California

• Nicknames: "The Golden State," "The Left Coast," "Kah-lee-fornia" (if you're Arnie), and "Leftist Pinko Homosexual Central" (if you're a bitter Republican that covets our electoral votes; or if you've never been to rural California).

• The 31st state in the USA; admitted on September 9, 1850.

• Part of America most at threat from North Korea if they can ever get their missles to work.

• The third biggest state, for sheer size (Alaska and Texas are first and second).

• At 33,871,648 residents (2000 U.S. Census), the most populous state in the union.

• Major industries are: agriculture (many, many products), oil, mining, electronics, movie making/entertainment, and tourism

• Home to:

- 1,340 miles of varied and beautiful American coastland

- The majority of America's media production.

- The best burger restaurant in all fifty states.

- The Ronald Reagan Memorial Library. (both Ronnie's colouring-in books are here)

- The very definitely non-racist Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)

- The John Wayne Airport.

- The Governator.

- Disneyland, or as it's affectionately known by people formerly employed by Walt & Co., Mauschwitz.

- Britney Spears, Madonna (guess the Dorset experiment didn't work), Keanu Reeves and Nicolas Cage. Jeez, we're sorry.

- An estimated 2 million illegal immigrants, which may or may not include...

- Roughly 10% of the estimated 820,000 British expats in America, living in the Santa Monica area alone (source pending).

- A myriad of taco and burrito shops, a direct result of the above point and God's gift to hung-over Californios.

• California has the eighth-largest economy in the world, so we must be doing something right! (The figure flucutates between 5th and 10th, depending on your source, but eight's a nice median number.)

• A piece of land VERY likely to fall into the pacific if anyone sneezes loudly since California sits on a massive fault line in the earths crust. If it does go then worthless scrubland/desert east of the populated areas are going to be valuable beachfront property ... as soon as the dust settles.

• There is a small, but vociferous, bipartisan movement among Californians to secede from the Union; for example: New California Republic. No doubt many states would be glad to see California go; all this author can say is that we feel exactly the same way about you, Jethro.