10 for 9/11

I know that I wrote about some of this five years ago (has it been that long already?).  But I wanted to again.  Yesterday, as a nation we observed the tenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in our history.  There were tributes running on television almost non-stop for the last week.  Sports teams wore flag decals, ribbons, and bandanas.  The UCF/BC matchup this past Saturday was especially poignant as the hometown Knights actually honored a BC alumni who gave his life in the World Trade Center while leading a dozen people to safety.  You had to be in a cave to miss the tributes; just like it is impossible to forget the event itself.  We all know exactly where we were at the moments the towers fell, when the Pentagon was hit, when the fourth plane disappeared into a field.  We all know precisely where we were when the world fell apart.

I was standing in a labor and delivery suite at the Orange Park Medical Center, awaiting the arrival of my first child.  "You may want to turn on the tv.  A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center."  The happiest and proudest moment in my life collided with the saddest and most terrifying moment.  I know we've told this story so many times, but it is impossible for me to separate those two events.  We were forced to deal with becoming new parents at the same time that we were watching parents lose children and children lose parents.  We were overwhelmed by the crushing grief and fear that emanated from New York and Washington DC.  We finally had to turn off the television once the camera crews started showing the thousands of people holding up hastily made "Have You Seen This Person?" flyers.  It became too real and too overwhelming.

I tried as best as I could to ignore what was going on.  It was virtually impossible.  Everyone was shaken - and understandably so.  We were living in the military-heavy community of Jacksonville.  No one there knew what these attacks meant.  We all knew there had to be retaliation - against who, no one knew.  You could feel the tension everywhere.  I swear to this day that some of the inferior care my wife received was due to the medical personnel being shell-shocked.  After Josiah arrived, we didn't watch the television.  I tried to avoid the wall-to-wall coverage on the internet.  As a result, we actually mercifully missed out on some of the most painful stories after the initial event.

One of my friends up in Buffalo wrote on his Facebook yesterday that he never realized just how much he was still in shock over the 2001 attacks until yesterday.  It was the first time the true weight of what happened hit him full force.  Last night, we had on the "minute by minute" replay of NBC's coverage.  Josiah wanted to watch it, since his birthday always coincides with the anniversary.  But, after five minutes or so, I felt myself getting anxious.  Even though I knew what was going to happen, I was terrified.  After about ten minutes, Natalie just exploded and yelled, "Turn this off!! I can't take it any more!"  She was just devastated at what exactly was happening - the fact that all the people on the planes died too, knowing thousands of lives were going to be lost (in the past).  I understood completely, because I was feeling the same thing.

I don't think I still have ever truly come to grips with what happened.  If I spend too much time thinking about it, I am just consumed by the grief and the scope of it all.  It is enough to bury me.  I remember right after the attacks, that I fell into the darkest depression I ever experienced.  I was so distraught over the loss of life and what this attack meant.  I sat there and looked at my little boy and asked myself, "What have I done?  How could I have brought this little one into such a horrible place?"  I was angry and withdrawn (classic male symptoms of depression).  It took months to escape that dark place.  And I have to be careful to not spend too much time thinking about that day or I can feel the darkness coming for me - like a Dementor attacking in Harry Potter.

I am sure many would call this avoidance.  I don't care.  I call it a conscious choice.  When I look back at that day, I see two enormous memories.  One is dark and horrible.  One is bright and wonderful.  I choose to focus on the second one.

My firstborn son, Josiah, turned ten at 2:11am this morning.  That, to me, is a huge birthday.  I remember my tenth birthday, how I felt like I really was growing up.  I was double digits.  I had lived a decade.  I was in the upper grades of elementary.  So it was a huge deal to me that Josiah was turning ten.  My little boy has turned into a very big boy.  He will be in middle school in two years.  I am very proud of the young man he has become.  He is brilliant and talented.  I am blown away by his artistic talent.  I have told him that between his artistic talent, his brilliant mind, and his knowledge of math and science he has all the tools necessary to create something absolutely incredible.  He could be a George Lucas or James Cameron or Steve Jobs or CS Lewis.

