Americans' Special Relationship with "Taxes": It is not just that the secretary of the Treasury owed back taxes for years, or that two other presidential cabinet-level nominees owed back taxes. In January, federal prosecutors revealed that District of Columbia Council member Marion Barry, who was already on probation after a 2005 conviction for failing to file tax returns for the years 1999 through 2004, and subsequently almost tauntingly failed to file a return for 2006, has now doubled-down the taunt by failing to file for 2007. And in March, a Georgia state senator proposed punishment for the 22 members of the legislature who either owed back taxes or had failed to file returns for at least one year since 2002. The 22 were not identified, in compliance with privacy laws, but the Senate's Democratic leader, Robert Brown, outed himself as one of the 22 in the course of calling his scolding colleague a "bloodsucker."

(1) The 2-Legged Dog: Pet rescuer Judy Walker of Oviedo, Fla., and Oklahoman Jude Stringfellow are battling over custody of Walker's two-legged puppy, which Walker believes has special needs but which Stringfellow is seeking to adopt, in part to portray Stringfellow's own famous, hind-legs-walking dog "Faith" as a puppy in a movie she is working on. Stringfellow said Walker had reneged on a firm Feb. 2 adoption date and implied that she had hired celebrity attorney Mark Geragos to get the puppy. (2) The 11-Year-Old Bullfighter: Michelito Peniche killed six young bulls in a single fight before 3,500 spectators in Merida, Mexico, in January, despite the mayor's ban on the event as a child-labor violation (but which was allowed to proceed after Michelito's father appealed to a state prosecutor). Michelito began his career in the ring at age 4.

-- Gildazio Costa, 54, was arrested in Framingham, Mass., in February and charged with kidnapping and beating his girlfriend following a five-hour-long argument they were having about what the operating hours are for the local library.

-- First, Do No Harm: Tennessee anesthesiologist Visuvalingam Vilvarajah was arrested in February in Kentucky and charged with providing controlled-substance prescriptions (OxyContin, methadone) to as many as 350 non-patients. However, the more basic question is why Tennessee licensed Dr. Vilvarajah in the first place, since he had been approved by the state Department of Health even though officials knew that he was on parole at the time after serving a sentence for murdering his wife and mother-in-law. A department spokeswoman told The Tennessean newspaper that no law prevented Dr. Vilvarajah's licensing.

-- A 25-year-old man was arrested in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., in February after an apparent suicide attempt. According to police, the man tried to gas himself inside his car in a closed garage, but apparently did not have a garage himself, and was arrested for trespass when he drove into a stranger's garage for the attempt, causing about $1,000 damage.

-- Total nudity is prohibited during Brazil's annual Carnival, as immoral and, especially, artistically tacky, but samba dancer Dani Sperle appeared in the street parade in Rio de Janeiro in February wearing a headdress, necklace, matching armbands and nothing else except a patch three centimeters long (1.2 inches) covering an intimate area.

-- In Airdrie, Alberta, in January, police officers responded to a report from the Ralph McCall Elementary School that a man was standing in the yard yelling with a portable loudspeaker toward a group of frolicking kids, calling, "Girls in the field, come over to my truck, come pet my dog." When alarmed adults nearby approached him, the man quickly got in his truck and took off.

-- In response to a bomb threat called in to Hays High School in Buda, Texas, in February, Principal Shirley Reich directed the evacuation of all students, who were kept out for two hours until the all-clear. The building had not been completely cleared, though. Reich had ordered that eight special-needs students, who presented mobility problems for the staff, be kept inside during the evacuation, and afterward Reich defended her decision, crediting herself for compassion because it was cold outside, and she wanted the special-needs students to be comfortable.

-- In February, a federal jury in Tucson, Ariz., awarded damages of $77,000 to six illegal immigrants who had trespassed on rancher Roger Barnett's land in 2004 (only one of hundreds of forays onto his land over the years by border-jumpers from Mexico) because Barnett had detained them while he was carrying a gun, which the jury said constituted "infliction of emotional distress" (though Barnett said he was merely protecting his property). Originally, 16 Mexican nationals had sued for $32 million, accusing Barnett of violating whatever civil rights illegal-immigrant trespassers might have.

