April 19, 2007, 7.35 pm (Singapore time)
Man brings donkey to testify on own behalf
DALLAS - Faced with complaints that his donkey was too loud, attorney Gregory Shamoun decided to bring his case directly to the court: He had the donkey testify.
Buddy the donkey appeared in court on Wednesday. He walked to the bench and stared at the jury, the picture of a gentle, well-mannered creature and not the loud, aggressive animal he had been accused of being.
Mr Shamoun was in a dispute with oilman John Cantrell, who had complained to the city about a storage shed Mr Shamoun was building in his backyard in Dallas. Mr Cantrell said Mr Shamoun retaliated by bringing the donkey from his ranch and putting him in the backyard.
Mr Cantrell complained of donkey noise and manure piles.
'They bray a lot any time day or night. You never know when they're going to cut loose,' he testified.
Despite the donkey's appearance, neither jurors nor Buddy had the last say - the neighbors settled their dispute while jurors deliberated. -- AP
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Nukes, 3 slit throats in a bible publishing house in Turkey, 32 dead students, followed by astonishingly insensitive hoaxes and threats, and so on. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise how appallingly screwed up humans are or can be, that humans are just so much more responsible for the world's shite than we actually think. And it doesn't take alot to realise that everyone's actually slowly going crazy deep down inside without knowing it, the minute they leave the birth canal... Though, ironically, it takes a lot to concede that you might be one of them too. Just, suppressing it, shoving it away thinking it's fine you'll get over it, letting time heal, sometimes not even intentionally hiding it away... but somehow react in a strange reflex way to the same kind of words, same kind of incidents - same old issues, same old wounds, same old hidden story. Just how much suppression is there around us, how much hatred, bitter anger?
It's easy to dismiss these atrocities as barbarisms of 'other people'... but it doesn't take alot to see yourself in those crimes either. Anger's still anger, and hate still hate; regardless of its scale the little gripes from donkey manure to court accusations amount to video diatribes and bomb blastings eventually. What more can be said, what more can be done? No evacuation or gun policy or brainwashing's gonna work, no mere effort of a human - flesh and failure embodied - and especially when the very fault lies in the crack of our souls to begin with. And no amount of treatment and spa sessions and yoga and moral philosophy's gonna cement it up even if they help a little...
the world can still be a beautiful place nevertheless.
"You keep me smiling... You keep me safe in a crazy world" - Corrinne May
