Dave Barry's Homes and Other Black Holes Read Free Page A

and into the 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 such as Libya or God forbid an adolescent male ever figures how to release the power, he could, using only the latent doorknob energy contained in a single 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 *

    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.
Heating and Cooling
    Heating and cooling should be supplied by one or more large filthy objects squatting in a basement or closet. You should inspect these objects from a safe distance; you should also find out what the total annual heating and cooling costs will be, using the following formula:
Ask the person selling the house how much the total annual heating and cooling cost will be.
To determine the actual cost, multiply the amount this person gives you by the weight, in pounds, of the devices supplying the heating and cooling.
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, who 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 responsibilities 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:
Termites walking around with pieces of your prospective house in their mouths
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’ll cover in our next chapter.
    * Requires 9 volt battery (not included)

3
How to Get
Very Deeply into Debt
    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