And it’s time for another editing break! So, I’m getting slightly pummeled in this post’s comments for my shoot-from-the-lip, non-medical opinion that Oslo mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is a loon, a kook, a nutter, a whack-job. Even prairie dog writers have forsaken me. Sure, this apparent lone gunman and bomber who quotes Ted Kaczynski supposedly found people and groups who shared some of his extremist political philosophies — of course these people are now disavowing him, not surprisingly. And sure, far right-wing groups and a culture of anti-immigrant hatred are threats to peaceful society. Let’s not downplay the soil of bigotry, unreason and sickness that this killer Norwegian daffodil sprouted in. It would be reckless to view this tragedy outside of its context.

But larger societal factors aside, Anders Behring Breivik is still a kook. Balanced people do not go to islands for two-hour, child-murder field trips. He’s nuts. It’s apparently not a popular opinion but I’m sticking to it. Besides, why would the fact that he’s cracked  mean he can’t be an evil conspiring terrorist, too? Can’t he be both?

While we’re on the subject, here are some other interesting people I propose be forever categorized as crazy. Feel free to disagree in comments.

MICHELE BACHMANN She’s a Republican presidential candidate married to a femmie-acting “therapist” who says he can cure homosexuals. She gets migraines from stress and causes them in others with inane pronouncements about the economy, morality and history.

FRED PHELPS He’s the head of the Westboro Baptist church (www.godhatesfags.com) which pickets soldiers’ funerals and calls Catholic priests “vampires”. Westboro also teaches that U.S. President Barack Obama is literally the Antichrist. With his square jaw and dead eyes, the elderly Phelps looks like an American Gothic-style  maniac from a 1970s slasher flick. When he dies there’s a 50-50 chance a posthumous video will reveal he was an atheist practical joker behind the greatest prank in history.

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING Canada’s prime minister for most of the period between 1921 and 1948 convened seances with the dead, communicating mostly with his mother and several pet dogs. There’s no such thing as ghosts. What a nut.

EURONYMOUS Deceased ’80s black metal singer Oystien Aarseth, AKA Euronymous, is a testament to the power of Google –one learns interesting things when ones searches for “crazy musicians”. After a bandmate killed himself with a shotgun, Euronymous allegedly ate a piece of his brain. He also made jewellery out of the skull bits. Euronymouswas murdered in 1993, dying as he’d lived — crazy. (“crazy” = “stabbed 25 times by an angry musician”.)

HAROLD BALLARD The longtime owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs can’t just have been a prick. Dick moves like trading Lanny McDonald and Darryl Sittler and basically destroying the team for more than a decade could only have been the result of undiagnosed neurochemical imbalance. If only poor Mr. Ballard had found the help he’d needed, his death migh not have been one of the most celebrated in Canadian history. Alas, he didn’t and good riddance R.I.P.

LINDSEY LOHAN Satan’s caterpillers fart in her brain.

MAXWELL KLINGER I’m not buying the act. That guy was legitimately bonkers. Why oh why wouldn’t they give the Korean war character the section 8 discharge he so obviously deserved?

WILLIAM SHATNER He’s crazy all right… crazy AWESOME!

That’s it for me today, off for one last coffee then back for lots more editing. See you tomorrow, and have a jolly Sunday night!