A gentleman's name should appear in the newspaper only three times: When he's born, when he marries, and when he dies.  And above all, we are gentlemen first.

The words above, I take ever so seriously.  It is the one thing in my life that I’m very proud of, my steadfast respect of others.  Always be a gentleman.  I don’t know if my parents taught me this or if it’s something you are innately born with.  In either event, I treasure this quality I ‘m blessed to possess and work hard to instill such ideals in my own two sons.  Never, do I want them to disrespect someone.  Especially at a horrific and unfathomable level like sexual assault.

I’m tired of reading the name Brock Turner in the media.  He’s not a gentleman.  He’s not a man.  He’s not even human.  Hell, I challenge you to tell me he’s even an animal; my money is on slime.
 

I’m so sickened by the complete and utter breakdown of our legal system, the perceived bias of university alums and undergrads and the larger unspeakable bias of privilege.  I’m not sick from hearing about it; I’m sickened that it happened.  And continues to happen.  People continue to take advantage of others.

6 months for 3 felonies.  For ruining a life.  But it was the alcohol that made me do it and I want to speak to kids on how binge drinking leads to ‘unfortunate results.’  Are you fucking kidding me?  It was the drinking?  Have some fucking account ability for God’s sake you useless sack of shit.  Enough with the profane tirade as it accomplishes nothing more than making me exercise my right to say what I want.

I don’t want this entry to be about Brock Turner putting his name in media ether again or my vehement disgust for our legal system.  It’s not the legal system.  The jurors found him unanimously guilty of these felonies.  Our system works.  What doesn’t work is the subjectivity of a Stanford alumnus who didn’t want to ‘ruin’ this kid’s future.  His sentencing is comical.  Even more, is the lack of responsibility and remorse of this guy.  Punishment should suit the crime.  It’s that simple.  No commuting the sentence.  No reduction of sentence due to ‘credits’ or how fast you can swim  You made committed a horrific crime.  Go to jail.  For the appropriate sentence.  Extreme of me to think so?  Absolutely.  I have zero tolerance for predators devaluing human decency with a blatant disregard to human life and respect.

Because of my annoyances with this lack of human decency and continuously seeing his name in the media, I’ve opted to stop reading anything about it.  Until today.  Today, I took the time to read the anonymous victim’s letter to Turner.  It’s not easy reading.  But I implore upon you to read it.  Digest it. Study it.  And more importantly, take it to heart.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.uhDP5k8M#.qdy57Alb

Despite how it may seem with my above words; I’m not writing today to debate the charges or sentencing. I’m not writing today to debate the existence of entitlement. I’m not writing to evangelize a cause. I’m not writing to use this tragedy or this young woman’s torturous recovery as a vehicle to promote a cause or advance my agenda.

Then again, maybe I am.  If you consider my ‘cause’ human decency.  Then yes, I’m trying to advance my ‘cause’ at the cost of the results of this tragedy.  But in all seriousness, those who know me know that this ‘cause’ has existed in me long before the stories of the “unconscious intoxicated woman” or Brock Turner.

I cannot fathom what it would be like to be a victim of such a horrible crime.  I can’t even pretend to be close to understanding it.  And there’s no way I would even try to relate any disrespect in my life in contrast to this even being mentioned here.  I wouldn’t do that or talk about me or my struggles in the same breath.

But all of my ranting really comes back to the basics of respect.

A shred of human decency and respect begins to erode the walls of disrespect and intolerance between us all.  It can stop the patronizing and the bullying.  It can stop with the passive-aggressive undertones of dysfunctional relationships.  It can reduce the levels of intolerable violence and shootings.  Respect leads to tolerance.  And in my idealistic world, this can lead to less hatred.  Less abuse.  Less drama.  Will we get there? I doubt it at times because most people are happily drifting blindly in their own misguided intolerable belief structures.  After all, we’re all human and believe we’re right all the time and others are wrong.

The incident at Stanford is a harsh example of just how far a lack of respect can go.  While the letter written by the victim is graphic, it’s also revealing into just how disrespectful some humans have become.  Lost, are we that we feel so entitled to do what we want, when we want, without concern or regard to consequence.  I hope that this young woman will be able to find the strength in herself to heal and grow.  I believe she will if any of her optimism is true at the end of her letter.  May she embrace the grace to carry on and the respect of here family and friends for her resiliency in this.  Still, it’s a shame that we do such inexplicable things to each other only so that we can find some sort of meaning in it all.

