Religious Faith Quandaries

Probably my favorite show on any media is one that can be listened to on NPR Saturday afternoons at 2:00pm, or for me podcasted and listened to at my convenience, This American Life . The radio show is organized each week around a theme, having multiple stories around that theme, about usually ordinary people in America, but usually, these ordinary people are having very extra-ordinary experiences, very different from my own. So, I usually thoroughly enjoy these glimpses into other people's lives. A few episodes ago, they did a show entitled Nobody's Family is Going to Change. The title they took from this book. Each story revolves around the idea that it is sometimes pointless to get someone else to change.

One of these stories documents the relationship between a brother and a sister: the brother a recent charismatic born-again convert, the sister, a lesbian. And it is this conflict, between religious certainty and more of a rational skepticism, and a general tolerance of each other's point of view, that I want to spend some time discussing. Because at some level I can really relate to this conflict, having my own personal experiences with it.

But first, let me give you a summary of the show. The story is narrated by the sister, and she describes how while they were growing up, before he left home for college, the two were extremely close. However, in his freshman year in college, as a result of some major emotional struggles, culminating in an intensely personal, spiritual, emotionally charged experience, the brother converts to Christianity and joins a charismatic church. As a result of this conversion, he completely embraces his faith to the degree that he drops out of school and moves to a farm in Alaska owned by this church to live a communal lifestyle with other believers, abandoning his family in the process. Meanwhile, his sister embraces lesbianism, and moves to Europe with her girlfriend. In time, she finally makes a visit to the farm to visit her brother, trying to figure out what happened to him, to make an attempt to reconnect their once close relationship, and to convince him to accept her choices as much as she hopes to accept his. She even made a movie about this trip.

It was fascinating to hear their conversations in real-time as she attempts to get him to accept her as she is, which is impossible for him to do. In fact, earlier, he made a trip to visit her in Europe, shortly after his conversion. Needless to say, he was judgmental of her situation. What's also fascinating is how she describes the differences each took in dealing with their problems, her time spent working through problems with a therapist, his consultation with the Bible to find answers.

This whole dynamic is interesting. According to the narrator, before his conversion, he was very non-homophoboic, very accepting, and they were very close. However, as she makes the attempts to visit him and talk with him, she discovers the details of his conversion. How his freshman year was unusually difficult; how he was struggling with depressive thoughts; how he has this religious, very spiritual experience; how through this experience, he felt in a very direct and undeniable way, God's love for him; how through additional experiences he was led to this charismatic church; and how through a relationship from this woman who kind of mentors him, he decides to move to the farm.

You see, what is fascinating here is that he becomes a Christian because of an emotionally-charged spiritual experience. I am not sure the extent of the intellectual process involved, it seemed obvious that he studied the Bible pretty intently thereafter, but it seems definitely secondary for him. Nonetheless, he seamlessly adopts all of the doctrines of the church almost without question.

And that's what is interesting to me, that when you experience spiritual conversion to a faith, to a church, and establish both an emotional and a spiritual connection to a particular sect, the intellectual conversion just sort of follows. So, of course he would come down hard on his sister's lifestyle, because it's in the Bible plain as day and I'm sure his pastor preached a sermon on it one Sunday, and it all made sense, and of course it must be true because God led him on this path.

I must confess I don't know these people, I only heard a brief summary on a radio show, so I'm extrapolating here, but stuff like this has happened to me and I bet it has happened to you. In fact, in many ways, I can relate to this phenomenon more so than most because of the religious faith I belong to. Growing up in a non-Mormon town where I had a lot of non-Mormon friends, and being the sort of combative know-it-all kid I was, I got into plenty of religious debates, and I always felt like I was at the disadvantage. You see, the Mormon faith makes some pretty big claims on divine revelation, prophets, priesthood, and being the only true and living church. It's in the first section of the Doctrine Covenants, our church being "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually—". So, in a debate on church doctrine, all one of my detractors had to do was find one example where my church was wrong, and the major premise of my church falls apart as well.

In contrast, the Protestants have it easy. Most of them simply say that as long as you believe in Jesus Christ (and since most people in Yuma, AZ do), you have nothing to worry about. That churches here on earth are a man-made invention, flawed to be sure, mere tools to help us mingle together, strengthen one-another, but the truth lies only in the Bible and in our relationship with God. We largely agree on this point, but it's just our church takes the additional rather significant step that God in His wisdom and mercy talked to one fourteen year old boy back in the early 1800's and through him started a divinely directed church.

