My fucking place is clean like a motherfucker!

The living and dining rooms are organized and tidy, except, again, for the corner with all my guitar crap. The kitchen is fucking sparkling, and almost all the dishes are done. I say "almost" because there are still some glasses and bowls I need to wash that I just didn't want to wash last night. The bedroom has been completely cleaned up and now it looks really, really empty. And the bathroom is sanitary. And I also brought back the concept of a hamper, so there's no longer a big pile of dirty clothes. As it turns out, the old big pile of dirty clothes was about 97 percent socks, which is interesting. That means that I should have enough socks to see me through a nuclear disaster.

One of the strange things about the cleanliness and orderliness in here is that I can walk from any point in my apartment to any other point in my apartment without stepping over refuse or avoiding sharp objects on the floor. This is really remarkable.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

My apartment has become sort of a giant mess. In fact, it's gotten so bad that I instituted a ban on people being in the apartment about a year ago. Since then, no one has set foot in here other than me. Except for Mr. Utah one time, and he insisted that we leave immediately. I'd like to say that I have some excuse for being so terrible about cleaning the place, but I don't. There's not really a reason for it other than that I'm lazy.

Things were getting pretty bad for a little bit there. The living room had gotten extremely cluttered. There was crap everywhere--dirty clothes on the floor, musical instruments strewn about, cat toys all over the fucking place, old computer equipment everywhere. The dining room wasn't much better. The bedroom wasn't doing very well, either. A long time ago, I decided that having a big pile of laundry would motivate me to do the laundry. That sort of worked, but then I gave up about halfway through and just had a big pile of dirty clothes. The President actually declared my kitchen and bathroom national disaster areas, which explains why there were guys in HAZMAT suits in here the other day.

Anyway, I decided that enough was enough and that it was time to make my place presentable again, so I set out to fucking clean the place. So I borrowed Mr. Vice and pH's vacuum cleaner--mine having given up in despair about a year ago--and started the long, arduous process of undoing the mess it had taken me over a year to make. And I'm pleased to report that there has been significant progress.

Last night about about 10:30, I was overtaken by motivation, and I started moving shit around. I picked everything up off the floor and... put most of it on the floor in different rooms. My ulimate strategy is to put these things somewhere other than the floor, but that required a little more thought than I was willing to do last night. Still, I already have an idea of where I'm going to permanently put all my old law school books and shit, so that's good.

Then I moved everything in the living room and vacuumed the shit out of the entire room. And repeated the process in the dining room. Two hours and three trash bags later, the place looks fucking nice, if I do say so myself.

Yes, the downside to my strategy is that the bedroom has temorarily declined in orderliness, but that is a temporary condition. And this time I mean it.

Today, I'm going to work on getting the bathroom and kitchen to be, umm, non-toxic again.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

A friend of mine has a nine-year-old son. The kid is pretty smart and charismatic. But he also craves attention like you wouldn't believe. I like the kid, but he can be very, very annoying. I mean, not more than any other nine-year-old, I'm sure. And not in a malicious way. He just wants attention and sometimes he doesn't understand that people are doing other things at the moment.

I'm telling you this, Mom, because the last time I was interacting with this child I realized something horrific: that this kid, as obnoxious as he can be, is no where near as terrible as I'm sure I was. I always had a slew of questions, and I needed the answers now. And I didn't understand how various things--for example, that you had just gotten home from a long day at work and wanted two seconds of peace and quiet before being inundated with queries about completely irrelevant bullshit--might mean that it was better for me to wait just a few minutes. I wanted your attention all the time. If a second passed during which the Universe was not focused on me, I spent it trying to make sure it was. I constantly made unreasonable demands of your time, money, and patience. I was selfish.

My worst sin, though, was that I never, ever told you how much I appreciated all the things you did for me. You did so much for me so well, and I was too selfish and stupid to tell you that it meant the world to me. And I was too lazy and pathetic to help you, even when I recognized that I could in some way. But you've never held any of that against me, and you've never let me down. Ever.

