Parallel Universe, USA

There's at least one parallel universe that I know about because I've lived in it most of my life and still do. I enter it through a hideous black hole every time I wake up in the morning.

It's an unrealistic realm where no one reads a book unless they see an ad for it on TV, a place where learning ends on high school graduation night and Madison Avenue tutors the young who have been nursed on fairy tales about happy consumers living in sit-com houses.

Nothing goes "bump in the night" in this parallel universe because all the bogeymen carry cell phones and PDA's and MP3 players and you can spot them coming a mile away.