And our church, through revelation to prophets does have a lot of complex doctrines, not completely understood by anyone I know, which is exciting to have room to grow and expand in an organization. But it's tricky. Despite all of the doctrinal complexities inherent in the church, mainly members of the church are directed to keep it simple, rooted in simple expressions of faith, rooted in emotional and spiritual experiences. In our monthly testimony meetings, we are asked to keep our messages short and focused on simple expressions of faith in God, Jesus Christ, and in the Divine mission of the church on the earth. As missionaries teaching prospective converts, we stick to six simple discussions, based solely on core principles of faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, scriptures, prophets, and revelation. We ask the person to pray, and as directed by their own convictions make the choice to act on the emotions and feelings they experience as they search. That's it.

But what's interesting to me, in the context of this essay, is what we don't do. A convert is never asked if they are comfortable with the church's polygamous history, or what they think of the historical controversies surrounding the Mountain Meadows massacre. Many times, a prospective convert will hear about this or other issues from a friend or pastor either before or soon after the conversion at which time they are forced to deal with it, but the missionaries never bring it up. And it's probably a good thing too because these issues are difficult to explain and basically get in the way of what's important, a person's personal journey to establish a relationship with Deity.

But contrast that with someone like myself who grew up in the church or someone who has been a member for many years. I have heard so many explanations of polygamy from these people and even have come up with a few of my own, none of them, to my knowledge, are officially church endorsed. But because the person has an emotional connection to the faith, they feel compelled to close the loop intellectually as well, and then talk themselves into some pretty crazy mental gymnastics in their attempts to do so.

I am only using the example of my faith because it is my faith, but we all have examples. Let's take politics. Isn't it strange to you that as soon as you declare yourself to be a liberal (for example), you almost always automatically become pro choice on abortion, anti-death penalty, pro progressive tax code, pro strict environmental laws, pro-increase the minimum wage, etc., etc., etc. Somewhere along the line, you probably had some sort of emotional conversion to the Democratic party, maybe a particular political leader was particularly inspiring, maybe the group of friends you associate with were influential, maybe your parents were Democrats and were raised you that way. But because of something more emotional than intellectual, you find yourself compelled to close the loop 100% of the way, and basically adopt the complete party line, hook, line and sinker. And your voting record bears it out.

This is not meant to be a criticism, it's incredibly easy thing to do. In fact, I have been a registered Republican most of my life and in those years I had a pretty consistent Republican-oriented voting record. I really can't remember ever voting for a Democrat until around 2004 or so. It was then that I registered independent, and have tried to vote that way. More recently, almost entirely because of Barack Obama, I registered Democrat, and found myself sympathizing more and more uniformly with the democratic side of the argument on so many issues. I have to keep reminding myself to stay independent in my thinking.

But there is another political component to my point. One of my first blog posts, I entitled it, "Are Democrats Smarter than Republicans", consisting of my personal political history. Well, one of the points I never really got to there and I'm getting to here, is that the Republican party has largely become the party of faith, while the Democratic party has become the party of intellectual reasoning.

The clash between the brother and sister of This American Life happens all the time in Congress, on Fox News, and in our communities. You are un-American if you don't wear an American lapel on your jacket and attend a church pastored by Jeremiah Wright. John Kerry was pillared in the 2004 debates for bringing up the idea of using a "global test" before we invade another country. And Bush's invasion into Iraq, as ill-thought out as it was, and this medieval like Crusades aspect to it.

Even the economic debates has this religious versus secular feel to it. The Republicans view always boils down to keeping the government out of the market and this almost religious faith that the free-market model will solve all of problems of poverty, family, and country. And the Republicans have been largely effective in labeling Democrats as elitist socialist, who want to grow government at the expense of our liberty.

In fact, most of the Democratic arguments I read are much more moderate. Most support the free market, but see its limitations in certain areas, so they support regulation, and government constraint, and to help "smooth over the rough edges" of the free market.

Now I'm not saying the Republican point of view is necessarily wrong and the Democratic view is right. I definitely see the religious point of view healthy and necessary in the political sphere, and I largely disagree with some attempts to eliminate religion from the public conversation. And sometimes, the more simple, religious approach is also the right approach.

