Is nutty normal?

ANYONE who reads newspapers or watches television knows by now that we live in a weird world. We all get so accustomed to absurdity that it passes for normality. A moose is in love with a cow in Shrewsbury, Vt. They have been making cow-eyes and moose-eyes at each other for some time now.

Whales beach themselves on Cape Cod and California shores for some unfathomable reason. People then rush down to the seaside and try to push them back into the water. I suppose this will eventually develop into a game called whale-pushing. No accurate score can be kept, because many suspect that the whales who get pushed back sneak around and beach themselves in a new spot.

And of all things, the American Civil Liberties Union is making an effort to wipe out the last vestige of religion from public life in America even though this would baffle the Pilgrims and the framers of the Constitution. But obviously, one can't have cities around with names like San Diego and St. Paul. Heaven forbid. Changing the name of San Francisco to Hillsville has already been suggested.

The Treasury Department has announced that the United States has managed to build the largest public and private debt in the nation's history. This is accepted in a sort of gleeful wonderment, like a baseball player hitting a record number of home runs. There is also the Department of Agriculture, which reveals that America - the breadbasket of the world - now buys more farm products from foreign countries than it sells abroad.

It seems that one can buy two cats from Neiman-Marcus for $2,800. The price is evidently determined by the fact that they have designer spots, even though a cat is a cat. The Humane Society is properly horrified and suggests something like burning one's charge card.

Then there is the White House! President Reagan has a number of underlings who are running US foreign policy, selling arms to Iran, giving millions to the contras, right under his nose and not even telling him about it. Whillikers, the President must have had one big surprise when someone told him what was going on.

Well, that's the way it is. Strange things keep happening, but they seem more and more normal.