Basically, the whole world is falling apart.
Nadine Dorries' never-ending quest for people to look and listen to her should probably not surprise, but her attempt to become Deputy Speaker was somehow even more ridiculous than her decision to wear Mick Dundee clothes and eat wallaby bollocks for a few weeks. She reckoned the decision may go against her because she's "The new kid on the block". Yeah, that's why. As it goes, on her chances of success at least she was right, she came dead last.
Up in Scotland, they're gearing up for a slightly more monumental vote than that of Deputy Speaker, but Independence point person Nicola Sturgeon has had more to contend with than political pressure: a man's been staring at her. While not wishing to denigrate the genuine menace Nicola Sturgeon felt, it does seem like the sort of thing that Morrissey would cancel a concert over.
Blokes in Scotland might be staring but in the States politicians have finally blinked and stopped the government shutdown despite the efforts of, not to be reductive, some nutters think an accident or health scare bankrupting you counts as freedom. The cease in government operations has had a slew of unforeseen domino effects, but none more intriguing than the fact that, since groundskeepers are off work, there's a fox who's strutting around the White House unabated. Or as the ostensibly sober TIME magazine puts it, "A rogue fox running amok on the grounds of The White House".
In Ireland there is at least a government to speak of and they can get a budget together, but it's not a popular one. Perhaps mindful of the squeezed middle, they've decided to give people at either end a hit, with young people's dole being cut to the quick, and scrapping a bereavement grant to help pay funeral costs. It might make you feel like taking to the bottle, but there's a tax on wine added too.
If there was a progressive levy put on the lack of quality of teenage music videos, ARK, the music makers who shot Rebecca Black to fame out of a flame war cannon, would be out of business. As it goes, teens with the means will not turn the opportunity to make a song and music video for a (relatively) low low price, dignity being mere collateral damage. Behold therefore, Alison Gold's Chinese Food. Patrice Wilson is the name of the guy who runs the company by the way, whom you may recognise as the driving rapper in Rebecca Black's Friday and the Rainbow Panda in this yoke. At least the fact he runs the company justfifies his rather odd presence in the videos slightly.
But if watching that video made you reach for your tea and sniff it in case someone snuck some hallucinogens in there, that isn't the only bit of news that will make you go, "Did That Actually Happen?' this week. In fact, my debut book shares exactly that name, and is in all good bookstores and enormous Brazilian internet rivers now. No, no shame whatsoever.