From the Shelves of the Paco Library

This week I’ve got two books just for fun.

Disorderly Conduct, by Rodney R. Jones, Charles M. Sevilla and Gerald F. Uelmen, is a selection of excerpts taken from real court cases. As the authors state in their forward, “While the drama which takes place in courtrooms is frequently portrayed by the media, the humor is too often overlooked. It is all preserved, however, in the verbatim transcripts taken down by the Court Reporter.” This book goes a long way toward rectifying the historical imbalance.

Witness a few examples of our legal system in action.

Two police officers extracted a confession from a suspect by advising him the Xerox machine was a lie detector. First they put a colander – a salad strainer – over the suspect’s head and wired it to the duplicating machine. Then, under the Xerox lid they placed a slip of paper reading “He Is Lying!” Every time the suspect answered a question, an officer would press the duplicating button and out would pop a Xeroxed “He Is Lying!” Finally shaken, the suspect told all. His confession was thrown out by a judge who was not amused.

Counsel: Can you participate in an endeavor in which the ultimate result might be death by lethal injection?
Juror: They do that up in Huntsville, don’t they? Yeah, I guess I could do it if it was on a weekend.

Counsel: How do you feel about criminal defense attorneys?
Juror: I think they should all be drowned at birth.
Counsel: Well then, you are obviously biased for the prosecution?
Juror: What makes you think that, I hate prosecutors, too.

The Court: The charge here is theft of frozen chickens. Are you the defendant, sir?
Defendant: No, sir, I’m the guy who stole the chickens.

Counsel: And what happened after you had been listening to the music for awhile?
Witness: We got held up.
Counsel: And what happened? Would you give the judge the details on that?
Witness: Well, they told us to get up against the wall, throw our money on the floor, and drop our pants.
Counsel: And what did you do?
Witness: Got against the wall, threw my pants down, and threw our money down.
Counsel: I mean after you got up against the wall and went through – or followed his directions, what happened?
Witness: Cracked up laughing, because one of the other guys – guys in on it dropped his pants, too.
Counsel: Excuse me. One of the robbers?
Witness: Right.
Counsel: He took off his pants, also?
Witness: Right.
Counsel: And what happened as he did that?
Witness: They told him, “Not you stupid.” And he picked up the money.

Some of the bits from this compilation have been floating around the internet for a few years, but if you want to see the mother lode, you’ll need this book.

* * * *

Now, this is one of those books you have to be careful about reading in a public place. At least, every time I return to it, it makes me laugh out loud. It’s Non Campus Mentis, compiled by Professor Anders Henriksson, a wonderful collection of excerpts from term papers and blue-book exams prepared by college and university students. As Henriksson points out in his introduction, “The spelling may be avant-garde and the logic experimental, but no one can fault these young scholars for lack of creativity. At its best, Non Campus Mentis (a typical student mishearing of non compos mentis) illustrates the ingenious and often comic ways we all attempt to make sense of information we can’t understand because we have no context or frame of reference for it.” And among the malapropisms, non sequiturs, and strange spellings, one is occasionally surprised by a student’s (accidentally) shrewd observation. Here are a few gems from this hilarious collection (all spellings are as they appear in the book):

Civilization woozed out of the Nile about 300,000 years ago. The Nile was a river that had some water in it. Every year it would flood and irritate the land. This tended to make the people nervous.

Arranged marriages required women to accept a kind of mate accompli. King Xerox of Persia invaded Greace, but fell off short at the battle of Thermosalami. Philip of Mastodon captured Greece and then was killed in a family sprawl.

Plato invented reality. He was teacher to Harris Tottle, author of The Republicans. Lust was a must for the Epicureans. Others were the Vegetarians and the Synthetics, who said, “If you can’t play with it, why bother?”

Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.

Austria fought the Snerbs. The Allies versed the Turks. The British used mostly Aztec troops to fight at Gallipoli. Italy joined the allies and this was useful because of their common border with Australia.

The Berlin Wall was built somewhere in Europe. President Kennedy soothed the masses, however, with his story about “Itch Ben the Berliner.”

Actually, the fall of empires has been a good thing, because it gives more people a chance to exploit their own people without outside interference.

My eyes weep with tears of laughter, once again, as I comb through this unique book. Take it from me, if you’re ever feeling down, Non Campus Mentis provides an immediate jolt of joy.