As promised, here are some pictures from my trip.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under

I didn't have internet access while I was in California. Well, not on my laptop. I had it on my phone. But blogging from your phone is far too time-consuming, so I didn't do it. I did type out a few posts, though, and I've put them up now and dated them so that they appear on the days they were written.

I only wrote two because I was alternately too busy and too busy relaxing to write too much more. In general, though, my trip was fan-fucking-tastic. I got to see almost all of my relatives and I got along with them all. I was really, really happy with the whole thing, even if it was pretty uneventful.

The two posts I wrote are:
"I Like to Be Here When I Can"
Mia

Check 'em out.

I also took a lot of pictures that I want to put up. I will do that soon.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , General Remarks

So, I've been home for a few days now, and I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon. It's been a really good trip.

My cousin Gloria has a four-year-old daughter named Mia. Mia is the cutest, funniest, most charismatic little girl I've ever met. Mia spends days when her parents are at work either at her paternal grandmother's house (where she's doted on by her father's mother), or at my mom's house (where she's doted on by my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother). The result is that she's the most ridiculously spoiled little girl in the world. Anything she wants to do, she gets to do. But she's still amazingly sweet and really smart. She just conveniently forgets to say please and thank you. And she apparently doesn't play well with others. And she's going to be a terrible teenager. But for now, she's just a sweetheart.

I hadn't seen Mia in two years, and I was excited to see her again. When her and her mom first got to my mom's house, Mia was scared of me. She's shy around strangers. But I kept trying to get her to play with me, and she eventually did. She's just the cutest little girl.

On Christmas Eve, we were at Mia's house. Mia got the vast majority of the presents. Everyone there got her at least one gift. Due to the fact that I don't get to see her often but still want her to remember me and look forward to seeing me, I got her two presents. Anyway, she was extremely excited the whole night, and behaved herself really well. She also listened to me when I told her to go and thank the people that had given her whatever present she had just opened.

By far, her favorite present was this coloring thing my cousin Kaky got her. Basically, the thing came with these "magic" markers and special preprinted drawings. When you "color," the white parts of the preprinted drawings fill themselves in with different colors and patterns. Mia loved it to the exclusion of all other gifts. She didn't even want to open other gifts, which wasn't something I had seen in a kid before. Anyway, she let me help her color, and it was fun.

Yesterday, Gloria brought Mia over. I asked her if she wanted to go outside, and she said she did. So we walked out to the backyard. She put her little hand in mine and walked me around, pointing out and correctly naming all of the different trees. "This is an avocado tree. This is an orange tree. This is an apple tree." I pointed out the sugar cane and the lemon tree to her, and she seemed impressed. Then she decided to point out all the "little" trees. She said "This one's little. And this one's little. And this one's little. This one's little, too, but not too little because it's big."

When Gloria decided that they had to leave, Mia said "No! I'm hungry!" and ran to the kitchen. And she got really sad when no one fell for that. So I picked her up and carried her to the car, and she calmed down a little. Her mom strapped her in and they drove off.

And, for the first time in a long time, I was really sad that I don't live closer to my family.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

So I actually came far too close to having that nightmare scenario from that terrible JTT movie come to pass.

I woke up at 2:30am Central and drove to Milwaukee. The drive was pretty ridiculous, actually. The roads weren't terrible, but they were far from good. In the end, though, I made it to Mil-town without too much of a problem. My parking and shuttle situations worked out fine, too. The problem started when Frontier Airlines decided that, instead of de-icing the plane and taking off, we would sit on the runway for a long time. Like, an hour. After we boarded at about the time we were supposed to take off. So now we're already an hour behind. When I only had a forty-minute margin for my plane change in Denver. Lovely.

We did eventually get into the air, but my inability to sleep on airplanes kept me from, well, sleeping on the airplane. I did get sat next to a really hot asian girl, so that was a plus. Her douchebag boyfriend, sitting on her other side, was a big minus. This girl was really hot, was an accountant, and made lots of money. She also seemed fairly nice, by which I mean that she didn't seem like the sort of huge bitch I'd expect someone as hot as her to be. Her boyfriend, aside from being a huge douche, was a welder. A welder. How does a welder end up with a rich accountant? I have no idea.

