Tater Talk
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno. He does a weekly blog post, too, and I highly recommend it.
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It’s been a distracting week here at Rancho Bizarro. I’ve not mentioned this here before but Olive Oyl and I are selling our house with intentions to move out to the country not far from here. (You: Which country this time? Me: All right, the countryside. Happy now?) We’re listing our house for sale next week and our real estate agent convinced us to clear a lot of the stuff out of here to make it look more spacious, so we’ve been as busy as a roomful of monkeys with typewriters.
We live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, but our real estate agent is American. Because this town attracts a lot of non-Spanish-speaking gringos, most of the agents are gringos. These days American real estate agents want your house to look almost empty when they show it. They explain that it helps the buyer to imagine their own stuff in there, which I suppose makes sense. By contrast, we spoke with a Mexican real estate agent a couple of years ago to explore the idea of selling, and when I asked if we needed to clear a lot of the furniture out she said, “No, don’t change nothing. Let them see how you live.” The tone of her voice in that last sentence was the same as if she’d said of long-time enemies about to get their comeuppance, “Let them choke on it.”
I remember being relieved when she said we didn’t have to clear the house out and now I realize how right I was. You know how much work it is to move out of your house? Well, it’s at least half that much work to half-move out of your house. I don’t know if prospective buyers will be able to imagine their furniture here but at the moment, our main floor is so empty that it’s hard for me not to imagine a row of cars lined up along the walls. To me, the place feels more like a parking garage than a house, but what do I know?
I suppose this empty-house concept became the real estate standard through experience but I find myself wondering how they know that it is actually making a difference.
Sure, if you’re a packrat and your house is stuffed to the gills with stacks of old newspapers, cat trees and mannequin parts everywhere you look, it’s going to turn off buyers. Especially if it smells strongly of Fritos.
But if your house is neat and clean and sort of normally furnished, is that such a disadvantage in selling it? It’s hard to say; you can’t really test a thing like that. I mean, you could, but to be a valid, scientific study you’d have to offer the same house at the same time in the same market to the same people, both furnished like a home and empty like a gymnasium, and see which one they bought first. And to do that, you’d need to employ one or more parallel universes.
And maybe that’s the answer. Quantum physics say that there are anywhere from a whole bunch to an infinite number of parallel universes. If the handful of brainiacs who can even pretend to understand that can get to a point where they can actually perceive what is going on in those places, maybe we’ll finally know once and for all whether home buyers prefer to look at a human habitat or an empty cavern.
Go physics!
But until then, we’re deferring to the experts and so for the past week we’ve had workers climbing all over the house repairing stuff and movers packing stuff up to put in storage. Before that, we each spent a couple of days culling through all of our earthly possessions (aka crap we should never have brought with us to Mexico like my sportscoats and Olive’s high-heel shoes) and getting rid of everything we no longer want or need. As you can imagine, it’s been impossible to get work done at my usual pace through all of this but that’s life. It’s probably going to get even harder as we move out for real and settle into a new place.
We love this town but our month in the mountains around Oaxaca last year convinced us that we really thrive when more immediately connected to nature. We’ve got our eye on a place that we think will be perfect if it’s still on the market by the time we sell ours. I’m not one of those cartoonists like Charles Schulz who can afford more than one house at a time so we’re keeping our fingers crossed. We’re the sort to believe that if it’s meant to be ours, it will still be available when we’ve got the money. If not, we’ll rent for a while until we find another place.
If you’re in the market to move to Mexico, our town is a gorgeous, English-friendly place to start. And I know of a terrific house that’s going up for sale next week! Our neighbors are super cool and nice, too, so we’ll definitely be coming back for block parties and having all of them out to our place when we’re ready. If you buy our house, we’ll invite you, too!
Now let’s see if we can clear some chuckles out of our gizzards as we aim our seeballs at Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…
Once again, I think Wayno has stumbled upon a stellar idea for a reality show. Contact our Hollywood agent to negotiate. Serious inquiries only, please.
I just hope the offspring don’t try to eat themselves.
Get off the phone and get back to ironing.
I wonder if the idea for Tofurkey came from animal crackers?
Wayno includes a sketch of an alternate version of this cartoon in his blog post this week. Also a very fun pipe picture opening sequence.
Children frighten me more than monsters because they actually exist. And they can be so cruel.
That signals the end of our cartoon police raid. Thanks to all you Jazz Pickles who stuck around for the ride in the paddy wagon. If you appreciate our content and that we don’t make you pay for it with pop-up ads, please consider helping us keep it that why by dropping a carrot in the bunny’s mouth via one of the links below. We’ll be excruciatingly grateful.
Until next week, replace those Fritos in the oven with some chocolate chip cookies.
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