’s Tournament Challenge: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage

Women’s Tournament Challenge: http://games.espn.go.com/tcwomen/frontpage

After you create your entries, be sure to join the Big Johnson group in each tournament! And, if you created your entry before the brackets were set, be sure to return in time to choose your winners before they lock.

ESPN tracks your points as the tournaments progress. I will weigh in every now and then with a Big Johnson update note.

FRIENDS ARE WELCOME, so you can forward this if you wish. Don’t forget your Significant Other – he or she may not have received this email directly, so be sure to forward it. Just be sure they identify themselves to me!

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It’s once again that time when people all over the country stop doing what they are doing and feverishly consider their picks for the NCAA Basketball Tournaments so they can enter the EIGHTH Annual Big Johnson COED College Basketball Tournament Classic, sponsored by yours truly, on ESPN.

Stick It To The Man – that’s me! A prize of untold delight – as yet undecided, frankly, but it will be something nice, though definitely not an iPad – awaits the winner of EACH of the Men’s and Women’s Big Johnsons! (YOUR gender is irrelevant. I am referring to the separate basketball tournaments.) And as usual, anyone who gets more points than The Man will win something. Probably chocolate . . .

It won’t cost you anything but your sanity . . . and not even that, if you simply choose the higher-seeded team in each matchup, and then pick the eventual Final Four winner based on their mascot or school colors. How difficult can this really be? Well, there might be upsets. Or not. And gee, there are only – uh, lessee, 64 teams in each tournament – okay, 126 total games.

And it takes a special kind of person to enter BOTH the Men’s and Women’s tournaments. Yes, I mean you!

FRIENDS ARE WELCOME, and Significant Others, too!

The brackets are being set by the NCAA (Men’s Sunday March 14; Women’s Monday March 15). The men’s first round games start on Thursday March 18 (we don’t do the men’s “play-in” game on Tuesday), and the women’s first games are on Saturday March 20 – and the brackets are locked shortly before the first game of each tournament. That doesn’t leave you much time, so GET GOING!

The Group Name on ESPN is “Big Johnson” for each tournament, and the group password is: kimsentme. That’s right, kim sent me, one word.

You can get there through the following URLs:

• Men’s Tournament Challenge: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage
• Women’s Tournament Challenge: http://games.espn.go.com/tcwomen/frontpage

I know some of you like to fake out ESPN with an alias and throwaway email, but please be sure I can identify you from your name or the name of your entry. Otherwise I will keep your prize, ha ha.

After you create your entries, be sure to join the Big Johnson group in each tournament! And, if you create your entry before the brackets are set, be sure to return in time to choose your winners before they lock. Most people will wait until March 18 or 17, but don’t forget! You will be humiliated as your entries with zero points sink inexorably to the bottom of the group . . .

ESPN tracks your points as the tournaments progress. I will weigh in every now and then with a Big Johnson update.

Best of luck to everyone!