Anyway, we ended up landing about twelve minutes after my connecting flight took off. The pilot actually said "you're pretty much on your own here, sorry." When they announced that you had to bring your seats up to the full upright position, I did. But then the male stewardess came up and told me to bring it up all the way. I said that I had. He forced it to get more upright, and then said "Sometimes you bigger guys make the seats go down farther." So Frontier Airlines has an amazing two-pronged campaign to ensure repeat business: first they'll fuck you over, then they'll insult you. Nice.

I was rudely told that I had to go to the customer service desk, which had a line about four-hundred people long. After waiting, and explaining to the woman behind the counter that I was willing to fly into any Los Angeles-area airport, she said "You're going to LAX? There's another flight in ten minutes." Sometimes flying to a giant city has its perks.

Ten minutes ended up being about half an hour, which was perfect because it gave me the chance to go down to the bar and have a giant, overpriced bloody Mary. It was awesome. Then I got on the plane. My total delay was about an hour, which was just fine, because it made sure my parents would have enough time to get to the airport.

The flight from Denver to LAX was ok. I got free TV. I don't know why.

Upon arriving at LAX, I immediately got lost. Then I found my way and found my mom and my aunt. And I was literally floored. Remember all those predictions I made? I was wrong on almost all fronts.

First of all, the first thing they said was that I looked skinnier. This is false, but it was nice of them to say. Then, my aunt said "I didn't know if I was looking for someone with long hair or short hair. Your hair looks nice short." This is strange--my hair is long. Then they told me that I looked good generally. They did insist that it was cold, but they understood when I mentioned that I was warm under my jacket. Then they asked me if I wanted to go home first or straight to the In-n-Out. I expected them to do all those other things not because they're mean or because they want to be hurtful, but just because they're extremely honest and forthright. The fact that they were the opposite of critical confused me. But it also made me happy. Either way, I was really excited to see them.

We went to the In-n-Out. It was a-ma-zing.

Then it took us way longer than it should have to get home because my aunt forgot whether she lives East or West of LAX. Hey, sometimes after living in a certain city for thirty years, you forget minor details like where you live in relation to a major airport.

But, eventually, we got home. And this house is amazing. They bought it something like four years ago and it was ok, but it also had many shithole qualities. It does not have any of those now. It is simply gorgeous, and they've replicated parts of a fucking tropical rain forest. There are banana trees with giant bunches of bananas, avocado trees, orange trees with beautiful ripe oranges, and just a slew of amazing vegetation. I'll put up pictures soon.

So now I'm home. My mom's cooking up some tamales. And we're working on the brine for the turkey I'm going to cook tomorrow. I'm going to cook a turkey. I'll let you know how that goes.

The point is that I'm home. And it's fucking awesome.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry , Restaurant and Bar Reviews , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

Tomorrow morning, for the first time in two years, I'm going "home," by which I mean that I'm going to the place where my parents live now. I'm really, really excited.

I theoretically fly out of Milwaukee tomorrow morning at 6am. That means that I'm going to leave my apartment at about 3am. Others might think I'm crazy, but I love getting up really early to start a trip. I don't know why, but I'd feel ripped off if my cross-country journey started while the sun was up. I say that I'm theoretically flying out because my trip has an above-average chance of getting canceled due to various weather things. I have my fingers crossed, though. And, come hell or high water, I'm going to be in Los Angeles by this time tomorrow. I may have just set myself up for failure, and maybe the next few days are going to be like that horrible movie with Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Jessica Biel in it, but that's ok. I'm going home.

So I called my mom to tell her my flight info so that she could pick me up. But then I also called my cousin Kaky, because redundancy is good. Especially when you're dealing with my mom and her sister. I love them, but these are the people that once went to a bank and demanded that the teller put several tens of thousands of dollars in a brown paper bag.

In any event, first I thought that Kaky was going to pick me up, but it turns out that my mom and her sister are. Which is fine with me: I'm kind of really excited to see them. Still, they've picked me up several times, and I have a good idea of how things are going to go. I'm going to make some predictions. I'll come back and highlight the ones that were accurate.

