To quote the ’90s dance music group C+C Music Factory, which quoted former television talk show host Arsenio Hall, there are just some things that make you go “hmmm.” (I know, I know. At some point, I’m really going to have to start updating my references. But I digress.)

These things that make you go hmmm are things that are just so stilted, so off-kilter, so odd, they make me wonder, not for the first time, what the world has come to. Or as the children say, WTF. (There! That’s better.)

Things like these have always been around, but all of a sudden they seem to be bombarding us ― me, anyway ― at lightning speed.

The other night, I couldn’t sleep very well, so I made a list of a few of the things that have made me go “hmm” in just the past few days.

* Donald Trump is the leading Republican Party candidate for president.

* Actor Sean Penn “interviewed” the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo in hiding and wrote an article about him for Rolling Stone magazine.

* Actor Sean Penn says he hoped his Rolling Stone article would start a national conversation about the war on drugs.

* The Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo is being held in the same Mexican prison from which he escaped, that is to say, walked away from a few months ago.

* Former MSNBC personality and WDAY sportscaster Ed Shultz is about to start anchoring a television news program on RT America, a Kremlin-backed cable news channel. Previously, the channel was known as Russia Today.

* Blogger Rob Port’s writing has become a part of Forum News Service, the same Forum newspaper he’s been highly critical of often in the past.

* Did I mention, Donald Trump is the leading Republican Party candidate for president?

There was more, much more. But at this point, I was starting get a little sleepy.