Saudi Arabia is host to several camel beauty pageants each year (condemned as religiously fatuous by Muslim clerics), but the country's first goat beauty pageant was held in September in Riyadh, with the distinctive Najdi breed, featuring high nose bridges and silky, shaggy hair, taking top prizes. In fact, most of the goats in the competition had the same father, Burgan, whose progeny typically fetch the equivalent of $25,000 and up. Still, prize-winning show camels can bring 10 times that amount for the greater status they convey to their owners. Burgan himself did not appear at the pageant, according to a Reuters dispatch, because his owner feared that a jealous competitor would have an "evil eye" cast upon him.

-- The Rental Society: Among the services available by the clock in Japan (according to a January BBC dispatch) are (1) quality time with a pet (about $10 an hour at the Ja La La Cafe in Toyko, usually with dogs or cats but with rabbits, ferrets and beetles available); (2) no-sex quality time with a college coed (flattering conversation by the hour at the Campus Cafe, less expensive than the geisha-type houses); (3) and actors from the I Want To Cheer Up agency in Tokyo, to portray "relatives" for weddings and funerals when actual family members cannot attend, or to portray fathers to help single women with their parenting duties, or to portray husbands to help women practice for the routine of married life (except for sex).

-- In January, a federal judge dismissed the last lawsuit standing in the way of a new Indian casino for California's Amador County, where the federally recognized Me-Wuk tribe of the Buena Vista Rancheria has its 67-acre reservation. The tribe consists of Rhonda Morningstar Pope and her five children, none of whom lives on the tribal land.

-- Parental Responsibility: (1) A father took his 20-year-old son to an Islamic court in Bauchi, Nigeria, in October, demanding that he be jailed for idleness, which he said has shamed the family. (The court immediately sentenced the son to 30 lashes and six months in prison.) (2) In December, a court in Seoul, South Korea, fined the parents of a teenage rapist the equivalent of about $60,000 for their negligence in raising the boy badly. (The 18-year-old himself is serving a 10-year sentence for the crime.)

-- Twenty million Chinese have their residences in caves, but that is often not a bad deal, according to a December McClatchy Newspapers dispatch from Miaogou Village. In addition to the obvious advantages (e.g., no mortgage), some caves have been in the family for generations and have electrical wiring, plumbing and cable television, and some are part of communities of connected caves. Researchers said that earthen insulation keeps the inside temperature from dropping below about 55 degrees Fahrenheit even in the dead of winter.

-- Political Correctness Update: (1) In November, the student association at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, voted to eliminate a cystic fibrosis organization from the list of charities it supports, explaining that since the condition almost exclusively afflicts white people, it was not "inclusive" enough to merit student funding. (2) In December, Britain's Oxford University Press announced the latest changes in its highly selective Junior Dictionary, finding room to add dozens of words, including trapezium, alliteration and incisor but eliminating, for example, bishop, chapel, christen, minister, monk, nun, parish, psalm and saint. The publisher said the changes reflect Britain's "multicultural, multifaith" society.

-- Photographer Yeon Lee's exhibit in a London gallery in December featured a burqa-clad model, fully robed from head to toe except for a tiny opening, but that opening was not the typical one, for the woman's eyes. Ms. Lee's openings exposed only the model's nipples, highlighting, she said, "the ways women are categorized in male-dominated societies."

-- Family Knows Best: (1) Evelyn Poynter, 86, had refused for months to leave her apartment in Pittsburgh and move in with her sister, Laura Stewart, 72, who had offered to take care of her. In December, according to police, a fed-up Stewart forcibly wrapped Poynter's arms, legs, neck and body in duct tape, tossed her in the back seat, and drove her home to Shaker Heights, Ohio. "There was nothing sinister," said Stewart's daughter, but still, Stewart was arrested. (2) In October, police in Elgin, Ill., said they were investigating an accusation that after a 13-year-old boy and girl broke off their relationship, the girl's mother ordered the boy to reconcile with her daughter by threatening to release nude photos of him that her daughter had taken.

Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December Wall Street Journal roundup was "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder," in which a person, when startled, would "jump, twitch, flail their limbs and obey commands given suddenly, even if it means hurting themselves or a loved one." It was first observed in 1878 among lumberjacks in Maine but has been reported also among factory workers in Malaysia and Siberia. It is believed to result from a genetic mutation that blocks the calming of the central nervous system (but could be merely psychological, from the stress of working in close quarters).

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) In January, police in Cape Coral, Fla., were seeking LaKeitha Watson-Atkinson for shoplifting from a TJ Maxx. The thief escaped after running from store security, but not before she was knocked down twice by her getaway car. In the commotion, a check made out to Watson-Atkinson fell to the ground. (2) Luke Radick, 21, was charged with attempted robbery of the National Bank of Palmerton in Sciota, Pa., in January. Bank employees refused to buzz Radick in for the simple reason that he stood at the door, covering his face and holding a shotgun.

