by Scott Upchuk

TORONTO.  (NP) Jason Luisjeans, a chronic sufferer of, fortunately, an extremely rare medical disorder — explosive diarrhea — had made it just in time to Toronto’s Eaton Centre mid level men's room when he discovered to his horror that he had given his last quarter to an opportunistic mendicant who had blocked his way to the facility.

After tossing his last quarter to the beggar who demanded he “make a donation” to the cause of 'starving Hittite children in Chechnya', Mr. Luisjeans then faced a life threatening dilemma. The stalls, the doors of which are coin operated, would accept only quarters and a sign on each door said that the facility was under constant camera surveillance. That was when, as the saying goes, the shit hit the fan.

After his arrest and hosing down in the Don Jail’s ‘Shower Room’ by a special nuclear decontamination squad, Mr. Luisjeans, who was garbed in a rubber body bag “just in case”, was arraigned at an emergency session of the Toronto Assizes. The prosecutor — the same one who prosecuted Karla Homulka — told the magistrate that in his thirty years’ prosecuting all manner of riff-raff, he had never seen an offender who had caused such widespread desolation and destruction.

“We had to evacuate the entire Eaton Centre of thousands of Christmas shoppers and alert all the city’s emergency crews to treat the dozens of dazed, shocked and wounded victims,” he said.

After a lengthy trial, complicated by frequent evacuations of the courtroom, the terribly emaciated Mr. Luisjeans was found guilty of seven counts of endangering human life through reckless disposal of his body wastes. The case has been dubbed 'The Schadenfreude Case'. Evidently, owing to the publicity given to the story. the mean spirited mendicant had laughed so hard after being told of the mayhem he had caused that he himself suffered a fatal cardiac arrest.

At sentencing, the presiding magistrate (several magistrates, owing to olfactory exhaustion took the case on a rotating basis), expressed sympathy for the prisoner’s condition for which there is no known cure. Also, he said he would take into account the fact that the mendicant who had taken Mr. Luisjean’s last quarter had never expressed remorse for the consequences of his mean spirited pandering and blackmail.

“Nevertheless, we must put society's interests first,” said the presiding judge, “and so as a deterrent to others, I sentence the prisoner to five years’ confinement, the entire sentence to be served in protective custody at the Bowel and Bladder Detention Wing at The Toronto General Hospital.”

This reporter has learned that “protective custody” in this case means that the man's hospital room/cell, will be hermetically sealed and its contents manipulated by remotely controlled arms much like a laboratory containing nuclear grade materials.

* Schadenfreude — a German word meaning joy at the misfortune of others.

BACK TO MAIN PAGE