A 48-year-old immigrant from Malta regularly hangs out in various New York City bars, but always on the floor, so that he can enjoy his particular passion of being stepped on. "Georgio T." told The New York Times in June that he has delighted in being stepped on since he was a kid. While one playmate "wanted to be the doctor, (another) wanted to be the carpenter ... I would want to be the carpet." Nowadays, he carries a custom-made rug he can affix to his back (and a sign, Step on Carpet) and may lie face-down for several hours if the bar is busy. He is also a regular at "high foot-traffic" fetish parties, where dozens of stompers (especially women in stilettos) can satisfy their own urges while gratifying Georgio.

-- Steven Gilmore Jr., 21, was arrested in Gainesville, Fla., after an aborted convenience store robbery in which he shot a clerk with a BB gun. Police said Gilmore confessed to the crime, explaining that he is an aspiring rap singer and felt he needed to commit a violent crime to gain "street cred" as a thug.

-- Marcella Rivera said the last she heard was that her soldier-husband, William Rivera, would try to reconcile with her and their five children when he got back from Iraq, but then her mother saw a TV program on returning soldiers that showed William being married to another woman. Marcella pressed a bigamy charge in Independence, Mo., but prosecutors dropped it in May after William convinced them that "post-traumatic stress disorder" suffered in Iraq had made him forget that he was married.

-- Evils of Renewable Energy: (1) Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick calls the Evergreen Solar Panel manufacturing plant in the town of Devens "the leading edge of our clean energy economy," but neighbors continue to complain vociferously about the dizzying, 24-hour-a-day noise. According to a June Boston Herald story, farmers report that their horses are developing ulcers and that other animals are behaving strangely. (2) Four hundred goats have mysteriously died since the installation of eight noisy, 24-hour-a-day wind turbines in the Penghu region in Taiwan, according to a Council of Agriculture official cited in a May Reuters report.

-- Sexual Confusion: (1) Researchers from the University of British Columbia nursing school reported in December that lesbian and bisexual high school girls are seven times more likely to get pregnant than other girls. A leading hypothesis is that those girls may try to disguise their sexual identity by uninhibited heterosexual behavior. (2) Addressing a conference in Hobart, Australia, in May, professor Julie Quinlivan, dean of the University of Notre Dame Australia's medical school, said that for disadvantaged teenage girls, becoming pregnant is a good thing, teaching a sense of responsibility that may otherwise not develop. Such teen mothers were more likely to stop smoking, stay in school and find jobs.

-- Even though life and health insurance companies now routinely penalize smokers with higher premiums (or by refusing their business), the companies themselves own tobacco company stock worth at least $4.4 billion, according to a recent New England Journal of Medicine report. Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than 400,000 Americans die prematurely each year due in part to smoking (burdening life insurance companies but perhaps sparing health insurers from having to pay out over longer lifetimes).

-- Chutzpah: In 2006, a jury in Tampa convicted William Deparvine, 57, of murdering a husband and wife in order to steal their restored, vintage 1971 Chevy truck that they had offered to sell Deparvine. Judge and jury agreed on the death penalty, and thus began the inevitable delay until execution. With time on his hands, Deparvine filed a lawsuit in 2007 against the dead couple's estate, insisting (in line with his failed trial defense) that the truck is now his, that the couple had signed over a bill of sale before they died. The couple's family, having hoped to move on from the tragedy, is instead busy filing court papers.

-- In June, lawyer Alfred Rava announced a $500,000 settlement of his lawsuit against the Oakland A's baseball team for "discriminating" illegally against men when it gave away 7,500 floppy hats to the first women through the turnstiles on a 2004 Mother's Day breast-cancer-awareness promotion. Rava may get about half ("attorney's fees"), and any man who swears he was among the first 7,500 fans through the gates that day, and who wanted a hat, will get $50 cash plus other premiums.

(1) When Ian Platt, 51, married Lisa, 42, in Leeds, England, in May, he dressed in traditional morning suit in a ceremony heavily attended by his family. However, after the family members departed, Ian slipped away, donned a wedding dress, and reappeared before friends to take vows as his preferred identity, Susan. Both ceremonies were approved by Lisa. (2) Asia News International reported in May that a man and woman, both 23, from Yichang in China's Hubei province, were planning to get married in 2011 and had made plans to switch genders before then (since the woman says she's always looked like a boy, and the man says his "calm demeanor" more resembles that of a woman).