-- How Could These Victims Have Acquired So Much Money in the First Place? (a) A 27-year-old "psychic" was sentenced to two months in jail in San Jose, Calif., in December after somehow convincing a woman, who had come to her for a $10 reading, to pay her, in ever-increasing increments, $108,000 for a "spiritual cleansing." (b) Charles Silveira filed a lawsuit in March in Morristown, N.J., to recover the $250,000 he had incrementally paid to a "psychic," who said she needed to make a golden statue for him to ward off negativity. The woman also convinced Silveira to buy her a $700,000 home, but that house is in Silveira's name, and he has asked a court's permission to evict her.

-- Crime Doesn't Pay (except maybe $25 an hour): According to police in Longview, Wash., a 57-year-old woman entered a Winco Foods store at 5 a.m. on March 2 and did not leave the store until 5 p.m., and upon exit, paid for about $80 worth of groceries but also possessed about 100 other small, concealed items such as greeting cards, sunglasses and batteries (the total value of which was about $300). She had spent at least part of the day surreptitiously removing the items' packaging so they would not appear to be the store's stock.

Once again, a man was found to have climbed into the waste tank of an outdoor toilet, but according to a March report in the Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, the emergency crew seemed to accept his story that it was all a mistake and not a manifestation of perversion. Rescuers from the town of Filer, Idaho, said the man told them he was just looking for his keys that he had accidentally dropped and had been in the tank for 15 minutes before help arrived. The man declined to identify himself, and no official report was required, but after the man was hosed off by a fire truck, he "discovered" that his keys had been in his pocket all along, and he drove away.

In March 1991, Florence Schreiber Powers, 44, a Ewing, N.J., administrative law judge on trial for shoplifting two watches, called her psychiatrist to testify that Powers was under stress at the time of the incidents. The doctor said Powers did not know what she was doing "from one minute to the next," for the following reasons: recent auto accident, traffic ticket, new-car purchase, overwork, husband's kidney stones, husband's asthma (and noisy breathing machine in their bedroom), menopausal hot flashes, "ungodly" vaginal itch, bad rash, fear of breast and anal cancer, fear of dental surgery, son's asthma, mother's and aunt's illnesses, need to organize parents' 50th wedding anniversary, need to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 20 relatives, purchase of 200 gifts for Christmas and Hanukkah, attempt to sell her house without a broker, lawsuit against wallpaper cleaners, need to return newly purchased furniture, and toilet constantly running. (Nonetheless, she was convicted.)

In January 2008, London's The Sun found a practitioner of a new art form in which a design is inked, with a tattoo needle, into the sclera, which is the white part of the eyeball. That volunteer (from Canada) may well be the only daredevil, or one of a tiny number, but Oklahoma state senators were alarmed enough that they passed legislation out of committee in February to ban the practice in their state. "If we can stop ... one person from doing it, we've been successful," said Sen. Cliff Branan. An Oklahoma City tattoo artist told KSBI-TV that the law is useless, in that "common sense" will prevent the problem. (So far, only the senators from Oklahoma seem to believe they have constituents who might actually ask for ink to be inserted into their eyeballs.)

-- A member of the Singapore Parliament, Loo Choon Yong, attracted worldwide attention in February when he proposed that his already legendarily hard-working countrymen add Saturdays as a workday, to improve productivity to cover for a declining birthrate. "We should accept that, as a people, our procreation talent is not our forte," he said, and move from a five-day workweek to six.

-- A state-of-the-judiciary report in February by Chief Justice AP Shah of the High Court in Delhi, India, estimated that the backlog of cases in the country's notoriously sluggish legal system would take up to "466 years" to clear. Shah acknowledged that progress had been made since 2007, with 56,000 cases cleared, at an average time of five minutes per case, but that systemic problems remained, among them corruption, the complexity of laws and the low quality of judicial personnel. (One property case from the 1950s was not resolved until the mid-1990s.)