An exceptionally cold winter brings more instances of the annual tragedy of young boys (rarely, girls) who could not resist the age-old physics experiment to see what would happen if, in sub-zero temperatures, they tried to lick a metal pole. In fact, it happened on successive days: a 10-year-old in Hammond, Ind., on Jan. 14 and a 6-year-old in Omaha, Neb., on the 15th. Both episodes ended badly with traces of the boys' tongues left on the poles.

(1) Marie-Eve Dean, 23, was ordered into intensive therapy in December by a judge in Ottawa, Ontario, after her conviction for mischief in making more than 10,000 crank phone calls to the city's 911 line, apparently just to protest the legal system's treatment of her former brother-in-law in a child-custody case. (2) A South Korean man identified only as Kim, wanted in Seoul for murder, had a more enduring grudge. Police charged the 37-year-old man with the November slaying of his high school music teacher after stewing for 21 years over the teacher's 1987 accusation that Kim cheated in class.

Ms. Courtney Mann, the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the white-supremacist National Association for the Advancement of White People, and who is a single mother who works as a tax preparer, was rebuffed in an attempt to join a Ku Klux Klan-sponsored march in Pittsburgh in April, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though she has been in the NAAWP for at least four years, the Pennsylvania KKK Grand Dragon turned her down for the Klan march because Mann is black. "She wanted me to send transportation (to bring her to the rally)," said the Grand Dragon. "She wanted to stay at my house (during rally weekend). She's all confused, man. I don't think she knows she's black."

They're either earnestly civic-minded or people with issues, but in several dozen cities across the country, men (and a few women) dress in homemade superhero costumes and patrol marginal neighborhoods, aiming to deter crime. Phoenix's Green Scorpion and New York City's Terrifica and Orlando's Master Legend and Indianapolis' Mr. Silent are just a few of the 200 gunless, knifeless vigilantes listed on the World Superhero Registry, most presumably with day jobs but who fancy cleaning up the mean streets at night. According to two recent reports (in Rolling Stone and The Times of London), unanticipated gripes by the "Reals," as they call themselves, are boredom from lack of crime and (especially in the summer) itchy spandex outfits.

-- People With Too Much Money: (1) The owner of a local ski shop told the Vail (Colo.) Daily in November that he was confident he could sell his parking space in a town garage for his asking price of $500,000. After all, he said, it was on the top floor and next to an exit. (2) The upscale residents of Gate Mills, Ohio, near Cleveland, are so grateful to their town's 61 government employees that they volunteered $50,000 in holiday tips in December.

-- Among the best-selling and most controversial toys of this past holiday season were the $39.95 Mattel "Gotta Go" Doll and the $59.95 Hasbro Baby Alive, both because of their interactive features, especially their digestion/excretion functions. The latter doll comes with its own food ("green beans," "bananas") and a warning ("May stain some surfaces"). The Gotta Go includes a toilet and brings the flushing process to life for the child. An industry insider told the Washington Post that next season's toys would be even more realistic.

-- The Economy in Crisis: (1) The Platinum Lounge, a lap-dancing club in Chester, England, announced in November that it would begin selling advertising, in 4-by-6-inch body-paint squares, on dancers' derrieres. Said the club's agent, "I had to do a lot of research ... to come up with the optimum size for the (ads)!" (2) In the midst of widespread unemployment in Sweden, the Haxriket i Norden company announced in November it would hire 20 professional witches well-versed in tarots, crystals, herbs, exorcism, and "contact with the other side," in the expectation that desperate consumers increasingly would require counseling.

-- Although to many outsiders, the concept of "clothing" on Muslim women suggests full-body veils, many married women in Syria are decidedly more playful, feeding a market for daring and quixotic underwear (to be worn in private, of course, and only for one's husband). Musical panties (some that glow in the dark), bras with "hands" covering the cups, and underwear designed to collapse and fall to the floor at the sound of hands clapping are just three of the popular items at boutique shops, according to a December BBC News dispatch from Damascus.

-- Ewww, Gross! Two brain surgeons in the western U.S. admitted that recent operations had shaken them up, though both said the patients have since been doing nicely. Dr. Peter Nakaji, expecting to find a dreaded tumor in the brain of a woman in Phoenix, was heard on video of the surgery chuckling when he realized the problem was merely a worm on the brain stem (probably acquired from poor sanitation). And in December, a 3-day-old infant was doing well in Colorado Springs following the discovery and removal of a tiny, almost-perfectly-formed foot from his brain by Dr. Paul Grabb.

-- More than 1,000 new animal species were discovered in the last decade in the area surrounding the Mekong River that runs through Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, including striped rabbits and a spider bigger than a dinner plate. Also found was a pink millipede that secretes cyanide, according to a December World Wildlife Fund report.

