Yes (as the incomparable James Joyce once started a famous sentence that went on for several days, even though it was all the same day — note to undergrads: If you must steal, steal from incomparable writers), these are wacky times.

Wacky, wacky, wacky. Sometimes even Wiki-wacky.

Luckily, I have a gadget on my iGoogle webpage that reminds me that life doesn’t begin and end with the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Who knew?

Just this past week, for instance, the iGoogle gadget informed me, in its own gentle way, that there’s a London insurance company (Goodfellows Insurance — um, wasn’t that the subject of an American movie?) offering something called "Alien All Risks" insurance. It involves $1.7 million coverage (for a mere $400 a year) in case you’re "abducted or impregnated" (well, that would only apply to half of you — unless the real wacky comes along) by aliens. Those would be off-planet type of aliens, not those from, say, France or Canada. Apparently, you’re on your own if you’re abducted/impregnated by the French or the Canadians. You’ve been warned.

This is the product of your diseased imagination, you’re saying right now.

No, really.

Something on the order of 40,000 people have paid for this "insurance," according to the iGoogle gadget. (Don’t you now wish you had one of these? See? The Republican presidential race fades into the haze that is apparently where Rick Perry’s mind has taken up residence.)

Goodfellows also in 1999, the iGoogle gadget reports, persuaded 15,000 women to buy immaculate-contraception insurance, in case, well, you know, through no fault of their own they gave birth to the Messiah.

That’s a wacky kind of insurance, you’ve got to admit.

On the other hand, there’s Michele Bachmann.

Enough said.

(Well, except that she has blamed liberals for causing earthquakes and hurricanes. I’m a liberal; I had no idea I had that much power. Now that I know, I think I’ll flex my mental muscles and ensure that the Red Sox win the World Series every year. Take that, Minnesota.)

Bachmann has said she not only supports waterboarding (as does Herman Cain, who doesn’t remember any sexual harassment, but the reports are caused by the liberal machine), the Minnesota congresswoman would reinstitute it as president. She also claimed President Obama was weak on terrorism for stopping the practice.

Um, we’re back at waterboarding? And Obama is weak on terrorism? I don’t think a lot of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan believe he’s all that weak, having experienced the U.S. drone attacks under his watch.

Not to mention that, under his watch, the United States got Osama bin Laden (which President George W. Bush didn’t do) and helped to topple Muammar Qaddifi (which President Ronald Reagan didn’t do, although U.S. planes did kill one of Qaddifi’s daughters).

But waterboarding? After World War II, according to numerous reports, the United States held war-crimes trials against the Japanese, convicted several Japanese of waterboarding U.S. POWs, and executed them.

So, when the Japanese commit waterboarding, it’s a war crime. But when the United States does it, it’s simply an interrogation technique?

It’s getting so wacky out there that one of these days, some conservative will propose that liberal Democratic President John F. Kennedy hired Lee Harvey Oswald to kill him so that he could become a martyr for liberal Democratic causes.

Yes, I know. That sounds wacky beyond possibility, and probably only a diseased imagination could dream it up.

Uh-huh. And the three main GOP presidential contenders (as of now; like the weather in Iowa, it’ll no doubt change — remember Donald Trump’s "candidacy"?) are Mitt Romany, Herman Cain, and steadfast marriage-defender Newt Gingrich.

Who has a diseased imagination?

In the era of Wacky-pedia, who could tell?