4/14/23 > Still in house-selling hell. Last week sum 1 made us an offer... + then came the inspection. Here we were worried about show-stoppers like the roof or HVAC, but their main concern was the heating floor in the basement. We scarcely even remembered our place had such a thing, the previous owners bragged about how great these heated tiles were when we 1st bought the place, but they just seemed like a decadent waste of electricity. I mean, if your feet are cold walking around the kitchen barefoot on a cold night, why not just put on sum fucking slippers? Throw down a rug? When we 1st moved in we looked at the console 2 try 2 figure out how 2 turn them on, but gave up after a few minutes, especially when we saw from the manual that U had 2 turn them on at least 3 hours in advance b4 U cd feel them. Granted, we also had our gym down in the basement + had our dining room on the middle floor. But this potential buyer really wanted them to work so after the initial inspection they hired an electrician 4 a secondary inspection (meanwhile we gathered up all the documentation + spare parts we could find). Here we were thinking that that day of the inspection we would have a definite answer of yay or nay, but it was prolonged... + prolonged further still as this electrician wasn't equipped to diagnose these heated tiles, evidently U need some fancy expensive gadget called a megger meter, that records the resistance of insulation.

So we had to extend the inspection contingency another 72 hrs + after consulting w/ the previous owners, we called in an electrician they'd used that was well-versed in these floors + armed w/ necessary fancy troubleshooting gadgets. Yet still, they were not able to determine where the issue was, they were pretty sure there was nothing wrong w/ the circuitry in the floor/tiles themselves, that it was w/ the console/thermostat, which of course are a hard-to-find specialty item. So more waiting, DocuSigning extensions to these inspection contingencies (+ meanwhile not showing 2 any 1 else). We had ½ a mind 2 tell this person 2 shove the heating tiles up their arse, they're a frickin' luxury item 4 chrisake! But another ½ of us felt we'd gone this far, we just needed 2 jump thru this last hoop, the last 100 feet of a marathon. But the hoop kept expanding just out of reach. Our argument about it being a luxury item was rebutted by saying there needed to be adequate heating, even though we have central heating, a fully functional HVAC. Complaining how the basement is a little colder than the upstairs... isn't that just physics 101?! Heat rises. This is the 3rd row home we've lived in in D.C. + they've all been like that, cooler in the basement, warmer on the top floor, it's the way of life 4 vertical living. We equalize az much as we can by closing the vents upstairs in the winter + then come summer do the opposite, close the vents downstairs + open them upstairs. Besides, this isn't Boston, it's D.C.! It doesn't even get that cold, most of the year we appreciate that it's cooler down there. This kept festering in us until finally (before even the final attempt to fix) we told the buyer (thru our agent) that regardless, we weren't negotiating nothing (we'd just rewatched Godfather I + II), that they just needed to accept it as is.

And their cold feet got colder. It gets back 2 what we were talking about in a recent post, how it's not us or the agent that is gonna sell the house, the HOUSE is gonna sell itself, it's gonna find its buyer + this house doesn't want this primadonna 2 live here. When the house finds a suitable buyer it will seduce them + that person will have 2 respect this house + accept it 4 what it is, which is not a typical house, not neutralized 4 resale like most everything else U see on Redfin. It's fancy in sum regards (wallpaper, a fireplace (that we didn't use once), etc.) but no decadent luxuries such as functional heated floors. And its got its funky quirks—a kitchen in the basement, takes 3 minutes for hot water to reach upstairs, roof access via a telescope ladder, etc.—that sum 1 will appreciate (we did). Absurd that this person would not want 2 buy a million dollar home b/c of a broken heating tile (or really, it's a $100 console, that we're waiting 2 replace as we speak). Reminiscent of how the ½ a billion dollar Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed in 1 fell swoop by a knicked heating tile, or how the Challenger disaster was caused by an O-ring not tested to work under those conditions.

Feynman ripping NASA a new A-hole by plopping an O-ring in a Dixie cup of H₂O

Also got us to thinking about decadence (ala Nietzsche), how (ala Cioran + Harry Crosby) it's rooted in decay, a dance of decay. In any event, a lot of our waking hours have been consumed by worrying about such absurd petty shit + wondering how humanity got 2 be so stupid, hard to focus on much else. We did, however, post the opening sequence from 1/ 4 i am ĐNA in Sleepingfish, this particular page below was influenzed by this dream about Laika the dog (that we then turned in2 a song), speaking of space travel...

Lately we've been reading az a distraction. That said, we're distracted when we read. Red Dark Neighborhood by Vanessa Onwuemezi + then started in on A Field Companion for Wandering by Conner Bouchard-Roberts, both served well to let our mind wander. Besides Godfather I + II, haven't watched much movie-wise b-sides the latest episode of Succession, which was intense. My chips are still on Greg, az being the 1 holding the cards in the ƎNĐ.