That's it, I've got to give up the sunny life in California and move to Massachusetts, where life for the unemployed must be like living the high life.

In California, where I live and worked my entire life until being laid off in June, the unemployment rate is 7.7%. compared to the national average of 6.1%. I'm getting the maximum amount from the state in unemployment benefits, $450 a week, but it turns out I could be making double that if I lived and had worked in Massachusetts. I'm now putting my Oakland A's caps away and am on the hunt for a Red Sox hat.

"The Bay State," while much smaller geographically than "The Golden State," pays up to $900 per week, making it the highest paying state in the United States for unemployment benefits. Massachusetts has a 5.3% unemployment rate, which you'd think would be higher if employees knew how much they could collect if their companies are looking for people to go on the chopping block. Mississippi has the lowest payout, up to $210 a week, but has a 7.8% unemployment rate that is barely higher than California's. Looks like the jobless in Mississippi are getting the short end of the stick.

Now Iceland is newly one of Europe's poorest countries. As one newspaper put it, Iceland is now "banging on the doors of Russia." A year ago, the American dollar bought only 60 krona. Today, it buys nearly twice as much, or 111. Costs have been halved. Now, after years of staying away because of scalding Scandinavian prices, Americans can tour Iceland for prices that are more in line with many of our own cities.

British tourists, who are just a couple of hours from the North Atlantic nation, are pouncing on the deals, which are already cost a third less than they did before the crash. Icelandair, which takes five or six hours to reach its country from several American cities (Orlando, Minneapolis, Boston, New York), is selling round-trip flights to Reykjavik, its clubby capital, for just $400 all winter, and another $150 buys a Hilton hotel stay for three nights while you're there (the booking deadline is Oct. 21, but I'd expect more deals to come).

It's interesting to think about how cities compete for tourists. Apart from spending billions of dollars on advertising, fighting to host World's Fairs and the Olympics, and desperately organizing major events, almost every aspect of a city's infrastructure could be seen as part of a bid for the tourist buck. Police? Handy for keeping the tourists safe. Public transportation? Offers a cheap way for the tourists to get around. Sports teams? Keeps the tourists happy while they're here and gives them handy souvenirs to take home!

I thought about this recently when I read about the town of Zheleznovodsk, Russia. Home to the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the town seems to have long been casting about for a sense of identity. On the one hand, it is noted for the healing powers of its mineral springs; then again, so are many other towns in the Caucasus Mountains region, where it is located. Not long ago, it hit on the idea of using the iconic enema, the delivery system for many of its healing mineral treatments, as a sign of its civic pride. The first step was posters that stated "Let's beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas!" The signs hung in the local spa and garnered a fair bit of attention.

Buoyed by the success of their enema poster campaign, the spa commissioned a sculpture. Costing $42,000, Mashuk-Akva's enema statue shows an 800-pound bronze bulb-style enema being carried by three Botticelli-esque angels. While the sculptor admits to a certain irony in her finished work, the director of the spa considers it to be an utterly non-ironic symbol of the region. It remains to be seen if Zheleznovodsk's new sculpture will become a cultural icon or will end up being a washout. Regardless, the next time I take a trip, I'm going to give a long, hard look at Russia, the land of the golden enema!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. The more he thinks about it, the more he's impressed with Zheleznovodsk. Come to think of it, maybe New York needs an enema!

What are the most important considerations when one is choosing a place to live? Obviously, recreation is a consideration, as is safety, but what else goes into the list? Does your ideal area have museums and libraries? Parks and bodies of water? How about diverse ethnic populations and a wide selection of restaurants?

While considerations like a country's level of happiness or its willingness to support slackers certainly have an impact upon its overall desirability, other factors definitely come into play. With this in mind, Mercer Consulting has developed an index that rates the safety and liveability of 215 cities across the world. According to them, the top-ranked city in the world is Zurich, followed by Vienna, Geneva, Vancouver, and Auckland, and the top five safest cities are Luxembourg, Bern, Geneva, Helsinki, and Zurich. The top-ranked city in the United States is Honolulu, which came in at number 28, while New York City came in at 49, behind San Francisco, Boston, Washington, Chicago, and Portland, Ore.

Having been to -- yawn -- Zurich and -- double yawn -- Geneva, as well as several of the other cities that are ranked far ahead of Honolulu, I began to wonder what, exactly, the folks at Mercer were smoking. Not that there's anything wrong with Oslo (24), Stockholm (20), or Copenhagen (11), but putting these cities ahead of every U.S. city seems a little odd. And Zurich! Don't even get me started on the famed "Valium of the Alps!"*

When I read the fine print, I began to understand. Mercer's focus is on how much "hardship pay" the average executive should have to get when he or she gets sent to work in a city. Their primary considerations are internal stability, crime, effectiveness of law enforcement, and relationships with other countries. In that context, it seems pretty clear why the United States is ranking comparatively low in the world and Switzerland is at the top of the heap. It also explains why Nairobi (212), Karachi (213), Kinshasa (214), and Baghdad (215) round out the bottom of the list. Hopefully, with a little more political stability and some improved relationships with other countries, the United States will be able to reclaim its rightful place, directly below Switzerland!


*Actually, nobody calls Zurich "The Valium of the Alps." But they should.

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Having dragged his butt through some of the seedier parts of Amsterdam (13), he still has to wonder if the Mercer people are on crack.