I’ve always thought that I’d make an excellent judge. I’m constantly judging everything and everyone else. The government should just make it official and appoint me to the bench. Having everyone call me “your honor,” constantly, day after day, I’m sure it would go to my head eventually, but not for a while. I’m confident that I could make it through ten to fifteen solid years of judging before I would become totally corrupted by my own absolute power. But that’s a long way off. History can be a judge’s only judge, and I think it’s going to judge me by my judicial accomplishments, not by my consolidation of authority or long, rambling speeches that I’ll often make, totally unprompted, right towards the end of an oral argument, just as everyone thinks they’re about to go home, but then I’ll start talking, and I’ll demand everyone’s attention. No bathroom breaks.

I’ll start off probably as a local judge. Every judge has to start somewhere. But I’ll start radically interpreting even the most minor municipal laws in such ways that make it impossible for anyone to ignore my ambition. And I’ll make it to the top. Can judges run for office while they’re sitting on the bench? I think I’d be able to do that. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to run two branches of government at the same time. I could check and balance myself. I’m a fair guy.

But what about the robes? It would probably be a little hasty to just get rid of them all at once, so right before each case, I’d make a slight alteration on my outfit, an almost imperceptible shift in style. But eventually the judge’s robe would wind up completely reimagined. It would be all leather. Leather pants. Leather jacket. Sunglasses. It would be great. We’d all look like a bunch of Terminators. I’d keep the hammer though, or gavel, whatever you want to call it, it’s still basically a hammer. But I’d replace the regular boring hammers with replicas of Thor’s hammer. And I’d rig the court so that whenever I banged it down, the lights would flicker and go out, but just for a second, before coming back on. And I’d never address it. People would just be left to wonder what the hell was behind the mystery of my hammer and the lights.

Most judges tend to stay out of the public eye, not bothering to involve themselves in the national discourse. I would do the opposite. I’d go on elaborate bus tours throwing my judicial weight wherever I’d feel it to be needed.

Judging by my complete inability to keep up this pace of writing, I think I may have misjudged my topic today. I just thought, OK, I’ll sit down and write something funny. And I thought, OK, I’ll write about being a judge. But after like first paragraph I could tell that it wasn’t working out. Maybe it’s because I’ve already exhausted for the time being these themes about power and what I’d do if I had any real authority. I’ve written about being Mayor. I’ve written about running for City Council. And now judge? If I’m going to keep writing about imaginary positions of power, I should at least space them out a little bit.

I’m rereading what I’ve written so far, and I’d like to apologize. The thing about the robes is clearly not funny. And the hammer? I mean, I don’t get what inspired me to put that down in the first place. I just thought, if I can somehow fit the word judge into every sentence, then this thing would basically write itself. But even that idea doesn’t strike me as funny anymore. I feel like I started this piece off as a completely different person, and somewhere through the middle, something just switched, and I’ve realized that everything that I’ve written so far has been a terrible, terrible mistake.

So then I was like, well, I better just start over. But starting over? Man, what a waste of time. I said to myself, Rob, all you have to do here is just keep going, but talk about how bad the writing was. That’s interesting, right? But even that just isn’t doing it for whatever reason. So then I thought I’d write about my decision to keep going, in spite of my acknowledging my disappointment with what I’ve produced so far, and that’s the paragraph that I’m currently writing, so I’ve basically caught up to myself, and the only thing that I have left to write about is the sentence that I’m currently in the middle of writing, and once it’s done, it’s done, and I’m afraid I won’t have anything left to say until tomorrow.