While I'm not feeling "more Jewish" these days, I'm starting to feel sort of irked for not getting accepted into Israel by Foot, and daydreaming about crawling through the muds of the promised land for free this winter. Leisure! Warm adventure! Long walks! Falafel! Marriage! This trip would bring it all.

Can it be? People have mocked the Aruba: 90,000 Friends ad campaign so much that they have removed the creepy, paternalistic fake locals' Friend profiles off the website?! Where can I go now, besides a subway platform, for surfing brothers Wesley and Quincy Connor? Nanette, the island's only female? The humorless pleated pants-wearer whose tee-time is seven am? The guitar-strumming ethnic who lives to entertain the tourists?

This is the death of an era.