His brain has always impressed me.  Just this afternoon, he was standing in the living room running through all the ways that terrorists could still attack - despite improved security procedures.  The stuff he was coming up with (sleeper cell agents, deep cover agents, attacks using trucks or boats) was right out of Hollywood filmmaking.  The thing is, he's never seen those movies or read those books.  He was just thinking and generated these very intricate scenarios.  He's already created several fictional worlds for his comic books - and of course he's adapted popular ones to fit his needs as well.  I remember last year, he had to write sentences for his spelling words.  So he would write all twenty sentences as a story and incorporate words into each successive sentence.  I was just blown away.

He's always shocked and surprised us.  He sat up in his stroller at three months and was mistaken for a nine month old.  He walked at seven and a half months.  He was carrying gallon bottles of water around our apartment at nine months.  He had all the planets memorized before he was two.  When Pluto was demoted from planet status, I had tons of people come up to me from his preschool to ask me what he thought.  I told them to ask him.  "I think it's dumb.  Some scientists don't want Pluto to be a planet any more.  Doesn't make any sense."  People wanted to know what a preschooler felt about astronomy.  It just cracked me up.

When he was born, I remember watching him through the window of the nursery.  Heather's parents and their close friends, the Delisis, were standing there.  These friends are as close as family - their daughter has known Heather since first grade.  They came up to the hospital to wait for Josiah to come.  When they arrived, they said, "We could stay home and be sad or we could come up here and celebrate life."  We all stood in the hallway after he was born and looked at him.  Mrs. Delisi said something about God having a reason why Josiah was born this way on this day.  "He is going to bring such joy on a dark day.  He already has.  God has something big planned for him."  Josiah himself told me once, "We're going to do big things for God."  It was completely unprompted and something I tucked away.  I don't know what exactly his path will hold, but I feel confident that Josiah is going to be involved in something big.

I choose to focus on my son's birthday.  I choose to focus on the joy and love that having him brings.  It isn't that I don't want to honor those who fell on that day.  I wore a 9/11 memorial badge all day.  I saw a Marine in the restaurant we ate at for lunch and made a point to go and thank him for his service.  I talked to my kids about what 9/11 meant and what happened.  But if we spend too much time being crushed and crippled by that day, that actually dishonors those who sacrificed.  They died to ensure that we can still live our lives and live them to the fullest.  It's kind of like what Tom Hanks' character says to Matt Damon's in Saving Private Ryan.  "Make your life worth this."  I want to make my life worth their sacrifice.  And I want Josiah's life to as well.  I try to teach him about making the most of his abilities, not settling for less than is best.  I don't want him to waste his copious talents.  In future years, we will have the discussion about why he was born that day and what he can do in his life to honor that event.  For now, though, he is still bringing hope and joy for the rest of us just by being himself.

For a long time, I hated the fact that we had to experience his birth on the same day as something so tragic.  But, when I think about it now, I realize that we actually had a wonderful gift in the fact that we had something to amazing and incredible to think about instead.  I really didn't have to go through what a lot of other people did because I had this little baby.  Whenever it got too hard to handle, when the news got too bad, I could hold him and find a place of joy and hope.  It is easy to recognize things like that in retrospect.  I thank God so much that I have had him in moments like those.  And I thank God that he is my son.  He has made me a better man, a better father.  And it has been a true joy and honor to be a part of his life.  And I still can't believe he just turned ten...

Watch Out for Charlie Crist

At the risk of being too political, there is something that is really bugging me lately.

For those of you reading this that live in Florida, you'll figure this all out quickly.  For those in other states, you may not care.  But you should still read this because I guarantee that your state is going to make stupid choices like this soon.  As you probably know, a state takes in various taxes from its citizens.  This helps to fund the budget for the state.  Now, for larger states (like Florida), the budget is bigger than most countries.  That is what happens when so many people move to your state like flies on a fresh carcass.  

So, the state has various taxes - property, sales, vehicle.  Most states have a state income tax.  Florida does not, so that means that it has to rely even more on taxes to fill its coffers.  So, if you were to remove or cut a particular tax, that would cut a large amount of money out of the budget.  What is the next step?  Things that the budget funds get cut.  And I'm sure that there are tons of personal ego projects that the legislature and governor have crammed into the budget.  So what actually gets cut is important stuff.  This is how it happens in our personal budgets, right?  If you stop getting income, you have to cut expenses.

Well, at the primary election, we in Florida also had to vote on Amendment One.  It was personally proposed and shepherded by our Governor Charlie Crist.  Up until this point, property tax in Florida was handled thusly:

• When you bought a house, your house was appraised and you were levied a tax depending on area of town, price of house, etc.  Let's just say this figure was $3600 a year - which is a common figure in the Orlando area.
  