1. Within two minutes of seeing her, my mom will make some comment about my weight. This has never bothered me, but it's absolutely going to happen.
2. My mom will find some way to both refer to me as an attorney and infantilize me at the same time. I'm expecting something along the lines of the Spanish equivalent of "Look, it's my little attorney-man." There's a 50 percent chance that she'll use some form of baby talk.
3. Then she'll start using the fact that I'm an attorney to criticize my general appearance. First it'll be my hair. She'll say something about how she's never seen an attorney with hair as ridiculous as mine. Then she'll offer to cut it. I will say no thanks. And she'll persist for my entire stay.
4. She'll move on to the way I'm dressed. Did you guys see up there when I said that I was leaving my house at 3am in order to make my flight? Can you guess how little I'm going to care about my appearance? I'm going to be wearing jeans and an old t-shirt. If I get really, really lazy, I might just wear my pajama pants. Everyone can fucking deal with it. But my mom will say something about how people would be shocked to find out that I'm a lawyer given the way I'm dressed.
5. My mom and aunt will tell me that they've made tamales and bunuelos and all manner of delicious Mexican food and that it's all waiting for me at home. I will say thank you, that I'm looking forward to it, but that our first stop is In-n-Out. I will order two double-doubles, animal style, and some fries, also animal style. They'll talk about how that's way too much food.
6. I'm probably going to be wearing my trench coat because that's what I'm going to wera in Wisconsin and wearing it is the easiest way to carry it. But they'll constantly say "aren't you cold? Mijo, it's so cold! Do you want my jacket? Aren't you cold?" And I'll point out that it's forty degrees and sunny, as opposed to the -2 and windy that it was in Madison. They'll continue to insist that it's really cold and I should be wearing more.

Don't get me wrong. I'm looking forward to all of this. But my family is ridiculous. Now perhaps some of you understand why I'm as ridiculous as I am. Honestly, I don't think I'm half as insane as my mom. It's true.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

I just realized something. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get to this conclusion, but I think it's correct.

Your friends don't think you're perfect. The people that love you most aren't the people who don't think you're flawed. Fuck those people. People who think you're perfect have no fucking idea who you are. The best friends you could ever have are the ones that see your flaws but also see that you are, on the whole, a positive addition to their lives.

This is a huge thing for me to realize, I think, because I sometimes worry that my friends will realize that I'm a huge failure of a human being and lose respect for me. But my friends already know that I'm a huge failure of a human being, and they respect me anyway. This is a comforting thought, in a strange way.

I'm thinking about this because I'm thinking about college. I was lucky enough to have a pretty close group of friends in college. And that group came to be in a completely random way. But, perhaps more astoundingly, I don't think that any one of the people in that group would, if given the opportunity to describe his or her ideal friend, have described any of the other people in the group. And certainly, there were plenty of arguments and confrontations and tension and falling outs. But at the end of the day, these were some of the best friends I've ever had, and I think they'd say the same about me and everyone else.

So, yeah.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 1:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

I got a call today from a friend I hadn't spoken to in something like three years. It was nice. We spent a lot of time catching up and remembering lots of things we all did in college. And we planned some new adventures--she's hopefully gonna come visit me early in the new year.

We hadn't spoken for, uh, dumb reasons. But it's all blood under the whatsit or whatever. The fact of the matter is that even when we weren't speaking, I knew we'd speak again sometime. And we did. And it was good.

It's nice to know that some of the connections you've made with people can survive time, distance, anger, and growth.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

I should give credit to Dee--I bastardized her Facebook status for this post's title.

Anyway, for a number of reasons, I feel like I'm finally ready to start thinking about celebrating Christmas. I was most certainly not ready in October when the ever-expanding Christmas season started this year, but I'm ready now.

First of all, I bought my plane tickets home today. So, while several courts are desperately trying to keep me in Wisconsin over the holiday, I will be in California with my family. I haven't seen my mom since graduation in May of 2007, and I haven't seen my grandma since Christmas, 2006. Needless to say that I'm excited.

Secondly, it's fucking beautiful outside. I know that people used to the cold weather are really not happy about this shit, but the inches and inches of snow we got tonight make me smile from ear to ear. It's just beautiful. I probably won't be smiling too much tomorrow when I have to dig my car out from under all this crap, but right now, it's awesome.

And finally, something that I had been dreading happened today. And it ended up not being nearly as bad as I had thought it was going to be. I'm not calling this thing a Christmas miracle by any means since I still have a lot of work to do and a "good" result is by no means assured, but, for the time being, disaster has been averted.

So, yeah. I'm pumped.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

Yesterday and last night, it was so warm that I was afraid the city would flood because of all the melting snow. Snow banks were reduced to large puddles, and the ground was once again visible.

This morning, it's as if the sun went out and the Earth is floating around in the cold harshness of space untethered to any star.

I love this city.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

Up until a few months ago, I had no clue who Campbell Brown was. Now that I do, I wish she'd shut the fuck up.