To wrap up, I want to talk a little more about something personal to me that really fits into this theme, the issue of homosexuality. This issue has so many elements of religion and secularism and it rips the two right down the middle, motivating politicians to amend constitutions, and religious groups to push legislation. To many religious groups, including my own, this is a clear cut case of taking a morale stand against something that is morally wrong. But if you take the religious argument out of the equation and look at it with only your secular eyes, the Democratic argument makes more sense. There does seem to be rather strong evidence that points to strong gay feelings in certain people at early ages. And to suppress those feelings seems to lead to a lifetime of heartache. Admittedly, I'm completely naive on this issue.

The Mormon church has made some pretty emphatically clear statements on gender and sexuality. In fact, just a short time ago, it published The Proclamation on the Family where it says in no uncertain terms:

"Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."

and

"We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife."

and

"The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity."

Pretty clear stuff. And I do feel a religious, spiritual, and emotional connection to the doctrine behind these statements. But I do know people that I highly respect that have close gay friends, and largely because of those friendships believe in their heart of hearts that their sexuality is an intrinsic part of their identity. In fact, I have met some of them, and would agree these people seem to be good in every possible sense of the word.

And also consider this story about transgendered six year olds. How, I want to know do you square this example with the statements in The Proclamation of the Family?

I guess my point is you just don't. In a recent Paul Graham essay entitled Lies We Tell Kids, he says, "Very smart adults often seem unusually innocent, and I don't think this is a coincidence. I think they've deliberately avoided learning about certain things. Certainly I do. I used to think I wanted to know everything. Now I know I don't."

That's all he says about that, and he moves on to the next thought. That idea is fascinating to me because it rings so true. It reminds me of this poem from a book written by the recent American poet laureate, Ted Kooser, on pornography, entitled a Deck of Pornographic Playing Cards, and it goes like this:

We were ten or eleven, my friend and I,
when we found them under a bridge,
on top of a beam where pigeons were resting.
Someone had carefully hidden them there.
On each was a black-and-white photo,
no two cards alike. We grew quiet and older,
young men on our haunches, staring at
what we feared might be the future.
The pigeons flapped back to their roosts,
rustling and cooing. The river gurgled
as it slipped from the bridge's cool shadow.
There were women with big muzzled dogs,
women with bottles and broom handles.
Stallions stood over the bodies of others.
The women smiled and licked their lips
with tongues like thorns. We grew old.
We were two old men with stiff legs
and sad hearts. We had wanted to laugh
but we couldn't. We had thought we were boys,
come there to throw stones at the pigeons,
but we were already dying inside.

The image of these boys growing old in that moment of accidental knowledge is pretty startling for me, and I think that is the point maybe. That maybe it is important to understand some things, but better not to understand many other things. That it's more important to feel love, to feel spirituality and emotional connections with heaven, than it is to get caught up in debates that have no answers.

What makes the Proclamation on the Family so powerful for me is that it emphasizes strong families that are lasting and enduring. I just don't think it's especially helpful to use it as hammer to pound an anti-gay argument down someone's throat. We all make very personal decisions on these issues, and it can be very difficult to make sense of why one person chooses a lifestyle completely different from our own.

So, I think in day to day living, in our association with our friends and peers, it's pretty clear that we should follow principles of compassion, empathy, and love. In matters of public policy I wish there was more room for politicians to simply say, "you know this is a tough issue and I'm just not sure what the right answer is".

Really, truly, what is the best way to deal with abortion or gay marriage. The answer is probably to error on the side of compassion and tolerance, not being afraid to compromise to get stuff done, to admit that we live in a wonderful country filled with incredible people having all sorts of religious, spiritual, and intellectual points of view and it's our opportunity to understand one another in the spirit of friendship and humility.

Mothers Day

Since it's Mothers Day today, how about I leave you with a few articles I read recently that were so incredibly well-written they blew my socks off, they were all written by the same woman and dealt very much with women issues:

This one is about the best article I have ever read about abortion, both sides of the issue.

This one will scare you silly if you have daughters. It's all about the dangers of the internet.

This one describes just how latching herself to a creep like Bill Clinton ruined Hillary.

Have fun and Happy Mother's Day.