You're the most generous, most caring person I know. You put up with me because I'm your son, but you bring that same patience to everything you do. You're the least selfish person I know. In fact, the only flaw I think you have is that you don't think of yourself enough.

But perhaps the thing I admire most about you is your seemingly bottomless strength. Because of you, my life has been completely devoid of real hardship of any kind. The only suffering I've ever experienced I've brought on myself, and you were always there to help and support me when I was stupid enough to get into one of those situations. But you've done things in your life that would break most people. You've been through things that would scare most people to death, and yet I've never seen you be scared. I've seen you be worried, I've seen you be anxious, and I've seen you resign yourself to accepting whatever's going to happen. But I've never seen you be scared. Not when faced with financial hardship, not when faced when cancer. Never.

You are my hero--there isn't anyone I look up to or respect more than you.

And I wanted to tell you that because you deserve to hear it and I think that I can mash together words effectively enough now to put something together that approaches expressing how much I love you.

So happy birthday, Mommy.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Things I Wish I Could Take Back

I've written before about my beliefs on God. Recent happenings have got me thinking not only about those beliefs--which, upon re-examination, I still believe are valid--but also about something else: spirituality. By spirituality, I mean the notion that a human being can have a relationship with God. Maybe I'm using that word incorrectly and perhaps there's a better word, but that's the meaning I'm assigning to it, so let's just work with that.

Anyway, like I said, I hold to my previous assertion about the nature of God: God may exist or he may not, but I don't know, I can't know, and neither can you. Logically, that position seems to require that relationships with God be impossible. But there's sort of a way out of that, I think. See, my idea of God is based on the notion that the world can clearly work with or without God. God might be pulling all the strings, but the method by which we learn about the Universe--science--hasn't found any strings yet. So science can prove that atoms are held together by certain forces and that solar systems are held together by certain other sources, but there will always be room for some further explanation, and some people will always put God in the position of Ultimate Explanation. What I mean is that God might be behind everything, but if he is, he's being sort of coy about it.

But here's the thing: if God is real, and he wanted us to know that he was real, it seems like he could easily convince us of that. I mean, all he'd have to do is show up and say something along the lines of "I'm God, check this out" and then do something only God could do. Maybe that's a stupid example, but the point is that if God wanted us all to know he was around, it seems like an easy thing for him to do.

And now some people will say that God did leave us some indication of his existence. The specific thing that indicates God's existence probably varies from person to person. For some it's the Bible, for others it's the perfect balance of natural ecosystems, for others maybe it's subatomic physics. But whatever the proposed indicia, they all seem--to me, anyway--to be woefully inadequate. But there's a probem with that.

There are a lot of people I trust when it comes to important matters in my life. I consult with many people over things ranging in importance from where I should take some girl to dinner to whether I should start my own business. I'm extremely fortunate in that I am surrounded by intelligent, thoughtful, kind people that I trust and that would not deceive me. If they support some course of action, I will not easily dismiss it. If they are opposed to some action, I will not easily adopt it.

It's easy, I think, to dismiss someone who claims to have a personal relationship with God. Such a belief seems so out of step with the sorts of mundane, physical lifestyles many of us lead. But I know and trust many intelligent, thoughtful, kind people that believe that they have a real relationship with God. So it seems wrong to dismiss that notion out of hand.

At the same time, however, I've been to church, I've read the Bible (parts of it, anyway), and I've prayed. And I've never felt anything that I would describe as even remotely God-inspired. I was never moved by a sermon or a reading. I was never swept away by the Word of God. I was never lost in hours of prayer. God has never spoken to me.

Looking back at my life, there has been exactly one moment that I think was even remotely close to being religious, and it didn't involve God at all. It involved a great live performance by an amazing band of one of my favorite songs, a girl I was in love with, and a feeling of well-being I don't think I've felt since that moment. But I'd never say it was divine. It was special, it was rare, it was beautiful, but it was entirely human.

