HE LOOKS GUILTY! WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE'S THE JUDGE?

I am not allowed to tell you that Absalom Dangleputty stands accused of killing Abdoulah Wagawaga and seven large transvestite friends with the brush-attachment of a vacuum-cleaner. Or anything that even remotely relates to the case.
Please do not discuss this egregious crime with me until either the trial is over and Absalom is taken out and shot, or I am excused.

More likely the latter, as even the authorities must realize that me sitting on a jury would be a travesty of justice.

Considering me some random other person's peer? Quelle chutzpah!

Instead, let us talk about a question they required all of us to answer in writing.


"Have you, or a loved one, relative, or friend, ever been a victim of, or a witness to, a violent crime?"


???


I live in San Francisco.

But they also wanted details, and they demanded to know how these things made us feel, or if they would influence our ability to be fair and balanced.
So I mentioned seeing the stabbing in front of our house in Valkenswaard when I was five or six, the knife-fight when I was seventeen, the forcible expulsion of a filing cabinet from a second floor by protestors when I was eighteen, and a shooting incident in Manila close by Ong Pin Bridge.
Plus several incidents on Broadway near Columbus, 1984 to present.

I did NOT mention that a corpse with half its head blown off floats mostly upright. Nor that a particular girls' academy in Mindanao still whiffed of shallow burials years after the Philippine Constabulary stopped using it as an interrogation centre. The two dead PC on the road to Buwalo, or the very neat row of exterminated NPA that we passed in the bus en-route to Sultan Kudarat - these too are minor matters. Relatively minor.

Violent deaths are very much like too much exposed cleavage, or sex in public. One's natural curiosity struggles with the impulse to look elsewhere, so as to give the victims a measure of privacy.

Indeed, your breasts and bullet holes are quite fascinating. But I've seen enough, and unless you come up with something truly unique, I will look away. Do you mind if I smoke?


Yes, I think I can be fair and balanced.

I just don't think that Absalom Dangleputty, Abdoulah Wagawaga, and the seven large transvestites, are all that intriguing.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================