Yesterday, VDB-reader Tom sent an image that could have consumed an entire afternoon, if we’d let it. It’s a map of the United States of America, but with each state renamed for a country with a very similiar gross domestic product.

Texas is Canada. Enough said.

Vermont, in this particular case, becomes the Dominican Republic. Which feels simultaneously really good, and vaguely bad. On the one hand, the DR is gorgeous, and they gave us Julia Alvarez, now jealously guarded as a Vermont writer.

Here’s the detail of New England.

On the other hand, the DR isn’t one of the world’s flourishing economies either. Which leads you to glance down the list of states to check Vermont’s relative position.

And yes, there it is, second from the bottom.

Rich only in comparison to Wyoming, so desperate a place that Dick Cheney — he of the two DWI’s and multiple draft deferments — seemed like an optimistic bet for Congress.

Of course, in this map Wyoming is Uzbekistan, which brings us back to feeling pretty darn smug about the whole Dominican Republic thing.

We may not have much, but we got our dignity.