-Scott

The Turley's Disney Family Vacation: A Way Too Detailed Recap

Last weekend, I was forced into a family vacation to Disneyland. Ok, I wasn't really forced into it, but it definitely was not my first choice. My wife's family had this master plan to go to Disneyland originally in December. But in December we, the Turley family, did not have the funds, so it was postponed to May, and now that its May, we just got back from our trip. So, Sara's parents, sisters, aunt and uncle arranged their work and school schedules to accommodate a vacation to Disneyland, and of course, so did we.

I guess I had sort of bad feelings about Disneyland. For one, there are many other ways I would have preferred spending all of that money, so many other places that would have been more exciting for me to visit. Second, the last time I went to Disneyland I went with a girl I was dating well before I met Sara. This girl was nice and everything, but deep down I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere, and I had absolutely nothing in common with the group of her friends who were also going. I left that trip with this feeling that, sure it was fun and all, but I didn't really feel like I gained anything from it. Like it was this short term fun fix that was over immediately, with no satisfactory after taste to savor later on.

On top of that, Sara read this book, right after we got married called Disney Unmasked (or something like that, I couldn't find it on Google, so I'm wondering if it's out of print because, really, who honestly doesn't love Disneyland) that disparages Disneyland as an over-crowded, money-making at all costs, cover up scandals and accidents mess of a park. On top of that, when I told my sister we were heading to Disneyland, she said, "you know, I don't think we'll ever go there." She described the slightly trashy quality of all amusement parks, how everything is way overpriced, and how at the end of the day, there are many other things that are just more fulfilling and enjoyable, at least for adults. Her trick is to make sure their son never hears about Disneyland so he doesn't know what he's missing. You know what I say, good luck with that.

So, needless to say, I had some negative feelings going into this vacation, but I knew at the very least, it would be fun for me, even if it would be this kind of candy kind of fun, the kind that leaves you a little sick afterward, and at the very least it would be great fun to see my two young kids (one of which has this Disney princess obsession) having a great time. And, you know what, I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with every single one of Sara's family members, so I was looking forward to seeing them.

So, Sara did some research on the park and was feeling pretty overwhelmed. We did do some high level planning to avoid Disneyland at the busiest times of the year, and to avoid the weekend as much as possible. So, we chose to arrive on May 1st, to attend Disneyland on Friday and Monday, leaving the weekend for some LA fun. Sara and I both knew, however, that that was not going to be enough planning. Disneyland is pretty much packed all year round, so we needed to have a plan, and with twelve people involved, the plan would have to be really good to avoid chaos, confusion, too much walking, and too much line waiting. A tall order; Sara was stressed out. So, I stepped in.

Good luck for me because I came across a really cool software package, RideMax, and I was instantly hooked. This software was written by a computer scientist who loves Disneyland. He somehow managed to obtain the wait time for every single ride at all times of the day, during all parts of the year. The user then only had to input a day of the year she would be attending the park and all of the rides she wanted to fit in on that day, and the software would spit out an itinerary that would optimize the wait in line time.

GEEK ALERT: This was very cool, because this was, in essence, a real-world example of the classic Computer Science , Traveling Salesman Problem. To find the exact optimal solution for this problem is actually considered algorithmically impossibly difficult to solve in a reasonable amount of time even for a computer given the number of rides to evaluate grows over ten or so. So, the designer of the software uses some sort of heuristics to come up with a reasonable approximation to the optimal solution. Enough said, I was hooked.

So, I must have spent a few solid hours just entering in rides and looking at the results over and over again, in this sort of trance. This was going to be fun. Let's see how well this software actually works.

So, to optimize the number of rides visited in a day, you have to be prepared to arrive at Disneyland early, about an hour early. You then have to be prepared to race to one of the most popular rides first thing, then dutifully hit as many rides in the morning as possible, when the lines will be reasonably short, then take advantage of the FastPass and the Fast Pass loopholes in the afternoon, and then coast on into the evening hitting either the less popular rides, or taking the hit waiting in line for a more popular ride you missed earlier. At this point you're too tired to walk around anyway, and waiting in line seems like a reasonable thing to do.

