here’s a peek at gurlsquirrel – and my little cathedral masquerading as an apartment
(Pssst! Don’t let Jack Daniels see.)
Category Archives: love
helpless – I left my heart in Houston
I don’t know what’s happening there. I only know that I don’t know.
I only know that the wall-to-wall plastering of suffering there is torture.
My son? The leftover strands of my cousins?
I have no idea.
I only know that what is entertainment for most right now – in some form or another, like it or not – is the first thing that has scared me in years.
#ethan2wild
So in my helplessness, since I must do something, I will just post a picture of the street we lived on in Houston; first, on the left, my aunt, uncle, and cousins’ house. On the right was “mine.” Although I basically lived at Aunt Mary’s.
Their house
Our house
and this is how far I had to walk to find laughter, love, kindness, and the best food in Texas:
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Protected: For Shawn
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A Cold Front (AKA Spring Hurts)
Up in my nest when the winds Δ Northward they do not do so in a whisper.
The hints of Spring have been incredibly unwelcome, because with them comes the knot in m my stomach that never leaves.
Not a day ever passes without the constant presence of my Onlies, and Fall – I won’t say the A word – is tough, of course, but there is at least a little peace between me and them.
It is so different with E2W.
Einstein’s birthday takes the constant pain and makes it unbearable. It never even rests. Not for a moment.
I’m doing the whole syncope thing again, and other than just some permanent brain damage, which would suck, I worry that I could fall wrong – because I fall hard, just pass out cold with nothing to brace the falls – but because I know both from the generalized accepted truism and very personal experience as well, that losing a parent with whom you have not made peace, despite whatever lack of Give A Shit you have when they’re alive completely sucks, and I don’t want any of my 3 Onlies to feel that, but with E2W especially, I can’t stand the thought of him feeling guilty or enduring any more pain than he has already endured. He has had it worse than the other two, and he is so good and so kind that I just cannot stand the thought of him feeling bad, or feeling like anything is unfinished.
The feelings we feel for our parents are buried so deep, and like a strand of our core DNA unwinding, when they die you will feel feelings that you could never have known you had. Like a song from forever ago that you couldn’t sing if someone held a gun to your head but when you hear it on the radio you know every word even though it was only on the radio for two months twenty years ago, except that song is not a dumb song, but the very foundation of your emotional core.
That.
So I am going to say here, in case: if anything happens, I love you every day and you are sweet and perfect and I know that you love me. Nothing could ever change that.
But nothing is going to happen to me. We have too many good years of bugging each other left. The payoff is coming, my angel. It’s coming.
Plus, I’m way too big a bitch to die like that. Hell, I don’t kill easy. And I don’t plan on going any damn where until I know that you know all the things you need to know. I want you to tell me every story I never got to hear.
Now, North Winds, BLOW!
BTW, E2W, you like Twenty-One Pilots?
I fucking miss you.
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Florida appears to actually have gotten something RIGHT
I am admittedly always a bit terrified when I get any legal updates on any law having anything to do with Florida.
Especially when the first sentence of that legal update leads with the words
“…a Florida law adopted by citizen initiative“
Like most people who care about human rights, my mind goes here:
Self Defense Skittish
CREDIT: Mr. Fish
But amazingly enough, this particular update was not only not negative, in my opinion, it’s quite the opposite:
Charles. v. Southern Baptist Hospital of Florida, Inc.
Florida Constitution Article X, section 25 (Amendment 7), adopted by citizen initiative in 2004, provides patients “a right to have access to any records made or received in the course of business by a health care facility or provider relating to any adverse medical incident.” “Adverse medical incident” includes “any other act, neglect, or default of a health care facility or health care provider that caused or could have caused injury to or death of a patient.” Amendment 7 gives medical malpractice plaintiffs access to any adverse medical incident record, including incidents involving other patients [occurrence reports], created by health care providers. The Federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act, however, creates a voluntary, confidential, non-punitive system of data sharing of health care errors for the purpose of improving medical care and patient safety, 42 U.S.C. 299b-21(6), and establishes a protected legal environment in which providers can share data “both within and across state lines, without the threat that the information will be used against [them].” The Supreme Court of Florida reversed a holding that Amendment 7 was preempted. The Federal Act was never intended as a shield to the production of documents required by Amendment 7. The health care provider or facility cannot shield documents not privileged under state law by virtue of its unilateral decision of where to place the documents under the federal voluntary reporting system.
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justice
**For those uninterested in my alterations on the game of chess or other random free-flowing thoughts and want only to skip straight to changing the world, scroll down to “Justice and the Course of History.”
(as an aside i apparently seem done with capitalization. we’ll see if that changes. Okay. Fuck. Oh, well, it was worth a try. Guess I’ll just have to double-down on the vulgarities.)
And, while I – as citizen of the world – came on here to write the grand, world-altering legal theory of a lifetime; I – as Serene – was distracted by capitalization and instead now first want to write first about “how we play chess.”
