You’ve very likely said it to someone in the past few weeks.Come on, you know you have.
“Wow…they’re really dropping like flies aren’t they…?”
And we ain’t talking from the heat, baby.
God seems to be shuffling celebrity types off the old mortal coil with a little more gusto than usual lately.
In just the last two weeks alone, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Karl Malden.
And now Steve McNair.
Shot to death.
And not just one shot.
Nope. Multiple gunshots, at least one to the head, as was evident when police found him sitting on his sofa, riddled with bullets, a gun next to the body of his dead female “friend”.
I know all of that because since the moment the bodies were discovered, the details have been on line and on the air in a perpetual flood that we haven’t seen since the likes of…
Well, actually since yesterday when this story usurped the perpetual flood of Michael Jackson details.
At this point, as the funny blokes from Monty Python would say…
And now, for something completely different.
Costa Rica is the coolest place in the world to live.
(CNN) -- Forget Disneyland! Costa Rica is the happiest place in the world, according to an independent research group in Britain with the goal of building a new economy, "centered on people and the environment."
In a report released Saturday, the group ranks nations using the "Happy Planet Index," which seeks countries with the most content people.
"Costa Ricans report the highest life satisfaction in the world and have the second-highest average life expectancy of the new world (second to Canada)," the organization said in a statement.
The Central American country, tucked between Nicaragua and Panama, touts its lush rain forests and pristine beaches. Its president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for trying to help end civil wars in several Central American countries.
This year's survey, which looked at 143 countries, featured Latin American nations in nine of the Top 10 spots.
The runner-up was the Dominican Republic, followed by Jamaica, Guatemala and Vietnam.
Most developed nations lagged in the study.
While Britain ranked 74th, the United States snagged the 114th spot.
The United States was happier 20 years ago than it is today, the report said.
Gotta admit I was caught a little off guard by that news.
If somebody asked me to name the coolest place in the world to live, I’m pretty sure that Costa Rica wouldn’t have popped into my mind.
And Lord knows, things do pop into my mind.
And it’s not that I don’t think Costa Rica is cool.
It’s just that I don’t know that much about it, so it wouldn’t have been on my radar.
But reading this story got me to thinking.
Imagine that.
I don’t really know, beyond a few dry facts, why this country gets the trophy.
But it only stands to reason that:
If Costa Rica is the coolest place in the world to live…
…they probably don’t pay pert near three bucks a gallon for what should cost fifty cents a gallon, tops, just so Costa Rican oil company CEO’s can have marble floors to rest their feet while they sit on the toidy in the morning…
…they probably don’t charge fifteen dollars per suitcase when you fly because their airlines have been badly managed and they need Costa Ricans to pick up the slack for that bad management…oh…the pillows and earphones are likely free, too…
…they can probably buy hot dogs AND buns in packages of eight each. Or ten. Each…
…they probably show each other the courtesy of turning off the damn cell phone when they sit down in the movie theatre…
…they probably don’t know who Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, et al, are…nor would they care if they did…
…they probably are smart enough to know that Adam Lambert is ten times the singer that Kris Allen is and don’t care that he’s only half the man…give or take…
…they probably aren’t losing their young men and women in Iraq…
…they probably didn’t spend five figures yesterday on a fireworks show that lasted twenty minutes, evoked a few mild smatterings of applause and a random ooh or ahh when all of that money could have fed or clothed countless numbers of people who have lost their jobs due to an economy gone to shit…
…they probably don’t care what Michael Jackson meant to Colin Powell…
…they probably don’t care why Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska and aren’t really giving a whole lot of thought to what she’ll do next…
…they probably know that “Miley Stuart” is secretly “Hannah Montana”, but they don’t make a big deal out of it…
…they probably really like Rush Limbaugh…but only because he’s just one very funny dude, not because his point of view is worth two seconds of consideration…
…they probably think Susan Boyle was, in fairness, a stunning singer, but you don’t really deserve to win the whole tomato just by knocking people dead with the same song over and over…
…they probably think Ann Coulter is the Anti-Christ…wait…scratch that…that would make America the coolest place in the world to live…
…they probably don’t care that Mark Sanford has a girlfriend in Argentina…what the hell, he probably has one in Costa Rica, too…
…they don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Linkedin, et al…chances are they go outside and actually talk to each other face to face a lot.
…they don’t think the filing of a will is BREAKING NEWS…
…they don’t really care that David Letterman pissed off Sarah Palin, because they probably think that late night TV hasn’t been worth squat since Johnny Carson retired…
…they probably think that while a former NFL quarterback being shot to death is sad, even tragic, they don’t feel the need to keep hammering Costa Ricans, over and over…and over, with the news that there were multiple gunshots, at least one to the head, as was evident when police found him sitting on his sofa, riddled with bullets, a gun next to the body of his dead female “friend”….
AND…
…they probably won’t leave their twenty four/seven coverage of the shooting death of one single human being on the entire planet Earth to resume their twenty four/seven coverage of the drug related death of one single human being on the planet Earth…
Wow.
They really ARE the coolest place in the world to live.
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