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 your 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 do is supply the home phone number of everybody you have ever known, even casually, since the fourth grade. Then you’ll have an interview with a Loan Officer, who’ll ask you 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 the Mortgage Applications for Several Months. This will give you time to practice signing checks in preparation for the Ritual Closing Ceremony.

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 an Official Homeowner. It is comparable to the initiation ceremonies at major college fraternities, where, to prove that he is worthy of the privileges and responsibilities of membership, the pledge must perform some feat such as attending a Papal Mass wearing only a softball glove.