So, this is what we did. We raced to Peter Pan first. Why not the famous (or infamous) Finding Nemo ride? Because if you don't run to Nemo first thing, being among the first group to ride the very first departure of those dastardly submarines, the line grows pretty much instantly to 45 minutes or more and stays there the rest of the day. You basically have to beat everyone else there who are also showing up early to do exactly what you're trying to do. Since we had kids in a stroller, we opted out of that rat race. So, off to Peter Pan and a five minute wait in line. Then, in rapid succession, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Dumbo's Flying Elephants, and Storybook Land Canal Boats, but wait, that last ride took longer than the software predicted, and we arrived at Alice in Wonderland late only to see a 30 minute wait time, way over the predicted time. We adjusted, and skipped this ride. Half the group enjoyed the Matahorn Bobsleds, the kiddie/parent half went to Pinochio and Snow White's Scary Adventure (way too scary for Joshua who backed out whimpering, "I'm too scared")...

Then, it was time to begin piling up Fast Pass passes for the busy afternoon. The runners (me and Sara's dad) went to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to get the first fast pass of the day, while the group agreed to meet us at Indiana Jones for the scheduled ride there in the late morning. But BTM RR had a 10 minute posted wait time... strange. We got the FP's anyway, then ran to Indiana Jones only to find a 35 minute wait time. AARGGG, the software was wrong again. We should have just ridden BTM RR, and gotten the fast passes for Indiana Jones. But no problem, the whole family jumped on the Pirates of the Carribean. But that ride was way too scary for our kids (something Sara predicted, but I said, let's just give it a try and see how they do). As the ride ended, Elizabeth looked at me in tears exclaiming, "why did you make go on this ride"?

Ok, we re-grouped, Indiana Jones was down to a 20 minute wait time, and the group hit that. Then we enjoyed the RailRoad roller coaster, a ride that even Elizabeth loved. We even hit it twice, once with our fast passes and another in the regular line, since it was still only 5-10 minute wait. Then lunch. Fast Passes for Splash Mountain, Fast Passes for Space Mountain, woops, Space Mountain was broken... The software didn't know about that...

Good thing we had fast passes for Splash Mountain, because while the masses were waiting for an hour, we sped to the front of the line. I road with Lizzie, and she loved it, except for the end when you take the huge drop, at which time she broke down yet again in tears, but this time for only a few minutes and was quickly comforted by the singing characters at the end, and when asked if she liked it, she answered with an emphatic yes, so we'll count that one a success.

By this time, we were all pretty exhausted, but we had a lot of park left to experience. We got Fast Passes for Buzz Lightyear, and checked up on Nemo, ugh 45 minute wait. We road Buzz Lightyear, and checked on Nemo, ugh 45 minute wait. We went to Toontown, Lizzie spent some time with Princesses at this sponaneous dance/story telling show, while Joshy and I tried our luck at Mickey's house, uggh long line, more wandering. We went back to check on Alice, 15 minute wait, let's do it, and that was a cool ride. Time to check on Nemo, ugh 45 minutes, well let's just absorb the wait. At this point, we were too tired to do any more wandering. Well, we waited a solid hour, but got on the ride and enjoyed it. That submarine ride was pretty cool with all of these Nemo characters animated right in the water, as the sub floated around the pool. Very cool. After that, the day was done (at least for the Turley part of this group, the others pressed on).

So, that was a pretty detailed blow by blow of our first day at Disneyland. Unfortunately, I was so obsessed by schedule, I probably forgot to actually enjoy the park. But I think most everyone had a rather enjoyable time, and I learned a few lessons for Monday.

So, onto Monday (by the way Saturday and Sunday could not have gone better for us. They were equally fun and relaxing, a most excellent way to prepare for another theme park onslaught to come on Monday. Saturday, we spent 3-4 hours at the beach and didn't really do anything else. Sunday, we went to church, a cemetery to see Sara's grandparents, a scenic park, then a little family party where we ate junk food, watched a movie at the hotel, and planned for Monday).

So, Monday, we entered an itinerary for California Adventure in the morning, and a Disneyland wrap up in the evening. We had a lunch with the princesses planned in between. California Adventure was absolutely great fun in the morning. They opened up a small section of the park a half hour early, and we got to be practically first in line for Soaring Over California (we arrived about 30 minutes early this day instead of the hour). And Soaring Over California really soared. It was my favorite ride in the park, and our kids loved it as well. It was absolutely cool, a ride where you actually feel like you're flying over some of the most scenic parts of California, complete with all of the smells and you even experience the wind in your hair.