In November, a jury acquitted Ms. Johnnie Miles, 42, of $7,500 worth of fraudulent credit-card transactions against a store in Vero Beach, Fla., and Miles assumed she had thus earned her freedom. However, Judge Dan Vaughn apparently considered Miles a disreputable rip-off artist (even though technically not guilty of "fraud") and used her schemings to convict her of violating probation on an earlier case. Florida law permits such collateral use of a defendant's behavior, and Vaughn sentenced Miles to five years on each of 11 probation violations, to be served consecutively.

On successive days in January in two towns in Britain, loners in their 70s were reported dead from dehydration in their homes after becoming trapped in monstrous labyrinths of, in one case, hoarded garbage, and in the other, hoarded but unopened merchandise. Gordon Stewart, 74, was found dead in a tunnel system he had arranged from several tons of refuse in his house in Broughton, Buckinghamshire, and compulsive shopper Joan Cunnane, 77, was buried under so much merchandise and rubbish that it took rescuers in Heaton Mersey two days to locate her body.

-- Failed to Keep a Low Profile: If a motorist is carrying $18,000 worth of marijuana, he might try to avoid attracting attention (and not go the wrong way on a one-way street, as Samuel Randall, 27, did in Chicago in January). Or if carrying a duffel bag full of marijuana, not driving around in a car that lacked license plates, like the four women arrested in San Antonio in November. Or if there are 78 marijuana plants in the back seat, making sure that her car had a valid state inspection sticker, unlike Tracy Pioggia, in Hampden, Mass., in October.

-- Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Torvald Alexander, 39, was able to chase away the unlucky home invader who hit his apartment on Dec. 31 in Edinburgh, Scotland, according to a BBC News report. The two men inadvertently came face to face just as Alexander was preparing to leave for a New Year's party, dressed in full regalia as Thor, the hammer-wielding Norse god of thunder. Alexander said the burglar took one look at him, turned and climbed hurriedly out a window, sliding down a sloped roof and landing on the ground, where he took off running.

A 77-year-old man was crushed to death in October while visiting his parents' gravesite at the St. Gregoire Cemetery in Buckingham, Quebec, when a tombstone fell on him. And in November, a 67-year-old woman was killed in southern Brazil on her way to the cemetery following her husband's funeral. She was a front-seat passenger in the hearse when another vehicle collided with it, slamming her husband's coffin forward and crushing the woman's skull.

Walt and Kathy Viggiano of Wichita, Kan., convinced Judge James Burgess to return their four children from foster care in 1999, following their removal the year before because of the unsanitariness of the family's mobile home. Unlike in many such cases, Judge Burgess realized that the Viggianos had not abused the kids, nor did they have alcohol or drug problems. Also, according to police who made the initial investigation, Walt and the kids seemed to speak warmly and lovingly with each other, even though their intra-family banter in the presence of the investigators appeared to be entirely in Klingon (from "Star Trek").

"Genetic modification" sounds like frighteningly complicated lab work, but amateurs are routinely doing it in garages and dining rooms across the country, according to a December Associated Press report. Hobbyists (some terming themselves "biohackers") are busy creating new life forms and someday, observers say, may turn up a cure for cancer or an accidental environmental catastrophe. The community lab DIYbio in Cambridge, Mass., has patrons who typically work on vaccines and biofuels, but might also whimsically create tattoos that glow. One amateur bought jellyfish DNA containing a green fluorescent protein (for about $100), and built a DNA analyzer (less than $25) so she could alter yogurt bacteria to glow green when it detects melamine (the substance recently discovered in deadly Chinese baby formula and pet food).

-- As the British government was poised in November to re-classify lap-dancing clubs from "entertainment" to "sexual encounter establishments" (thus imposing tougher licensing standards), the industry's trade association insisted to a Parliamentary committee that the clubs are not sexual. "(T)he entertainment may be in the form of nude ... performers, but it's not sexually stimulating," said the chairman of the Lap Dancing Association. That would be "contrary to our business plan."

-- Not My Fault: (1) Bruce George, 20, admitted to police that he had molested a 6-year-old girl in Anchorage, Alaska, in October but said he needed to do it to acquire the courage to kill himself. He said he needed motivation for suicide by doing something that totally disgusted him. (2) In October, a man unnamed in news reports filed a lawsuit in Selkirk, Manitoba, against the woman who supposedly caused him mental distress by suing for child support. The man said he had been sound asleep during that 2006 encounter, but awoke to discover the woman having sex with him. He ordered her to "cease and desist," he said, and she complied (but nonetheless, a pregnancy resulted).

-- Karma: A few animals were rescued from an early morning fire at a Humane Society shelter in Oshawa, Ontario, in December, but cats suffered heavy casualties, with nearly 100 perishing. The Fire Marshal's office said the blaze was probably started by mice chewing through electrical wires.

