You have entered the Twilight Zone. Yes, this may be the weirdest news week ever. The newsroom and the wires were full of oddities this week--oddities that were sometimes just utterly ludicrous and at other times sad and scary. In case you missed 'em...

Item one: The death of Hsing-Hsing, the last remaining giant panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Seeing the pandas at the National Zoo is one of my first memories of our nation's capital. I still have a memento of my first visit to the zoo--a tiny stuffed panda that hangs on the doorknob of my bedroom.

So when I found out that Hsing-Hsing, suffering from kidney disease, was euthanized at the zoo Sunday, I was sad. When you are five years old and go to the zoo and see a big, black-and-white fuzzy bear, you don't think Nixon. You don't think China. You think cute. And you think forever.

But apparently I am alone in this.

"It's black and white and dead all over," my editor said, when I told him I was in mourning.

It's a big, dead bear, he said. An old bear. It was Hsing-Hsing's time.

"He lived a long, fruitful, panda life--in a cage," my editor said.