A 1970s-style San Francisco commune is organized around the practice of "orgasmic meditation," but for women only, in daily sessions that start promptly at 7 a.m. Men belong to the commune, too, but are useful only digitally to the women and must remain clothed, according to a March report in The New York Times. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, 41, is considered by some former members to be running a "cult," because of her dominant personality and ability to play on the vulnerabilities of her members, but the three dozen now in residence seem to admire her vision. One man said, according to the Times, that he had improved his own concentration at work (as a Silicon Valley engineer) through "the practice of manually fixing his attention on a tiny spot of a woman's body."

-- We Welcome Our New Monkey Overlords: Researchers recently revealed that they had observed monkeys (1) planning future combat and (2) perhaps teaching their young to floss. A researcher from Sweden's Lund University, writing in the journal Current Biology, described a daily ritual of a 30-year-old chimpanzee that loathes his human visitors at a zoo north of Stockholm and thus begins every morning by roaming his enclosure to collect stones and place them strategically in handy piles for subsequently hurling at irksome visitors. And a researcher at Kyoto University's Primate Research Center told Agence France-Presse in March that he had observed mother long-tailed macaques in Thailand flossing their teeth (with strands of human hair) more frequently if their young are present and hypothesized that they were teaching dental hygiene.

-- Questionable Pricing: (1) Yale University student Jesse Maiman, 21, filed a lawsuit against US Airways in March because someone stole the Xbox console from his luggage, for which he wants $1 million. (2) In January, after the New York City subway system barred the oversized "assistance dog" of Estelle Stamm, 65, she filed a lawsuit for $10 million. (3) In Lonnell Worthy's lawsuit against Bank of America, filed in November in California, Worthy values his now-ruined iPod playlist at $1 trillion.

-- After Elizabeth Russell, 45, and her 13-year-old daughter were arrested in February in Hartford, Conn., and charged with shoplifting from a Kohl's department store, her husband, Daryll, 47, and son, Jonathan, 19, arrived at the police station to bail them out. However, a quick check revealed that both Daryll and Jonathan had warrants against them for violating probation, and were arrested. Said a police lieutenant, "I don't ever recall having four related people in lockup at the same time."

-- In December, Idaho State University sent certified-mail letters to its adjunct faculty to disclose (as required by law) that some of them would soon be laid off. However, only the first-class mail fee was billed to the university, leaving each professor to pay on receipt the certified-mail surcharge in order to find out what the university would send them that was so important. (The Idaho State Journal reported that it was the Postal Service's error.)

-- Jailers Not Paying Attention: (1) Christian Colon, 21, had a plea deal worked out to testify against alleged murderer Joel Rivera in exchange for a lighter sentence, but suddenly decided in February that he would not take the stand. The change of heart came right after Colon was accidentally housed in the same Milwaukee County Jail holding cell with Rivera. (With no plea deal, Colon got 46 years.) (2) At least Colon is still alive. A 23-year-old inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary was found beaten to death in March after being mistakenly assigned to the same cell as his ex-partner-in-crime, against whom he had testified in a 2002 murder trial.

-- At least four culinarily daring food emporiums in the U.S. serve deep-fried pizza, including the takeout Pizza Snobz in Wilson, Pa., though owner David Barker admits the specialty is more common in Scotland. The key point, he said, is to begin only with frozen pizza; otherwise, the cheese soon slides off into the fryer.

-- When a supporter of the animal-rights organization PETA contributed, for a fund-raising auction, a towel that had recently been used by actor George Clooney, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk had what she thought was a better idea: extracting Clooney's perspiration from it and using the sweat to flavor a tofu dish. "I can see people having parties to try CloFu," she said. (Clooney rejected the idea, according to a March Washington Post report.)

-- In February, Britain's Southwark Crown Court ordered so-called "countess" Eida Beguinua to give back the equivalent of $1.2 million to investors who had believed her story that she could recover treasures in the Philippines but needed money for expenses. Despite the setback, she told the judge that she was sticking with her story and begged him for more time to look for the "22 caves," protected by "10,000" guards, containing tons of jewelry and gold worth "300 followed by 41 zeros" (presumably in British pounds).

(1) The venerable 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei was honored at a gallery in Florence, Italy, in February to mark the 400th anniversary of his transformative work, which was widely discredited at the time (as contradicting the Bible) and which subjected him to vicious slanders. The exhibit includes Galileo's only preserved body part: one of his middle fingers. (2) London's Royal Opera House announced in February that its next biennial original production will be a libretto based on the life of the late Anna Nicole Smith.

(1) The Court of Appeal in Brisbane, Australia, rejected in March the challenge of the man convicted last year for having sex with his underage stepdaughter but who had tried to protect himself by having her sign a "contract" of consent. (When arrested, the incredulous stepfather indignantly asked the police, "Did you not see the (expletive) contract?") (2) Schoolteacher Andrew Melville, 48, was sentenced in January in Scotland's Edinburgh Sheriff Court for possession of child pornography after the tribunal heard that Melville had initially sought to cover up word of his March 2008 arrest by buying up all copies of the newspapers in his hometown of Gullane.

Least Competent Criminals: (1) Alleged bank robber Feliks Goldshtein was arrested after a brief chase by police, who were summoned to National City Bank in Stow, Ohio, in January. Employees may have been tipped off because Goldshtein, wearing a ski mask, had waited patiently in a teller's line and only displayed a gun when he finally reached the counter. (2) Romeo Montillano, 40, who was being sought in the December robbery of a Kmart in Chula Vista, Calif., pleasantly surprised the cops when they learned that a "Romeo Montillano" had registered for the upcoming police officers' exam on Feb. 25. Indeed, he showed up, and he was arrested.

From a May 1999 police report in The Messenger (Madisonville, Ky.), concerning two trucks being driven curiously on a rural road:

A man would drive a truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so on, into the evening. He did it, he told police, because his brother was passed out drunk in one of the trucks, and he was trying to drive both trucks home, at more or less the same time. (Not surprisingly, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be impaired.)

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.