For several billion years the planet Earth had grown just a bit more unusual every day, but for the past several years overall global weirdness has been multiplying faster than amoebas on Viagra. In the past week or two, we have enjoyed or endured so much wacky stuff that it now seems commonplace.

For example, the voters in the Ukraine elected a new president who happens to be a comedian and an actor without any governing experience. But seriously folks, he did play the part of a teacher who accidentally became president. He might have been the most qualified candidate and he might become a great president, but as an American I’m a bit shy when it comes to television stars taking over the reins of government. To his credit, President-elect Volodymr Zelenskiy said to his supporters “I promise I won’t mess up.” Make the Ukraine great again!

Meanwhile, Peru’s former president Alan Garcia had an amusing response to his forthcoming arrest in a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal: he took out his gun and blew his brains out. Mister Garcia was but one of four former presidents involved in this scandal, but he’s the only one to have committed suicide – thus far. 

In 1858, candidate for senate Abraham Lincoln said “a house divided amongst itself cannot stand.” Evidently that became so, as Lincoln lost the election. But I’m reminded of that quote because of the fun and games going on in the Vatican, whose occupants seem to be divided over fealty to the two living popes. I’m an outsider here but it just seems to me that this was something everybody should have seen coming.

Pope Francis, p.k.a. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has taken radical stands that might drag the church all the way into, oh, maybe the mid-1800s. His predecessor, the still-living Pope Benedict XVI (p.k.a. Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger), abdicated back in 2013. He had a more conservative approach to church matters and has seen his base grow as opposition to Francis is spreading like wildfire.

One of those commanding this conservative rebellion is America’s very own Steve Bannon, the jowly white nationalist cockroach who was Donald Trump’s senior counselor until his delusional thinking became too embarrassing to even POTUS. Bannon has proven his fidelity to conservative Catholic values by divorcing all three of his wives — in consecutive order, which was big-of-him. If Pope Benedict thought his membership in the Hitler Youth Corps was an albatross, wait ‘till he gets a load of Steve.

In Japan, it looks like university professor Tatsunori Iwamura will be going to prison for teaching his pharmaceutical students how to create MDMA, the drug sold under the brandname “ecstasy.” I do not know how he graded his students, or whether such grading was on a curve. He also got them to create sundry designer drugs. Remember when we were all bent out of shape about teachers sleeping with their students? Ah, good times…

Italian television powerhouse RAI, a state owned corporation, decided to create separate male and female television channels. No, it’s not that the electronic signals possess unique genders (the jury is still out on that), it’s the audience that would be segregated. Channels for men, channels for women. No word yet on plans for transgender channels.

Here in the good ol’ United States of America, the President said we (he’s president, so he’s acting on “our” behalf) are going to allow our affected citizens to file suit against the nation of Cuba and its various corporations that use property that was nationalized in 1959 when Fidel Castro ousted the Mafia from their shores. It seems their idea of communism is as spot-on as our idea of socialism.

This, of course, might inure to the benefit of those Cuban-Floridians who were inconvenienced by Cuba’s actions 60 years ago. I have no doubt that all of those nonagenarian armchair warriors will now throw their money in for our incumbent president’s reelection next year… assuming they actually count absentee ballots and, of course, those nasty hanging chads don’t get in the way.

Responding to these reports, leaders of the American Indian Movement, the Red Power movement, the Indians of All Tribes organization, and other Native American movements issued a joint statement telling President Trump to go fuck himself.