Excuses, Dishonesty, and Tragedy

November 30, 2013 by J. Nelson 2 Comments

A daughter’s collect call from jail interrupts Thanksgiving dinner

To look at Everett and Ella, you’d never know they’re the parents of a troubled, incarcerated daughter. They’re both successful in careers they love and they both espouse the family values with which they were raised, albeit modernized ones. Their home, where my wife and I were guests for Thanksgiving dinner, sits on a nice street in a neighborhood just about any set of young parents could happily work with.

When the phone rang the air at the table thickened slightly, as if a fly had entered the airspace. If the fly knows what’s good for it, it had better not land. A second ring offered a perspective on what it’s like to be the fly, buzzing in during dinner, which for Everett and Ella is a consistently early evening affair.

It was their old-school land-line ringing, and because, like a lot of us, they live and work by their iPhones, that meant that whoever was being ignored was family. Who else, besides mom and dad, first dials a land line these days? Regardless, ring number three provided satisfaction in the parental example they were setting for their four-year-old boy: no matter who’s buzzing around, during dinner, nobody touches the phone or the television. Read more

What’s a Mitzvah?

November 24, 2013 by J. Nelson 2 Comments

Performing a kind act solely because you’re in a position to do so

I don’t know many Hebrew words, but Mitzvah is one of my *favorites. Technically, it means “commandment,” but it also goes by the above definition, which is how it was broken down for me. I think about the word often ‘cause I’m almost always in a place in life where my right-now resources are relatively rich. Yet shedding comparisons, quieting the noise, ditching conditions, excuses, and all those countless words I’d use to describe my otherwise good intentions only leaves “because I can.” So, “help that person because you can” has become a personal commandment.

Right. Well, nobody wants to hear about how I threw a dollar at a homeless dude as I exited Breakfast Coma Café, so don’t worry, that’s not where this is going. You probably don’t really care what I do; more relevant is how one can be coerced into developing character. Read more

“Your Honor, my wife made me do it.”

November 11, 2013 by J. Nelson 1 Comment

Unprincipled enabler blows his integrity on whims of half-wit wife

or

Spiteful, shortsighted, lady-child steers husband right to jail

In 2010, weirdly-named Kent Wycliff Easter and his just-as-oddly-titled wife, Jill Bjorkholm Easter, sought vengeance upon Kelli Peters, a volunteer at Plaza Vista Elementary School in waspy Irvine, California. Among their many complaints was that Peters hadn’t escorted the Easters’ son (what his name is, I can’t imagine) from school to his mother’s waiting ~~Range Rover~~ car fast enough. Apparently there was a lot about Peters’s care-taking that the Easters didn’t like, so the bumbling A-holes went to town.

First, the two lawyers tried to get Peters fired from the school: FAIL. Then they harassed her: FAIL. They actually filed a restraining order to prevent her from going near their son: FAIL. Twice they tried to sue Peters; both lawsuits were dismissed. Frivolous much? Talk about diminished credibility as attorneys: FAIL.

And Kent. Our man Kent had been a Newport Beach law firm’s “rising star” until the couple’s campaign against the school volunteer culminated in a hysterically catty attempt to have her arrested. This, after the Easters had located her home and planted drugs in her car in the middle of the night. Jill Easter has since pled guilty and separated from her husband, leaving him to fend for himself.

Quality of life spiraling downward due to lack of character? FAIL. Read more

Bernard Kerik: The Wrong Man to Talk about Prison Reform

November 5, 2013 by J. Nelson 3 Comments

Kerik, former Homeland Security Secretary nominee, should shut up.

Bernie Kerik is no friend to those who have been prosecuted excessively for drug crimes or, for that matter, to anyone serving time in prison. By my estimation, his unlooked-for discovery that America’s drug sentences have created a huge underclass of offenders is little more than fodder for Kerik’s own PR agenda.

Here’s both barrels:

For starters, though Kerik did spend time behind bars, he can’t speak on behalf of the general population. A former NYPD Commissioner and the man who once oversaw one of the facilities in which he was detained, Kerik definitely did not live among gen pop inmates. He was housed in protective custody, a much less transitory and smaller environment. Protective custody (a.k.a. administrative segregation) is mainly for informants, self-harmers, perverts, and anyone else facility administrators deem likely to become stabbing practice.

So from my perspective – and probably that of every other rational general population convict – Bernie Kerik is free to speak only for snitches and kid touchers. Sure, like me, he’s entitled to a second chance and the opportunity to use that chance and his platform productively. But I say, consider the source. Read more

Breaking the Narcissist Richter Scale

October 20, 2013 by J. Nelson 2 Comments

Goofing on cosmetic surgery martyrdom and Justin Bieber’s toolface

If I look like Justin Bieber, I’ll live like Justin Bieber, goes the thinking of a sick, dumb animal.

When humans are psychologically backed against a wall, they often do silly things reminiscent of the crazed stumble of mad cow disease. Narcissism is like mad cow, in that infected animals’ brains and spinal cords get wonky after eating too much of themselves.