Ultimately, it seems to me that even the people who think that God speaks to them don't mean that he speaks to them in the same way you and I might speak to each other. I've never heard anyone describe literally having a conversation with God. That doesn't mean that people don't get something very real out of thought and reflection and meditation. But is it God? Again, I don't know. But I don't think it is.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Philosophical Rants

I was born on this day twenty-seven years ago. I generally really look forward to my birthday, and I certainly did this year. But I feel extremely old. Maybe some of you will read that and think I'm stupid for thinking I'm old even though I'm only twenty-seven. But it freaks me out, man.

I can no longer plausibly claim to be in my mid-twenties. The most I can say is that I'm in my early late twenties, but those sorts of linguistic calisthenics just show how desperately I'm trying to cling to some semblence of youth. It's all fucking down hill from here. Soon I'm going to start thinking that people are playing their music way too loud. I can't remember the last time I slept past ten in the morning. Soon I'll start thinking that 11:00pm is really late. I almost certainly won't understand the next big developments in music. I already think most of the "good" music out there--that indie stuff everyone listens to now--is boring and lame. And I can't understand what's wrong with kids nowadays. I seriously can't. They're all fucking morons. And they wear skinny jeans! I'm shaking my fist in the air as I type this. I'm fucking old.

Another strange thing about being twenty-seven is that I sort of feel like I should have accomplished more by now. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain, just to name a few, all died when they were twenty-seven. By the time they were my age, they had made indelible marks on music and popular culture. By the time Billy Corgan was my age, he had already released one of the greatest albums of all time and was working on another. I'm sort of behind the curve.

Still, none of this means that I didn't celebrate. In fact, I celebrated so much that I could barely move for most of today. And I ate a fuck load of amazing food prepared by Co-SME and his girlfriend, who has yet to be assigned a blog-related nickname. I'll work on that. Anyway, here's some of the food:

So while I'm afraid that my twenty-seventh birthday marks the beginning of the decline of the vital, creative, awesome part of my life, I still want to thank Co-SME, his girlfriend, and everyone else that helped me have the best birthday party in recent memory. Even if the birthday cake was ugly.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Fun Shit I've Done

One of the reasons I went to college and law school is that I hate lifting things. There's nothing wrong with people who lift things for a living. Just because you lift things doesn't mean you're stupid or uneducated or whatever. There is honor in lifting things. I just don't want to lift things. I'm fairly intelligent, I hate lifting things, and I enjoy work that challenges me mentally. I've built my entire life around the desire to avoid having to lift things to feed myself.

I bring this up because I realized today that it's a damned good thing that I don't lift things for a living because I'm a fucking pansy. I spent my day on my feet--I ran from court, to the law library, to the jail, to the law library, to court, to jail, to wherever the fuck else a bunch of times today. I sat for a grand total of about forty-five minutes over the course of a seven-hour day. I didn't lift anything other than my briefcase. But I'm still fucking physically exhausted. Which I can't believe.

On the other hand, though, it felt great to be busy again. Sometimes having a fairly easy day in the middle of the week is good, but having a really busy, action-packed day like to say just makes me feel great, for lack of a better day. And even though not everything went my way today--which does fucking suck--I still feel like I accomplished a lot, which is a really good and satisfying feeling.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

Surprisingly, this post has nothing to do with people mispronouncing my name. Instead, it has something to do with the Olympics.

I was watching the trampoline finals tonight and, between thinking "How the fuck is this an Olympic sport?" and "I don't understand how this is a sport," I couldn't help but notice that one of the commentators kept saying that the competitors were getting a lot of "heighth." What the fuck is heighth? Is it like height but pronounced by an idiot?