As far as I'm concerned, she's the worst that mainstream news has to offer (note that I'm not counting people like Bill O'Reilly as members of the "mainstream news" because, well, what they do isn't news). She's sensationalistic and panders to the "common" folk and all that other shit. But the positions she chooses to take are retarded.

In a video posted on CNN.com today, for example, Ms. Brown discusses the fact that Governor Rod Blagojevich still has the sole legal right to name Barack Obama's successor to the U.S. Senate. In the video, she goes to great lengths to remind us that, in America, people are innocent until proven guilty. But then she pretty much to say "well, not so much."

See, she thinks that it's preposterous that someone facing allegations as serious and ridiculous as those the Governor is facing could still be in a position to appoint a senator. And she goes on to analogize that situation to ones where police officers are put on leave if they are facing allegations of serious misconduct.

But her positions are stupid for several reasons. First of all, we can't throw away the presumption of innocence just because the allegations in a particular case are both extremely serious and clearly true. Rod Blagojevich is a sleazebag, but he's also innocent. He can't be sentenced or sent to jail, and he hasn't lost his position as the Governor of Illinois. This conclusion might seem absurd in this particular case, but the principle is solid. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that someone with the authority to bring criminal charges would misuse that authority for personal or political gain. If the rule is that any government official accused of some serious offense automatically loses his or her authority, then anyone with the power to make those accusations would also have the power to circumvent the will of the people and government as a whole.

And that brings us to the second problem with Ms. Brown's analysis. There is a crucial difference between a police officer accused of misconduct and a Governor accused of breaking federal law, namely that governors are elected. It seems pretty clear that Illinois voters chose a selfish, idiotic, arrogant, terrible man as their governor. But that is the right of the voters. This is the man they chose and he has not relinquished that authority nor has any other entity used any legal mechanism to remove him from office. The people of Illinois chose to give this man this power and also, directly or indirectly, approved the system that allows him to keep his authority in this issue. They can change the law if they want, but for the time being, this is the will of the people.

Democracy isn't perfect. In fact, sometimes it can lead to really stupid results. But that's when we have to be the most careful to protect it, I think. The presumption of innocence and the notion that the will of the people is supreme are two of our most important ideas. If we really want to take them seriously, then we have to take them seriously all the time. And if we can't do that, then we might as well just give up on everything.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Legal Rants , Philosophical Rants , Political Rants , Rants on the News

I've been thinking lately about how old a girl would have to be in order for me to consider dating her. I mean, I'm twenty-seven. That's fucking old in terms of the whole dating scene, right? I mean, I'm not in college anymore. Fuck, I'm not even in grad school anymore. So would it be strange--either for me or for other people--if I dated someone in, say, law school? Or college? I mean, people in college are, like, twenty-three at the most. What are those people like? I envision this scenario in which I show up with my twenty-two-year-old girlfriend to some college party and try to hold my own at beer pong only to get embarrassed by the twenty-year-olds there and then have them all talk about me as being some random old dude that totally crashed their party.

But on the other hand, what if there's some girl that's generally more mature than the average person her age? Or something. One friend of mine suggested that it's cool to date someone as long as their in the same stage of life as I am. So if her parents are still paying her bills, then that's bad. That seems to make some sense. But then another friend of mine suggested that, should the right nineteen-year-old girl come along, I would be all over that. And part of me probably would. But wouldn't that just be really gross and lecherous? Plus, how could I introduce her to my colleagues? What if I went to some Christmas party with people I see in court and go around introducing my girlfriend and explaining that she just graduated from high school? That's clearly ridiculous. But would it be any better if I said that she just graduated from college?

This is all moot, of course, if the person in question is pH's sister.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

So, after an initial delay, I finally saw The Smashing Pumpkins again last night. This was the fourth time I've seen them, and I can now say that I've seen them tour for every album since and including Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

The first time I saw them, it was on the "Infinite Sadness" tour on December 7, 1996. It was in a giant arena, and Billy was wearing his most iconic outfit: the Zero shirt and the silver pants. I believe he had just started shaving his head. I don't know for sure because our seats sucked and I had a hard time making out the stage. The show was good, but it was slightly disappointing because I was pretty far away. But the band delivered, both in terms of the setlist and the actual performance. My only real gripe my distance.

