Reasons to be Happy this March:

Reason #1: March Madness! The NCAA Basketball tournament is the best sports tournament in the world. Every match is sudden death, there are tons of matches, every good team gets a shot at the championship, however slim, and all the teams are well matched against each other to produce supremely entertaining games.

March basketball is so fun that productivity dips all across America as offices grind to a halt to watch the last shot of every buzzer.

Reason #2: Anime! When is anime not a time to be happy? But more specifically, look for the release of a subbed Sora no Otoshimono movie, a subbed Hayate no Gotoku movie, Saki blu-ray, Kobato blu-ray, Hanasaku Iroha blu-ray, Baka to Test Ni blu-ray, Gunbuster blu-ray, Usagi Drop blu-ray -- basically it's a good time to collect and watch the highest quality anime in the highest quality format.

Reason #3: The CIA World Factbook! It has updated its information to include 2011, and the news is all positive: The world's per capita GDP now is $11,800 dollars. If all money were distributed evenly, everyone in the world would live with all the modern conveniences of life. $11,800 is a lot of money. Because of uneven distributions of income, we still have a long way to go to cure poverty, but this is rapid and wondrous progress.

The countries with the highest growth rates were also the most populous in the world, China at 9.5% and India at 7.8%. That's 1/3 of the world's population getting massively better off in a single year right there. A few more years like that and they'll be richer than us.

But America got better off too. Our per capita gdp rose to $48,100. Now with just a 25% tax rate we could give everyone a $12,000 citizen's dividend. Since the USA already spends around 50% of its GDP in the public sphere, we clearly have both the ability and the will to spend this kind of money socially. The only question is whether we have the brains to spend it in the Right way moving forward.

The stock market is hitting 13,000 for a reason. It may be a jobless recovery, but the economy is improving all across the world.

#1 Reason to be Sad: Memory of Light has an official release date of January 8th, 2013. The waiting continues.