Every time the Twin Cities is ranked in a survey, we come out strewn with roses. Smartest people! Most voters! Fewest deaths from hurricanes! This has no impact on our lives, but they're nice to mention when defending our home to relatives in Arizona. It's 70 here by the pool; hear you got 12 below and showers of fist-sized ice-chunks. Yes, well, those ice chunks fall on the Guthrie, one of the nation's finest theaters.

We may roll our eyes at these surveys, but secretly we like them, just as someone who doesn't care a whit for sports will feel a tiny thrill of pride if the Vikings pull it off Sunday. This is our place. It is a good place. If it weren't, we wouldn't be here. Right?

So it's always a surprise when you hear what I heard from the door-to-door salesman the other day.

"Been here four months," he said, then shook his head. "Can't wait to leave."

But -- but why? He laid out his complaints:

1 He'd been burglarized twice, and was getting a bit tired of having to buy televisions.

2 Cold. "I've heard people tell me this winter was nothing." I said those people were pulling his leg, and this winter, according to all records, was actually "something."

3 "No good Chinese," he said. Well, now that's racist, and sir, I will have to ask you to leave. "Or pizza," he added. Oh. C'mon: We have lots of small joints that sell boxes of indistinguishable mushy Sino-glop, and we have better Vietnamese. Pizza? Please. New York pizza has crust like someone ironed a wet Sunday Times.

4 People acted friendly, he said, but they were really hypocrites.

So I kicked him. Like us more, now, pal? Just kidding. Asked where he was from: Long Island. I said I'd been there, and liked it fine. I was lying, and I guess that proved point #4, but you have to humor the insane. Look, I think this is a great place, but I can see his position, and it puts one's love of home into perspective. It's not like we drank the Kool-Aid, as the saying goes. Possibly because we suspect it would taste like lutefisk.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858. More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz