Q. Given the potential for “collateral damage,” can I be killed while praying in a crowded church, synagogue, or mosque?
A. Yes, you can!
Q. Can I be killed while visiting a friend’s premature infant in a neonatal intensive care unit?
A. Sure!
Q. Can I be Discretionarily Executed while giving someone CPR?
A. I don’t see why not!
Q. My girlfriend and I have a bet. She insists that it’s illegal for an NJSDE releasee to be executed in a casino on an Indian reservation. I say that’s nonsense — an NJSDE releasee can be executed absolutely anywhere. If she’s right, I take her out for sushi. If I’m right, she treats at the steakhouse of my choice.
A. Try Peter Luger’s, 178 Broadway at Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. Order the double porterhouse and a bottle of 1975 Lafite Rothschild.
Q. If I’m convicted of another crime and sent back to prison, can I be Discretionarily Executed while serving that sentence?
A. Absolutely, but it probably won’t be necessary. Because you expose fellow convicts and guards to the risk of incidental death or injury, you will be one extremely unpopular inmate. NJSDE releasees who reenter the correctional system are rock-bottom on the institutional totem pole, ranked below informers and pedophiles. So don’t count on your new cellmate greeting you that first day with a lei and ukulele — the chances of your surviving 24 hours are nil.
Q. As an NJSDE releasee, will I find it difficult to secure employment?
A. Unfortunately, you may. Most businesses are reluctant to hire NJSDE releasees, despite the fact that they often make stellar employees. You’ll have better luck with those companies, nonprofit organizations, and public-sector agencies that are less squeamish about workplace violence, such as 7-Elevens, Planned Parenthood clinics, and the U.S. Postal Service.
Q. Will I be issued special license plates?
A. Yes. NJSDE vehicular license plates feature the “NJSDE” prefix, a specially designed logo (three guillotined heads chatting amiably in a basket, superimposed over the State of New Jersey), followed by a random or vanity five-digit sequence. State law requires that all parking areas provide specially designated spaces for NJSDE cars. Given the possibility of car-bomb execution attempts, though, these spaces are not always conveniently situated. For example, the Short Hills Mall in Short Hills, New Jersey, generously allots six NJSDE parking spaces, but they are located in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.
Q. What savings or premiums does my NJSDE card entitle me to with restaurants, hotels, sports and leisure facilities, and airlines?
A. Because there may be an NJSDE attempt on your life at any moment, you put the lives of those around you in constant jeopardy. Consequently, many fine restaurants, hotels, and airlines offer NJSDE releasees substantial cash premiums to take their business elsewhere. Simply present your NJSDE card to the maitre d’, or at the front desk or ticketing counter. Following a spate of Discretionary Executions, airlines typically engage in NJSDE No-Fly Premium “wars,” so consult with your travel agent about which carrier is offering releasees the most money to fly with its competitors.
Q. Are there support groups for people who’ve been sentenced to Discretionary Execution?
A. Yes. Local NJSDE Support Groups meet throughout the state. The day-to-day burden of living with an NJSDE sentence can be psychologically debilitating, and many releasees find the NJSDE Support Group enormously helpful. The fellowship of others who are experiencing the same dread and paranoia, and the guidance of specially trained counselors, can ease your feelings of isolation and significantly enhance the quality of your life.
Q. Can I be Discretionarily Executed while attending a New Jersey State Discretionary Execution Support Group meeting?
A. Absolutely! In fact, the chances of being killed while attending an NJSDE Support Group meeting are extraordinarily high. Not only are you subject to an NJSDE attempt on your own life, but you are at increased risk of being collaterally killed in an attempt on any one of your fellow NJSDE Support Group members!
Q. If I avoid execution and survive into my senescence, but then develop a fatal disease or disorder, will I — at that point — be removed from the NJSDE “active list” and allowed to die a natural death?
A. No. Your status as an NJSDE releasee is irrevocable and remains in effect until you are declared legally brain dead. Unless certification of brain death is received by the NJSDE Control Center, your social security number remains active in the NJSDE system, and if that number yields any of the triggering values, you are subject to Discretionary Execution over that ensuing 24-hour period, regardless of your age or infirmity.
Several years ago, an octogenarian NJSDE releasee who’d suffered a serious thromboembolic stroke was sent to the hospital for an MRI scan in order to determine the degree of neurological damage. As he was rolled into the tunnel-like magnetic machine, an NJSDE commando hidden inside, splayed stealthily against the scanner’s cylindrical walls, garroted the releasee to death, as bewildered physicians squinted at their monitors in the control room.
In a recent incident, an elderly NJSDE releasee was about to undergo a lithotripsy — a procedure for fragmenting bladder stones, in which the patient is immersed shoulder-deep in a special tub and high-frequency ultrasound shock waves transmitted by a machine called a lithotripter are focused on the stones and shatter them. As he was lowered into the lithotripsy tub, several clandestinely submerged NJSDE frogmen fired a salvo from their spearguns, killing the shriveled releasee instantly.
NJSDE operatives dispatched to execute ailing releasees in New Jersey hospitals frequently disguise themselves as grossly negligent physicians, thereby enabling them to move freely about operating rooms and intensive-care units.
Be advised, though, that if you die as a result of premeditated medical malpractice at the hands of an NJSDE assassin disguised as a grossly negligent physician, your loved ones are not entitled to compensatory and punitive damages. But if they can show that, during a Discretionary Execution attempt by NJSDE assassins disguised as grossly negligent physicians, the primary cause of death was actually the inadvertent result of a bona fide grossly negligent physician’s own gross negligence, then they are entitled to compensatory and punitive damages.
The most celebrated lawsuit resulting from an NJSDE releasee’s death due to concomitant deliberate and inadvertent gross negligence involved the renowned signage copywriter Leonard Gutman.
Although most signage copywriters are unheralded, their work is among the most widely apprehended language-product in the world. The lay public is aware that copywriters are critical in the creation of brochures, direct mail, print ads, radio spots, television commercials, etc. And some advertising copywriters have even achieved celebrity status in this country, commanding salaries commensurate with Hollywood screenwriters and best-selling novelists. Most people, though, tend to disparage — or ignore altogether — the role of highly skilled copywriters in the creation of the text-driven signs that we see everywhere around us.
Len Gutman was not only considered technically virtuosic in his craft, he was deemed a visionary genius. In the course of his career, he garnered every significant award bestowed by his colleagues, and was ultimately designated a “Living National Treasure” by the American Signage and Display Association (ASDA). His work is so ubiquitous and prototypical that it smacks of the primordial, as if it’s somehow existed always, independent of human artifice.