Is no update a good update?
Shawshank didn’t have court today, but neither did anyone else. No one has court at all this week, he thinks they’re shuffling the caseloads among the judges. Whether that means there are more detainees now, or less judges, he doesn’t know. Right now, there’s nothing scheduled for his case.
However, he received something from the Canadians, a packet he tells me is entitled So You’re a Canadian Citizen in a Foreign Prison. Is it true? No idea. The packet had some forms for him to fill out, which he’ll do and then mail to me to look over. I’ll check them out, add any paperwork he might need, and mail it to the Canadians.
He’s also snagged me a copy of the New Testament in Spanish.
Detainees are allowed to file two inquiries/grievances each week. This week, he used one of his to inquire about whether the facility had a copy of Eclipse, the third book in the Twilight series. During the last two weeks, he’s read Twilight twice. The response he received said “We’ll see, but all those books look the same to me.”
“Really now,” he told me. “I could find it easily enough, it’s the one with the red ribbon on the cover.”
Happy Sunday. All holidays have been cancelled. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I’ve got a load of laundry in the washer. I made an early morning trip to Dunkin. I sold Shawshank‘s longboard, and grabbed a bagel while I was there. This weekend, I’ve learned a valuable lesson about Facebook marketplace: don’t offer a bunch of Wii games with the option to buy either single games OR the lot of them, because then you end up with a bunch of people all wanting Super Mario Bros. and no one wanting Wii Fit.
Not that I blame them, I didn’t want Wii Fit either.
While I’m still waiting for his paperwork from the Canadians to arrive, two letters from Shawshank arrived yesterday. He’s been writing almost every day, which is nice. I receive a letter or two in the main a few times every week, and he has an outlet. Yesterday’s letters were from last weekend and the beginning of the week. I can tell how he’s feeling based on his handwriting. It was pretty obvious he was upset and stressed about the hunger strike, or as he calls it in the letters, “the hunger games.” However, he was doing better by the end of the last letter. He’s proud of himself, in a way, for not just going along with the crowd.
On the other hand, he really needs some help with his choice in reading materials. In a way, I understand why he’s enjoying the Twilight series so much. It’s familiar content. The movies were some of those that we’d put on automatically if we saw them while flipping through the channels when we still had cable. We binged the series on a few holiday weekends off. His memories of snuggling under a blanket and watching cheesy vampire bullshit probably color his opinion on the books. If the library cart showed up with the Outlander series, he’d be hoarding those in his room instead.
Hold on tight, spider monkey.
This morning, I was cruising on Amazon, looking for a boxed set of the Twilight series. It was partly shits and giggles, because it’s ridiculous that he’s loving them so much, but also because he’s loving them so much. I didn’t want to buy him just Eclipse, as I don’t have the series at home, but I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on a set, either.
And then I thought, Fuck this young adult vampire romance shit, let’s give the man something a bit more challenging.
And that’s why on Thursday or Friday, he’s going to have a brand new copy of House of Leaves.
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