Raging moderate

Sit the kids down. Let the dogs out. Prop the grandparents up. The nation's patience has been richly rewarded, because the eagerly awaited list of the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2018 has been officially released. This truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

But first a caution: please do not confuse this list with the top ten legitimate news stories of 2018. No. No. No. They are as different as charcoal sketches of historic steam engines and a bucket of compost. Like golden-stitched, sequined blue jean jackets are to chocolate brownies. Bow ties and dirt bikes.

There are no wildfires or hurricanes or kids kept in cages or bone saws or cave dwelling Thai soccer teams, nor mention of the movie "The Happytime Murders" in this report. No casualties from the #MeToo or Times-Up movements. These are the stories that most lent themselves to (s)mocking and scoffing and taunting. So here they are, the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2018.

10. Proposal to give teachers guns. Brilliant idea. And the cure for concussions is hammers. It admittedly would add an interesting element to the faculty lounge. Might help parent teacher conferences resolve a little earlier. Of course then all the school employees would want them. And the librarians would demand silencers on theirs.

9. Kim Kardashian meets with Trump. In May, the two broke the old record for largest assemblage of White House ass, set in 1978 when Jimmy Carter welcomed the Upper Michigan Donkey Basketball Champions. Five months later her husband Kanye West set the bar even higher. Or lower.

8. Kim Jong Un & the Singapore summit. A win-win. Trump got a great photo op and Kim Jong Un got to leave North Korea and eat real food.

7. Books on Trump. Four major publications and every one calls him nuttier than the hospitality suite at a squirrel convention. Stormy Daniels said his male member looks like a mushroom prompting a protest from the American Mushroom Institute. Apparently, every twenty years America needs to know the shape of the leader of the leader of the free world.

6. Vladimir Putin & the Helsinki summit. The president made Neville Chamberlain look like a mixed martial arts champ. He sucked up so hard he probably left hickeys.

5. Un laughs at Trump. After he claimed to be the best president EVER, they laughed. And because of translation delays, it was a slow ripple of laughter punctuated by the occasional guffaw.

4. White House corruption. His mafeasance is so large it can be seen from space. Rick Gates testified under oath he stole money from Paul Manafort who stole money from Donald Trump who stole money from everybody. These guys are the Russian nesting dolls of crime.

3. The Kavanaugh hearings. Women outraged for being disenfranchised and white men outraged for... having their entitlements challenged.

2. The blue wave. Against all odds, the Democrats actually exhibited a pulse. The midterms were less of an election and more of an intervention.

1. Donald John Trump. Refuses to release his DNA to prove he's a carbon-based life-form. The president calls his administration a finely tuned machine, which certainly sounds better than out-of-control dumpster fire but might be a little less apt.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin. For a calendar of personal appearances, including his new one-man show, "Durst Case Scenario," please visit willdurst.com.