-- In February, at the 500th annual celebration of the Buddhist Saidaiji Eyo festival (reputed to be one of Japan's three "oddest"), about 9,000 men dressed only in loincloths tussled over two pieces of sacred wood that were thrown into what the Kyodo news service called a "writhing throng" of men at a temple in Okayama. Those who somehow emerged with the 8-inch-long planks will supposedly have good luck this year.

-- Pastor Bob Book of the Church of the Common Ground in Atlanta and his wife scrub the feet of three dozen homeless men every Monday, based on the concept of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, with such pedicures including a soak, pumice-rubbing, nail-trimming and massage, topped off by a clean pair of socks. Book says his crusade makes the down-and-out feel more confident, and the "worst ongoing" threat, according to him, is not Satan in men's minds but fungus in their toes. "It eats away and destroys the toenails and just makes it very hard for people to walk."

-- The Vatican said in January that Pope Benedict XVI would soon issue guidelines to help Catholics understand which "sightings" of the Virgin Mary and Jesus are legitimate and which are phony (such as "apparitions" that seem to have been created for quick sale on eBay). When a claim occurs, the local bishop will be expected to convene a panel of theologians, mental-health people and priests who will investigate (and, if the sighting is demonic, summon an exorcist). (A 2003 Vatican paper noted that only 11 of the 295 reported apparitions during the 20th century were "genuine.")

-- In January, Prince William County, Va., supervisors told Robert Bird, the longtime chief of the volunteer firehouse in Gainesville, that it would be shut down if Bird and his wife and 19-year-old daughter didn't move out. They had taken up residence upstairs from the truck decades ago (a Washington Post reporter was not able to track down exactly when) and built a customized kitchen for themselves with room for 16 guests, a weight room, and a large family room with a 50-inch TV set. Said the chairman of the supervisors, "There is a difference between sleeping in the station and living in the station."

-- "This adds an extra dimension people will appreciate," said Hobart, Australia, mayor Rob Valentine in December, announcing that at the annual Taste Festival later that month, performance artists would entertain in the restrooms. According to Valentine, the performers would also supply soap and towels and would "recite (a) favorite poem, or tell ... a story" while concert-goers "used the facilities."

-- The Giza Zoo (the largest in Cairo, Egypt) is a broken-down version of its former greatness due to poor management, failed international inspections, animal sickness and attrition, and a deteriorating neighborhood, and among the problems now, according to a February Global Post dispatch, is that employees supplement their tiny wages with $2 bribes from visitors who want to fraternize with the animals. "(P)osing with elephants" and "feeding seals" are big attractions, but so are visitors' roaming the cages, "holding lion cubs" and "hugging bears."

Arrested Recently and Awaiting Trial for Murder: Kevin Wayne Dunlap, Hopkinsville, Ky., October; Richard Wayne Smith, Marietta, Ga., January; Joshua Wayne Cubbage, St. Helens, Ore., February; Timothy Wayne Murray, Slidell, La., convicted on a 2005 cocaine possession charge in March 2009 while awaiting trial for a 2006 murder. Indicted for Murder: Arnold Wayne McCartney, Lewis County, W.Va., March; Arthur Wayne Blood, Pendleton, Ore., March. Convicted of Murder: Michael Wayne Charles, Beaumont, Texas, October; John Wayne Graves Jr., Lancaster, Pa., November; Michael Wayne Sherrill, Charlotte, N.C., February; Douglas Wayne Hall II, Richmond, Ky., February. Sentenced for Murder: Charles Wayne Warden, Brownsville, Texas, January. Murder Conviction Upheld on Appeal: Thomas Wayne Weaver, Gastonia, N.C., February. Executed for Murder: Kenneth Wayne Morris, Huntsville, Texas, March. Died in Prison Awaiting Retrial for Murder: Michael Wayne Jennings, Martinez, Calif., convicted of murder in 1984 but granted a retrial in 2002.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Matthew Peverada was arrested in Portland, Maine, in December and charged with attempting to rob Dipietro's Market. His first attempt, at about 4 p.m., was rebuffed, but he announced that he'd be back at 11 p.m., and that they'd better have some money for him. He returned, and police were waiting. (2) In Phoenix in January, Shawn Holden, 20, ran from his car rather than be detained at a traffic stop for running a red light, and officers pursued him on foot. As police were wandering around looking for Holden, a truck driver walked by, got into his truck, and drove off, running over the prostrate body of Holden, who had been hiding underneath. He was treated at a hospital and arrested.

