It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … um, a giant can of Pringles?

A lot of folks have gotten very worried about all the unidentified flying objects, balloons and suspicious clouds floating across North America these days. I haven’t been very interested, but some folks are all up in arms and ready to shoot at anything in the sky while crafting tin-foil hats to protect “them” from reading our thoughts.

“Bubba, I don’t think you ought to be shooting at that thing. It looks like a 737 to me.”

“You ain’t been reading the right stuff on them interwebs, Jim Bob. That is clearly a commie missile balloon. And see them chemtrails? They put some of that Omicron in it, and if it lands on you, it’ll turn you trans and make you vote for AOC.”

“Excellent points. Take it down!”

This all started when a little 200-foot-tall balloon floated all the way across the U.S. China disputes claims that it was a surveillance balloon, noting that it clearly read “It’s a boy!” in 100-foot letters and that they don’t need spy balloons when they’ve got TikTok.

A lot of right-wingers were angry that the Biden Administration did not shoot it down when it was first spotted, even after Marjorie Taylor Greene told them where they could get their hands on some high-quality Jewish space lasers in her 24th Tweet of the day on that platform she says censors conservative voices. Instead, they let it float all the way to just off the South Carolina coast, where we popped it by having Dallas Cowboys kicker Brett Maher attempt an extra point at Myrtle Beach High School.

Then came more floaters, starting with something “cylindrical” in Alaska, a car-sized something or another in the Yukon and an octagonal object over Lake Huron. Not wanting a repeat of the previous criticism, Biden had them shot down, leading a lot of right-wingers to say things like, “What? You can’t just shoot things down like that when you don’t know what’s in them! Somebody could get hurt on the ground! You should’ve let the sucker float across until it got safely into international waters!”

And now we’re shooting down more flying things than Jim Bob and Bubba getting a one-day-early start on dove season.

“Ain’t the limit 15, Bubba?”

“Naw, I think it’s 1,500.”

“Excellent point. Take ’em all down!”

Quite frankly, I’d be a little nervous jumping too high on a trampoline right now — mainly because of my old knees, but still.

All of these unidentified flying/floating objects were deemed to be unmanned except for the one over Alaska, which was determined to have Mr. Pringle piloting the purple cylindrical object, indicating that it was likely BBQ-flavored. That has not been confirmed as teams are still eating, er, I mean investigating the crash site.

In the midst of all this, photos captured a lightning bolt striking the 125-foot Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Therefore, the UFOs and lightning and drag queen story hours clearly indicate that we are in the End Times. Again. For the 47th time in the past 23 years. Heck, I still have a t-shirt from 2011 that reads, “I survived the End of the World!”

Meanwhile, the looney crowd is convinced these are space aliens and are recruiting Jeff Goldblum to fly to the mother ship and give it a virus while partner Will Smith slaps the alien leader. Most of us can’t update to the latest version of Windows, but I’m sure a virus Jeff Goldblum creates in a couple of hours will be perfectly compatible and understood by the aliens’ computers that were built on the planet Vootron … with Chinese semiconductors.

They may be on to something. I did intercept this transmission from the giant octagonal stop sign over Lake Huron:

“Dear humans. We are here from planet Vootron, where we have a perfectly balanced environment, sustainable green energy, no wars, no imaginary dividing lines, free Netflix and where we have turned Oreos into a health food. We are here to share our knowledge with you out of the kindness of our hearts. Oh look! We see your welcoming party. Wow, they must be excited based upon how fast they’re moving! Hey, Zeebub! Wave big and smile so they know we’re friendly! Uh-oh.”