Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig vpirc.org. NS
Answer
vpirc.org. 5 NS ns-1088.awsdns-08.org.
vpirc.org. 5 NS ns-677.awsdns-20.net.
vpirc.org. 5 NS ns-960.awsdns-56.net.
vpirc.org. 5 NS ns-2000.awsdns-58.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0