(1) Daniel Doster Jr., 42, was arrested in Yorktown, Ind., in March for masturbating while standing beside his mailbox (which he told police he was doing to show his neighbors "who was boss"). (2) Dean Mark, 53, was arrested at Whittell High School in Zephyr Cove, Nev., in June, for trespassing. Three students had reported encountering Mark a short distance from the school, nude, tied to a large rock, and asked if he wanted to be untied. According to the police report, Mark declined but then a few minutes later appeared fully clothed on the school grounds.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) In April, police in Fayetteville, N.C., were seeking a pregnant woman who walked into a Carter Bank & Trust branch with a handgun and demanded cash. As a clerk was taking money out to give to her, she received a call on her cell phone, and the conversation became so intense that she ignored the money and walked out of the bank empty-handed, still talking. (2) Alfonso Rizzuto, 47, who was on the run from forgery charges in Scranton, Pa., was arrested in nearby Kingston when he wandered into a post office and an employee noticed that Rizzuto bore a great resemblance to the photo on the Wanted poster of "Alfonso Rizzuto" tacked to the wall.

Medical Marvel: Paul Gibbs, 26, hopes soon to have his left ear reattached after losing it in a barroom fight, but for now, the ear needs to be re-nourished to be strong enough to survive the surgery. Consequently, Gibbs has become the most recent person to have one organ surgically implanted elsewhere in his body while it absorbs nutrients. His lawyer reported in June at England's Leeds Crown Court (at a hearing for the two thugs convicted of beating Gibbs up) that the ear was successfully sewn into Gibbs' abdomen.

In September 1992 in Chicago, Frank D. Zeffere III filed a lawsuit for $40,000 in lost dating expenses against a woman who had broken off their engagement. However, Zeffere, who is a lawyer, wrote her an offer of an out-of-court settlement, beginning with, "I am still willing to marry you on the conditions hereinbelow set forth," and ending, "Please feel free to call me if you have any questions or would like to discuss any of the matters addressed herein. Sincerely, Frank."

Using GPS and state-of-the-art sonar, Columbia University researchers recently made the first comprehensive map of the wonders submerged in New York City's harbors. Supplementing those findings with historical data, New York magazine reported the inventory's highlights in May: a 350-foot steamship (downed in 1920), a freight train (derailed in 1865), 1,600 bars of silver (unrecovered since 1903), a fleet of Good Humor ice cream trucks (which form a reef for aquatic life), and so many junked cars near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges that divers use them as underwater navigation points. Of most concern lately, though, are the wildlife: 4-foot-long worms that eat wooden docks and tiny "gribbles" that eat concrete pilings.

-- More California Money "Management": The Los Angeles Unified School District pays almost $10 million a year to about 160 teachers and staff who are forbidden to do any work -- those subject to discipline but whose cumbersome "due process" and appeals take years to carry out. One teacher, Matthew Kim, fired by the school board in 2002 for allegedly sexually harassing students and colleagues, still receives his $68,000 a year, including benefits, and (by union contract interpretation) cannot be called on to perform clerical or other non-"professional" duties during the appeals, according to a May Los Angeles Times report.

-- Because of what an April Boston Globe report called "a decades-old interpretation of the state's militia laws," state government employees who are also members of the Massachusetts National Guard and who go on active duty are paid much more money if deployed at home than in Iraq or Afghanistan. State law requires those Guardsmen on domestic duty to be paid both for their state job and their military duty while Guardsmen in the war zones collect only the higher of the two salaries.

-- Britain's Local Governments Are Afraid of Everything: (1) The Bedfordshire and Luton Fire and Rescue Service issued rules recently requiring the use of long poles to test high-up fire alarms because letting the firefighters use stepladders might lead to injuries. (2) The South Kesteven District Council decided in May to no longer hoist the oversized Flag of St. George outside Bourne Town Hall on St. George's Day -- because of the "risk" involved in using an 8-foot ladder on a plinth above a spoked gate.