-- Drunk-Driving News: (1) Kathleen Cherry, 53, was arrested for DUI in Carson City, Nev., in December. She is a phlebotomist working on contract with the sheriff's office and was driving to the jailhouse to administer a blood test to a DUI suspect. (2) Stephen Foster, 28, was jailed briefly in June in Edmonton, Alberta, when he showed up in court drunk for his DUI trial. The driving charge was postponed until December, and at that time a court found him not guilty.

-- In December, Lorraine Henderson, the port director for the federal Customs and Border Protection agency's southern New England area, was charged with hiring illegal immigrants to clean her home and instructing them how to avoid detection by her agency. According to court documents, she told one worker, "You have to be careful, 'cause they (meaning, her agency) will deport you."

-- Elizabeth Shelton, 21, filed a lawsuit in Houston in December against the truck driver that she accidentally rear-ended in a 2007 crash, while she was intoxicated, and in which her boyfriend was killed. Though she was convicted of manslaughter, she is now suing for $20,000 damage to her Lexus SUV and for "pain and suffering," basing her claim on the fact that the blameless driver she hit was uninsured. In all, her lawsuit names 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. Shelton is the daughter of a state court judge.

-- In November, Michigan state circuit court judge Robert Colombo Jr. almost single-handedly quashed thousands of apparently bogus lawsuits for asbestos-related injuries by exposing the principal examining doctor as unqualified. Dr. Michael Kelly had diagnosed injuries on 7,323 patients' x-rays over 15 years (earning $500 per screening), which in one sampling was 58 times the abnormality-detection rate of independent radiologists. Judge Colombo found that Kelly is neither a radiologist nor a pulmonologist, had failed the certification test for reading x-rays, and performed lung-function tests improperly 90 percent of the time. On the day Judge Colombo commenced the investigation of Dr. Kelly, plaintiffs' attorneys, realizing they had been busted, promptly withdrew all of their lawsuits except one.

-- Poor Babies! (1) Two customers who lined up for the 5 a.m. November "Black Friday" opening at the Long Island, N.Y., Wal-Mart (in which a worker was crushed to death) filed lawsuits against the store because of the crowd's unruliness. Fritz Mesadieu, 51, and son Jonathan, 19, said they got neck and back pain from the surge of customers and that their medical and legal expenses amounted to at least $2 million. (2) More than 130 lawsuits were filed in November and December by inmates at a state prison in Beaumont, Texas, who claimed to suffer psychological trauma because prison officials failed to prepare them well for Hurricane Ike, which hit the city in September.

-- Questionable M.O.s: (1) Jessica Cohen, 20, was re-arrested in Cincinnati in December. She had gone to the local Public Defender's Office seeking a lawyer to represent her on a theft charge, and while there, according to police, stole an employee's cell phone. (However, she had already filled out paperwork with her name and address.) (2) Robert Dendy, 59, was detained by police in Tonawanda, N.Y., in November after he dropped by police headquarters to give them a holiday wreath as a token of his gratitude for their service. One of the officers happened to notice that the wreath was the same one that had just been stolen from a market next door to the station, and after investigating, found more suspicious missing goods at Dendy's home.

Poor at Multitasking: (1) In Britain's Manchester Crown Court in December, Imran Hussain, 32, was sentenced to eight years in prison for his DUI-related crash that killed two people in August. (Hussain was also masturbating at the time.) (2) Louise Light, 21, was not hurt when she crashed into guideposts in Woodstock, Ontario, in November, but she did get milk all over her because she was eating cereal from a bowl while driving.

(1) In December, a Flybe Airline flight from Cardiff, Wales, was preparing to land as scheduled at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris when the pilot announced that they had to return to Cardiff because, he said, "Unfortunately, I'm not qualified to land the plane in Paris." Because of the heavy fog, the plane would have to be instrument-landed, and the pilot had not yet completed certification. (2) In September, after a Chinese Shandong airline flight landed safely in Zhengzhou, the engine died, and the airline was forced to enlist some of the 69 passengers to help employees push the plane to the gate.

Willie Windsor, 54, of Phoenix has for several years lived as a full-time baby, wearing frilly dresses, diapers and bonnets, sucking on a pacifier, eating Gerber cuisine and habitually clutching a rag doll, in a home filled with oversized baby furniture. According to a long Phoenix New Times profile in June, the diaper is not just a prop. Windsor said he worked hard to learn to become incontinent, even chaining the commode shut to avoid temptation, and the reporter admitted feeling "disconcert(ed)" that Windsor might be relieving himself at the very moment he was describing his un-toilet training. Apparently, Windsor's brother, ex-wife, girlfriend and a neighbor tolerate his lifestyle (though no girlfriend has yet been willing to change his diapers). Windsor is a semi-retired singer-actor and said he's been celibate for nine years.