7/7/23: L'autre jour, our douche started backing up, sew we got out our trusty bent coat hangar that we typically use in such circumstances 2 snake the drain, butt, b-sides a few meager wads, we couldn't clear the clog. So 2day we upped our game. 1st we spent ½ an hour plunging till we were dripping in sweat from the effort. Air bubbles would percoL8 up + sum grayish water started 2 swirl down, but then it would reclog. Sumtimes rather than pushing we suctioned up wads of hair on the rebound... altogether we pooled up an amount abt the size of a rat, butt the drain remained backed up, more than ever, not even a slow leak now. Weed plunge + plunge, but only smelly gray water + residual debris (lord nose what) wd come up—we ½-expected an amphibious ½-drowned rat 2 emurge, 2 welcome us back 2 aNYCity. Weed switch back 2 our coat hangar + keep snaking, deep az we cd go, 1 meter or so down, but couldn't produce anything major. Sigh.

Finally we gave up + w/ tale B-tween our legs resorted 2 drain-O. A few minutes L8er we herd a gurgling burp + the drain cleared w/ a satisfying suctioning suck sound. But when we turned on the shower, it was still stopped up. So we poured the rest of the drano in + it gurgled + burped again, clearing the water down w/ that satisfying suck, but this time we let it stew down in the depths for 20 minutes, 2 really let the drain-O seep in. That worked like a charm, drained perfectly when we turned the water on. We screwed the drain cover back on + took showers. Ahh.

A few hour L8er we started 2 hear noises coming from next door— pipe banging, grunts + groans + ppl arguing, reminiscent of Delicatessen (1991), or that scene in Brazil (1985) where Robert Deniro emerges from the inner ducts in scuba gear. The racket got louder + louder when all in a sudden this snaking metal contraption came bursting thru our drain w/ such 4ce it stripped the screws off the drain cover. We couldn't help but 2 think of Alien (1979), having just seen it the nite b4.

Welcome back 2 Gotham! The &roid 5nake came further in2 our bathroom, spinning + flailing, we thought it might brake the glass of our shower so we ran next door where the super + plumbers were hunched over a bathtub controlling the other end of this contraption. When we told them their snake burst thru our drain they were nonplussed, nor apologetic, this merely led 2 an argument w/ the plumber + super over jurisdiction, the plumber disappointed, saying it wasn't a major enough clog 2 call in the big guns, that it was just a minor issue isoL8ted 2 these 2 apartments on the 3rd floor.... az if the plumber was FBI + our super the local podunk police. Perhaps this is the 1st of many ghost stories from The Cancer Castle?

Earlier 2day we did another remaphattan walk, W 97 thru W 91, getting it2 the "yupper west side," as Pynchon calls it. 7-8 miles in toetill, but we ran some err&s after making it 9.

We documented the sites in our original Maphattan Project post, but here's some additional pics:

96th st red line station on Bdwy

Gotham cliff dwelling on 95th + Riverside

getting in2 brownstone territory

B/c we love goats we looped back along the river 2 check out the "ribbon chewing" ceremony @ the compost center in Riverside park. But way tooo menny kids, so we didn't even bother 2 get a pic 4 our sister Goat Rodeo site, which weave bin sadly neglecting... we'll have 2 find them—Charlie, Cowgirl, Mallomar + Chico—on another day when they're actually working, in their natural st8, eating the brush in the wild parts of Riverside.

In the continuation of our continued POD chronicles, we finally got Part of the World up on Amazon as print-on-dem&. We tried Ingram, but got an email saying, "one or more of your titles are believed to violate our Content Integrity Guidelines." They weren't specific, so not sure what that was about + we couldn't get it 4matted rite anyway... Part of the World was done in PageMaker which we haven't used 4 ages so can't access the original files 2 re4mat. Amazon was smart enough 2 auto-re4mat, but Ingram wasn't. So we made the sacrifice of removing the blurbs from the back cover, as the Bozos said the font was illegible against that background. Despite this—in weighing the pros + cons of Amazon vs. Ingram—it's Amazon, h&s down, so far.

We also converted David Ohle's Motorman, after selling our last 4 copies in a matter of hours b/c SFUltra is devoting an entire month 2 Ohle on their podcast. Olé!

Still purging/unpacking, down 2 boox + surplus art (+ frames). Still w8ing on shelves 4 the books, which will also determine wallspace 4 remaining art. A few weeks ago we set up a mailing list + started ending these w/ a note saying email us 2 comment on a post, 2 try 2 make 5cense more inclusive (in loo of massage boards, witch we don't have the chops 2 implement in2 this hack hand-maid site... nor wood we want 2 moder8 them). Garielle (perhaps the only humun that actually reads 5cense on a regular basis) sent us the below photos the other day, perhaps in response 2 us airing the dirty laundry of our Mar-a-Lago bathrooms, 2 show the progress she's made in her one personal purging.

"three bins into which I have tossed old drafts and such to be recycled. These papers go back three decades or more"

"trash (mostly papers i tore up and shredded) that went out for the second-most-recent trash collection"

"trash that went out last night. (mostly papers i tore up and shredded)"

"boxes that are now empty but were full of papers"

"the papers I have kept"

Fitting 4 5cense, we thought, so figured weed inkloot them hear 4 the record. Weave probly st8ed this b4, but there's a certain satisfaction 2 purging/organizing, like ur doing your part in the struggle against entropy. 5cense is wear we per4m this analog 2 material purging, in4mation absolution, 2 gather our thoughts 2 move FWD w/ a clear head. We consider dreams 2 B a similar sort of garbage collection/processing. We haven't logged many dreams as of L8. If we did dream this past year or 2 (since Residue, where we logged dreams almost daily, from 2020), more often than knot we let 'em go. And our inbox is also inklooted in this mess... book orders, Sleepingfish submissions, casalingo deliveries, personal correspondence, etc. all jumbled in2 these posts. It's hour weigh of stain on top of things. Garielle also asked about our journals + other personal FX that we can't let go of, so we sent her this photo, witch we'll also inkloot hear 4 the record:

Not that organized, but what's left of the journals (which we finished transcribing in2 the 5cense archives a few yrs ago) are in the upper right corner (some may have fallen back out of site). There's also drafts of unfinished or unpublished books + notes 4 published 1s, artwork, cassette tapes + boxes of negativs that we crammed stacked in the middle b/c the upper shelf was buckling 2 the extent we though it wood break w/out the added support.

7/10: Yesterday (Sunday) we went 4 another remaphattan walk, extending the above jaunt, zippering further down to 85th st, then looped back thru Central Park:

who u gonna call?

pond a stone's throw from our place

Our shelves arrived so built 3 of them + then schlepped 2 Cobble Hill 4 our Calamari event. 1st met L + M @ Shan, delicious szechuan food. Then 2 Bar Great Harry. Not many ppl showed up, only 1 person (thx B!) that wasn't a friend or friend-of-our-friend's L + M (co-author of Residue), + a friendly Chihuahua that strayed in2 our area b/c he liked us better than their owner.

parting ways w/ M + L (they live deeper in2 Bklyn)

residual adhesion #1097