There's (almost) a land war in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers are almost done splashing on their war paint ahead of a likely ground invasion following several days of airstrikes. The strikes—targeted but still killing Palestinian civilians—are an answer to a steady rainfall of Hamas rocket fire on Israeli border settlements.

Hamas is responding in kind by landing missiles, for the first time in decades, on far-away targets Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. So much for the cease-fire planned for the Islamist Egyptian prime minister's historic Gaza visit.

Japan is ready to overthrow its ruling party in favor of one that's promising to talk tougher about China. This is also when I delight in the fact that Japan's parliament is called the "Diet."

David Petraeus and Benghazi and David Petraeus and Benghazi and David Petraeus and Benghazi and David Petraeus and... LIES? FILTHY HYSTERICAL LIES?

The "shirtless" FBI agent in the Petraeus email privacy scandal is a strange ranger, yes, but nowhere near the sex creep everyone making that shaming clucking sound with their mouths this week really wanted him to be.

Republican governors nursing thinly veiled 2016 presidential aspirations have suddenly decided Willard Romney is worse than crazy-metastasized ass cancer just because he inarticulately said aloud every single political thing they were thinking.

The story of a modest Renoir painting found inside a West Virginia flea market (probably with mustaches and fangs and comically oversized wieners drawn on in coal dust).

In which many important people, including the president and the house speaker, feed the 24-hour news cycle by posing for photos during a meeting presumably about the "fiscal cliff."

A veterans parade in Texas somehow stopped on top of a railroad crossing right when a train came barreling in—leading to a few acts of bravery, but mostly a lot of carnage. Four people died, and 17 were hurt.

If you bought Ikea furniture 25 years ago, chances are you own the handiwork of an East German political prisoner paying off their debt to the communist state with some forced labor. Laboring under duress for little to no pay for a profitable corporation—that's one of those times when communism and capitalism blend, right?

Another oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has exploded. But everyone's minimizing the chances of another environmental catastrophe.

The headline said something about Hostess foods "liquidating," and I was all, "No duh!" That stuff plays something awful with my GI tract! Sno-Balls are an inhuman color! Seriously, what's in them! But then I read the story. Hostess just can't stomach treating its workers properly. And now Twinkies suddenly have a shelf life.

EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT TWINKIE THE KID. BUT WHO THE HELL IS THE "FRUIT-PIE MAGICIAN"? AND WILL HE NOW BE AVAILABLE FOR SUBURBAN BACHELORETTE PARTIES?