The shapeless cereal box fragment arrived at attorney, Gary Brenniman’s office with the legal scrawl on one side and a postage stamp and address on the other.

“I didn’t know what it was at first,” said Brenniman. “Then when I looked closer, I realized that this could only come from the mind of Ronny Alvin Rigby. I’m a very fortunate person. This document will have a lot of historical value some day.”

Rigby’s last wish, not surprising to friends, fans and family, was to serve society… not by deeds or actions… but by donating his body to science. Specifically, Rigby indicated that he wanted his corpse to be used as a crash test dummy.

“The surreal and creative part of this story is that he didn’t want to wait until he died to donate his body,” said long time friend, Vilt Jamborlindt. “He wanted to be able to watch the video. He was a visionary.”

Jamborlindt, a self proclaimed “borned-again” (sic) body builder and lawn expert, told us about his friend, Rigby, as he blended a banana and cabbage smoothie in his artists’ loft overlooking downtown Blythe, California. “I loved him,” he told reporters.

Blythe is a stereotypical California post card community. Like their other California counterparts, Blythe-ians sip their lattes; drive their SUVs and rollerblade to their jobs. They tan their youthful bodies on the golden sands of this trendy, cutting-edge metropolitan mecca as people do all over California.

“Everyone wants what we Californians have,” said Jamborlindt, nicknamed “Jam Bot” by Rigby, as he casually toyed with a banana slice soaking in a bath of cabbage juice and raw eggs. His boyish face belied his years as he knotted the tails of the camouflage shirt around his midriff. “I’ve lived here since ever since the 80s. This is it. This is where I belong,” he said as he poured clamato juice over his concoction.

Rigby was well known in artistic circles as the Bard of Blythe. “He was a cutting-edge performance and Rap artist. As a white man, his gift was unusual,” said his therapist Molly Day Ron-Hubbard, daughter of famed feng shui guru, N. Ron-Hubbard. “He had a way of creating an environment that could clear your sinuses just by moving a piece of furniture,” said Ms. Ron-Hubbard. “He could do things with a bowl of ice cream and a magnet,” said Ms. Ron-Hubbard. Asked how she had met Rigby, she responded, “I’m talking about my father, not Rodney,” she clarified. “I actually didn’t know Rodney, but my neighbor did.” That neighbor was Vilt Jamborlindt.

“Rodney had this idea for the ultimate performance piece,” according to Jamborlindt. “What he wanted to do… and part of the beauty of this was that… well what he did was… he wanted to donate his body to science. He said he was… he had this guilt. He was the guiltiest guy I’ve ever known. He never really did anything… bad. He just felt worthless so he wanted… to punish himself, and nothing he did to punish himself… and he punished himself a lot… ever really satisfied him,” Jamborlindt told us as he fished the last bit of cabbage from the bottom of his glass.

“Like one day he felt like he’d spent too much money on a pair of shoes, so rather than taking them back, he just left his bicycle at the shoe store and made himself run home barefoot. It was kind of weird… not that he did it… but that it looked weird… because the pavement was pretty hot, and he had to kind of do this dance like Michael Jackson so he wouldn’t burn his feet. It was clever. He was a clever guy. He didn’t burn his feet either. Like he was floating.

“He was resourceful. Actually… he was brilliant. He actually thought to call me to video tape the whole thing so he could use it for a performance piece. It’s some of his greatest work.”

“He had this… addiction to videotaping himself. He was like John Lennon… or Madonna. He always had a video camera with him, and when he thought he was going to do something brilliant he’d hand the camera to me or someone else and I’d start shooting.”

“Anyway, he figured that by the time he got home he’d deserve the shoes because he’d suffered for them. He wanted to be loved. You know? And he thought maybe people might love him if he sacrificed more… and he’d be worthy. So… the more he needed love, the more he’d come up with these crazy ideas. But they really weren’t crazy at all.

He used to say it was his ‘Inner Jim’ talking. You know, like Jiminy Cricket used to talk to Pinocchio? That’s where he got his ideas. I think in Nam they have something called Injim. That’s where he learned about it, I think. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Injim yu tok mi nau,’ which is Vietnamese. He spoke Vietnamese very well. Very poetic. Very mysterious. He spoke many languages.”

“I’d ask him what he was doing when he’d get like that and he’d just say, ‘Just listen. It’s Jim.’ And as devoted believer in that inner voice, if Jim said jump, he’d jump. I never heard Jim, but then, I’m not Ronny Allen Rigby.

There were times you’d see him outside and he’d be all frustrated because he needed new ideas and he’d be running around in a circle yelling, ‘Inna Jim! Inna Jim!’”

Paramedics were perplexed by the man that lay on the stretcher as they placed him in their ambulance. Accompanying him on the trip to the hospital was a large woman with a video camera. It was his wife, Vilta.

In the report filed with the Blythe police department, emergency medical technicians noted that Rigby certainly appeared to be dead, “but not dead enough.”

Mrs. Rigby, hovering over her dying husband, begged them to pull over at the next 7-11 so she could buy some batteries for her camera. When she reached into Mr. Rigby’s pocket for his wallet, paramedics heard a faint disembodied voice, possibly coming from a 2-way radio, they thought. The voice repeated the phrase, “…In the other pocket.”

As Mrs. Rigby leaned over Ronny’s body, she incanted the phrase, “Injim not tok nau.” She explained that it was very possible that Mr. Rigby was being visited by the Spirit of Injim, so she would need to protect him with a magic phrase.

Paramedic, Tranh Ho, a Vietnamese immigrant was not amused. He was no stranger to incantations for the dead… and this particular incantation, though suspiciously familiar in its sound, was somehow unconvincing in its execution.

It didn’t take long for everyone nearby to realize that the camera-carrying Mrs. Vilta Rigby was in fact, Vilt Jamborlindt, the muscular 6 foot, 6 inch sycophant.

Canned at Cannes

For the rest of us, until Ronny Alvin Rigby’s next great idea bubbles to the surface, all we can do is wait.