Six dildos is one too many.

Laws can be particularly absurd, especially when you live in Texas, a place not exactly known today as being one that elects the least absurd among us to higher, public, law-making office. The state's political machinery certainly puts its own, distinctive twang into Kafka's idea of institutional absurdity (that's the third leg of the stool, in case you're playing along at home, the others being cosmic and local).

Many of the most absurd of the laws our society's various systems enact eventually get overturned by one higher court or another for obvious reasons, making the laws unenforceable. Sometimes it even takes the highest court having the final say. But no longer having a reason to exist is not always seen as a reason to actually take the laws off the books by those who enacted them, so we're left with the artifacts of their absurdity.

And that's great news for me here at Absurdia.

Exhibit A, Texas Penal Code §43.23 and its "obscene-device" provision.

Texas' penal code has a long and glorious history, dating back to 1856, with a revision being made in 1925. Then along comes the 1960s, bringing with it a counter-culture of the sort rock-ribbed Texans in the state legislature watched with more shock than bemusement. So in 1965, the legislature decided the penal code needed an update or two and put together a panel to study the old statutes. After eight years, they rolled out their revision in 1973.

But the revision didn't go quite far enough for some walking the hallways under the pink dome in Austin, so it was amended in 1979 to make it clear that, “a person who possesses six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles is presumed to possess them with intent to promote the same.”

Own five, and you're fine (and happy, presumably). Own six? You're a felon.

How that particular number was arrived at, I haven't a clue, and the legislative record is moot on the subject. But someone wearing a tie inside the Capitol decided six was just one too many.

I've counted orifices. The numbers don't correlate.

Texas of course wanted the terms defined, and they were. Words like "dildo" and "artificial vagina" made their way into our law books, and intent to promote's definition included "gifting, loaning, or supplying."

Loaning? No, I won't be needing it back, thanks for asking, though.

It all passed on a unanimous voice vote.

The 1979 amendment resulted in an almost immediate prosecution of someone in-possession over the statute's limit. Possession of twenty-nine devices, to be exact. It took a few years' worth of guilty verdicts and appeals before the case reached the state's Court of Criminal Appeals where it was remanded back to the lower courts because of bad instructions given to the jury. Not because it was unconstitutional.

Twenty years later, in 1999, Representative Senfronia Thompson attempted to repeal the "five is fantastic, but six is sleazy" language. Her attempt was defeated in committee, so there is no record of her rising to the back microphone on the floor of the House to mellifluously intone, "I have six dildos, and I'm not afraid to use them."

Sadly.

In 2008, a group of "adult novelty" sellers came together (a poor choice of words, I recognize, even as I write them) to preemptively sue the Travis County District Attorney, seeking to prevent any prosecutions of their businesses. The D.A., Ronnie Earle, fought it, and the State of Texas signed on to the effort.

The case made it all the way to a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit where the sellers won the day. Texas appealed to the full court, en banc, but the court refused a rehearing (though not unanimously).

The collection in your dresser was now finally safe from the tingling-vibrating hands of Johnny Law.

But legislative inertia keeps the statute still on the books, and no one has ever explained why five is a magic number, but six is a bridge too far.

I make no judgements.