The second time I saw them, they were on the "Arising" tour, which coincided with the release of Adore. They weren't nearly as huge anymore, and this translated to them playing in a smaller, general-admission venue. So we got our tickets, showed up early, and fought our way to the front. At some points, I was less than ten feet from Billy Corgan, and D'arcy was always right in front of me. This was also the only time I've seen the whole original lineup, and it was by far the best of their shows I've ever seen. Things were really intimate, and they fucking rocked. They also did a beautiful new version of "Today" that involved some really pretty interplay between Billy and James's guitars. I've never heard that version anywhere else. Also, the version of "Soma" that they played that night was excellent, and D'arcy did some good backup singing on it. Oh, and she looked hot.

The third time I saw them was at the Mesa Amphitheater, an outdoor, general-admission venue. This was on their tour for Machina. It was all the original lineup except that D'arcy had been replaced by Melissa Auf Der Maur. Again, it was another really good show. We fought our way to the front just as they played "Bullet with Butterfly Wings." They again rocked.

But lots of things have changed in the last few years that made me really anxious about the show. First of all, it was only half of the original lineup: this would be the first time I was going to see The Smashing Pumpkins but not see James Iha. I always thought that he added way more to the band than he was given credit for. He cowrote "Soma" and "Mayonaise," two of the band's best songs. And I'm pretty sure he did the string arrangements for "Disarm" and maybe "Tonight, Tonight." Plus he was an excellent guitarist and he had a really good stage presence. And he seemed to keep Billy in check at times.

And then, of course, there's the fact that the band's latest album pretty much sucks really hard. So I knew going in that I'd have to listen to some crappy songs, but I hoped that the good songs would more than make up for it.

In the end, I was almost right.

The show started with "Ava Adore," "Cupid de Locke," and "1979." I was fairly unimpressed, especially since Billy wasn't even holding a guitar. It was just strange, really. And there were backing tracks. Like, the echoy repeated vocal part of 1979 was there, even though no one was singing it. So that was strange.

Also noteworthy was the fact that, for the first time, there were more than four musicians on stage. In fact, there were nearly a dozen different people. With one glaring exception, I could have done without most of these extra people.

So, the show continued. After a song or two I had never heard, the band quietly went into "Soma." The crowd went wild. The rendition was good, and it was the first time I had seen it performed live with the piano parts. It did seem a little rushed, but it was still amazing. You just can't screw up a song that powerful.

"Soma" started off what was the strongest portion of the concert. It was quickly followed by "Cherub Rock," "Zero," and "Bodies"--a song I don't think I had seen live before. It was an awesome little portion.

If I remember correctly, that section was followed by some truly bizarre noise, then by an extremely surrealistic metal portion. And I'm talking thrash metal here. Jimmy Chamberlain did some double bass action. The solos sounded like something Kirk Hammett wrote and rejected. It was awful.

Then things turned around. Billy strapped on his acoustic guitar and strummed the opening notes to "Disarm," and everyone was sucked right back in. And I have to say that this was, by far, the best live version of the song I've ever seen. It started off being just Billy, but then all of the extra musicians chimed in. There was a violin and some fucking horns. They recreated the album's string sections beautifully and possibly even surpassed the awesomeness. It was the highlight of the show. It was just really, really good.

Then there was some more noise. A lot of it. For a long time.

And then the most unbelievably strange thing happened. I'm actually still in shock. The Smashing Pumpkins laid down a funky Latin groove. The Smashing Pumpkins. A funky Latin groove. I couldn't do anything but sit there with my jaw on the floor. It was strange. But wait! There's more. See, Billy at that point wasn't playing guitar, so he was free to move around and fucking dance. Like he was at a rave or something. While wearing a skirt. And a top hat. And carrying tambourines. All while there was a fucking Latin groove going on. Complete with those whistles. And all the main musicians put down their instruments and started using those rhythm stick things. It was fucking shit-tastic. "Indefensible," one of my friends said. And I agree.

Then they sort of got back on track and did a serviceable version of "Galapagos." And then it was back to the noise.

In the end, I would say that about 40 percent of the concert literally consisted of noise. Of that, about half of it in terms of total time was completely indefensible nonsense. At times, it really did seem like they were trying to make us listen to the exact opposite of music. The other half of it was just songs that no one had ever heard and didn't care about.

Another 30 percent was extremely "meh." Why would they choose to perform "Cupid de Locke," for example? That's not really a song that anyone cares about.

The remaining 30 percent was either good or amazing. The highlights were definitely the amazing, amazing version of "Disarm" and a very intimate rendition of "Landslide," but the songs they played from the Siamese Dream era were all pretty good, and most of the songs from MCIS were good, too.

