I often tell people I am from Madagascar, and will fight them to the death if they don't believe me, in scenes similar to the final fight sequences of Kung Fu movies in which the hero's shirt always comes off and the combatants are magically transported to a beach with no explanation.

I have even gone so far as to claim scars from childhood injuries are in fact lemur toothmarks.

The whole entire reason for telling people this is that I always liked having Madagascar when I played Risk. It was one of the spots on the map that seemed really ineffectual, and made you wonder why they even put it there. There should really be an optional rule for Risk which states that when you have three armies left, and you're cowering in Western Australia, about to be crushed by an army of black plastic Roman Numerals so immense that it doesn't even fit on Siam anymore, your armies can hop in a boat and sail off to Madagascar, to live out your days in peace.

I like to think that the inventors of the game had a soft spot for Madagascar. I bet when they were making the game, whenever they mentioned Madagascar, they'd look at each other and say in a hushed and reverential tone "The Land That Time Forgot!"

Madagascar is one of the only countries that has a built-in subtitle like that, and ranks second in public TV and Animal Planet documentaries only to Galapagos, land of needlessly large turtles.

And don't even bother getting all pedantic and telling me they're tortoises, because I'll just ignore you.