Here we are, in the middle of April, and the east and midwest got a special surprise this week, snow! Some areas got several inches of the white menace and it caused numerous traffic accidents. I remember one year when I was growing up in Ohio, it snowed on Easter. My dad, clever as he was, didn't color any eggs for me to find, he just buried the white ones in the snow. Kept me busy all day.

    The weather is not the biggest problem this week, the problem is the presence of blatant stupidity performed by people who are really bored. For example, there is, at this moment, a grown man, dressed in a teddy bear costume, walking from Los Angeles, 400 miles to San Francisco. He has no cause or charity to support, he's just doing it to do it. Watch for the candidacy of Ted E. Bear in the next California election.

    Since we are currently in a national mess, I thought it was time to find our subjects elsewhere, hence, News From Around The World.

YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT BAD

    The combination of COVID-19 and the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal proved to escalate garden gnome sales in England. The virus got people outside and gardening, and they all wanted a gnome or two. Retailers quickly ran out of the ugly little statues, and the ship wedged in the canal had the materials to make more. Oh, heavens, what is the country to do? A gnome shortage of epic proportion. People are gnomeless, Where is Winston Churchill when you really need him?

    Until the gnome dilemma is resolved, I suggest that people with gardens dress up small children to look like gnomes and either have them stand in their own garden, or rent them out to the neighbors

CLAM UP!

    In the Philippines this week, the Coast Guard recovered over 200 tons of illegal fossilized clam shells. Fossilized shells of giant clams are protected by the Philippine Wildlife Conservation Act, and the stolen shells are valued at $25 million. So here's my question. Let's say you're a thief in the Philippines and you steal 200 tons of fossilized giant clam shells, where are you going to fence them? Where is the market for giant fossilized clam shells? 

    I would guess that the shells were going to be shipped to England to be sold as garden gnomes.

HOW DOES THIS GARDEN GROW?

    A study is underway by Argoscope, the state research institute in Switzerland. They plan to determine the health of the soil by burying underpants in it. They are supplying 10,000 gardeners with two pair of white cotton underpants. They are told to bury them in their garden and dig them up after a few months. If the pants have holes in them, it means things in the soil like bacteria, fungi, insects and worms ate the underpants, thus showing that the soil is healthy. So when you say to a bug, "Eat my shorts!" they'll take it as a compliment.

    I don't bury my underpants, I use traditional laundry methods but I still wind up getting holes in them. I guess I shouldn't have tried to put them on my garden gnome.