People adding an extra H to the word height has bothered me ever since middle school where a friend of mine explained that it made sense to pronounce it heighth since the other words for dimmension--length and width--end in the "th" sound. That makes sense, I suppose. Except that there's no fucking H at the end of the word!. That's like saying that since the words "spoon" and "fork" don't have silent letters, we should pronounce the K in "knife."

So check it out: if you're pronouncing it "heighth," you're an idiot and I hate you.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry

Saturday night, in order to celebrate pH's recent acquisition of gainful employment, we went somewhere we had been wanting to go for a long time: Samba. Samba is one of those Brazilian steakhouse places that seem to be all over the place now. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, you basically pay a fee for all-you-can-eat meat, which is delivered to your table on swords by dudes dressed like pirates. Or not dressed like pirates, depending on which specific place you go to.

Several of us had previously been to one of these places in Chicago. We were blown the fuck away. The $50 price tag was completely worth the food. Samba is less expensive than the place in Chicago by about $20, and it is clearly the superior value. Although I missed the giant wheel of Parmesan cheese and the bacon-wrapped filet mignon, the meat at Samba was nonetheless awesome, and the few things I missed weren't worth paying nearly double for.

As you'd expect, I ate more than I should have and could barely move afterwards. And then Co-SME and I traded meat-based puns for about twenty minutes. Everyone around us enjoyed that tremendously.

Then we went to a comedy club to see some comedians. One of them sucked, one was awesome and told a lot of Star Wars jokes (not to mention a joke about Spiderman I thought about years ago), another guy juggled and had a really strange beard, and the last guy was decent but was on state for way the fuck too long.

Then some other stuff happened. But the most relevant thing that happened was that I tried this place that's new in Madison called Five Guys. Morenononsense had been telling me for a while that this place was like the In-n-Out of the East Coast, so I was excited to try it. And I was not disappointed. The fries were way better than In-n-Out, in my opinion. They were crispy and thick and tasted exactly like god intended French to taste: like salty potatoes with a subtle hint of the oil they were kicked in. The burger was not as good as In-n-Out, but it was fucking respectable. And definitely one of the better fast-food burgers I've had, behind only In-n-Out, I think. Still, while it was awesome, it only made me miss In-n-Out more.

Oh, and for some reason my desire to go to Vegas has increased exponentially after this weekend.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Restaurant and Bar Reviews , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

I just watched this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Tapestry." You can read the whole plot synopsis here, but basically it involves Captain Picard almost dying. Q gives him a chance to go back and undo one of his biggest mistakes. See, when Picard was an ensign, he got in a fight because he was sort of an arrogant jackass. And during the fight, he got stabbed through the heart. Well, Picard took that back. And then he saw that the arrogance of his youth made him the confident, badass leader he would become. Had he not been the man that got into that fight and got stabbed, he would never have become the officer he was. Instead, he would have been a passionless, boring man. The whole thing lead Q to say:

The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did not fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death. Never came face to face with his own mortality. Never realized how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never led the away-team on Milika III to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer's bridge, when its captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe--and he never, ever, got noticed by anyone!

I'm not really a risk-averse person. I love to gamble. I never minded doing things that might get me in trouble. I regularly do things that people with better judgment or common sense would never do. But when I look back my life, I really only remember two instances when I decided to take any sort of real risk. The first was when I decided to go to law school, which is a moment that's sort of etched in my mind forever. The second time was when I told Mr. Vice that I was definitely "in" as far as the whole law-firm thing was concerned. I remember that moment perfectly, also. And I guess I've done various "risky" things when faced with women that I liked, to varied measures of success.

And even though none of those decisions were really all that risky in the grand scheme of things--I could always find a job in some gray office building, after all--I sort of feel like I still learned from them. I spoke to someone yesterday who, when discussing her job, was very upfront about the fact that it was a "right now" sort of thing, that it was boring, that it was tedious, and that it wasn't her dream job at all. I think a lot of people find themselves in that position. And that's too fucking bad. I mean, the security of a guaranteed paycheck is great. But not if you're miserable.

