Graceland--i'm not really a huge elvis fan or anything but i am a huge fan of really tacky popular culture and this place is a mecca of really tacky popular culture. you go there, pay your admission price (i only toured the house, not all the other stuff, and i think that really, the house is enough), then they put this headset on you (it's like a walkman with a tape inside). you can't put the headset on yourself. i'm not sure why. you get on the bus and they tell you when to turn the headset on. so then you get this guided tour of the mansion all on the headset. the really weird part of it is that you are touring the house with a big group of people, yet there is no interaction between any of you, since you're all busy listening to the headset. there was this one point on the tour when something went wrong with my headset. i stopped walking and kinda looked at it and withing seconds there was someone at my side to fix the headset. way weird. no one's allowed on the second floor. i don't think that even the people that work there can go up there. some people say that elvis is still alive and living up there. then there's this wall outside of the mansion that is covered with "we love and miss you elvis"-type graffiti. my friends becky and alice also went to graceland and becky took a picture of this wall from the tour bus. when she got them developed there was this weird ghost(devil)-like apparition sort of hovering above the wall. becky was a lil freaked by this and she started showing it to everyone, lighting incense, and even praying. after a couple of weeks of this she realized that the apparition was really my friend alice's reflection in the window of the bus. ha.

The Jim Beam Factory--i love jim beam! i love the way it looks. i love the way it tastes. i love the way it smells. i love how tough it makes you when you're a girl that drinks whiskey and not wine coolers. it's really the only alcoholic beverage that i enjoy drinking. so i went to the jim beam factory. this is in kentucky. it's really cool. you get to watch a movie about how jim beam is made. you get to see the jim beam house. and you get to see where jim beam is stored while it's distilling. these buildings are crazy! i'm not sure if i've got these figures correct, but i think that each barrel holds 20 gallons of jim beam, and each storage buildin can hold 80,000 barrels! that's a lot of jim beam. and the smell of jim beam is all you can smell. yum.

Intercourse, PA--heh. yeah. it's not really all that exciting, but at least you get to say that you went to intercourse. and it's not too far from blue balls, pa. heh heh.

The Santa Cruz Boardwalk--i've been on a lot of roller coasters in my life. been to a bunch of great theme parks. all of these roller coasters pale in comparison to the wooden roller coaster at the santa cruz boardwalk. there's this surprise beginning that's just--mmmmm... and it's been around for something like 80 years too.