At 33 years-old, “songwriter” Toby Sheldon is one such sick, dumb animal, thanks to his diseased missteps in pursuing the surgeried likeness of Justin Bieber’s pout. He may not have succeeded in turning his mug into a copy of The Bieber’s, but he has broken the Narcissist Richter Scale and become this month’s poster boy for GET CHARACTER OR BECOME ONE.

Perhaps it’s unfair for me to pick on one of God’s mixed up creatures, one whose likely next move is stumbling in a circle until it dies. But God commanded me to write this blog, and I can’t be blamed for self-poisoning narcissists who shudder, shake, and stagger madly before my oncoming truck.

Maybe the rule of thumb should be that, if you’re such a delusional cosmetic surgery pigeon that becoming a laughing stock is a minor consequence, you should be entitled to special insurance coverage or perhaps your own island residency. I favor the island, a zero-liability environment where you can immolate yourself with a can of gas, invent a chainsaw radio, or stagger delusionally off a cliff, all free from the legal or social judgments of others.

“Walt’s Transformation” My Ass!

September 30, 2013 by J. Nelson

Meth dealers are far closer to prison

snitches than math teachers.

No, really. I promise.

“Get Character or Become One”

September 12, 2013 by J. Nelson 2 Comments

The release date for Where Excuses Go to Die has finally arrived.

Not until today could the story behind this highly personal motto be told.

My reasons are simple. First, with today’s official publication of Where Excuses Go to Die, I’ve paid myself back for the opportunities, experiences, friends, and belongings that the consequences of my actions took from me. Second, a prison sentence was the first thing I ever started and saw through to the end, and the long journey of bringing this book to market would never have begun if I hadn’t formulated and maintained a relationship with delayed gratification. Neither would certain realizations have been triggered by the input of those I encountered along the way. The late comedienne Lotus Weinstock, for example, encouraged me to consider developing my newfound voice under less isolating circumstances, and her advice came just as the meaning of the concept — having a voice at all — was finally becoming clear.

Where Excuses Go to Die contains a good number of instances where the lights came on. But this is the most important of all: Read more

Murderers Are His Life

September 2, 2013 by J. Nelson

Writing teachers are neurotic candy-asses. Not David Scott Milton

“All writing is re-writing.” Yeah, try telling that to someone who last wrote in blood.

Author and playwright David Scott Milton spent 13 years teaching creative writing at CCI, a “SuperMax” prison in Tehachapi, California. “Tehachapi,” as the facility itself is better known, has seemingly been around forever. It was built for inmates refusing to live by regular prison rules, murderers serving lengthy sentences, and men assigned to extreme isolation in high-security units, a.k.a. the controversial S.H.U. programs making headlines today.

Milton’s average Tehachapi class consisted of 15 to 20 lifers, most in for murder. I met him after he’d been hired to teach one of his classes about 80 miles north, on the Level III Yard at Wasco State Prison. By then, David Scott Milton was a veteran prison educator familiar with every risk, procedure, and personal reward his job could entail.

First off, for all the prominence of literacy and its rehabilitative powers, which we assume exists behind bars, you’d think creative writing courses would be better attended. They’re not. Though the power to save lives endures in the written word, a lot of the fellas incorrectly assume writing credentials come with the territory.

Yet you don’t learn to write in a prison writing class: you learn why it’s important to fight for the time to write, which sounds funny considering inmates are supposed to have nothing but time. But if there’s one thing true about prison, it’s that it’s one upended Hollywood cliché after the next. Read more

Where Excuses Go to Die is now on Kickstarter

July 18, 2013 by J. Nelson

Your minor contribution is a thank you to prison educators.

And the “first responders of rehabilitation” are why this book needs an audience.

I exchanged letters with each of the instructors and prison educators I encountered during my incarceration. As I was transferred from facility to facility, their words of encouragement were invaluable. They made me feel like I mattered, which is funny coming from a spoiled young adult.

The fact that they didn’t let go of the rope or forget what they saw in me has a lot to do with why I never re-offended; instead, I applied myself. Each teacher encouraged me differently, but they all said, “Never say no to a writing class.”

Investing in myself wasn’t something I grasped too well back then, so I took a variety of courses for no reason other than I thought I owed it to those instructors. They’d helped me discover a voice, which I used to make others laugh. But since my audience was mostly an inmate one (i.e. both captive and desperate for humor), I was steered toward disciplining my gift instead, which was freeing. Before then, I’d only ever viewed the concept of discipline in terms of religious and scholastic compliance. Suddenly it was no longer something you got subjected to, but a sharpening tool you could wield. Read more

There’s No Excuse for Being Uninformed

July 6, 2013 by J. Nelson

Video clip of Egyptian 12 year old goes viral, shames us all

In a street interview conducted by Egypt’s El Wady newspaper, this 12 year old proves that privileged Westerners should consider arming their children — not with credit cards, guns, and Ramones t-shirts, but with information about our changing world.