Take a break the positive self-affirmations that you post to Facebook that you never follow.  Stop with the gossiping and the defamation of each other.  Stop with the judgements and the condescending superiority complexes we all have at times.  I feel like I’m dropping all of these imperatives like some micro-managing Lumberg from Office Space.  I’m just as guilty as everyone else.  When I take a look in the mirror, I know I have great room for growth and a high ceiling for improving how I treat others.  This entry isn’t meant to be hypocritical and point fingers at others to make a change and practice more respect, human decency and tolerance.  This is to rally all of us, including me, to a movement of respect of others.  If nothing else, we can all make a step today toward respect of others and ourselves.  Even a little step would be for the greater good.

Teach others the value of respect and human decency.  Teach your children respect and respect will come back to them.

It’s long been said that girls who hang out together can get ‘in phase’ with their monthly visitor.  And while the discussion of bodily functions isn’t necessarily the most appropriate of blog entries, I've developed a theory onthe aforementioned ‘in-phase’ phenomenon.  But by contrast, this involves the opposite gender, specifically 9 and 10 year old boys.

Son #1 has odd bathroom habits.  And coincidentally, so do his friends.

A typical weekend in my house involves Son #1, his friends, and Minecraft.  If you’re not familiar with the pre-teen boy interest of Minecraft, consider yourself one of the luckiest OR one of the blissfully oblivious people on the face of the Earth.  Minecraft is a video game.  An annoying video game.  But it’s an obsession of my children and their friends.  Our weekly routine consists of sleepovers, pizza, hours of Minecraft, and now…….bowel movements.

Let me break this down for you.  These kids are up at 6:38AM wanting play this damn videogame.  They come marching into our room like a pack of rhinos.  Three nine year old boys aren’t quiet.  Let me just say that at this time of year, it’s O-dark-30.  Despite being in a delusional sleep state, my wife has enough sense about her to realize the darkness along with the request and sidetracks the delinquents for the moment.  She tells them to go watch TV for an hour.  Now while this seems like swapping one screen for another, it’s a fair strategy to remove the noise factor from a videogame which breeds bickering and whining.  Needless to say, the three of them posted up in our bonus room watching an infomercial selling a get-in-shape DVD.

An hour passes, they’ve served their hour sentence of TV and now it’s on to the videogame.  Since there are three of them, we make them alternate and take turns.  15 minute intervals are mandatory for the game in our house.  But none of this matters.  What matters is the frequency of departures from the game for bowel movements.

The game started with Son #1 and Friend #1 taking the first round on Minecraft.  Friend #2 gets bored and starts grazing through the pantry looking for sustenance.  Forget respect for others people’s property, these kids make themselves at home and are hungry.  Fortunately in this regard, my wife out-maneuvered these kids’ appetites.  The night before this particular screen filled morning she baked a least a dozen muffins for their grazing.  The boys were instructed to refrain from raiding the pantry and to only eat the muffins.  She was mostly successful in this directive.  Only a few granola bars were consumed.  Unlike the week before where the three boys devoured a box and a half of them.

And now the ‘Parade of Poop’ begins.  After the first game rotation, Friend #1 was free to relieve himself.  Off he marched to the bathroom.  How do I know the business that was being tended to?  I was in the neighboring office as the pending crime against my toilet was being committed.  I heard the steps into the bathroom, the door close, and the fan get switched on.  Besides no boy stays in the bathroom that long to pee.  As a dude, you’re only in the bathroom for that length of time for one of two things.  Confirmation was made after I walked by the bathroom and the aroma a freshly dumped turd was wafting through the air.

A few rotations passed and then Friend #2 took his shot.  Similar actions transpired leading up to the crime.  Similar results and conclusions were drawn by me.

They say third time’s a charm.  Not to be outdone by his friends, Son #1 then took his shot.  As his friends were being picked up by their parental unit, Son #1 made his contribution to the sewer system of the neighborhood.  He disappeared for bit only to shout out a ‘goodbye’ from his porcelain throne.  But unlike either of his two friends, Son #1 proceeded to complicate plumbing matters with the granite-like density of his toiletry deposit.  Looks like another job for me, the resident plumber.

Anyway, all of my observations that morning got me thinking and I came up with three very distinct realities.  First, the plumbing in my house is getting a serious workout from these pre-teen poop-o-potamuses.  I seriously wonder if the water company has alerts or surveys customers for increased and possibly ‘alarming’ usage (like Big Brother is watching type of alarm).  Water use agents may be dispatched to my residence for the crimes against the sewer system.  Second, I have financial advice for all of my readers, family and friends; Charmin stock value is going to be rising so get in now while shares are low.  Earn your millions from these kids.  Wait.  Buy Target stock instead.  My wife buys Target-brand butt wipes.  And third, there MUST be a correlation between pre-teen boys who hang out together frequently, Minecraft videogame, and bowel movements.

