A Brown Commodity and the American Dream

During the trial, the media reported that Jaunita showed "no remorse" and at times there appeared to be "joy" on her angelic face and in her dark, pretty eyes.

Excerpts from Jaunita's statement to the jury:

I have suffered the process of jury selection, for throughout that process I noticed that virtually all of the potential jurors comprised the largest concentration of vacuous stares and ignorance that I have ever witnessed. The very few that exhibited anything more than a bundle of emotions were promptly dismissed and are no where to be seen in this courtroom.

The only difference between the prosecutor and the advertisements on the billboards that I saw, while dangling above Park Avenue, is that the prosecutor is less succint and colorful in his message. The prosecution is a walking, talking, self-promoting ad-man for the American justice system. And like all ad-men he relies upon deceptions and outright lies to sell his product.

Your American Dream shines on the surface and shimmers around its edges. And cast against the sullen backdrop of the world, your dream forms the perfect incongruity. But beneath its shining surface, your American Dream is stark in its darkness. Your dance to The Crap and Crackle Hop has deafened you to the torment of your conscience and the pleading of your soul. You Americans are very good at attaching colorful labels to things that you don't understand . . . all for the sake of convenience. But to understand requires much effort and careful thought. Understand this: I am not a little brown commodity.

No, I do not regret ripping Rich Bill's eyeball out of his head anymore than I regret my condemnation of the prosecutor, you the jurors, and your American Dream. You're so-called dream is an illusion brought about through the clever promotion and deception of the dream keepers. I now know that to achieve the American Dream requires much less honest sweat from the brow than it requires the abandonment of all self-doubt and the consequent leap over the threshold into the world of anti-doubt where one forever remains a slave to delusion and a procreator of deception.

You, members of the jury, have the American smirk of certitude all over your faces. And certitude is the most abject form of ignorance. And in your eyes is the look of pigs troughing at the heart of humanity. Solitude and certitude can never coexist . . . .

Juanita's ode to the jurors:

Journey down from your high top silly American race;

and look in your mirror at the lie on your face.

Citizens scaling mountains with gunny sacks

returning to their mirrors in their run-down shacks?

Those that break no commandments earn your scorn and hate

and those that break all commandments, live a prospered fate.

The angel that broke one commandment is in a filthy cell;

joyful and laughing; for a dirty white boy fell.

You stumble and bumble through life's cold uncertain mist . . .

Your solitude and certitude can never coexist

Rich Bill, a man of certitude (and a dirty white boy, too)

Rich Bill was so secure in the rectitude and certitude of his "mantra", and the philosophy contained therein, that he would take advantage of any occasion to espouse its tenets and demonstrate his contempt for non-adherents by pointing out to non-adherents what fatalistic fools they be. On one such occasion, while Rich Bill was in a lower-Manhattan "working-man's" bar with his corporate staff consisting of twenty-something MBA's, he overheard the man, sitting next to him at the bar, talking nonsense with a friend, about the-luck-of-the-draw and when your number's up, it's up! The man, sitting next to Rich Bill, was in his mid-to-later- fifties, and the right side of his face was deeply scarred and it appeared to have suffered severe burns, and part of his skull was "caved in". Rich Bill laughed and said to himself, "this pathetic loser looks like hell". Rich Bill turned to the twenty-something MBA, sitting next to him, put his hand on her thigh, his mouth up to her ear, and said, "listen to this fatalistic loser sitting next to me . . . he's a prime example of what can happen to you if you allow externalities to invade the equation of your existence". Rich Bill turned toward the man that looked like hell and shouted, "you make me sick!" The friend of the man that looked like hell immediately got up and walked over to rich Bill. "What did you say?" Rich Bill turned his head, smiled at his MBAs, gave them a wink and said, "Watch this!" He turned back toward the man and said, "I said that your friend is a fatalistic loser and he makes me sick!"