The world can be a strange place and when one thing goes bad, usually it was in concert with many other nasty dominoes that fall behind it. "When it rains, it pours." It had become his mental refrain, one that felt especially true in 2016 when it seemed like the whole world had spiraled into chaos. He was no stranger to life’s oddities, but this year felt different, like the absurdities had taken on a life of their own. The news cycle was relentless, flashing images of creepy clowns stalking neighborhoods one moment and heated political debates the next. It was a strange time to be alive, with the country seemingly on edge, flipping between real dangers and imagined threats with every scroll through his phone. He could still recall the first clown sighting he read about on Facebook. It was some grainy, shaky video taken in the woods of South Carolina, the eerie figure half-lit by a dim streetlight. Before he knew it, the stories were everywhere—clowns lurking outside schools,...