One other thing. Although there were literally about seven different keyboard instruments on stage, they didn't use a single one of them when they played "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." Instead, they performed that as an orchestral piece. It was almost unidentifiable. Not necessarily bad, just not what I was expecting.

In the end, if the band comes near me again, I will probably go see them again. But I can't blame RPM and SNS if they don't wanna join me.

Update:
I found some Youtube videos that I think are fairly relevant here.

First, this is a video of the band's performance of "Landslide" last night:

Second, this is a video of the version of "Disarm" they did last night, although not last night's actual performance:

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Fun Shit I've Done , Music Reviews , The Smashing Pumpkins

Some people are very solitary and enjoy spending time alone when they're stressed or anxious or depressed or whatever. I've never been one of those people. Although there are times when I'd definitely rather sleep or read or just be alone than socialize, when I'm in a bad mood, I'd almost always rather be around my friends.

By early Friday evening, I was in a pretty bad mood. Nothing specific or really terrible had happened. My week had just been long and I was tired and irritable. And stressed about some things that are completely out of my control. So, of course, the universe decided that right then would be the best time to start messing with me.

Starting at about 5:30 on Friday, a slew of very minor but very annoying things started to happen. My computer started acting up. Then I decided I wanted to make some pasta for dinner, so I went to the store and got everything I needed for the sauce, but didn't buy the pasta itself because I knew that I had a box in my cupboard from the last time I went grocery shopping. Well, of course, I came home and realized that I had used that box. So I had to go back to the store. Then Mr. Vice called to let me know that he and pH would be staying in that night because they had some stuff to take care of for the next day. Then L-Dawg and X-Tina decided that they, too, were staying in. RPM couldn't hang out because he had a date. That added to my deteriorating mood on two levels: first, it meant that all hope for social interaction that night was lost. But second, it meant that all of my friends in Madison were spending the evenings with either significant others or potential significant others. The phrase "the cheese stands alone" came to mind.

So I settled in for a night at home. I decided that I would play some video games and just relax. But my chosen game--World of Warcraft--decided that it was going to add to my bad night. I tried literally about twenty times to accomplish what everyone told me as a very simple task in the game. But I just couldn't do it, and my anger and frustration grew with each successive failure.

So I gave up and decided that I would unwind and play some guitar. Maybe trying I could translate my frustration into a killer riff or something. But my guitar rig was also acting up--my cats apparently decided that it would be fun to chew through some of the cables, so all I could get were occasional squawking noises. Awesome.

Eventually, I just went to bed, comfortable in the knowledge that I would be spending the next day cooking and eating with everyone. Well, the next morning, L-Dawg and X-tina asked me to go pick up a bunch of things for our fake Thanksgiving. So I went to the store and picked all the stuff up, then came home. I had two pounds of butter, ten pounds of potatoes, a gallon of eggnog, a gallon of apple cider, and bunch of other little shit. My hands were full. Just then, Mr. Vice called to let me know that he was outside to pick me up. But I didn't answer because I had my hands full and I'd be outside in a second. So when I open the outside door to my apartment, I see Mr. Vice's car. And then I see Mr. Vice's car drive away.

Eventually they came back--they needed to go back to the McDonald's because they fucked up their order. And they handed me the french fries I had asked them to pick up for me. And my fries were cold and stale. And I was convinced that it was going to be a terrible day, which pissed me off more because it meant that the day I'd been looking forward to for weeks was going to be ruined.

But I was horribly, horribly wrong. Fake Thanksgiving was relaxing and fun and awesome. And I ate so much amazing food, I'm still recovering. L-Dawg's turkey was amazing--moist and tender, just like a turkey should be. Everyone said the potatoes were really good. I'll take the credit for those since I watched every step of their production. RPM's stuffing was damned tasty. His mashed chipotle sweet potatoes were ok--others thought they were excellent, but I sort of hate sweet potatoes. pH's cake was ri-goddamn-diculous. It was probably the best cake I've ever had.

In the end, the weekend was pretty awesome. Which just goes to show that I should stop being such a moody bastard.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Hanging Out With My Friends , Life Sucks Sometimes

Now that I've gotten over the initial embarrassment of admitting that I signed up for one of these things, I think it's appropriate to rant about the kind of shit people write in their profiles.

The site I signed up for asks a bunch of questions and then you're supposed to answer in some way that tells people interesting things about you. Probably pretty standard shit. Unfortunately, there are also some pretty standard responses which are really, really fucking lame. Some examples:

What I'm Doing With My Life
"Living"
Really? You're living your life? Gee, thanks for letting me know that you're not dead. Or, worse, undead. What the fuck kind of response is that? You might as well write "breathing" or "attempting to not die." Those would be at least as informative. Fuck you

"Trying to find out who I am."
What does that even mean? Some existential angst is fine, I suppose, but if you're 24 and you're still out there with absolutely no idea of who you are, then you're sort of a loser. I don't care if you don't know what you want to do, but you'd better have figured out who you are. Jesus, man!

I'm Really Good At . . .
"Everything! But mostly I'm good at being modest."
Oh! I get what you did there! You said you were good at everything, which makes you sound like an arrogant piece of shit, but then you acknowledged that and sarcastically said you also excelled in the area of humility. You are fucking hilarious. And original.

Favorite Music
"Everything except country."
Let me see if I understand your worldview. You believe that the universe of music can be expressed in a Venn diagram consisting of two non-overlapping circles. The first circle represents good music and the second circle represents country. Right. You are a stupid and boring person.

"Good music, as defined by me."
That's a verbatim quote from one girl's profile. "Good music, as defined by me." Could there possibly be a more tautological statement? Why not tell someone who's lost to go in the direction of their destination? Or say to the waitress that you'd like something that you'll think tastes good. Oh, right, because those statements mean abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

Six Things I Could Never Do Without
"Food, water, shelter, etc."
I don't think that's what the fucking question meant. But, then, the question is stupid. Really stupid, in fact. I can't remember a single interesting response to that question.

The Most Private Thing I'm Willing to Admit Here
"You'll have to message me to find out!"
Fuck, can you not read? Do you not understand how this works? You're supposed to admit the most private thing you're willing to admit in public! If that's that your favorite color is poison green, then that's what you admit. If the most private thing you're willing to admit is that your clit is pierced, then that's what you admit. Admitting nothing makes you look like someone who has no idea what's going on around them, so they default to trying to be coy. You are a fucking idiot.

"I love my vibrator."
Oh, good for you! You, like everyone else in the fucking universe, masturbate. Only you're being lame about it because you think you're blowing my mind. You're not. And I don't care.

Also, I find myself judging people on the strangest things. For example, if someone can't use "their," "there," and "they're" correctly, I'm pretty much not interested. I mean, it's not that fucking hard to keep those straight!

So the point is that I'm pretty sure that what I originally said about dating websites is going to end up being true: the entire experience is going to be depressing because I'm only going to discover that I'm far pickier than my attractiveness should allow me to be.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry

Apparently, some of the changes I made recently rendered my blog unviewable by people using Internet Explorer. I frankly didn't know that anyone still used IE, but I also like having readers. So I think I fixed the problem.

If you're still having trouble loading the page, please let me know. I don't know how you're going to see that link if you can't read the page, but you people are resourceful. Figure something out.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under General Remarks

I love the first Coldplay album. I think the second one is good. X&Y is pretty bad And this new thing they put out, Viva La Vida, is fucking unlistenable. It's fucking crap. It's some of the worst "music" I've ever heard. "Roman Catholic choirs are singing"? How does that count as a lyric! Compared to "Don't Panic" or even "Yellow," this new shit is appallingly bad.

And who the fuck is Lil' Wayne? I honestly have no idea. Have I heard something by him? I mean, what the fuck is going on in the world of music?

Anyway, all of this is to say that I'm baffled by the list of nominees. That Coldplay and Lil' Wayne got the most nominations fills me with anger and confusion. I mean, I have no idea what should have been nominated, but certainly we could have done better than to honor Coldplay in any way, yeah?

Actually, fuck the Grammys. I'm just so pissed at how fucking terrible that new album is. God. Dammit.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Music Reviews , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry , Rants on the News

So, the Big Three car companies showed up in Washington again to beg for money. This time, they jetpooled or something. They didn't each fly their own private jets, anyway. And the CEOs of each of the companies have apparently promised both to work for $1 a year and drive hybrid cars to DC for the next meetings. Because that makes sense somehow.

