IN DEFENSE OF ISIS

09/24/2014 by J. Nelson

No, Isis the cat, not the beheading berzerkers in Vietcong jammies!

Natalie, a friend of mine, has a cat named Isis. Now, after a comment a neighbor lady made, she wants to change it, and that causes my brain to reach Critical Processing Failure. So in defense of Isis, the cat, I’m now determined to convince my friend to shave an Islamic crescent moon into the animal’s fur.

Apparently the neighbor said something about the cat confusing kids, who are just learning about the militants. At any rate, that’s about as far as Natalie got before my hands and arms took on a life of their own, flailing like flies were trying to get into my mouth and land on my eyeballs.

“Wait, wait, wait…she said WHAT!?”

What low-watt adults are these, inflicting the media’s 24-hour terrorist hostility feed onto children? Show me kids who are so ruinously strobed by ISIS media hype that they’d confuse a house cat with the Islamic bogeyman and I’ll show you parents who need an ass-kicking in a parking lot.

I had to sit down and be convinced not to confront the woman, demand she never speak to Natalie again, and wish mortuary cannibalism upon her.

But it was Nat’s failure to laugh that gave me pause. She’d actually taken the woman somewhat seriously, I could tell, which re-prioritized the mission at hand. I realized I needed to listen, to offer Natalie counsel. Read more

On the Concerns of Others…

09/14/2014 by J. Nelson

Deny this ugly age of self mania; recognize the concerns of others.

Something I dislike about myself is that I’m occasionally caught off guard by my reaction to the concerns of others. I spend so much time pretending to care that when it’s real, my whole being awakens. And it doesn’t matter if my bureaucratic, rubber-stamping brain comes along or not.

Finding myself 100% unreservedly happy for someone else’s joy, for instance, makes me need to find a chair, fast; to think and relish the awareness before it fades. Sadly, I can only remember nine or ten instances in which I recognized the strange sensation of wanting to sing out-loud because something good happened to someone else.

It works the other way too, like it did with Big Wednesday, a well-fed, fifty-something homeless guy with sun-bleached dreads. I hadn’t seen him when I pulled into the gas station, but suddenly he was at my bumper. Read more

A Billboard for Brainlessness Pt. 2

08/17/2014 by J. Nelson

Jeffrey Chapman’s trial begins next week. He’ll wear a turtleneck.

For those unfamiliar with the young man’s plight, Jeffrey Wade Chapman is an accused murderer who doesn’t want to start his murder trial with the word “MURDER” tattooed across his neck. In April of this year, I mistakenly closed a previous Chapman entry, “A Billboard for Brainlessness,” with, “as far as most are concerned, that’s the end of his story.”

Turns out, not only does Chapman’s saga continue (the trial was postponed pending his court-ordered mental evaluation), I think I’ve figured out a way for his defense to turn that tattooed frown upside down!

Chapman’s attorney previously appealed to the court to allow a professional tattoo artist into the jail to obscure, alter, or remove the tattoo from his client’s throat, but he’d been turned down. So, between the prosecutor, the judge, and the sheriff running the jail, alternate ideas of a turtleneck and fake bandages had been proposed. The turtleneck won, which I find disappointing ’cause I really wanted to see the bandage idea in action. Imagine the distraction in the courtroom!

The sheer volume of gauze and medical tape required would make it tough to keep a straight face. How could the defendant – or anyone for that matter – manage to behave as if it wasn’t there? Watching someone otherwise unimpeded by the serious injury such a large bandage implies would be off the hook. I can just imagine Chapman, mid-proceedings, jabbing his fingers between fraying layers of gauze to get at an itch and expecting no one to notice he has no difficulty responding verbally to the judge’s questions – again despite his apparently sizable wound.

That’s not to say the turtleneck won’t be an elephant in the room on its own. But now I believe Chapman would be best served by leaving the tattoo exposed. In fact, it could be one of those crazy-daring defense maneuvers silly jurors love to be charmed by.