And I'm not miserable. In fact, I'm fucking happy. As much as I bitch about being on Law Review, I really liked it. I liked the sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Running a business is like that but times a thousand. And the sense of accomplishment that goes along with getting a good result for a client is unmatched by anything else in my life. I mean, it's not all victories and days off, but it's well worth it.

So that's what's on my mind, and it makes me think that I should take more risks in other areas of my life. And it also makes me wonder what risks you guys have taken or wish you had taken. So there!

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 1:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , The Law Firm , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To , Wisconsin Law Review

One of the rumors I've heard about the upcoming ways in which Hollywood will rape my childhood is that they're planning some sort of movie or something based on Thundercats. I really hope this doesn't happen because, while Thundercats kicked an unmitigated amount of ass when I was a kid, I really don't think it would hold up nowadays. Not without major modifications, anyway, and if you're going to change the whole thing around, then why not just come up with a whole new idea and leave my childhood alone?

Having said all that, there was one element of Thundercats that I really, really liked. Not surprisingly, it was also the show's most memorable gimmick. Whenever he would get in trouble, the Thundercats' leader, Lion-O, would wave the Sword of Omens around while saying "Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats--Ho!" and his sword would, um, get bigger. Then, if he really need everyone's help, the Eye of Thundera, embedded in the hilt of the Sword of Omens, would project the Thundercats logo into the sky, Batsignal style. And all the other Thundercats would invariably see it and come help Lion-O.

I wonder, though, if Panthro ever felt conflicted. I mean, Panthro was a busy guy, and he had his own shit going on, you know? Maybe he was out late the night before, or maybe he was in a bad mood himself. Or who the fuck knows what. I'm sure sometimes he did feel like that. But I'm also sure that even in those instances he still got to Lion-O as quickly as he could. And I bet that the fundamental, lame explanation for that is that that's what friends are for.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Life Sucks Sometimes , Potentially Entirely Unhelpful Analogies

With most of my friends out of town this weekend, a wicked hangover to deal with on Saturday, and generally low motivation all around, I did a lot of sitting around watching TV this weekend. And I watched the Olympics almost exclusively. Here are some observations:

• I would do almost any of the female gymnasts on the U.S. team. The ones that are legal, that is.
• I would not do any of the female Chinese gymnasts because none of them are anywhere near legal, regardless of what they claim. I'm sorry, gymnasts might generally be small and young looking, but the girls on the Chinese team are clearly nine.
• I will never make fun of male gymnasts again. Their sport may or may not be inherently gay, but I would not want to fight any of those guys. Their arms are thicker than my legs.
• I'm through with swimming. Is it over soon?
• Why the fuck aren't we getting more coverage of awesome sports based on ancient marshal skills? I want prime-time coverage of archery and fencing, goddammit!
• The Chinese people are apparently awesome. Their government, on the other hand, is really, really scary.

I'm way more into the gymnastics than I have been in previous years. I don't know what it is, but the shit they do is pretty fucking crazy. Still, I can't wait for the track and field events. Those people, also, are crazy.

Oh, and also, what's the name of that old swimmer lady? She's awesome. She's going above and beyond to prove that she's not taking any performance-enhancing drugs, including donating specimens so that they can be tested later when better testing methods are developed. I think that's fucking great. If you're a clean athlete that's excelled in some remarkable way like she has, I think it would be really easy to be insulted that people would even suggest that you took steroids. The fact that she's not only taking it in stride but doing more than what's asked of her to prove she's on the up and up sets a fucking great example. I just wish more athletes had that kind of attitude.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry , Television Reviews

I'm sure that any of my relatives would be able to tell you about how I reacted to things that I thought were unfair when I was a kid. I would cry. But I would also tremble with anger. My fists would be clenched as tight as possible. My face would turn into a hideous scowl. I would be inconsolable.

