Vanuatu Down By the River

Hey there, friend. I know how you feel. Your body and mind are ready to check out for the week, yet when you look at the calendar, you’re dismayed to see it’s only Thursday. YAB understands. Your boss came down on you a little too hard, and it wasn’t fair for God to make it rain right after you washed your car. And when you were walking to the parking lot last light, some crazy Frenchman head-butted you in the sternum. And you really like your sternum. You’ve said at parties it’s your best feature. Yeah, man, we think you have a nice sternum, too.

Look, it’s way easier to be depressed than happy, but it’s time to face the facts. A lot of this stuff just isn’t your fault! That’s right – it’s not what you’ve done to deserve this, it’s where you’ve gone to deserve this – the United States of America.

In another instance of “Think-Tank Gets Bored and Makes Up Crazy Ranking,” the British based New Economics Foundation has compiled a Happy Planet Index. When YABNews first saw this, we thought Earth would win by a landslide. After all, Mercury is too hot, Pluto is too cold, and Uranus has low self-esteem for having an unfortunate name. Earth: We’re Number 1.

But when I told the YABNews team that they had to do more research than reading headlines and opening paragraphs, they found out that said Index does not rank planets, but rather all of the nation-states on our planet in descending order of happiness. And sure enough, your home country and mine, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, ranked 152. (Apparently freedom and bravery may translate into independence, but not glee.) Our life expectancy and life satisfaction are decent, but some silly metric that calculates how much land we need to produce sustenance? We’re nearly last.

However, this ranking doesn’t take into account certain things. Why isn’t Italy higher? They just won the World Cup! And would I be able to enjoy the summer blockbuster season if I moved up just one country on the list? You think they’ve got Capt. Jack Sparrow in…Lithuania?!?

Ok, people, let’s not get crazy…yet. If this Happy Planet Index makes you sad, thereby forcing your hand to relocate, why not go all the way to number 1? Leave behind the sad bastard village of America Town for greener grass…in Vanuatu.

No, I didn’t just make that up.

Vanuatu really exists. Hell, they are ranked 161st in the FIFA Rankings (I couldn’t play for them, either. Not happy enough.) In the Truman Show, Jim Carrey was convinced by television producers that Seahaven was so perfect that he’d never leave, yet Truman longed to go to Fiji. Guess what, Burbank – Vanuatu is just west of Fiji and WAY happier. And better at soccer.

How could you be sad when singing a national anthem like this?