"HOMES" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

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.

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 into
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 your 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.

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