Gomer Pyle, USMC, in his 80s, just got married to some guy from Hawaii; some player from Notre Dame had a dead virtual girlfriend who really wasn't alive; and the media are reporting that we've been out of the recession since March of 2009. Well as Gomer would have said, "Golly!"
I really don't give a flip who Jim Nabors, who played Gomer, marries and can't really find a reason to understand why Notre Dame's Manti Te'o's private online non-love-life matters, either. But then again, as we enter 2013, let's consider all of the crazy things we never thought people would talk or care about.
For example, there are now more "Real Housewives of Wherever" shows on cable than one could ever keep track of. And each crowd has less class than the one before it. A self-proclaimed "redneck" family with a girl named Honey Boo Boo is tearing up the TV ratings, and some other bunch of similarly situated folks from West Virginia are challenging them with some other show in which the real-life stars are trying to be more backward.
Lance Armstrong has confessed to doping (shocker) in order to win that riveting sport of bicycle racing, and now we have a whole new cast of characters who are allegedly guilty of using some type of performance enhancing drugs to win at -- you guessed it -- Major League Baseball.
The president of the United States makes no secret of his belief in global warming, redistributing wealth and pushing aggressive gun control. He wants to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants but really doesn't think we should get serious about border control, which of course is how we got into the entire mess in the first place.
And then there is that bubbling and clearly almost aged recovery we've been in. I don't know about you, but I saw very little if any evidence of it. As best I can tell, the "recovery" was basically made up of endless new apartment projects that rose from the inner cities to the suburbs so that all the folks who lost their homes or couldn't buy one could begin a permanent march toward the joy of paying rent.
I haven't bothered to check, but I'm sure the papers are proclaiming that crime is down, although in the past five months about every area near me has been hit by bandits and thieves, where at one time no one could even imagine such activity.
But of course we all know that gun violence is now suddenly out of control and that we absolutely must get weapons out of the hands of everyone but those in the business of stealing and not registering them, so they can have a clear shot at all of us without the threat of self defense.
Thank goodness we have another riveting Super Bowl to keep us all entertained, and I'm sure the halftime talent won't lip-sync, just like Beyonce didn't lip-sync at that in-your-face inauguration. And I'm sure that those multimillion dollar Super Bowl ads will be just as witty as ever and likely cause us all to race from our chair and purchase two times as many bottles of beer or chips or whatever than we would otherwise. By the way, can you remember who won the Super Bowl last year? How about two years ago?
And we can all sleep better at night knowing that John Kerry is now our secretary of state, right? Between Kerry and the president's nominee for defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, I'm guessing we should be headed toward complete unilateral disarmament within a matter of months.
Well, at the very least we've got the Republican Party around to save the day. John McCain can teach us all how to compromise with anyone on any issue at a moment's notice. And for those who are completely uncompromising, enjoy being part of that all-white, all-male permanent Republican minority.
I know, the tone of this whole thing is sarcastic and really should be more cheerful. But, hey, we live in a day in which zombies and vampires are the hottest trend, so it should be trendy to focus on the dark side.
The bottom line is we have had no economic recovery in this country, our entertainment programs honor just plain ignorance, and the politicians and their pals make very little sense. Our liberty is drifting away, and we all got a nice little tax hike in the form of the payroll deduction tax increase in that effort to "spare the little guy" from the "fiscal cliff."
Looking at all this crazy stuff, I guess we can repeat what Gomer also used to say: "Shazam!"