>>And the outrage that none of them think of themselves as foreign! They all imagine themselves as ah so local and domestic.
I think some of the funny little foreign places know that is what they are. ;-)
Did you know that if you drop a pen in New Zealand, you have to catch it quickly or else it falls away down past Antarctica into outer space?
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