• Next year, your tax was only legally allowed to go up 3%.  That is the most if could ever go up.  So your tax would be $3708.  This happens each year.  $3819.  $3933.  And so on.
• However, when you moved, your new home was subject to the current tax rates.  
• This caused problems for especially the elderly, who would live in a home for 30 years and still be paying taxes based on when that law first was passed.  Then they would get a smaller place and pay twice in taxes.

Crist's proposal was that you would now be able to take your 3% with you.  So your new home would only be able to have your tax raise 3% - even if the house value was higher than what you were in.

Sounds great, right?  If you are a homeowner you would love this.  You would pretty much lock in your tax rates on the first home you bought.  (Of course, with property values nosediving, it doesn't sound so great now.)  However, as the vote neared, I began to notice something as I thought on this issue.  Just about every public service group (Police, firefighters, teachers) were fighting the issue.  Why?  Well, think about it.  When that Amendment passed, the legislature would find itself with a shortage.  And we all know the first thing they are going after.

Crist was confronted with this and waved his arms and squawked, "No no no people.  I will not let a single public service get hurt by this."  The media helped Crist by trying to paint this as a home owner vs home renter issue - which never made any sense.  I voted No for several reasons.

• I don't believe that legislative issues like this should be run through making Amedments.  It is a fact that in Florida it is easier to pass an Amendment than a bill.  So this was a way to circumvent the legislature - who already had shot this proposal down.
• If this passed, the state would know that they would only have one shot to nail a homeowner with a high tax rate - on their first home.  How much you want to bet that tax rates are going to skyrocket on new homes?  That $3600 will be $6000 before you know it.  (Doesn't sound like much?  That adds $200 a month to your mortgage!)
• I knew that the services would get whacked.  I've watched politics enough to know they are ALWAYS the first thing that gets hurt - regardless of Crist's thoughts.

Turns out I was part of the 29% minority as the Amendment sailed through.  So what happened?  The legislature is working on the budget right now.  And they immediately told every state-funded service to slash their budgets.  The biggest hit?  Schools.  Orange County Schools were told to cut $70 MILLION out of their budget!  (jaw drops)  So, the people of the state took this into their own hands and just shot their kids in the foot.  The new teacher hires in the state have been cut in half.  And road repair, emergency services, etc etc all took hits too.

Way to go Governor Crist!  Of course, people are starting to get angry.  Florida is the worst hit by the subprime fiasco, with Orlando in the top 10 cities in America for foreclosures.  (I heard it was #1 at one point.)  And now these people realize that schools just got decimated by the budget cuts.  Crist's popularity is the lowest since he took office.  And his solution to all of this?  You ready?  No seriously, this is how proposal.  He wants to legalize gambling.  Not just lottery, which we have had for 20 years.  He wants to legalize full-scale gambling.  Awesome.  Yes, my friends, this is the man who was personally hand-picked to replace Jeb Bush (who was a GREAT governor - I don't care what his last name was).  Charlie Crist, defender of the conservative moral right.  

Oh it gets better.  You want to know who is high up on the short list for Republican Vice President list?  That's right.  Charlie Crist.  So those of you out of state just went back and re-read this post?  Charlie Crist is being considered for the Vice Presidential nomination.  That kills me.  In 15 months he has lost 20 percentage points of favor in the third most populous state in the country.  He personally damaged the already struggling education system.  And he mortgages the state's future for the present (on second thought, he sounds like he is perfect for the national stage).  

I will say this right here.  If John McCain picks Charlie Crist, it will have made me 95% sure that I will NOT vote for the GOP ticket.  Unless the Democrats pick a convicted felon.  Actually, I would not at all be surprised that after the completely unexciting Republican offering, and the sure-to-be-contentious Democratic convention, there will be a third party candidate show up and really mess up the whole process.  Seriously.  You watch.  Once the conventions are over, someone will step up and really throw a monkey wrench into everything.  

***This post was not sponsored by the Republican Party, Democratic Party, Green Party, or Bachelor party.  I am David Staples, and I approved this message.

