The banks who bought these crooked mortgages, crooked in that many of the buyers were known to the brokers as being unable to meet higher payments, quickly “bundled” them and sold them off at a good profit.

Now, we have some interesting facts. Most of the people being told to pay up or vacate do not know that it is virtually impossible to locate the actual mortgage holder and the law requires that said mortgage holder alone can repossess a home with delinquent payments.

Many judges ignore this but more than a few are requiring the actual holder of the mortgage to appear. This is impossible to do in most cases so young couples and poorer people should have their lawyers, assuming they can afford them, look into this.

Also, many infuriated home owners, upon being tossed out on the street, have taken to doing damage to their homes. I am going to discuss this aspect of the crisis here. I will, as an exercise in black humor, explain methods for teaching the banks a badly needed lesson.

Smashing up the house is stupid and futile. People who take tools and smash windows and rip out drywall could be prosecuted by the mortgage holder.

Better to consider some of these small advices instead.

Perhaps one could get a screwdriver, six or seven bottles of crazy glue, several bottles of Metamucil, a six pound hammer, a quantity of fresh or frozen crab meat and several dozens of large, cooked shrimp or prawns. That’s all you need to leave nothing behind. Oh yes, you can also get a large sack of rocksalt, available in any supermarket for use in water softeners, and fifty pounds of plaster of Paris. And a brace and bit too. That’s all you need. First, remove all the light switch and electric outlet plates in every room. Put some crab meat or a large prawn or two into the cavity and put the plates back on. When the shellfish goes off, the stench would kill a maggot. The meat will not only rot and give an unholy odor, it will eventually liquefy and vanish.

Having done that, pour a gallon of hot Ritz dye into the middle of the largest wall to wall carpet in the house. A puddle that looks like an accident. The carpet is ruined and it all has to be ripped out.

If there are wood floors or other horizontal wood surfaces, pour some acetone onto them and the finish is ruined and has to be redone. If the kitchen or entrance hall has ceramic tile, take a hammer and crack one or two of the tiles. If you have a tile kitchen sink cover, knock out one or two tiles or knock off one of the edge pieces.

You can pour the Metamucil down the drains in the kitchen. It will plug up the pipes for yards. You can also mix the big bag of plaster of Paris and pour it into all the toilets and down the bathtub and shower drains. After the toilets are firmly plugged, take a nice dump on top of it. Then, when a disgusted bank representative comes to visit, and overcomes the vomit-inducing stench of rotting shellfish, they will lift the toilet lid, make a face and pull the handle. This will result in a flood of water and turds onto the floor.

You can take the brace and bit, climb up on a chair and drill a hole in the top of your hollow core room doors and drop shrimp or crab down into the cavity. The stench will be matched by the staining of the wood at the bottom, stains that will smell for decades.

Fishing leader let down into the garbage disposal will ruin it and if you keep the power on, you will burn out the bearings. If you can’t get the stove out, piss into a large, ovenproof bowl, turn on the heat and put the bowl inside the oven.

Also, if you plug up the shower or bathtub drains, you can always turn on the taps, very gently, before you leave. If this is on an upper floor, the water will eventually spill over, spread out all over the floor, ruining the carpets and the floors before it leaks through and causes the plasterboard ceiling below to cave in.

If you want to be really bad, rip the electric cord off of an old lamp and put alligator clamps on each wire. Then, remove the cable box back or the telephone line cover and hook the clamps to each terminal and plug it into the household current. Five minutes of this and all the phone and cable lines are permanently fried. Put the cover back on again so as not to alert the bank people.

When you have done all of the above, take the crazy glue in hand and seal up every door in the house. Close the door first. Then note that the doorknob has a part that is fixed to the door itself and another part, the knob, that turns. Pour crazy glue over this junction. It will quickly settle in, effectively sealing the door.

You can also take out all the window blinds and curtains. If they won’t fit in your new apartment, put them into a dumpster. And be sure to leave the front door lock untouched.

Outside, locate the gas meter and pour a large circle of the salt around it with a trail leading in a straight line to the street. Either turn on the sprinklers for a while, allowing the salt to penetrate into the ground and kill the grass, or wait for a rain to hopefully arrive before the bank. In either case, wait for about a week, then call the gas company and complain of a leak. When the service people come out, they will see the dead grass and just know that there must be a leak. What will they do? If it looks like the line into the house is somehow leaking, they will get a backhoe and make the yard look like the battle of the Marne was fought there.

And you can dump the rest of the salt into the flower gardens and scatter the bits of it all over the lawn.

All of this may take some time and cost a few dollars, but believe me, the results are worth it. Vomiting bank visitors and huge bills for refinishing the floors, replacing the carpets, and if you use crazy glue on the sliding windows, much trouble there.

All it all, not a sound to annoy the neighbors and you leave little bits of joy behind. Trust me, children, the bank will have to spend many dollars to put the place back in service for the market and when the new owners try to install a telephone or put in cable, there will be even more delightful surprises.

My motto? Don’t get mad, get even.”