Breaking News...Pit Bull Pille Pulled from Bully Pulpit

Smoot vs. Shopping Cart--a controversial landmark case

• A breathless Public Assuagement Director Zliplitt here. Determined Institute staffers, mere moments ago, threw up their hands on jimmying the lock on the oaken and iron-strapped main entrance-way to the Mt. Palomine Institute of Mysteries--an immense gateway that held up to barbarian incursions a millennium ago--and tossed, instead, the ornamental lawn birdbath (memorably configured like Frau Sarah Bernhardt as Salome holding a dish aloft, sadly minus the head of the religious fanatic, of course) through the north wall of the Zoology Department Aviary, releasing flocks of enraged and perpetually diarrheatic parakeets into the Institute parking lot where my new (and shining-no-longer) horseless carriage is parked. This method of entry was an option, oddly, that never occurred to the ancient barbarians, possibly because Frau Bernhardt was but a gleam in the eye of a relative 800 years or so into the future, and the Institute birdbath at that time was a 45 tonne block borrowed from Stonehenge with a bronze bedpan perched atop--the Professor at that time being no fan of winged things. I wander. At any rate, a flying wedge of staff members, headed by Frau Doktor Adrianna Zliplitt (my wife, yet only coincidentally named Zliplitt as it is a common family name in the Narragansett National District), entered the Institute (alarums blaring and tooting, perhaps tooting slightly more than blaring to a minor degree), stormed the converted coatroom now serving as "Der Peeper" Intergalactic Central (I wax ironic, as it is still called the coatroom and, although now shared, is still used as such), recovered our beloved leader from beneath a heavy wool Prince Albert and snakes-pail of interknotted scarves, and respectfully escorted the dazed and sleepless Professor Pille away from the ramshackle inter-dimensional viewing device that permits us to view the happenings on that foul place called "da Urth." He is now resting comfortably in the waiting room wing chair near the aspidistra, his right eye blackened with soot applied to the viewing vent of the device by some wit; later we hope he will take some broth and perhaps a chocolate dough-nut, then, if recovered, we expect a long evening listening to the Professor fornicate promiscuously with the lexicon. It is a tribute to his stamina, if not his good sense, that he was able to endure repeated viewings of our obnoxious Echo World over a matter of a few short days. His postings through that time represent a bad attitude unavoidable for any civilized citizen of the Empire; if anything, he was, as I wouldn't have been, far too kind and generous. Normal Institute business shall be resumed forthwith, and the handful of weeping interns who remained with the professor as a skeleton crew have been sent home to their parents to re-examine life.

• Above is a lovely coloured daguerreotype of a legal issue that will eventually be back under surveyance within our Most High Court of the Empire. With the retirements of justices Cornpipe and Bellybub, the Imperial affairs of law had been running as slow as thick molasses down a nun's chest-plate on a cold morning (suiting the citizenry--and above all, Papists--just dandy)--that happy condition of non-function will be maintained at least until suitable replacements can be hauled from bed, or dug up, and presented shivering in their legal briefs and stockings to the Imperial Senate Star Chamber and Rotary Inquisitors. The Imperial High Court is, in fact, two separate-but-equal courts each consisting of nine players who arrange themselves on a square playing field and use the head of an appellate lawyer (merely a figure of speech!) as the game play object. The court to the right (your left, or upstage) consists of jurists who, in regarding the landmark Smoot vs. Shopping Cart case, would use any opportunity to pet the Smoot or at least tickle it under the chin. The court to the left (your right, or downwind) would use any means at its disposal to overturn the Shopping Cart. At least this is the popular perception of the goings-on. This ingenious bicameral court system was created to waylay the endless nomination games and judicial deadlocks initially generated by that unwed-mother-of-all-court-cases, Smoot vs Shopping Cart. Each session of the court opens with the national anthem (Oh Boyo! What an Empire!) and the gratuitous and now-familiar ritual of the Smoot vs. Shopping Cart vote--9 for, 9 against--something the Honorable Justices get through these busy days in about 5.5 seconds. Anything else argued before the Most High Court of the Empire is decided by coin toss.