All of this was some sort of good-faith demonstration which, I assume, was meant to soften the blow of the fact that they're no longer asking for $25 billion, they're asking for $34 billion. Huh That seems to me a little like saying "Mom, you know you said that if I kept good grades this year you'd buy me a Mexistrat? Well, I found some spare change on the way home today, so I was wondering if you could get me a 1960 vintage Gibson Les Paul instead? Thanks."

Anyway--and I realize that this may come as a shock--but I don't have an opinion on this whole bailout for the car companies thing. On the one hand, it seems to me that Ford, GM, and Chrysler have been running their businesses like shortsighted idiots for a while now. From personal experience, it seems to me that the general quality of American cars has increased, but that's not all that matters. I mean, while foreign automakers were producing attractive, economical, fuel-efficient vehicles, Detroit was busy churning out SUVs and trucks. I mean, GM bought the Hummer brand in 1998, a year after the Prius debuted in Japan. I know that trucks and SUVs were selling well and represented huge profits for the Big Three, but how much foresight does it take to see that that shit isn't going to last? Here we are a decade later and I can't think of a single competitive American hybrid or electric car. And the truck and SUV market has pretty much imploded.

So no, I'm not sympathetic to companies that, based on my limited understanding, have run their like idiots who think that they are above change and innovation.

On the other hand, I don't really want to see a giant portion of American industry simply disappear. I mean, what would happen to Michigan? How many millions of people would be affected? And how fucking terrible would all of that be for an economy that's already in the shitter?

But then, if the government's gonna spend billions of dollars to help these companies out, it seems to me like maybe they should have some oversight of how the money's spent A lot of oversight, a part of me says But then I start thinking that the government giving companies money and then telling them how to run themselves seems kinda contrary to the whole "free market" thing, which I'm a big supporter of. I mean, I was listening to Air America the other day and Ed Schultz was talking about he thought that if we bailed out the car companies, they would have to agree to have a large number of viable hybrid vehicles on the market within a few years. And I'm all for hybrids, but something about the government telling a company what products to sell seems really disturbing to me. So it seems, to me, at least, like there's this slippery slope: we want oversight, but we don't want socialism How do you decide?

But then, if we're so against socialism, which I guess I am, why are we all about using the government's money to save stupid companies.

I really have no idea. What do you guys think?

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Rants on the News

For fuck's sake. I seriously question the intelligence and wisdom of any writers that sit around and think "you know how we've got that character played by Kristen Bell? Let's kill that character!" Fucking stupid.

But, anyway, so, continuing the completely ridiculous trend of doing whatever is most "cool" with characters, Sylar is now back to being totally all about killing people randomly. He doesn't so much care about being a good person or fighting against his hunger for power, he's back to being all creepy and unsympathetic. And so he kills his super-hot girlfriend. Which is fucking lame on so many levels. I mean, why did we have Sylar go through all that emotional turmoil if he's just going to end up in the exact place where he started? Blah.

Oh, and also, what the fuck, Nathan? Haven't we learned our lesson about buying into crazy, ridiculous, playing-God schemes? Remember when you were totally on board with the whole "nuking New York" thing and then you were like "whoa, that was totally a terrible idea, I can't believe I didn't see that before." So then you turn around and you don't see the fucking downside to giving everyone super-human abilities? You're a fucking retard. Oh, wait, no, the writers are making you seem like a fucking retard. Get it fucking together, guys.

The stuff with Hiro and Claire was ok, as was the stuff with Parkman. But the problem continues to be that the episodes are entertaining enough while you're watching them, they just don't hold up to scrutiny. The plot isn't very complex, there aren't really any mysteries to ponder, and the characters are becoming more and more tired.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Heroes , Television Reviews

I kept thinking that yesterday was Sunday. Do you know what it's like when you wake up having gone to bed thinking you were going to wake up on a Monday and find that you've actually woken up on a Sunday? It's like God said "You know, I think you've been working really hard lately and I know you could really use an additional day to do nothing but goof off, so here, this one's on the house." And when God does something like that, it would be a huge mistake to actually do anything. Accordingly, I did nothing today.

I played video games, I played some music, I worked on a new song that I'll be posting in the next week or so, I read a little, I continued developing my addiction to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I did nothing. And it was glorious.

Still, I'm ready to go back to work. Even though I took the weekend off justifiably, I'm still feeling pretty worthless right now, and I'm anxious to get back to work tomorrow. There's a lot of stuff waiting for me on my desk, and I'm actually looking forward to a lot of it.

So I hope that all of you, whether you were able to take four days off or not, had as relaxing a weekend as I did.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To