We’re all going a little stir-crazy during this pandemic, but sometimes it seems that someone has turned the occasional oddness of the legal system up to 11. Recently, we had the U.S. Supreme Court making history with its first telephonic oral arguments, and all anyone can talk about is “the flush heard ’round the world.” In the midst of oral arguments during Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, and just as attorney Roman Martinez was arguing that the right to robocall is protected by the First Amendment, the distinctive sound of someone flushing a toilet projected across the court’s live audio. Was the culprit a tech-challenged justice who forgot to mute? We may never know, but the incident certainly gave new meaning to live streaming or “doo” process.

And speaking of toilet humor, a recent cease-and-desist letter provided a master class in the art of giving one’s adversary crap. Attorney Kevin Christopher took exception to the company Poo-Pourri denigrating his poop spray-manufacturing client, Turdcules at a tradeshow. In a very entertaining cease-and-desist letter that covered everything from Poo-Pourri’s insinuations about the toxicity of Turdcules’ product to its attacking of Turdcules’ bearded mascot, “The Craptain,” Christopher made fun of the rival company’s attempt to portray itself as “classy.” Chiding his counterpart at Poo-Pourri that it was hard to regard a company that sought trademark rights to terms like “brown load” and “yule logs” as classy, Christopher reminded him to “just remember at the end of the day both companies sell poop spray, not diamonds.” Whoever prevails in this dispute will certainly be flush with success, if not smelling like a rose.