Commuters are in the intersection of Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street, which is normally very crowded on a weekday morning, Monday, March 23, 2020 in New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered most New Yorkers to stay home from work to slow the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

With everything going on in the world and the panic a microscopic piece of RNA has managed, these are five crazy, somewhat amusing stories out there if you look hard enough.  And guess what? Three of them involve the coronavirus.

Coronavirus Spurs Hate Crimes

It has nothing to do with Trump calling it the Wuhan virus and people taking exception to the fact that the President notes the damn thing seems to have originated in China.  In the Big Apple, police are pursuing hate crime charges against a black man filmed screaming at an Asian man on the subway, then spraying him with Febreze.  In LA, it is reported Asians are stocking up on guns, likely fearing a Rodney King-like backlash from their black neighbors.  And in Fresno, one Asian resident awoke to find this graffiti that read: “F*** ASIONS AND CORONYVIRUS.”  Using Febreze to disinfect someone is stupid enough, but most irksome is when hate crime perpetrators can’t even spell correctly.

Are Smurfs Immune?

To show that he ain’t afraid of no little virus, Patrick Leclerc, the mayor of some small hamlet in France defied his country’s ban on gatherings of people greater.  Calling the ban “ambient gloom,” Leclerc allowed a gathering of 3,500 adults in blue Smurf make-up to invade his town in an attempt to set some world record of some sorts.  Said Leclerc, “We must not stop living” in response to bans of public gatherings in France.  There was no word on whether the Smurfs were disinfected with Febreze.

The Iranians Thought They Had the Answer

First it was China, then Iran before the bug spread here.  The Iranians have accused the US of spreading it in China in some secret biological warfare operation.  To show they aren’t afraid of the virus, one leader took to the airwaves and licked a Muslim shrine.  Supposedly the wisdom of Mohammed or Allah gets on your tongue and kills the virus, or something like that.  However, officials with the CDC and the World Health Organization have definitively proven that shrine licking is no cure for coronavirus.  It has also been determined, in a press release, that Allah opposes and does not condone shrine licking.  So please, Iranians: stop licking your religious shrines.

 A Lesbian Revolt Against Immigrants in Greece

Sappho was a Greek chick who liked to get it on with other Greek chicks about 2,500 years ago.  She lived on the island of Lesbos.  Inhabitants of that island, despite their sexual orientations, are known as Lesbians.  In 2016, in exchange for a bunch of euros, Turkey agreed not to send any Syrian refugees onto Greece so that they could invade Europe further from there.  Apparently the money ran out and Turkey is reneging on the deal.  So Syrians are getting in boats and rafts in Turkey and setting sail for…you guessed it- Lesbos.  This has made the Lesbian residents angry and they are demanding that the Greek authorities do something about the mini-invasion.  The moral of the story: Don’t piss off a Lesbian.

Lady Gaga is Memorialized

Lady Gaga, that strange subspecies of human Homo sapiens gagais, has an insect named after her.  Described by the entomologist as possessing “…these crazy horns and a wacky fashion sense about them… the genitalia also looked more like treehoppers from the Caribbean.”  The bug was discovered in Nicaragua.  First, it should be noted that this entomologist makes a living studying insect genitalia.  More importantly, it raises a serious question: Who should be more offended?  Lady Gaga or the bug that was named after her?