WEBVTT

NOTE 5. The Great Drain Debacle

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:16.000
Chapter 5, The Great Drained Bockel, September 26th, 2006

2
00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:21.000
In purgatory, there probably aren't any garbage disposals.

3
00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.000
People there will have to scrape all food remains into the trash,

4
00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:30.360
And if so much as an onion bit gets into the drain, it will have to be carefully fished

5
00:00:30.360 --> 00:00:36.680
out before the water is turned on, lest the drain clog. And also it will be as in many

6
00:00:36.680 --> 00:00:43.160
cities on the east and west coasts. The garbage will have to be separated into plastic, glass

7
00:00:43.160 --> 00:00:49.960
cans and food muck. So there will be no peace after dinner. No shoving all leftovers down

8
00:00:49.960 --> 00:00:51.960
The Theory of Money and Credit

9
00:01:19.960 --> 00:01:23.000
when sewage systems became more common.

10
00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:26.520
Nowadays, the Euro people commonly toss their trash

11
00:01:26.520 --> 00:01:28.960
into their own yards and try to cover up

12
00:01:28.960 --> 00:01:33.540
for this primitive reality by calling it composting.

13
00:01:33.540 --> 00:01:36.720
If you were a New Yorker before 1997,

14
00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:40.560
you were guilty of a crime if you used a garbage disposal.

15
00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:42.200
But the state finally relented

16
00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:44.080
and granted the freedom to grind.

17
00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:47.560
When my last garbage disposal wore out,

18
00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:52.820
The search for a replacement was a joy. You can get a normal household disposal with half

19
00:01:52.820 --> 00:01:58.200
horsepower, or you can step it up with a three-quarter horsepower engine, or you could

20
00:01:58.200 --> 00:02:05.200
dare to step into the future with extreme disposals with one-horsepower engines, capable

21
00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:10.620
of grinding up a whole pineapple or a sack of potatoes or a set of glass tumblers you

22
00:02:10.620 --> 00:02:12.720
were tired of.

23
00:02:12.720 --> 00:02:18.380
And so, of course, there was no choice for me. With my new unit there was nothing that

24
00:02:18.380 --> 00:02:25.180
wouldn't go down. That crab-leg dinner left piles and piles of orange crustaceans on plates,

25
00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:32.080
but in they went. Thanksgiving turkey remains, in goes the corpse. My double batch of muffins

26
00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:38.200
overcooked, but no problem, down the grinding machine go twenty-four muffins, chickens,

27
00:02:38.200 --> 00:02:46.760
workshop bones and even the much dreaded banana peel. It all works so well. Where's the downside?

28
00:02:46.760 --> 00:02:53.800
I couldn't see any. The next step, of course, is grease. Everyone knows or, so we are told,

29
00:02:53.800 --> 00:03:00.920
never ever put grease down the drain. But, hey, this is the modern age. Why take household

30
00:03:00.920 --> 00:03:05.920
appliance advice from people who are still living in the fifties? So it started with

31
00:03:05.920 --> 00:03:11.900
with Bacon Grease, Zoom. Then I pushed the envelope further and further. In the most

32
00:03:11.900 --> 00:03:19.300
outrageous act of disposal extremism ever, I dumped a full gallon of hot grease straight

33
00:03:19.300 --> 00:03:27.640
into the sink, and watched with pride as it slid lazily and effortlessly down. Again,

34
00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:34.060
where's the downside? For a time it seemed that I could get away with these sink sins

35
00:03:34.060 --> 00:03:40.540
forever. Then one day I noticed a certain bogginess. The disposal side didn't seem

36
00:03:40.540 --> 00:03:48.820
quite as robust. Water would back up sometimes before flowing out again. Then one day, and

37
00:03:48.820 --> 00:03:54.940
now it seemed inevitable, it stopped. A bit of plunging pushed it right through again,

38
00:03:54.940 --> 00:04:01.740
and I figured that all was well. But then the plunging became more frequent. I must

39
00:04:01.740 --> 00:04:07.540
have slipped into some state of denial as my plunging became weekly, then daily, and

40
00:04:07.540 --> 00:04:13.380
then several times daily. I had to have the plunger very nearby if I was to work in the

41
00:04:13.380 --> 00:04:20.380
kitchen at all. My conscience was telling me the truth. All my abuse of the system was

42
00:04:20.380 --> 00:04:25.940
finally catching up to me. But I ignored that quiet inner voice and figured I could live

43
00:04:25.940 --> 00:04:26.940
of Money.

44
00:04:26.940 --> 00:04:27.940
I lived this way.

45
00:04:27.940 --> 00:04:29.860
I was living an illusion.

46
00:04:29.860 --> 00:04:34.980
My dream of grinding a mountain of trash came to an end.

47
00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:38.020
Finally one day I gave in and called a plumber.

48
00:04:38.020 --> 00:04:40.460
He came and went, announcing that all was well.

49
00:04:40.460 --> 00:04:44.060
Fine, I thought, back to my old ways.

50
00:04:44.060 --> 00:04:47.620
But of course, all was not well.

51
00:04:47.620 --> 00:04:52.980
Then it finally happened this past weekend, a stoppage that would not be broken.

52
00:04:52.980 --> 00:04:58.460
As if to confirm the persistence of natural law, it began following another bacon grease

53
00:04:58.460 --> 00:05:02.300
dump. The water wouldn't move.

