Life Is Better Than Good Sometimes...

While one dignitary after another is being toppled from important government positions...while a retired priest is beaten up on a sidewalk when he was recognized by someone he raped thirty years ago...at about the same time I heard that a bounty (ten chickens and ten roosters) had been placed on the head of Hilary Rodham Clinton...while Rodney King and Ray Bradbury twitched their last...WHAT, YOU ASK, WAS HAPPENING IN KAZAKHSTAN?  Well, um, THIS was:

A sports tournament welcoming ceremony went terribly awry when someone in Kuwait 'mistook' the music from Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan for the real country's national anthem.  The music from the movie starts out like this:

Kazakhstan greatest country in the world

All other countries are run by little girls...

Hey, it sounds like the real thing to ME.

The response was nothing short of astounding.  To Kazakhstan's credit, they did not start any sort of Kuwaitis-are-dumber-than-hammers campaign, but they DID stiffen penalties for anyone disrespecting the country's national symbols.  Which accomplishes WHAT, exactly?  If a Finn, or maybe a member of an Amazon Basin tribe, thinks Sasha Baron Cohen is a real Kazakh, what are they going to do, jail the guy after demanding extradition to the offended nation? 

But I have to say that this is the ONLY development that addresses what I think is the REAL issue here, an issue on which all the major news organs are TOTALLY SILENT: 

Did this unnamed Kuwaiti really not know the difference between Cohen's faux anthem and the real one?  Did he or she just do it to see if anyone would notice?  Who is that person?  Were there any consequences for this little experiment?  Inquiring minds want to know!! 

Just A Smiley Little Thought

I was driving down the highway and saw this on the back of one of those massive, gleaming pickup trucks:

The thought struck me for the first time:  as a Detroiter, should I not be concerned that the "heartbeat of America," which may not literally be the pulse of the United States but is, AT THE VERY LEAST, the heartbeat of the Motor City, more or less FRESHLY OFF LIFE SUPPORT?

And what can I, personally, do about it?

...Nothing, I guess...