The Economics of Class-Action Lawsuits: On Jan. 20, L'Oreal, Estee Lauder and seven other cosmetics companies offered one free item per customer ("for as long as supplies last") as penance for having allegedly conspired with department stores to fix prices in the 1990s and early 2000s (but did not admit to any wrongdoing). The total amount the companies agreed to spend on the settlement was $175 million, even though the benefit to any aggrieved customers was merely the price of one cosmetic item. However, lawyers who brought the case took home $24 million.

From the Riley County police blotter in the Kansas State University newspaper, Sept. 2, 1995: At 1:33 p.m., disturbance involving Marcus Miles; at 2:14 p.m. (at a different address), "unwanted subject" (police jargon for acquaintance who wouldn't leave) in the home, Marcus Miles told to leave; at 4:08 p.m. (different address), Marcus Miles accused of harassment; at 6:10 p.m., "unwanted subject" call against Marcus Miles. Nov. 14: At 6:47 p.m., "unwanted subject" in the home, Marcus Miles told by officers to leave; at 7:36 p.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" call against Marcus Miles. Nov. 20: At 2:05 a.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" charge filed against Marcus Miles; at 2:55 a.m. (different address), disturbance involving Marcus Miles; at 3:07 a.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" charge filed against Marcus Miles; at 4:11 a.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" report made against Marcus Miles.

University of California researchers, on a Pentagon contract, announced in January success at rigging a live flower beetle with electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists to control the insect's flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug's muscles or optic lobes can command it to take off, turn left or right, or hover, according to a report in MIT Technology Review, and the insect's "large" size (up to a whopping four inches in length) would enable it to also carry a camera, giving the beetle military uses such as surveillance or search and rescue. The researchers admired the native flight-control ability of the beetle so much that they abandoned developing robot beetles (which required trying to mimic nature).

An official of the National Association of Letter Carriers in Buffalo, N.Y., said in February that it would challenge the Postal Service's threatened suspension of a carrier who was using sidewalks to get from house to house this winter instead of walking across ice-packed, deep-snow-drift yards. Cutting across yards is required by Postal Service rules in order to speed up deliveries.

(1) Allahmanamjad Barbel, 21, sought help in February at the police station in Barnstable, Mass., after his sister playfully put handcuffs on him at a birthday party and couldn't get them off. Police removed them and then, after running his name through the computer, discovered several outstanding warrants and immediately re-cuffed him. (2) Doctoral student Daniel Bennett filed a lawsuit against Britain's Leeds University in February because custodians had mistakenly thrown out research that he had been working with for the last seven years. Bennett is studying the rare Butaan lizard of the Philippines and over the years, to examine its diet, had painstakingly sifted through jungle dirt to gather over 70 pounds of its feces, which Bennett believes is worth far more than the ($720) Leeds has offered him.

-- A coin-operated self-service dog-washing machine ("self" meaning the dog's owner, not the dog) has been introduced in a half-dozen carwashes in the United States recently, at $10 for 10 minutes, according to a January report on one such franchise in Stuart, Fla. The "K9000" is a 3-foot-high, walk-in shower area (or push-in, for reluctant dogs) with an open top, has six separate wash cycles, conditioner and flea-and-tick options, and adjustable water pressure and dryer settings.

