Last week was a strange one for global politics.
First, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and then North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un launched a balloon-borne scatological warfare offensive against neighboring South Korea.
After the Nobel Committee's Feb. 1 deadline for nominations passed, Trump emerged as one of nearly 200 people nominated to receive this year's Peace Prize, joining the ranks of Pope Francis, Iran-U.S. nuclear agreement negotiators Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, and Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC guerrilla leader Timoleon Jimenez who brokered a peaceful end to 50 years of civil war in that South American Nation, according to a compilation of nominations that have been leaked to the press.
Trump's nominator, who chose to remain anonymous, cited the real estate magnate for his "vigorous peace through strength philosophy, used as a threat/weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS, nuclear Iran and Communist China," even though said philosophy has yet to be implemented or tested pending the outcome of the November election.
At least Barack Obama had been in office a couple of months back in 2009 when he was nominated for his undeserved Peace Prize, and, thankfully, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, nominated in Trump-like fashion in 2013, failed to make the Nobel finals.
Trump could get a run for the nearly $1 million in Nobel Prize money from another American entertainment figure. Actress Susan Sarandon was nominated by a group of Greek academicians and the Hellenic Olympic Committee for her work in aiding and documenting refugees struggling to reach the islands of Greece from Syria and other war-torn nations.
On the other side of the planet, Kim Jong-Un spent last week doing his best keep the Cold War alive in frat boy fashion by sending helium balloons carrying payloads of used toilet paper, cigarette butts and propaganda leaflets calling South Korean leader Park Guen-hye "political filth" across the Demilitarized Zone. The North Korean leader's experiment in scatological warfare was launched in response to South Korea sending propaganda-bearing balloons across the border back in January, shortly after North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb in an underground test.
In retaliation for North Korea trying to prove it's No. 1 by sending balloons full of No. 2 their way, the South Koreans are looking for payback by blasting pop music northward across the border via a series of high-volume loudspeakers.
Hopefully, the earsplitting K-pop dance tracks won't cause the North Korean leader to snap and retaliate in a preemptive manner. I'd rather have him squeezing the Charmin' than pushing the button. But for now, at least, both sides can agree on one thing:
War is smell.