Sports Writing Central

In my opinion, the best sportswriters have the following characteristics in common:

A true passion and love for sports.
An incredible sense of humor.
An understanding that sports is not the only thing in the world.
An interest in other things to talk about.
A high intelligence quotient.
A refusal to talk down to the readers.
An ability to keep readers involved even when they don't care about the topic.
Quotability

This list is why I think that Ray Romano's character on Everybody Loves Raymond would be a horrible sportswriter. He is missing numbers 3, 4, 5, and probably 6. Skip Bayless from ESPN also is horrible because he is missing all of them. He only wants to stir up trouble. That attitude of trouble-making and arguing is sadly becoming the norm. Writers do not actually WRITE so much any more as try to make points to stir up arguments. That and get on tv.

You get to be a part of the television sports commentary scene by causing a ruckus. Usually these guys actually stink as writers. I would wager that most of the newspaper guys who have jumped to television (and vice versa) would fall in the category of "Sports Muckraker" instead of Sportswriter. ESPN is the one responsible for this. They had hours and hours to fill on their many stations, so they started bringing famous writers onto the screen. So now we have Woody Paige, Jay Mariotti, AJ Andale, Dan LeBatard, Stephen A Smith, Bayless and their ilk screaming at each other and basically trying to cause trouble instead of actually write well. It is funny, though. The best sports commentators are often the best best writers too. If you have those qualities above in your writing, you will have it in your talking too. This is my current list of best sportswriters (not necessarily in order).

Bill Simmons -- ESPN Page 2, Sports Guy World -- Not on TV now (used to write for Jimmy Kimmel)
Simmons is probably my favorite sportswriter. (You could argue his wife is the second best - her articles are hilarious.) I would rate him as a 10_10_8_9_10_9_10_10 in the eight categories. His strongest are 2 and 7. How good is he at keeping your attention when you don't care? His favorite sport is basketball (which I hate). His favorite teams are the Patriots (in my bottom NFL 10), Celtics (I only hate the Lakers more), and Red Sox (my least favorite team in any sport). He wrote several complete articles on choosing a favorite soccer team (I read all of them). The days he doesn't write actually make me upset.

Tony Kornheiser -- Washington Post -- Pardon the Interruption, Monday Night Football
I love Kornheiser. I wish he wrote more and longer. But his schedule has not allowed him to continue writing. The amazing thing about him is that he also had my favorite radio sports show and has one of my favorite tv shows (PTI). But the crazy thing is that he didn't start in sports - he used to write culture articles. And his current radio show is not always sports-themed. He's dry and droll and funny as all get out. His scores are 8_10_10_10_10_9_9_10.

Peter King -- CNNSI, Sport Illustrated -- HBO NFL show, NBC Sunday night show
King is a very rare bird. He keeps you interested in all sorts of mundane stuff - his daughters' sports efforts, he quest for good coffee. But he also has forgot more about football than most people know. One of the best pieces he ever did was a report on a sports-loving Iraqi war participant. 10_8_10_10_10_9_10_8.

The list was topped by another man until this past weekend when David Halberstam died in an auto accident in California. In MY opinion, he was the standard for sportswriting. Of course, I came up with that decision while reading a book that had nothing to do with sports. In one of my college history classes (US History 1945-Current) we had to read a book called The Fifties. This was one of seven books (yup 7) for that class alone. Now, if you have ever had a class where there are seven books to be read (and that multiplied by four classes), you know the goal is to skim and read the least possible. Well, when I hit that book about one of the most boring parts of U.S. History, I was going to be in full skim mode.

Until I started reading it. Then, I was enraptured by the style and the approach. It was amazing. I read every page and was sad when the huge work was done. The thing that was crazy was that my roommate was in a class on the History of Baseball, and he was reading a book by David Halberstam. What? The same guy who wrote this amazing book on The Fifties wrote a book on baseball? Well if you go to Amazon.com and look up Halberstam, you will see that he also has books on Michael Jordan, basketball, the Korean War (which my dad fought in), Vietnam, and American Politics. I plan on reading all of them. He was a 10 in each category.

