In the United States, Minor Jail Time Ought to be Replaced with Significant Rehabilitation.

Well, since nothing I say can possibly win this round at this point, I beseech you sit back, relax, and listen to a tale of an accountant named Jenarxo. Jenarxo was an ordinary man. He was the type of ordinary so ordinary that he merely disappeared off the ordinariness charts when he was compared to what is considered ordinary. (The reports are highly classified. They are most often used by national governments when they find the need to examine foreign foods. The most ordinary of all foods? Swiss cheese.) Jenarxo was ordinary in every sense of the word- except for his name, of course. He loathed his parents for the name. Why couldn't they have the common sense to call him George or Bob? But no, he was Jenarxo. Jenarxo wasn't sure where they had pulled the name from. Personally, he suspected that his parents had drawn Scrabble tiles from a bag. He had no way of knowing that he was exactly right. (59 points!) So from as early as he could remember, he called himself Bob. It was much better than any nickname remotely close to his name. He couldn't bear being called Jen, or worse, being teased as Dr. X. The kids couldn't leave him alone. So Bob withdrew- letting everyone say or do as they want. Bob wouldn't let them see how much it hurt, and Bob would avoid any kind of confrontation. So they left. Bob was happy- for a time. Bob kept his philosophy on life well into middle age. He married well, for his temperament: a bossy woman who needed everything done her way. Nothing was ever questionable, it just was the way his wife, Hilda, wanted it. But in the meantime Bob's mannerisms were beginning to annoy everyone he met. Bob avoided the elevator, didn't cross streets when he could help it. He never drank coffee for fear of staining his shirt, and he always used the stall. If it ever started raining, he refused to go outside. Lightning. And he never left the house without pepper spray. On one particularly humdrum day, Bob made his routine and absolutely ordinary trip to the little insurance company he worked at. It was a routine and ordinary day. Bob filed several reports and made a record nine artistic yet inexplicably drab paperclip sculptures. Bob was just finishing the tiny dull flag to top his miniscule monotonous tower when a somehow terribly distressing sigh startled him so suddenly that his mug spilled all over his front. (Thankfully, it was full of Mountain Dew.) "Looking rather bleary this fine morning," the stranger drawled the word ‘fine' so long that Jenarxo wondered if there would be anything ‘fine' left once he was done. The man didn't seem to notice that Bob was now on his feet, dabbing at himself madly with a yellow handkerchief. "…that coffee can normally put the zing back into a humdrum life." Bob was infuriated by the man's bored withdrawn attitude. "Can you imagine what I'd look like now if that had been coffee in my mug?!" The man wasn't phased a bit. "Slightly less yellow?" Jenarxo looked down and turned scarlet. "Well, I.. I'll have you know that normally that would have been water in that mug." The stranger gave an amazingly expressive sigh, and then said, "You know, the last person who died of a little hot coffee was lowered into a steaming pit of it during the Salem Witch Trials." "Really?" Jenarxo saw the sarcasm a little too late and awkwardly tried to pretend he hadn't just said that. "Who are you to tell me how to run my life?" he yelled. "How should I know if some madman might not leap off the street and try to kill me? " Bob sensed a sudden movement behind him with his mirrored glasses. "Argh!" and Bob pepper-sprayed an unwary understudy dangerously reading the comic section. Bob dusted himself off as the understudy screamed himself out of the room. "So yeah," finished Bob. "Who are you anyway?" "I'm concerned." Bob frowned. And I thought I had a weird name. Concerned began to sigh again and then thought better of it. He quickly scribbled an address down on a napkin. "You're in no danger of dying. Here, just take this, and promise me you'll follow up on it." Concerned heaved a deep sigh for the last time and then left. Bob frowned and then tucked the note into his pocket. What kind of pathetic loser would he have to be to hunt down an address that a guy named Concerned gave him? 6845 D Rendezvous Bob looked up at the craggy Victorian house used in every Frankenstein movie to date. A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder would have wonderfully completed the effect, but of course, Bob and thunder just didn't mix. Bob wouldn't have touched the ancient spider-hung door with a ten-foot pole. Luckily, he'd brought along a twenty-footer. Bob carefully prodded the door open. The first thing he noticed was the brilliant floodlight and neon sign just within the door: RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY!!! WE'LL GIVE YOU YOUR EXACT DAY OF DEATH!!! MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE!!! The second thing he noticed was the thick dust which encrusted the neon sign and everything else. The third thing he noticed was the old man hunched in front of him. For a few bewildered moments, Bob stared at the old man, and the old man stared at Bob. No, the old man was staring at the air three feet to his left. It wasn't an old man at all. It was a manakin. Bob sighed in relief. So, where did he go now? In seeming answer to his reply, Bob noticed the red rope which led its way throughout the large room. It looked like the place was prepared for huge crowds. But it didn't look like any such crowds had been here for eons. Bob was becoming more and more convinced that this was some joke. But Bob wasn't going to be surprised. He gripped his twenty-foot pole a little tighter, making it bob a little, high up in the Gothic vaulted ceiling. The ballroom (for that was what it was) was lined with other such manakins, all displaying the amazing, if sometimes gruesome, effects of old age. One of the manakins particularly had bad luck with the aging chromosomes. Its facial hair looked more like spiderweb, and its wax skin was particularly saggy. Bob reached out to touch it. Then Bob remembered how in horror movies the ancient manakin always grabbed the unsuspecting victim as he reached out to touch it. Bob yelped and jumped back, knocking over a the little old man behind him. Bob screamed at the man he had thought was a manakin as it (or he, rather) lay sprawled on the floor. "He..." the old man rasped. Bob yelled bloody murder. "…lp" the old man's voice wavering like Richard Harris. Bob continued screaming as the man as the man finished rasping. Manakin Man realized that Bob wasn't going to help him any more than the constant screaming he was currently offering, so he gave up trying and lifted himself up. "Welcome," he quavered, "To Death Rendezvous…" Jenarxo wondered if another scream would do him any good. But after looking over the man again, he decided that there wasn't much to scream at anymore. In any case, he had at least twenty seconds of echo for back-up. The man in question (still recovering from being knocked over by a twenty-foot pole) was rather shortish, and had a frail constitution. The most alarming thing about him was that his eyes never really rested where they should. They would independently spin across the room- a mad Russian roulette Jenarxo felt the silence become uncomfortable. "I'm—" Jenarxo began. "No no, let me tell you your name." The old man's eyes did a mad little dance over the ceiling, Jenarxo's hair, and the red rope in the room. "You are…. Hmm. Your name is Jenarxo." Jenarxo gasped and fell rather awkwardly onto his twenty-foot pole. "How..? how did?" "You seem to have written your name on the pole which you knocked me over with," the man chuckled. This was all the more disturbing, seeing as where his eyes currently rested. Jenarxo looked up at his psychedelic pole, colored flamboyantly.