After that, we hit ride after ride after ride with absolutely no line. We also saw show after show. The Bugs Life Show was the coolest. The princess lunch was next and Lizzie got to have her picture taken with Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, and the Little Mermaid, and we got to spend a lot of money for this experience, but Lizzie loved it, and she owes us big time...

We also tried to get both kids on the Grizzlie Raft ride, but they denied Joshua because he was an inch too short, and he was devastated, exclaiming, "But I'm a big boy" over and over again, crying the whole time, we were on the ride.... The ride was incredibly tame too, so I'm not sure what the point behind the height restriction was.

That evening, we took full advantage of fast passes to get another shot at Indiana Jones and Space Mountain (fully repaired). We tried to get Lizzie to ride Space Mountain, just as the park was about to close, but she backed out right at the last minute forcing Sara to hike all the way in to retrieve her.

At this point, I must also say, that Sara was an absolute trooper, being pregnant, she was restricted from so many of the rides and she did not complain once.

So, that was Disneyland, in all of its gory details. As for Ridemax, it cost $15 dollars to use it. For those of you not experienced with Disneyland, I would recommend it highly. But use it as a guide and not as the Bible. That was the mistake I made on Friday and learned from on Monday. RideMax is not Disneyland scripture, remember that.

The general high level idea behind it as far as I could tell are as follows:

1) If you can sprint to Nemo to get on the very first ride, go for it, otherwise avoid it, or do it like we did it and just take the hit at the end of the day when you're tired anyway (preferably on a not so busy day, Monday would have been preferable to Friday for example).

2) Keep mornings busy doing many rides with short lines, since the park is at its least busiest in the mornings.

3) Stack up Fast Passes for the afternoon/evening. You cannot get more than one Fast Pass at the same time, but you can use Fast Passes any time after the alloted time it reserves for you. We had a Fast pass to be used from 11-12 AM but they still let us use it at like 3pm, so that is a fantastic loophole to use.

4) You can also use the afternoon/evenings to see shows or the parade. The park is busy and many lines are long at this time, especially on Friday.

5) Just enjoy yourself, and try not to get too overwhelmed.

I want to end this post with one final thought. My parents basically had two sets of kids, my two older sisters, a big gap in time, then me and my younger sister. My two older sisters also left the state before Karen (my younger sister) and I were even able to sniff high school, so they became these kind of mystical legendary figures to us. We only saw them maybe a couple of times of year, which really enhanced them in this mythical way for us.

My two older sisters are also these arty types, who kind of in their DNA really enjoy going against the grain, and growing up, in my little mind, I considered them to be the absolutely coolest people on the planet. Needless to say, they had a pretty monumental influence on me, and it's been a little tough to shake that influence, to become my own person. It hasn't been all bad, don't get me wrong. Through them, I've been exposed to a lot of cool things I never would have been exposed to otherwise, theater, art, music. But as far as I can remember they have always had this kind of rejection attitude toward anything considered mainstream or pop. At least that has always been my impression of them, I know now that this is probably a drastic over-simplification.

I still have this memory where I think I asked Shelley, my second oldest sister this rather vague question. She was in high school, I was in junior high I think. I asked her if she could give me a description of the kind of music she thought I liked. And she kind of dismissively said, "oh, you like pop". I was crushed. Pop wasn't cool.

At any rate, I have to say (and ironically, I'm wondering if my sisters wouldn't agree with this), that pop is cool. Disneyland rocks. I love Disneyland. I love the characters, Mickey and Minney, the princesses, the happily ever after endings, the fantasy of the whole enterprise. It is a place where dreams really do come true, or at least a place where you can pretend they do. I love the rides, the thrills, the crowds, the expensive food, the long lines, the commercialism. I love it all.

And more than that, I love pop culture. I love watching TV. I love Lost, I love Heroes, I love Friday Night Lights. I love pop music. We just purchased the latest Amy Winehouse record, the one that won all of the grammy's and I love it, I can't stop listening to it, over and over again. I recently purchased a duet by Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson, entitled "Because of You" on iTunes, and I love it. I love action movies: Batman, Spiderman, and X-Men. I loved, loved Rocky I, II, III, and IV, and I loved that song "Eye of the Tiger" growing up. Yes, I said it, I love Disneyland, and I am glad we went, and I'm sure we'll go again.