235. DE MINIMIS NON CURAT LEX

From the Archives. (6 July 2006) My title, roughly translated, means the law doesn’t bother with trifles.

It does, however, consider torture chambers and journalistic censorship and phone tapping to be trifling, if you take the Boy Emperor’s word for it.

Meanwhile, his popularity is, understandably, waning.

If I were emperorgrrrl, I would make Ariel Dorfman and Garcia Lorca and Garcia Márquez and Neruda and Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness required reading and each and every citizen would have to discuss the characteristics of dictatorships before they could change the channel to American Idol.

Still, the Supreme Court did finally and unanimously agree that forklift operator Sheila White was discriminated against because she is a woman—and after only 9 years of this case winding its way through the system—so, who knows, maybe torture will be ruled against (again) in the end too.

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I’m taking a break before cooking some wild mushroom risotto and settling in to watch Snow Falling on Cedars with Danishgrrl. Cinnamon the cockatiel is bang bang banging on her bell—let me out!—as Danishgrrrl sits beside me, researching assisted-living facilities for her father.

We spent July 4 helping a friend get her house ready for the market, then hung out with Jamie and her daughter and some other pals at the pool. Got home just in time to watch the NYC fireworks on TV (where, somewhere in the crowd, Danishgrrrl’s three kids were smiling).

We were supposed to go to the beach today but it’s pouring, so we went vintage clothes shopping instead and boy did I find the perfect pair of bright red cowgrrrl boots! I pulled them on and the shop owner and Danishgrrrl both said, simultaneously, those were MADE for you, Writergrrl! So now I’m grinning every time I think about them.

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Meanwhile I read today that the video game Border Patrol, a web favorite, features Mexican drug dealers and pregnant women and mariachi dudes who cross the border in an attempt to reach the welfare office ... but only if the players don’t shoot them first.

Let’s take a guess which party endorses this game.

So tomorrow I must return to my sad work reality. It’s been a wonderful 3 days off and I’ve managed to not even think about the fact that I’m carless or how much this most recent repair will cost. Have also been looking around, trying to imagine another car I would like as much as my cute little lemon.

LISTENING TO: Danishgrrrl’s dog snore

READING: Susie Bright, who just pointed out that a perineal massage is nothing more than fist-fucking

SANG IN SHOWER: Phoebe Snow’s “There’s A Boat That’s Leaving Soon for New York, Cooooooome with me....”