-- Small-Town Government "People Skills": E-mails from Smithfield (Pa.) Township Supervisor Christine Griffin, published in May in the Pocono Record, confirmed the long-time complaints of critics about her lack of diplomacy. In one official e-mail, Griffin wrote: "Don't you dare waste my time with your (expletive), you lying cheating son of a (expletive), sneaky back door (expletive) nut (expletive) sucker." In another: "(N)o cement boots for me! Nice try though, a real drama rama! Reminder: I am the quintessential professional! (D)ecorum and common sense are my bylaws!"

(1) Kim Schroeder, running for vice president of the Milwaukee (Wis.) Teachers Education Association in May, promised a five-point program, with the first four being vows to make the union more aggressive toward the school board. His fifth point, he said, was "to make sure that there is ... beer and wine available for our monthly Leaders' Meetings." (He lost.) (2) Josko Risa finished second in the election for mayor of Prozolac, Croatia (pop. 4,500), and was in a run-off on May 31 because of (or despite) his campaign pledge of (roughly translated) "All for Me, Nothing for You" (or, "It is definitely going to be better for me, but will be the same for you"). (Run-off results from Croatia were not widely reported.)

More Post-Traumatic Stress: Peter Singer, the author of a new book on battlefield robotics, told LiveScience.com in May he had seen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan grow so attached to their bomb-disposal robots that, in one case, the soldier risked 160 feet of enemy machine gun fire to retrieve his little buddy, and in another, a soldier brought his robot in for repairs with tears in his eyes over the "injury" to his beloved "Scooby-Doo." Several units, he said, had given their robots promotions, Purple Hearts and even a military funeral.

Richard Balsavage, 28, pleaded guilty in Berks County, Pa., in 2005 to taking pornographic photos of a toddler and was sentenced to nine to 23 months in jail, which he served, but while still on probation, he continued to possess child pornography and was re-sentenced by a different judge, to 3 1/2 to seven years in prison. Balsavage then asked that judge for a re-sentencing, pointing out that he had not been given a fair opportunity to express remorse in court, and the judge relented. Balsavage then made a sorrowful apology, but it went for naught because the judge had subsequently learned that during therapy sessions, Balsavage had confessed to a history of abuse of young children. If Balsavage had not demanded re-sentencing, he might have been out in 3 1/2 years, but his new term was set at 24 1/2 to 49 years.

In the Kings Creek area north of Lenoir, N.C., according to sheriff's deputies, two feuding families created a ruckus in May after a dog killed a neighbor's cat. When the cat's owner found out, he shot the dog dead. When the dog's owner found out, he shot the cat's owner and the man's young daughter. Deputies were called, and when they arrived, the dog's owner shot both of them, but one got off a return shot, fatally wounding the dog's owner (and completing the chain!).

(1) Brandon Hiser, 22, was arrested in Kansas City, Mo., in May for trying to break into a bank using only a screwdriver, which would be a daunting task any time but the bank Hiser was trying to enter was the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. (2) Ezedrick Jones, 18, was arrested in Memphis, Tenn., for the attempted robbery of the very same KFC from which he had recently been fired. Though masked, Jones was quickly recognized by his former manager via the mask's oversized eye holes, and throughout the robbery the manager kept addressing Ezedrick by name.

(1) The most recent man to decide to smash a bullet with a hammer, George Fath, of Pleasant Lake, Ind., said he wanted to destroy it so it wouldn't harm his kids. Fath told WANE-TV in April that he was shot in the stomach "and knocked ... on my butt." (2) Yet another man tried to explain away testing positive for cocaine by swearing he could only have ingested the drug when he performed oral sex on his cocaine-using girlfriend. Ex-NYPD helicopter pilot Jon Goldin had been fired three years ago for failing the drug test and had his challenge of the test rejected in April.

Their Last Words: (1) "A million dollars is a lot of money to pay for a whore" were the last words of multimillionaire French banker Edouard Stern, according to his girlfriend, Cecile Brossard, who took offense (and was convicted of killing him in June in Geneva, Switzerland). (2) "Shoot me, shoot me," you "ain't got the --" were the last words (according to a police report) of Scott Riley, 25, who was arguing with the gun-wielding Joseph Jimenez, 24, about their game of Beer Pong in Bridgeport, Pa., in May.

