The earth must have slipped off its axis a bit last week because it was a crazy, crazy week. And I’m not just talking about the U.S. election, which is in an alternative universe all its own. I did read one thing from the U.S. election that made me shake my head, more than usual. There was a story about Donald Trump doing something stupid (which fiasco it was doesn’t matter) and his running mate Mike Pence’s reaction. The Associated Press, which one would think is a respectable news source, described how Pence and his wife were mortified at what Trump had said. Reasonable enough. Who wouldn’t be mortified. The story, however, quoted “sources that were familiar with Pence’s way of thinking.” Huh? Did they interview Pence? Nope. Did they interview someone who works on his campaign? Nope. They interviewed someone who, quite possibly, goes to the same church or who had kids in the same school or is, perhaps, just a middle-aged, affluent white guy. We all chortle and snort at Trump’s assertions that the media is out to get him. Well, that’s likely not true, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing a good job either. Then at the Blue Jays playoff game against the Orioles someone threw a beer can onto the field. Wrong thing to do, absolutely, but do we really need a Royal Commission to examine the issue? I had a friend who threw mickey bottle on the warning track at a B.C. Lions game in Empire Stadium (so that goes back a few years). Security tracked him down and tossed him out of the game. End of story. No national discussion. No police manhunt to rival that of the search for Osama bin Laden. Just an unceremonious turf out the back door. Crazy, because the police have much more important things to do … hunt down clowns. Yes, the craziness came to a head when a teenager posted a nasty clown picture on social media, prompting the police to investigate and schools to do into a ‘code yellow’ lockdown. Granted, police and the school authorities have to take these kind of things seriously, investigate, and take appropriate action. The public went wild, though, slamming the RCMP for allowing students to go to school Thursday when the RCMP had been investigating the situation since Wednesday night. It prompted the following words in a letter to the editor in the Citizen on Friday: “If I was made aware of this, you can bet I would have let my kids sleep in this morning, safely away from any threat of clowns or any other lowlife targeting schools.” I couldn’t imagine a writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes or SNL coming up with a better line. Remarkably, this wasn’t a satirical writer. The irony of it being October, when we dress up our kids as ghouls and goblins and send them around to the neighbors to extort candy from them, seems to be lost on the coulrophobics. Don’t get me wrong, if there’s a threat, deal with it. But if it’s just some clown clowning around in a clown mask, laugh. That’s what clowns are supposed to make us do. Hopefully, with the exception of the U.S. election which is spinning way out of control, the Earth will be back on its axis this week.