Let's see what's going on in the zany, malaprop-infested world of Crankshaft today. Looks like the Fat Cats down in City Hall have learned of the mayoral bid that's convulsed readers for the last fortnight:

At least the comic is a tacit admission that the comic pages provide no actual laughs. It's something of a non-collegial zinger at the Beetle Bailey world, though. Granted, Sarge does beat Beetle into a pile of bones from time to time, but every strip has a running gag, and it's a safe bet that Beetle himself, a few months hence, may ask whether Zero is laughing at Crankshaft backing his bus into Keesterman's mailbox again.

But here's today's Beetle Bailey, which I went to immediately after seeing Crankshaft.

What are the odds? About one in three, honestly. I forgot to mention this last week: the world's most poorly drawn comic strip, which is, adds "Computer Monitor" to the list of things it is singularly incapable of rendering with any degree of competence.

SPACEAlien invasion? NASA cuts live feed showing three UFOs leaving Earth, and the Daily Star asks if this is the footage that proves the truth of UFOs. (Hint: no.)

INCREDIBLE footage reveals UFOs flying over Earth before space station camera is taken off air.

Not on the YouTube video, it doesn't. Anyway, if all this is true, someone's in trouble at work.

"You there, Johnson, you're tasked with cutting the live feed the moment you see a UFO."

"Fine, sir, but may I suggest running the live feed on a 10 second delay? No one would notice, and it would be easy to pass off as lag. That would give us ample time to switch to stock footage, and no one would be the wiser."

"Are you mad, Johnson? It's live feed or nothing. Now watch closely for UFOs or the whole jig is up."

The Daily Star article notes: "One posted on YouTube by user Streetcap1 shows what appeared to be a small white disc flying near to the space station," and the link goes to . . . another story on the same video, this time headlined "Space experts baffled as mystery object filmed passing space station." Those space experts being the sort of people who peer at gauzy artifacts and deduce the existence of extraterrestrial civilization.

Or the guys who speak on behalf of the aliens themselves.