ACUTE CASE OF SCHADENFREUDE

by Scott Upchuk, who covers toilets for the Toronto Daily Star

TORONTO. (NP) Jason Luisjeans (pictured left), 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 a mean-spirited 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 children in the Dominican Republic', 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. As the desperate Mr. Luisjeans had given away his last quarter, 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 body waste 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 had 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. “We had to evacuate the entire Eaton Centre of thousands of Thanksgiving shoppers and alert all the city’s emergency crews to treat the dozens of dazed, shocked and shit-stained 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 trial has been dubbed 'The Schadenfreude Case' (a German word meaning joy at the misfortune of others).

This is the first known case of Schadenfreude causing death (that of the bum, Brian Wales) though many of the lawyers and jurists involved in the case are themselves being treated for uncontrollable attacks of the snickers. A doctor who examined Mr. Wales's corpse said, "it's unlikey any of these will die as did Mr. Wales, because his booze habit left him very vulnerable to attacks of severe merriment.

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 Mr. Wales, the mendicant who had taken Mr. Luisjean’s last quarter, before he died had never expressed remorse for the consequences of his mean spirited pandering and blocking Mr. Luisjean's way to the toilets.

This he said, coining a phrase, "amounted to shitmail. Nevertheless, we must put society's interests first, 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 Mr. Luisjeans hospital room/cell, will be hermetically sealed and its contents manipulated by remotely controlled arms much like a laboratory containing nuclear grade materials.

Copywrited, Toronto Daily Star