-- At Mannerspielplatz ("Men's Playground") near Kassel, Germany, testosterone-fueled office workers can get in touch with their "inner ditchdigger" (according to a January Wired magazine report) and frolic all day long on 29-ton backhoes, 32-ton front-end loaders, jackhammers and various other big, loud vehicles for an admission fee of about $280 a day. At the Men's Playground, the owner said, "We fulfill men's dreams."

-- "Reproduction is no fun if you're a squid," said a biologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, referring especially to the deep-sea squid. Finding a mate a mile down in pitch-darkness is hard enough, but the combination of males that are smaller and fearful of being overpowered and females whose reception of sperm involves being stabbed makes the insemination process especially traumatic. Sperm deposits can be extensive and burdensome to the female and are delivered by the reckless slashing of the skin by the male. In fact, according to a December report in Germany's Der Spiegel, in the darkness the male sometimes misses the female altogether and inseminates himself.

-- Princeton University scientists, reporting in January on research in Peru, said they observed aggressive, carnivorous behavior for the first time among dung beetles, which decapitated and ate millipedes. Dung beetles were not known previously to be fussy eaters (except for a 2006 study in which they seemed to prefer horse dung to camel dung or sheep dung).

-- People With Too Much Money: At Tokyo's first fish auction of 2009 in January, the upscale Kyubey restaurant and the more moderate Itamae Sushi dining chain jointly purchased a single, 280-pound bluefin tuna for the equivalent of about $104,000. Kyubey said it would cut its half into slivers priced at about $22 each, while the popular Itamae planned to offer tinier, more affordable slivers.

-- In Hong Kong, according to a February Wall Street Journal report, when a feng shui master speaks on the economy, investors listen closely (especially in view of the mess quantitative analysis has made of things). Alion Yeo, an expert on the Chinese system of beliefs in stars, geography and the location of objects, and whose popular finance seminars attract high-end investors, told a group of about 170 recently that 2009 would be dismal because the U.S. economy is now in the hands of a president and a secretary of the Treasury who were both born in a Year of the Ox (1961), of which 2009 is another (and which has already started frighteningly with both a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse).

-- Some laid-off workers may be desperate to exhibit their work skills at any available job, but February news reports highlighted two government bureaucrats who draw $250,000 a year between them yet have been prevented from doing a stitch of work for, in one case, six years, and in the other, 18 months. Randall Hinton is nominally the chief of investigations for the New York State Insurance Fund but was ostracized by his supervisors in 2002 and has taken home his $93,000 a year for zero work ever since. U.S. Labor Department official Bob Whitmore earns $150,000 but has had no work to do since July 2007 due to a clash with his supervisors.

(1) Drug-trafficking is a capital offense in Malaysia, and it appeared that one man would go down after being spotted by a police officer with the key to a large drug locker. However, the man has an identical twin brother who was not charged, and in February, Kuala Lumpur High Court Judge Zaharah Ibrahim ruled that because it was impossible to know which one had been seen with the key, both had to go free. (2) Jeffrey Boyle was convicted in 2006 of setting eight fires during the time he was a lieutenant in the Chicago Fire Department and is serving a six-year sentence, but in January, he filed a lawsuit against the department demanding his pension, of about $50,000 a year, on the grounds that he was off duty during the time he set the fires.

Recurring Themes: (1) In February, David Hampton, 23, was charged in Charlotte County, Fla., with robbing a BP gas station and became the latest such robber to run out of gas in his getaway car even though minutes earlier, obviously, he had been present at a gas station. (2) In Marseille, France, in January, a 21-year-old man became the latest bank burglar with an ambitious plan and a mediocre sense of direction, as he drilled through the outside wall of a branch of Banque Populaire but missed the room with the safe deposit boxes and wound up instead in a restroom. [WWSB-TV (Sarasota), 2-9-09] [Reuters, 2-1-09]

A pre-trial hearing was scheduled in February 1996 in Lamar, Mo., on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit against the county for injuries suffered in a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed damage to nearly every part of her body. According to her lawsuit: "All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, ligaments ... discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed, dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abraded, lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained, inflamed and infected."