54
00:05:02.300 --> 00:05:07.820
I plunged and plunged until my back muscles were sore. Sometimes, if I put the plunger

55
00:05:07.820 --> 00:05:14.020
in the wrong spot, water would splash up and I would taste the muck. That combination of

56
00:05:14.020 --> 00:05:21.500
old garbage with the overriding smell of bacon, a tepid and thick gray-brown oily muck. The

57
00:05:21.500 --> 00:05:49.300
The more it splashed in my face, the more I didn't care. The muck soared high in the air, dropping on countertops far and wide, landing in my hair, soaking my clothes. Sweat mixed with the bacon muck and dripped all over my face. Blisters began to appear on my hands. But the pain was not an issue. I had to beat this clog. No progress.

58
00:05:49.300 --> 00:06:00.300
It was time to break out the chemicals. Liquid plumber gel, baking soda, lye, boiling water, vinegar, anything. Nothing worked.

59
00:06:00.300 --> 00:06:05.300
Should I call a plumber? Heck, I thought, what does a plumber have but the right tools?

60
00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:14.300
So it was off to Wal-Mart to acquire them myself. And I ended up with a dazzling little addition to my do-it-yourself toolkit.

61
00:06:14.300 --> 00:06:21.940
A fifteen-foot drain snake. This would surely do it. I put the snake down, a free passage

62
00:06:21.940 --> 00:06:31.700
for fifteen feet until I reached the end. No blockage. But still the sink did not drain.

63
00:06:31.700 --> 00:06:38.100
Despair set in. I imagined the crews from the city arriving the next day, with city

64
00:06:38.100 --> 00:06:44.260
officials and even the city planner. They would have to dig up my yard with huge tractors

65
00:06:44.260 --> 00:06:49.700
The sidewalks would be ripped up. Specialists would have to be brought in to assess the

66
00:06:49.700 --> 00:06:55.700
damage I had caused. There are probably fifteen different agencies that oversee the water

67
00:06:55.700 --> 00:07:02.180
supply, and they would all be allied against me. I would be sitting there in my kitchen

68
00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:09.100
alone, vulnerable, guilty. And they would be writing citations, wagging their fingers

69
00:07:09.100 --> 00:07:37.380
Another day passed, another day of tepid sink-muck, and then something struck me. The left side

70
00:07:37.380 --> 00:07:44.340
of the Sink Works Fine. Only the garbage disposal side is stuck. But both the garbage disposal

71
00:07:44.340 --> 00:07:50.820
and the other sink flow down the same tube. So how does this make any sense? And I've

72
00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:56.660
already snaked out the garbage disposal. So that can't be it.

73
00:07:56.660 --> 00:08:02.980
Then finally, a revelation. There are two tubes coming from the disposal unit. One goes

74
00:08:02.980 --> 00:08:19.980
I had snaked out the wrong one! But then another problem arose. I could not get the snake down the right one, because the entry point was hidden beneath the choppers on the disposal unit. How will I get in?

75
00:08:19.980 --> 00:08:26.580
At long last I opened the counter door. The pipes were plastic PVC. They all fit together

76
00:08:26.580 --> 00:08:32.540
nicely with large bolts that can be twisted by hand. I twisted the one that led from the

77
00:08:32.540 --> 00:08:37.540
disposal to the main pipe and gently moved it to the side.

78
00:08:37.540 --> 00:08:44.920
And there was the offending glob. It was just sticking there, sort of lifelike. With a fork

79
00:08:44.920 --> 00:08:51.800
I removed it. It was an accumulation of six months of grinding, but tangled up at the

80
00:08:51.800 --> 00:08:58.800
very front of the glob was the most marvelous thing. It was a big piece of green plastic,

81
00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:05.600
something shaped sort of like a washer. It could have been from anything, no one has

82
00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:11.240
ever seen it before. It might have been there for years. It had evidently fallen down the

83
00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:16.480
Sink, managed to slip through the grinding and then rammed into the pipes where it stayed

84
00:09:16.480 --> 00:09:23.720
lodged and began to accumulate muck. It might have been there for many years for all I knew.

85
00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:29.160
Once having removed this, I screwed the pipe back together and voila! Everything worked

86
00:09:29.160 --> 00:09:36.280
perfectly again. Better than ever! Three days of hell were over, after an operation that

87
00:09:36.280 --> 00:09:41.540
That took maybe 90 seconds. Unbelievable.

88
00:09:41.540 --> 00:09:48.040
But here is the real triumph. This little green plastic thing had expiated my sins.

89
00:09:48.040 --> 00:09:54.360
It turned out that none of my supposedly bad habits had done anything to clog my disposal.

90
00:09:54.360 --> 00:09:59.740
In fact, to the extent that some of those bones and grease finally caused a choking,

91
00:09:59.740 --> 00:10:04.700
that was a good thing because it led me to the fundamental source of the problem. I was

92
00:10:04.700 --> 00:10:14.700
Every civic culture in human history has attempted to distort our moral sense.

93
00:10:14.700 --> 00:10:20.700
They want us to believe that right and wrong consist in obeying social and civic priorities.

94
00:10:20.700 --> 00:10:27.700
But there is no moral norm involved in such issues as whether we own disposal units or what we put in them.

95
00:10:27.700 --> 00:10:32.700
Those are merely issues of technology that change with the times.

96
00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:37.700
Our only restriction is not to impose on others, person or property.

97
00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:41.700
Morals do not come from the state and society.

98
00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:51.700
Morality deals with weightier matters that measure our thoughts, words and deeds against universals that are true regardless of time and place.

99
00:10:51.700 --> 00:10:58.700
And in this time, in this place, we can grind our garbage to our heart's content.