Once I discovered ESPN Page 2, I was thrilled because Halberstam was listed as one of their writers. Unfortunately, it was not for too long because September 11 kind of drove the sports part out of him. He still wrote on sports and was on his way to do a book on quarterback Y.A. Tittle when he died. But the daily obsession with sports became something uncomfortable to Halberstam. This article was his take on the first anniversary of the attacks. It pretty much sums up Halberstam. It is weird, when I list my favorite books on places like mySpace or whatever, The Fifties usually is there. How in the world did a textbook end up on a site like that? That was the kind of impact that sportswriter had on me. Apparently, that was a common opinion. Check out this article by a very good sportswriter Jim Caple. And then, no surprise here, there is the article by the most likely successor to Halberstam - Bill Simmons. I had to laugh when I saw that when I got ready to post this.

Yes, I'm Irate

I've been writing less serious posts lately, but today is different. I know myself pretty well, and I know that when I get worked up, I can get to be a pretty unpleasant person. Well, when I checked the news online today, I started to get heated up. Here is what I saw:

"Court strikes down Internet porn law"

It was not the first story or anything like that. It was the sixth headline in the list next to the main big story about John Edwards running for President even though his wife has incurable cancer. I found that minorly ironic, that he is running for President of a country with an incurable cancer as well.

I was not surprised that this court decision happened. I had read about the possibility a few months back on Wired.com - another bastion of "freedom" and "enlightenment." Basically, this judge ruled that it is unconstitutional - under that mysterious "right to privacy" that is not listed in the Bill of Rights, and the nebulous Freedom of Speech - for the government to consider it illegal for websites to expose children to material deemed "harmful to minors" by "community standards." The long and short of it: the government can no longer force websites to have age-verification when they have explicit material on it. The people who started all of this was a collection of "Sexual health" sites, salon.com, and "other web sites" - backed by our friends at the ACLU. (I wonder who those "other sites" were.)

The line that made me so angry I wanted to go up to Pennsylvania and punch the judge was this beauty: "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection." Hang on a second....yeah....I can see where he's coming from. It is definitely more harmful to the minors of this country to violate their mythical freedom of privacy and "free speech" that to keep them from having to see sexually explicit sites. You are absolutely right, Senior U. S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. It is waaaay more important that my three and five year old do not have their right to free speech threatened than to keep them from accidentally finding a website with obscene pictures on it that is masquerading as a kids' site.

I mean after all, violating a minor's free speech would probably destroy them and make them a quivering shell of a person. It would make them less than human. That wrong would burn into their brain forever, so that it would pop up for decades. It would give them the wrong understanding about what a woman is supposed to be. It would make them compromise their high standards, and settle for digitally enhanced frauds. It would damage their intimacy with others and with God. It would keep them from being able to connect to their spouses. It would give them oppressive guilt and shame. It would stunt them emotionally. It would enter them into addictive behaviors that would take intense counseling to escape. It would put their marriages at risk. It would probably escalate into getting into fascination with illegal and immoral activities. It would make them come face to face with urges and desires that they have not grown up enough to understand.

I mean, pornography seems mild compared to the damage that hampering a minor's freedom of speech would cause. Porn doesn't do all of that. It's just harmless fun. Just something everyone does. No big deal. I'm glad we have the ACLU and Senior U. S. District Judge Lowell Reed, Jr. to set us straight. I mean, after all, "parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech." We can't have that - people's free speech being limited. Especially when it comes to free speech that looks an awful lot like a naked woman. Why, that would be criminal.

[If this post seemed a wee bit sardonic, just remember - it's just my freedom of speech.]

9/11 Reflections, Part Three

After those last two reflections of 9/11, I guess the question is, "Where does that leave us now?" How has America changed since that day - or has it? This is just my opinion. And I know that expressing opinions about politics and religion will get you into trouble faster than just about anything else. However, this is nothing more than me expressing my views as an American. I don't claim this is researched or documented or surveyed. This is what I see in my daily life. If you don't agree, that's fine. If you agree, that's fine. If you think I'm an idiot, join the club.

Personally, I do believe that America has changed a great deal since 2001. First of all, it is a more scared place. Americans are more worried now about their safety than probably at any time in the last 100 years. True, some of this is fed by the media playing up EVERY LITTLE THING. And it is also compounded by the government's jittery chihuahua impersonation. Whatever the causes, I think that we as a country have lost that invincible swagger that defined us. Sure, you still see those patriotic "them's are fightin' words" bumper stickers. But most of the time those come off as overcompensation.

