COSTA MESA UNPLUGGED:

A short work week is as good as any to shake up the junk drawer and toss those rogue paper clips, homeless pen caps and half-used packets of Sweet’N Low.

Keep the pennies, though. Gas is not cheap (more on that in a minute). And mind those thumbtacks. Those little buggers like to jump up and bite you while you’re sifting about.

But let’s move on.

Surfacing for disposal in my junk drawer is the growing cast of positively screwy characters headlining the city of Costa Mesa v. Benito Acosta comedy.

Oil’s another one. At 140 bucks a barrel — and north of $4.50 for a gallon of petrol — I’m not sure it’s more oil that we need. More gas would be good.

The last bit of gradoo is fireworks. God bless ’em, and pass the punk.

Now, last week the California Commission on Judicial Performance — an 11-member panel of folks charged with keeping an eye on the state’s jurists — bounced Orange County Superior Court Judge Kelly MacEachern from the Harbor Court for filing false and misleading expense claims for a San Diego legal conference, and for then fibbing about them under questioning. She’s appealing the decision.

MacEachern, you remember, is the judge who pulled the plug on the Benito Acosta trial after it was learned one of Costa Mesa’s contract city attorneys, Dan Peelman, had failed to be sworn in as a public prosecutor.

At the time, we pitched high and tight on Peelman and his superior — Costa Mesa City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow — for booting the city’s case against Acosta and thousands of public tax dollars over a rudimentary technicality. This, of course, presumed MacEachern’s ruling was legally sound.

That’s why I beefed for an appeal of the judge’s decision on the dime of Jones & Mayer, the law firm that employs Barlow and Peelman. Either Peelman and Barlow blew it, or MacEachern did. In any case, Costa Mesa taxpayers had a right to know which.

By the way, a panel of Orange County Superior Court heard arguments in that appeal on Thursday. A decision is expected in about a month.

Now, MacEachern’s ouster says nothing about her skills for applying the law in the courtroom. But it does reveal something about her ethical compass.

So, add her to the cast of color in the Acosta matter. And Costa Mesans must feel as though they’re stuck in a Monty Python episode.

On another front, we’ve had Costa Mesa Planning Commissioner and GOP acolyte Jim Righeimer pastoring in his Rigonomics column on these pages about the stifling price of oil and America’s need to step up production on its own soil to help bring down the tab for a barrel of black gold.

In one respect, Riggy’s right. Ours is an oil economy too dependent on petroleum sources in countries ruled by complete whack jobs. Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria come to mind.

But more oil isn’t going to shave enough coin off the tab on a tank of gas. It’s sort of like wanting more cows without the means to tap them for milk. What’s needed are more factories to turn that oil into gas, plastics and every other petroleum-based raw material found in every gear of our economic machinery.

It’s just this side of criminal that not a single new oil refinery has been constructed in this country in 30 years. We’re talking 1978. You’d think the gas shock of that decade would have been instructive.

Guess not.

Finally, Friday is fireworks day in Costa Mesa. Celebrate that this city still clings — though just barely — to this great neighborhood tradition.

And do your part to take care of the privilege. Spark up only the safe and sane variety, and only on July 4, and only between 4 and 10 p.m.

Even better, if you witness folks lighting up illegal fireworks, call the cops. They’re the folks who are the threats to your legal front-yard fireworks show.

BYRON DE ARAKAL is a former Costa Mesa parks and recreation commissioner. Readers can reach him at cmunplugged@yahoo.com.