As yet, this information is unconfirmed, but my pentagon sources have informed me that the media's so-called "axis of evil" (i.e. NBC (with their hi-tech MSNBC division), ABC, CBS) have formed a military alliance to put down the upstarts of CNN, Fox News, etc. Cleverly disguised as a mid east war so that the rest of the world won't think anything is out of the ordinary, these agencies wage battle against each other. As it is the mid-east, it is expected that the terrorist organizations "The Enquirer" and "The Star" might well make their presence felt. I'll try to keep you informed if I find that any of this information can be authenticated. Until this time, please carry on normally, and don't panic. As a Bri/yan, I am sure that you will comport yourself well in this crisis.
Indeed. Should I receive any more inside information from my confidential source, I will immediately let you know, thereby betraying my source and the trust the source has in me.
~~~~~~
Yes, yes. The princess is back from the butt doctor. She seems none the worse for wear, though one can never tell when she will suddenly develop a bleeding ulcer or brain tumor or some other fictional ailment designed to use up every minute of sick time allotted her.
It cannot be denied that she is a mess.
And that term can be applied to more than merely her mental state. She's literally a mess. Ellen goes so far as to call her a pig, and though the term may sound a bit harsh it isn't in anyway unfair. I get the impression, working at her side, that she has never ever once had to take care of herself before. For example, she can't pay her phone bill without three calls to her fianc� and two to her mother.
And her eating habits are both public and disgusting. She eats leftovers stored on the floorboard of her car. She crushes crackers into a bowl, covers the crumbs with peanut butter and grape jelly and eats the concoction with a spoon like a salad. She has three boxes of cereal on the floor under her desk and when she feels a little peckish she pours a bowl of BooBerry, tops it with non-dairy hazelnut flavored Coffeemate and chows noisily. Last week I was alarmed to find the source of a distressing odor was a half eaten strawberry with a mold beard, squirreled away in one of her desk drawers and then forgotten over the course of four or five successive sick days.
As in many offices, ours runs on coffee. Before the Princess and I took up our positions, Ellen, the judge's secretary, had collected a dozen or so mugs for coffee swilling. The mugs belong to Ellen, and are laid out for anyone to use. I brew my own in my french press in the morning and usually bring my own mug, so I rarely make use of mugs. Judge Selma, on the other hand uses them every day. Sometimes two or three of them if she forgets she's already poured herself some joe.
Always before, when someone was done with a mug, they washed it and returned it to its rightful place alongside the office coffee maker. Always before the princess, that is. About three months ago Ellen began to notice that the mugs were disappearing. Souvenir mugs from distant Caribbean beaches and the three matching mugs she liked to use when the judges are in conference were suddenly gone.
One afternoon she pulled me aside. "Brian," she whispered. "How many mugs does she have at her desk?"
I pressed myself up against a wall and peeked around the doorframe to get a look. "Looks like three," I said. "All with lipstick stains." I thought I saw the princess stir so I ducked back behind the door frame before getting caught.
"Well, if she's got three that means four are still missing. I bet she did something to them. She's a fucking psychopath, Brian, and I bet she did something to my mugs!"
That night Ellen and I both stayed after the princess left. We searched her deskal area looking for additional stray mugs. I opened one of her drawers and caught a faint whiff of stale coffee. I knew I was onto something.
I dug around a bit and finally I spotted one. It was in the back of the drawer, behind a box of staples and a pile of binderclips, but it was clearly a mug, on its side, handle rotated up. I pulled it out and looked inside where I saw, much to my horror, what used to be about two ounces of coffee, but what was now a gelatinous blob teeming with life. I nearly dropped the mug.
"Oh, god. That's just disgusting." Moving the mug around had the wholly unexpected effect of causing the living coffee remnant to spring to life and fart horrible stenches into the surrounding air. "This must be how they get tear gas." I complained.
We speculated wildly about what this discovery could mean to our investigation. We finally decided that the only thing that it could mean was that the princess must be allowing filth to build up inside the mugs, and once they were good and ripe throwing them away instead of cleaning them so as to avoid soiling her milky white skin. It's the only thing that makes sense, really.
The next day Ellen, the maven of sign making, created a little bi-fold treasure which she placed on the mug tray. It said, "Do Not Take Any More Mugs, Bitch!"
Judge Selma raised an eyebrow when she saw the sign the next morning, but Ellen quickly smoothed it over with a curt, "not you. Her." and a jab with her index finger in the general direction of the princess.
I resolved, for the sake of office sanity, that I would do something about this situation. That I would make an effort to, you know, smooth things over. I decided to replace the mugs the princess had thrown away. But I didn't want to be boring about it. I wanted to leave my mark. So, I've been hitting the dollar stores and eBay and flea markets and novelty shops searching for perfect mugs.
Seven mugs have gone missing total, and to date I've replaced three of them.
The judge, she isn't one for noticing stuff like the images on the side of her mug. She's very focused and tends to direct her energy toward her work, not toward many of the other things we might find important. For example, she's as likely as not to have brushed her hair on any given morning.
It has, therefore, been my secret delight to sit at my desk and watch the judge walk by sipping piping hot coffee from a mug bearing the logo of the Mustang Ranch.
I come in every morning to find my novelty mugs on the back of the tray. I rotate them to the front, of course. So far, the judge and I are the only ones to use them, and yes, I'm the only one to use them on purpose.
This afternoon the judge and I sat in her office discussing the probable arguments to arise in a particularly challenging upcoming case. She sipped Earl Grey from a mug declaring the underused missive "Slippery When Wet!" while I lapped pumpkin spice coffee from a mug stating simply that "I'm with stupid."
It was a wonderfully layered exchange, at least for me. I sat across from a legendary jurist discussing the lofty ideals of the law while at the same time it was impossible for me to ignore the very base subtext I'd quietly introduced via mug-speak.
I'm looking for four more. Suggestions are always welcome.
Posted at 3:03 p.m.
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