There’s also “how we solve Rubik’s Cube,” but I have yet to introduce that as a disconnected tag or inside joke that appears “apropos of nothing” and yet actually has both literal meaning and quite a bit of unadulterated fun both in terms of story value and — and, perhaps most importantly — real life applicability for regular people. Okay, well, maybe not “regular” people, but regular, very intelligent people.
Yes, boys and girls, if you are one of the many real people out there in the world afflicted with Limitless Intelligence Syndrome – #limitlessintelligencesyndrome – or are either a card carrying member of the Intentional and Consensual Mindfuckers Organization, a devotee to their belief system, or even a person with a still closeted mindfuck fetish, we welcome you.
This is for you.
How We Play Chess
In actuality, it’s quite simple, really. The story of how it started is good but as my mind has wandered again, it doesn’t look like I’ll get to it here.
(Yes, I am one highly annoying bitch. Cute, though.)
The basic idea usually begins like it did with us – although as most good ideas, the genesis of it was really accidental – and that is by a single-order change in the objective of the game: in our case that objective shifted from putting the King in “checkmate” to putting the Queen in mate. No other rules were changed. So The Bitch – as I refer to the most awesome and powerful goddess of the chess board – still can move in exactly the same amazing ways as before, and the King is still limited as before, and everything else stays the same – but the objective shifts to going after The Bitch. Oh, as a natural consequence one other corresponding change is made; whether you choose to view it as making my original statement of a single-order change incorrect or not depends on you, but the King may be taken prisoner as the Queen was before and the Queen may not be taken but is instead required to free herself from the many and myriad entanglements of check that she so necessarily finds herself in, just as the King is required to do in the regular rules of the game.
And that, really, is what makes it so much fun and so radically changes the game.
Justice and the Course of History
And so now I will attempt to briefly set down my idea that could practically be accomplished right at this moment – depending on whether the U.S. Supreme Court could be persuaded to address the issue, which I believe they very well could be persuaded to do – of how we go about altering the course of human history.
Making a fairly simple change in argument via the lawsuit brought by appellees Sarsour, et. al. on the lawfulness of Trump’s “Muslim Ban” and seeking leave of the court to address a broader question of whether or not the courts should take international law more into account, something they actually already do – and how much they should take international law into account – including treaties and conventions of long standing recognition in the U.S. courts, up to and including the United States Supreme Court, we who believe in justice and humanity have a path available to us that could very well alter the course of humanity.
If there is anyone out there besides me and the set of lawyers who appear in front of SCOTUS in a near continual loop who still watch the Supreme Court and its jurists on a regular basis they will understand immediately why this is, quite truly and without hyperbole, a very, very real opportunity to alter everything. To change the future of the world.
And for those who do not watch these justices and want a head start: hint, his name is Justice Breyer.
But not only Justice Breyer. This court, as now comprised, despite the usual “liberal”/”conservative” labels, has quietly been doing some truly extraordinary things in the past 11 months. This court has surprisingly coalesced in ways I never thought possible. Hell, Justice Thomas read two opinions from the bench a few months back, and to be honest, I was not at all sure that Justice Thomas even had use of his voice box anymore. But the women up there are insanely brilliant, and both Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts have surprised me not only in many rulings of late, but perhaps more importantly, in many of the questions they’ve asked from the bench; questions that demonstrate beyond all doubt that in issues of human rights, both at home and internationally, they care deeply about justice and fairness and rule of law and that they understand the gravity of this moment in history and their place in it.
In fact, I say here now that everyone out there working on outdated assumptions about these justices need to come full stop and give these men and women a fresh start. We expect them to be fair minded and I am saying, as a vulgar, shock-loving heretic of all things, that it is our burden – BURDEN – as people of conscience, to now give the same measure of justice, fairness, and humanity we wish to receive to those from whom we fervently hope to receive it. I do not say that we should do it uncritically or that we might not, after an unprejudiced look, decide that they have not done their duty as arbiters of justice. All I say is that, not from some delusional wish or blind faith, but instead a wealth of experience in the weeds of this court – and not just as it is now comprised but historically as well – that these justices look poised to take on the most important issues that have ever faced that court, issues that will surpass the importance of everything else they have ever considered, because they will not only effect human and civil rights here but also internationally.
I hope that faith is not in vain.
*I am also including the comment I made on this post into the post itself directly after the youtube.com clip from “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Now, go play chess.
(Aw hell, now that I’ve more fully delineated the issue of How We Play Chess, watch this 2 and ½ minute clip again.)
“The Nerdy Looking Kid In the White Shirt”
Just P.S., I want David C. Frederick to argue this. And my reasoning is simple: he rocks. My new favorite SCOTUS case, feat. David C. Frederick, is UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES, INC., Petitioner v. UNITED STATES AND MASSACHUSETTS, EX REL. JULIO ESCOBAR AND CARMEN CORREA, Respondents – the link contains both the original oral argument and the unanimous opinion read from the bench by Justice Thomas (!!!)
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Fight Like a Girl: Angela Davis at the Women’s March on Washington
If you haven’t watched it, watch it. If you have watched it, watch it again.
