It's been a slow news week. When you're running stories like "Minneapolis swimming pools rated among nation's wettest" or "Como Park gorilla yawns, scratches self," it's a sign the holiday is nigh. Good thing I have an exciting topic I've kept in the back pocket for just such a slowdown, and, no, it's not the plague of caterpillars some are reporting. I'll start worrying about an excess of caterpillars when they start coming through the second-floor window.

It's this: They have reprogrammed every credit-card terminal in every store, so now you have to hit CANCEL all the time.

Some of you know what I mean, and have put down the paper and put a hand on your sternum, thinking, finally, "I am not alone. It's not just me." The rest are thinking, "Can you tell me more about the scratching gorilla, because that seems more interesting?" I will. But first:

We love the swipe-and-go payment method. The cards have cut down on that bane of the grocery store line: the Checkbook Lady. She'd wait until the last item was bagged before spelunking in her purse for the checkbook; once it was found, she wrote the check with a speed that suggested writer's block, as if she was searching for le mot juste for the comments field -- I know! Groceries! Once this was done, the amount would be entered in the register with the meticulous care of Bob Cratchit working the books under Scrooge's baleful eye, and then the checkbook would be returned to the cavernous purse before she moved an inch away from the counter. On behalf of everyone: You are why our ice cream has those crystals you get when it melts and refreezes.

Now it's swipe and dash, provided you get the card the right way -- the illustration always seems to suggest that your first read is wrong, and you need to hold it upside down and backward, and if you get it wrong you think "I am old! I'm like Grandma setting the microwave in 1976, when she put it on high for 60 minutes and cats were sterilized for a three-block radius!"

Then you sign -- NO! YOU WENT OUTSIDE THE BOX! If any part of your signature is outside of the box a red light flashes at the Federal Reserve, apparently. Signing inside the box is a crucial step in the process, which is why the box is the size of a coffin you'd build for a beetle.

Minor annoyances. But. A few months ago, I noticed that every checkout terminal asked for your PIN, right up front. Target. Walgreens. Grocery stores. Some terminals, programmed by people who can't stop laughing when they think of what you'll do, make you hit CANCEL to continue, because that's as intuitive as a green stop sign. Others want you to press CREDIT to escape the PIN screen, and if you press CANCEL because that's what you just did at the last store, you're back to square one, so you have to swipe your card again. The wrong way.

"Why is this? Why did this change?" I asked a clerk. And she shrugged: "It's a new law," she said. "It's named after someone."

Really? Like one of those laws they name for someone who suffered a horrible fate? Did some politician get up in a press conference and say "Jennifer found herself unable to buy arugula because the terminal had the PIN option nested under PAYMENT CHOICES, and that's why we're pleased to announce the passage of Jennifer's Law, which puts the PIN choice to the forefront of your vegetable transactions."

I asked a manager at my favorite grocery store, and he gave me the name: Dodd Frank. Every business in the country had to reprogram its terminals to comply with Dodd-Frank Inscrutable Complication Act. Businesses have to suffer, but Dodd-Frank saved some pain for the little guy, too. I have Googled the heck out of this and I cannot find the exact provision, but given that the law is longer than "War and Peace" and contains neither plot, characters nor the Napoleonic War, I may have dozed off here and there. But that sounds right.

Remember: If input interfaces make you feel stupid, it's the fault of the people who design them. I'd tell you where to contact them, but you already know. Check the zoo. They're the ones yawning and scratching.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858