My conclusion is pretty simple:  Much like a group of girls and their aligned monthly visitor, boys in a common friendship groups have aligning ‘phases’ of bowel movements.  And to further this conclusion, I believe that Minecraft relaxes the colon.  I plan on writing to a medical journal about my study to see if I can get published.  As an aside, I think there’s a ‘halo’ effect as well.  Both Son #2 and I got in on the business but we weren’t playing the game, just aware that it was being played.  That will be the second edition of my entry into a medical journal.

UPDATE:  I picked up Son #1 and his two friends up from school today.  First thing when arriving at the home front was firing up some Minecraft.  And like clockwork, a parade of poop!

It’s New Music Monday!  If you recall, the last Monday of the month was my review new music day.  It’s been almost a year since I dropped a little science on such a topic.  I like to share the music that moves me with my friends and family.  Especially, the real good stuff.  So this month, I’ve gone round and round with the music I was going to review.  And as I write this sentence, I still don’t know.  I’m opting for reviewing the dark yet introspective album rather than the uplifting and inspirational one.  The record is so vivid and so real, it can’t be avoided.

This album was a surprise.  In what would later be titled the ‘Best Sick Day Ever,’ I discovered this band.  And strangely enough, it was an incarnation of a band I all ready really loved.  Let’s start with a brief description of the best sick day ever.

I don’t normally get sick. More importantly, I don’t normally sit for hours and watch TV.  But on this day, I felt like shit, stayed home from work, and posted up on the couch all day.  I turned on the channel Palladia, which is a channel that only plays concerts and performances in HD and surround sound. I sat for about six hours and watch six different concerts and/or performances.  Let’s see there was Ray LaMontagne, the Dropkick Murphys, Later with Jools Holland, the Foo Fighter Back and Forth, and this band; The Horrible Crowes.

The Horrible Crowes is a side project of Brian Fallon.  He’s the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, the Gaslight Anthem.  I had no idea of this side project.  The first exposure was a one hour Palladia show of their first show EVER at the Troubador.  The background music at the start of the show was the Gaslight Anthem as the band milled about backstage.  Somehow I just knew this was going to be a new kind of awesome.  They take the stage and I realize it is Fallon and he introduces his band.  Instantly, I’m online looking up the band find more about them.

While the Gaslight Anthem is more alt, punk, Americana, blue collar rock, the Horrible Crowes is the dark and subdued social commentary on the misdirection of life.  Every song is minimal and the lyrics are at a depth that Fallon never thought would work on a Gaslight album.  Perfect music for sitting at your desk, staring out the window in the dark raining afternoon, feeling the misery and emptiness, while looking for your resilience...  Depressing and uplifting all at once.  As you listen, you are taken to rock bottom and then lifted back up through faith.

“Elsie,” the band’s only album came out in 2011. As I mentioned above, it’s very brooding and contemplative.  This is Tom Waits as inspiration.  “Elsie” could easily be classified night-time music due to its dark message, instrumentation, and slow tempos.  The music is soulful and intense and Fallon takes more liberty in the music, subject matter, the vocals, and the lyrics than he could in the Gaslight Anthem.  It’s cinematic and dark and the songs are about conviction, lost opportunities, and loneliness.  Things that we all relate to on a variety of levels.

The lyricism by Fallon does not disappoint.  He exhibits masterful storytelling abilities, where his gravelly, rugged voice operates with the heartfelt conviction, like a pulpit preacher that is vivid and colorful.  Musically, there is masterful work done on the guitar by Ian Perkins.  The keys and percussion help the elegant music rumble and sway through the emotions of the stories.  The summation of all of the pieces creates something creepily eerie and yet strangely familiar to the heart.

How do you pick a trio of songs that represent the album when ALL of them are amazing and representative of the epic nature of this album?  I can’t so I’m suggesting you take the time to listen to the album in its entirety here:

The Horrible Crowes - "Elsie" 

Described as ‘hymns for the lonely’ by Fallon himself, the Horrible Crowes is something that you must listen to.  “Elsie” is a lesson in how to capture what emotions precisely sound like.  Think of a time capsule filled with old photographs, torn love notes, and mementos of past mistakes. This is its soundtrack.  We’ve been these songs.  Some of us are still a part of them.

Play the video for 'Behold the Hurricane' here: