I'm the President, so you know when I say this it's pretty damn serious: I'm almost certain that this country and perhaps the whole world around it is falling apart. I didn't want to believe it back when I was running and I ignored the signs for the first few years in office, but it's getting clearer every day that life as we know it will soon no longer be possible. How do I know this? Because I checked my schedule recently and realized that Lady Gaga is the most reasonable, down-to-earth person I'll be talking to for the foreseeable future.

Yes, soon I'll be having a chat with pop singing sensation and budding conceptual artist Lady Gaga. She wants to sell me on supporting anti-bullying legislation that will protect LGBT teens in school. Ms. Gaga was spurred in this regard after finding out that one of her biggest fans, a gay kid who suffered intense bullying, took his own life recently. So, I've agreed to sit down and have a meeting with Lady Gaga about a law that, if worded correctly, could be a step in the right direction for civil rights in America. Don't ask me how Lady Gaga has a line to the White House. Frankly, I don't actually care, at least not anymore.

I don't care that the most reasonable discussion I have on the docket between now and the end of (hopefully) my first term is with Lady Gaga because at least I can be certain that it'll be less insane than any random selection of meetings I have with politicians. I mean, talks between Democrats and Republicans have never been what I'd call "productive" but they've taken on a level of maddening destructiveness in recent years that makes every minute at the table seem like an hour in hell. There's no getting out of this mud, either. No, I'm living in a time when a presidential candidate can call Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and still get a positive response in Florida, surrounded by a significant chunk of the people in this country who currently receive Social Security benefits. There's so much dissonance there that talking Congressional processing with a chick in a meat suit seems tame.

Oh, and I'm also in the middle of another shouting match between Israel and the Palestinians. That's always a barrel of monkeys, I tell ya. It's a special kind of disheartening when you get blank stares in the middle of a discussion that goes something like,

"We want the U.N. to give us a country."

"Okay, but first you gotta stop shooting rockets at the country that's gonna be your neighbor."

Really, how freaking hard is that to understand? It's like talking to 2-year-olds. 2-year-olds with bombs and machine guns and a nationalistic streak a mile wide.

And then I remember that the only person I'm going to talk to for months who actually wants to curtail violence instead of instigating it is the woman who wrote "Bad Romance". This has become my life. Maybe I should have meetings with more pop singers. Hell, maybe I should appoint one to the Supreme Court.