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, roughly 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