A new study — and they seem to never cease — finds that Hawai'i is the SECOND happiest state in the country. Second behind wait for it here it comes Louisiana!

Are you kidding me? I've been to Louisiana (which we used to call Lousy-ana) and in fact I have a lot of relatives there. Other than certain streets in the French Quarter of New Orleans where women expose their ample charms from balconies in return for cheap, plastic beads, I didn't see a lot of happiness there. (Makes you wonder if the research for this study was pre- or post Hurricane Katrina. I've seen pictures of the Big Easy's Ninth Ward after Katrina, and the only things that looked happy were the gators.)

The happy state study was undertaken by two professors, one from New York and one from the University of Warwick in England. They contrived some sort of happiness scale based, I believe, on the number of smiles contained within each state combined with sunshine and good intentions, divided by the number of Grumpy Guses and gross tonnage of mayonnaise usage, multiplied by the number of biting insects and yearly snowfall minus overall Ritalin consumption. I found this study surprising on many levels. First of all, why is a professor from a college in the U.K. worrying about how happy American states are? Shouldn't he be studying how happy Northumberland is versus Cornwall and West Sussex? The second surprising thing is that singer and Psychic Friends Network diva Dionne Warwick actually has her own college in England. Who knew?

According to the study, the happiest states, in order, are Louisiana, Hawai'i, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona. The most unhappy states are Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York.

I don't have any problem with Florida and Arizona being in the top five happiest states. But Tennessee? The only thing Tennessee has to be happy about is that it isn't Louisiana. Or maybe that Al Gore spends most of his time out of the state burning up fossil fuels in his private jet trying to save the Earth from people burning up fossil fuels.

Hawai'i is clearly the happiest state in the country by whatever criteria you could name. We have relatively few alligators, for instance. Or snakes. Or chiggers. Or horse flies. Or banjo players. We have the best views, best weather, best mongooses, best geckos, best beaches and best teriyaki plate lunches. And did I mention our lack of banjo players?

I believe I know the major flaw in this study. Some of the states were rated on the basis of how happy the people who live there think they are. That's a horrible way to measure. There are people who live in New Jersey who actually think they are happy. Why? Because they haven't been to Hawai'i. Or even Lousy-ana.