Yeah, I was a terrible child to deal with, but here's what was going on in my head. I hated being treated unfairly. Or, rather, I hated being treated in a way that seemed unfair at the time. Looking back on it now, I was treated unfairly very rarely by my family and almost never by my mother. But that's not the point. The point is that when I was a kid--as, I imagine, was the case when you were all children--I thought that there was some mandate in the Universe that things be fair. And if I screwed up and I got punished, well that's cool because that was only fair. But how was it fair that I saved up my money for fucking ever and then didn't even get to buy the pirate ship I wanted? That's just not fair at all! Bad things can happen within the confines of fairness, but once something happened outside of those boundaries, all bets were off, I thought.

But that's not the only thing that lead to my somewhat amusing reaction to injustice. I also hated the feeling of complete powerlessness that almost always accompanied perceived slights against me. It wasn't just that something unfair had happened, it was that I couldn't do anything about it.

Like I said, I think everyone has this idea of fundamental fairness when they're a kid. But as we grow up we learn that the world isn't fair and we start to lose sight of that fairness idea. Well the world certainly isn't fair, but I've never thought that this fact justifies further unfairness. If the world isn't fair, then it seems to me that it's our responsibility to make it as fair as possible, not add to the unfairness. That's always made sense to me.

But the thing that I hadn't realized until an unpleasant conversation I had today during which I felt like that little kid with his fists clenched and tears streaming down his face is that I do have some measure of power now. It's not a great amount of power, and it's almost certainly not enough to make any sort of difference. But I can try, right?

So that's what I'm going to do.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Rants

I remember the first time I really saw stars. It was in college.

Nogales is not, by any means, a bustling metropolis, but even it puts out enough light to diminish someone's view of the night sky. And though I had been camping a few times, I think that the moon was always out and, besides, I wasn't really paying attention. But one day, for no real reason, some people and I went on a drive in the woods around Flagstaff. Flagstaff takes its astromony somewhat seriously--they discovered Pluto from Lowell Observatory. There's a "dark sky" policy which means that, even though we were only a few miles outside of the city, Flagstaff's lights didn't really affect our view of the cosmos. And there wasn't any moon at all that night.

I remember getting out of the car and looking up at the sky and seeing the band of the Milky Way for the first time. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

Sometimes thinking about the vastness of the Universe is extremely comforting: it doesn't really matter what I do or what happens to me because, in the end, I can't change a single important thing. Other times, it's the most depressing thing in the world: given the nearly infinite nature of our reality and the surely exhorbitant number of intelligent beings in the galaxy, I still spend a great portion of my time feeling completely and utterly alone.

I guess right now I'm feeling the latter.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 1:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Life Sucks Sometimes

Seriously, this isn't so much a browser as a steaming turd that occasionally loads HTML files. Not only does it lack tabbed browsing, it loads pages slower than molasses and it makes my computer run slower than... molasses!

Why am I using Internet Explorer and not my beloved Firefox? Because Firefox has decided that the bset possible thing for it to do is crash randomly. It doesn't care if I'm loading a page, playing a youtube video, or just letting it sit there, if it's the exact time I don't want it to crash, that's when it crashes. What the fuck?

I blame my computer. It's four years old. It might as well work on vacuum tubes and gears--it's fucking ancient. It's so ancient, in fact, that the laptop I got a few months ago--the cheapest possible model Dell offers--is faster. God, I need a new computer.

And also I want someone to fix Firefox for me. I already tried uninstalling it and then reinstalling it again. Past that, I'm not in the mood to deal with it. Maybe I'll just give it a few days and see if it fixes itself.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 1:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Life Sucks Sometimes , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry , Reviews , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

I'm thinking of changing the look of the blog. Not the layout or the interface or anything, just the look. Specifically, I'm thinking of changing the graphics so that they're more in line with the header and profile graphics here.

What do you think?

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)| Filed under General Remarks