Once the soldered-together parts are cool, drill a few holes in them and screw them to the inside of your television set, using your optional hacksaw on either the television set or the parts to insure a good fit. Now all you need to do is reattach the cabinet back and check to make sure your fire insurance is paid up. You’re ready to enter the World of Home Computing.

First, you’ll need some data to put in, or “input.” Have your children go around the house, inside and out, and gather up, or “upgather,” all your bills, check stubs, candy wrappers, receipts, lawn clippings, tax records, and lint balls. The more data you give your computer, the better it will work. To input your data, simply stuff it into the Bowie-knife gash.

Next, send your children to another room, or, if possible, another state; then plug your computer in. For a few seconds, nothing will happen, but then you’ll hear the computer start to process, or “process,” the data. Before long, you’ll actually be able to see it working, even smell it; after 20 minutes or so, your computer will be processing data at such a rate that your entire house will be warm as toast. In fact, this easy-to-make personal home computer produces heat so effectively that since I built mine, we haven’t spent a nickel on home heating, primarily because of the medical bills.

In this chapter, we’ll explore various techniques for reducing common household pests to lifeless blobs of tissue. Now before I get a lot of angry letters from ecology nuts, let me assure you that I am all in favor of wildlife, as long as it stays in its place, which is Africa. I believe that if God had wanted us to share our homes with insects, He would not have made them so unattractive.

Although the techniques described in this chapter are designed primarily for the smaller styles of pests, they will also work on larger ones, such as goats or people who want you to become an Amway distributor.

Termites are unattractive little insects that have developed a highly complex society, very much like American society, except that instead of houses they have nests, and instead of a president they have a queen. The queen can lay up to 46,000 eggs a day, more than eight times the output of the most productive U.S. president, Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). So we can see that termites are indeed amazing creatures.

Beneath the queen in the termite hierarchy are the drones, and beneath them are the workers, who are chosen for their stupidity. Each day, thousands of workers scurry from the nest in search of wood, with the idea that they will chew it up and mix it with spit and bring it back to the queen. The queen doesn’t want it, of course; nothing appeals to her less than chewed wood mixed with termite spit. So the instant they leave the nest, she and a few top aides swarm off to another house, probably yours.

The easiest way to keep termites away is to install a 6,000-volt, one-inch-high electrical fence around your house. This fence will keep out not only termites, but also most snakes. Of course, the snakes that do get past the fence are likely to be extremely angry, so it might be a good idea to wear a sidearm at all times.

Roaches are the hardiest form of life on earth. In a recent experiment, scientists detonated a hydrogen bomb directly on top of a female roach, and the only noticeable effect was that several days later she gave birth to 65,000 baby roaches, some of them weighing as much as three pounds.

Many people believe they can get rid of roaches by spraying them with poisonous chemicals, but this is utter nonsense. Roaches love poisonous chemicals. They’ll often gather under the sink late at night and lick the residue off the Black Flag can. The more chemicals you spray, the more roaches you attract. This is how your professional exterminators stay in business.

The only surefire way to get rid of roaches is to remove all the liquor from your house. Roaches can mate only when they’re drunk. Can you blame them? Would you mate with a roach if you were sober? So what roaches do is get really drunk, then have hurried, squalid sex amongst the filth and little rolled-up balls of grease and ketchup in the darkness under the refrigerator. The next morning the female lays 35 billion eggs and vows never to do anything so disgusting again, but by nightfall she and her mate are creeping up the side of the Jim Beam bottle again. Alcohol abuse is a terrible problem among roaches, which is why you see so few of them in positions of responsibility. So you’ll be doing them a big favor if you get rid of your liquor. It might also be a nice idea if you and your family squatted in front of the refrigerator from time to time and had inspirational discussions about the evils of drink.

You cannot simply spray toxic chemicals on children the way you can with roaches, because children represent our Hope for a Brighter Tomorrow. So the best way to deal with pesky children is to read them a few old-fashioned traditional fairy tales in which various deformed creatures ingest children who do not behave. At the end of the story, say: “See, Bobby? If you don’t want the great big ogre with eyes that glow like red-hot coals in the darkness to come into your room tonight and plunge his enormous yellow fanglike teeth repeatedly into your flesh, you must never set fire to Daddy’s legs again.” Or, if this approach doesn’t work, you can simply place your children in the washing machine and set it on Spin Dry.

The best way to get rid of mice is to set traps. To illustrate why traps are so effective, let’s look at what goes on behind the scenes in a mouse family.

It’s a cold winter’s evening, and Momma and Poppa Mouse are putting little Debbie and Jimmy Mouse to bed. “Oh, Momma,” Debbie cries, sniffing her little pink nose as a tiny tear trickles from her deep, brown eyes to her soft, gray fur. “I’m so hungry I don’t think I can sleep. Couldn’t we have something to eat, please?”

“Now, now,” sighs Momma Mouse. “You know how upset the humans get when we eat their food.”

“That’s right,” chimes in Poppa Mouse. “And frankly, I don’t want to upset the humans any more, because they’ve been acting mighty odd lately. The other day, they were squatting in front of the refrigerator and talking about liver damage.”

“But Daddy,” says little Jimmy Mouse. “If we don’t get something to eat soon, we’ll starve to death, and it’s Christmas Eve. Besides, there’s a stale old piece of cheese just outside the hole, and I’m sure the humans wouldn’t mind if we ate it.”

“You’re right, Jimmy,” says Poppa Mouse pensively. “I’ll just go outside here and pick up this piece of ...”