The Halloween costume you have to explain to people all night of news.
It's a great big world out there, and this week a lot of crazy stuff has been happening in it. We start in the USA, the alpha and the omega of crazy. Hurricane Sandy has had the world agog for the last few days, and has had the eastern seaboard without power or dry passage. Being a natural disaster that took the lives of over a hundred people and the livelihoods of many more, politics took a backseat for a while as both candidates suspended their Presidential campaign and did their best to help co-ordinate and console. But, the circus didn't stop for long.
As digging up an embarrassing quote of Mitt Romney's is as easy as eating a packet of strawberry creams in one go, his past opinions on the government rescue agency FEMA have come back to haunt him. Meanwhile, on Wednesday Barack Obama met with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a bellicose critic of the President in times past, but full of praise for his efforts in dealing with the crisis. Not everyone has been so magnanimous though. The FEMA director who banjaxed Hurricane Katrina, for example.
But as time runs down before the Presidential election everyone has been making last-ditch efforts to get their guy elected (including Republican governors trying to Dastardly & Muttley the election) and with that have come some significant endorsements. Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama isn't all that surprising considering he's done it before. Less surprising than his endorsement was the reaction to his endorsement from his fellow Republicans, one of whom couldn't help blurting out it "It's because he's black!" like a dance-hall era ventriloquist's dummy.
While they've lost Powell again the Republicans have the continued support of actress Stacey Dash (who decided, inexplicably, to endorse Romney while wearing a Baywatch costume). While her endorsement has given people like me an open goal in terms of puns about her being Clueless the always-moderate people of Twitter have taken their criticism way too far, to the point where you'd think she'd started going out with Harry Styles. Don't become everything you hate, lads.
Meanwhile in the Ukraine election fever is pretty virulent, with former PM Yulia Tymoshenko still behind bars and the Prime Minister is a bit of a sexist whose style seems to be "John Major on sedatives". So devoid of choice were they in the election that world champion boxer Wladimir Klitschko had to set up his own party (called, sure what else, PUNCH!) to try and knock some sense into the country. Pro-western and pro-reform, he now runs the third biggest party in parliament. Though in fairness, if he came canvassing at your door, would you say you weren't voting for him?
Kiltschko has seen his start-up party become very popular very quickly, but that other renowned political entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi has finally run out of steam, or Viagra, or whatever it is keeping him alive. He started up his own party Forza Italia in 1994, figuring becoming Prime Minister would be a great way to avoid prosecution. Genius. However, now he's not PM anymore and the recalcitrant Italian legal system has finally caught up with him, after years of ducks, dives and reducing the statute of limitations to 25 minutes. He's being sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion, although that will probably go way down once he gets to the Appeals Court, that he no doubt appointed personally from the finest pole dancing clubs in Milan. Of course, if he was just to stay in custody while someone read out a list of all the ridiculous stuff he's done over the years, he'd probably die in the cell aged 102.