Beer and Judges

MAJOR mistake on the choice of beer tonight. In the same sense that I've come to expect a wine label that describes the contents as evincing "an oaken finish with notes of chocolate and plum" to taste pretty much like every other goddamned bottle of mediocre plonk on the grocery shelf, so too I've come to brush aside the fine print on the neck-labels of microbrews as so much dandified fluff. I can tell a good stout from a bad one, know how much hoppiness I like in a Pale Ale (less than most beer-snots), and am comfortable enough with my prejudices that I feel no shame in telling you I've never drunk a pilsener-style beer I've liked. Just a taste thing, no biggie.

So when this Otter Creek Middleberry Ale that I poured myself just now, cheerfully blathers about its "hints of blueberries and elderberries," I tend to take that with a grain of salt. Probably doesn't taste much like otters either, dig? What I don't expect when I stick the hooter into the foam is for a pong amazingly reminiscent of something I'd expect to smell in a poorly maintained kindergarten refrigerator, or perhaps a hooker's handbag: A Kool-Aid finish with notes of Bazooka Joe and Crunchberries. Phwooooooey! Sobriety, thy name is Elderberry!

All of which nearly derailed me from my original text tonight, which was the fact that a judge in Oklahoma, the Formerly Honorable Donald Thompson, who was originally charged in 2004 of all manner of bizarre behavior while on the bench, has himself been ordered to stand trial.

The F.H. Thompson was accused by his court reporter, one Lisa Foster, of using a penis pump on himself while presiding over a trial, apparently for purposes of self-gratification. I may be a shade innocent for this kind of reportage, but from what little I know of these devices, which look a bit like a cross between a bicycle pump and a Van de Graaf Generator, they operate on the principle that exposing the male weenus to an intense vacuum for a few minutes while fully erecto potentis will cause it to assume a size fully millimeters larger and a color several shades purpler than normal, thereby impressing the very WonderBra off any Victoria's Secret model still in the room after this display. If this be self-gratification, then I'm off to the harem to volunteer for eunuch duty. I hear the year-end bonuses are great.

"No, look, honey, it's like it's got a huge hickey! Woah! Look at that, it's humong -- Honey? Hey! Where you going...?"

Now those judge's robes are voluminous things, and I wouldn't doubt for a minute that their billowing folds conceal any number of sins -- an adjusted bra here, a deliciously scratched sweaty scrotum there -- but another of Judge Thompson's alleged transgressions has me, a student of human eccentricity who'd put Krafft-Ebbing himself to shame, utterly flummoxed. According to the original charge, filed in June 2004, his court reporter testified that she saw the good judge "holding his penis up and shaving underneath it with a disposable razor while on the bench" (p. 3 of the Petition).

Now, I'm all for a well-tended garden. Let's get that right out in the open, here. I yield to no one in my conviction that a trig appearance is not simply a matter of a plucked eyebrow or the discreet application of the pinking shears to an unruly ear-hair.

But all that self-justification aside, I have a bit of a slog following the Formerly Honorable's thought process on this one. The trouble is, I can easily see, during the deadly dull proceedings of a murder trial in full swing, the old Train of Thought headed for Guttersville at a high rate of speed. It's a frailty I struggle with every day. It's an old dilemma: The Thought is Not the Deed, and that's where His Honor and I part company. For while I have an unbroken track record of success at fighting back the impulse to produce a disposable razor and shave my teabag during a vitally important jurisprudential function, His Honor has, allegedly, not. His Honor has had the perhaps unique experience in human history of noticing that the Garden was not Well Tended while presiding at a murder trial, and concluded that the meet and fitting course of action was to reach back into the Bag o' Bics in the Bag o' Tricks, select the appropriate tool, and Tend the Garden forthwith with neither let nor hindrance, in full view of the (female) Court Reporter.

As I say, I can't pretend to understand the logic at work here, but perhaps a little gedankenexperiment might provide some insight. Perhaps, like modernist authors before us, in the tradition of Leopold Bloom we might try to immerse ourselves in the F.H's inner-monologue...

Foster's Steno again. Good kid, nice caboose, roving eye. Like that, like that. Hope she keeps eyes front tho during Happy Time... Murder's a bitch, ain't it. Swinnnnnngggg... Or do we do that anymore? Not since Capote. Gnn. More like the Pentothal-and-Pavulon cocktail... Pentothal-and-Pavulon, Pentothal-and-Pavulon, doot-doodly-doo... Shit, that defending's got a sweet rack! Nips? See nips? FUCK YEAH nips she's SO READY... Awww, she'd do me in an Omaha minute! Oh christ I need it bad, I'd pay GOOD MONEY for some some Judicial Succour oh fuck....

NUBS. I feel NUBS. Oh man, Imaginary Victoria's Secret Model Number Four (brunette, 6'1", 42DD) ain't gonna fuckin' appreciate NUBS on the Judicial GolfBag.... Bet I can get away with it right here... No. Don't be an idiot yes you can no cant yes you can. Do It. I dare you. I DARE YOU. Foster sees you, it'll just turn her on GO ON DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT....

You can see how a man might get in trouble...