Added to this, America is a reactionary country now. It used to be that we were the trailblazers. We did something and everyone else followed, got run over, or got made fun of. Now, we are always on the defensive - responding to threats real and imagined. Take the whole airline situation. Every time a would-be terrorist tries something new, the government institutes sweeping policy changes that hurts everyone. Like the whole liquid on a plane thing. I can understand we need to be more careful about carry-on items. But that policy was put into place overnight. And the security personnel didn't even know how to handle it. So they are dumping a bunch of liquids into the same container - the very action that would have ignited the same binary liquid explosives they were trying to avoid. The government seems so worried about terrorists destroying planes that they have ignored the real problem in air travel -- the ridiculous new standards being levied on air traffic controllers. They have cut positions, increased shift time, and generally made air travel 10 times more dangerous. It was no mere coincidence that the plane crash in Kentucky happened right after this policy took place. As the research comes out, that wreck was caused by a tired traffic controller, old information, and about a dozen people dropping the ball. Basically, we have reacted so strongly to a threat from abroad that we ignored the threats from general safety mediocrity.

That last paragraph will highlight two other things about America. First, it is more cynical than ever. Second, it is more divided. I mention the first because I just ripped into the government because I am fairly certain that they are consistently making bad calls - and I am not so sure anyone else would do a better job. It isn't like I'm sitting here saying that Bush is bad or whatever. I am saying that ALL OF THEM are going to make big stupid mistakes - just in different areas. The cynicism sets in because we all think the government is up to something, hiding something, lying about something, doctoring something, torturing something, and spinning something. This has been fed by the whole "war on terror." I don't know many people who think that this war has been handled 100% right - and I don't see anyone out there who could ever fix it without screwing something else up.

The division in America is highlighted by the fact that anyone reading those last two paragraphs will form an opinion about me from them. If they agree with that opinion, they'll get all happy. If not, they'll get all angry. And the breakdown of angry and happy is probably 51/49. That's what almost every issue comes down to now. Which means that at any given time, half of the nation is ticked off about something. The unity after 9/11 is long gone. And in its place, the partisan politics of pre-2001 has only gotten worse. It is like the two sides are angry that they even had to work together for a year or so - and now they are going to be as difficult as possible.

I think America is worse of racially as well. Maybe white/black issues are not as bad - I guess your opinion on that depends on which media outlet you use and which films you watch. But there is now this lingering distrust of Middle Easterners and Muslims. You may see some people trying to act like that isn't true. But to see how true it is, just look at the fact that all CBS had to do to get huge press coverage for 2005's Big Brother was to put ONE Muslim in the house. You should have seen how people were around him. One girl even tried to vote him out first week BECAUSE he was Muslim. The government itself even tries to act like there isn't something going on in the way they randomly screen at the airport. "We don't want to look like racial profilers, so we'll pat down this 89 year old from Des Moines too."

Economically, thanks largely to the gas prices and home price escalation, things are harder for a lot of Americans. I know that the gas itself has hurt us horribly - we traded in our van about a month ago for a new minivan. With how much we are saving on gas, we are only putting out about $100 a month on the payment! But the trickle down from the gas stuff affects power bills, food costs, air travel costs, just about everything.

I honestly don't think that the terrorists knew all of this would happen - just like they never realized the towers themselves would collapse. The complete destruction of the towers was just icing on the cake - just like the long term damage to the country as a whole is just an added benefit. Do I attribute all of those above things to 9/11? No. Much of that would have happened anyway at some point - 9/11 just sped up the process. But there certainly was a chain of events that came into place. I do love this country, and I hope that things can straighten themselves out. I don't really see some magic election that will help everything be okay again - in fact 2008 scares the weewee out of me me (Cynicism alert). But I still have hope. I'm not sure what we are supposed to do at times like this. I guess it is a time to look back, honor those who perished, and then take stock and see what we can do to make things better. That last part is the hard one. Honestly, I don't know. I don't think anyone around here has the answer. Makes you really want to hold on to the fact that God controls kings and princes, that he appoints governments, and that he is not bullied by terrorist or ravaged by time. That is where our hope has to come from. Seems like a pretty unsatisfying conclusion - but honestly that is where we are right now. I hope the 10 year anniversary will be different.

Wasn't THAT a cheery post. Don't worry - I'll get back to random weirdness soon. In fact, my next post will be a socio-economic and cultural breakdown of Disney's Aladdin movies. I bet you are wondering if I'm joking...(cynic)