In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in February 1994, accused murderer Donald Leroy Evans, 38, filed a pre-trial motion asking permission to wear a Ku Klux Klan robe in the courtroom and to be referred to in legal documents by "the honorable and respected name of Hi Hitler." According to courthouse employees interviewed by the Associated Press, Evans thought Adolf Hitler's followers were saying "Hi Hitler" rather than "Heil, Hitler."

Competitive Facial Hair: At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in May in Anchorage, Alaska, four local heroes "defeated" the usually dominant German contingent in the 18-category pageant, including overall champ David Traver of Girdwood, Alaska, whose woven chin hair suggests a long potholder. Said Traver, of the Germans, "They were humble, and you have to respect that." One defending champ, Jack Passion of Los Angeles, fell short with his navel-length red hair, despite having authored "The Facial Hair Handbook" after his 2007 victory. Traver acknowledged that no money was at stake (only trophies and "bragging rights"), but added that there are "a lot of ladies" who fawn over men's facial hair. "Seriously, they exist."

-- Men Who Get Around: (1) Thomas Frazier, 42, was jailed in Flint, Mich., in April after his unpaid child-support tab reached $530,000 (14 children with 13 women). He told the judge that he was only trying "to find someone who would love me for me." (2) The total tab of Desmond Hatchell, 29, of Knoxville, Tenn., was not reported at his May court appearance, but the judge questioned him sharply about payments from his minimum-wage job. Hatchell has 21 kids by 11 women, but told WLVT-TV, "I didn't intend to have this many."

-- Bad Sci-Fi Movies Come to Life: (1) A portion of downtown Rotterdam, Netherlands, was blanketed in gluey white "silk" in May, from a six-week-long invasion of caterpillars that strip trees and cover them with gooey larvae. (2) Nicola Bruce and her two toddlers, who live in government-assisted housing in Stoke-on-Trent, England, have awakened nearly every morning for two years to a fresh invasion of about 50 slugs, despite 30 attempts by contractors to find their source (in addition to the remodeling of the kitchen and bath and the bleaching of floors).

-- The head of Florida's Department of Corrections admitted in May that at least 43 children (including a 5-year-old), who observed their parents' prison jobs as part of "Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day" in April, were playfully zapped by 50,000-volt stun guns. DOC Secretary Walt McNeil said the demonstrations (in three of the state's 55 prisons) even included one warden's kid, but that only 14 children were individually shot (with the rest part of hand-holding circles feeling a passing current). Twenty-one employees were disciplined.

(1) Two scientists from Britain's University of Oxford, on a three-year study costing the equivalent of nearly $500,000, found that ducks may be even more comfortable standing under a sprinkler than paddling around in a pond. Lead researcher Marian Stamp Dawkins concluded that ducks basically just like water. (2) According to research announced in May by pediatrics professor Jennie Noll of the University of Cincinnati, the more often that teenage girls tart themselves up in online presentations, the greater the sexual interest they provoke.

-- Not What They Were Looking For: (1) Rescuers searching for a missing tourist on China's Taishan Mountain in April failed to find him but inadvertently discovered the corpses of seven other people. (2) Los Angeles Police detectives, frustrated that a 1980s-era South Los Angeles serial rapist-killer is still at large, set out recently to painstakingly trawl for DNA from all unregistered sex offenders who have come through the system since then. They came up with nothing on him, but in late March, they inadvertently matched DNA to a different cold-case serial killer, the "Westside Rapist" from the 1970s and arrested John Floyd Thomas Jr., now 72.

-- Leading Economic Indicators: (1) Bloomberg News reported in April that among the assets for sell-off by Lehman Brothers Holdings (liquidating following its September 2008 collapse) is a "matured commodities contract" for enough uranium cake to make a nuclear bomb. Administrators are awaiting a rebound in its market price. (2) Among the assets for sell-off listed in the May bankruptcy filing of Innovative Spinal Technologies of Mansfield, Mass., were nine human cadavers (eight of which had already been used for research).

-- More Fallout From the Recession: (1) In May, Mitsubishi Motors of New Zealand, to spark sales of its Triton compact pickup trucks as "hardy, versatile units," began offering farmers a companion "hardy, versatile" premium with each truck: a goat. (2) In May, Ichiro Saito, a professor of dentistry at Tsurumi University, publicly warned that as many as 30 million Japanese workers overstressed by the economy are suffering from such severe dry mouth that the country might be experiencing epic halitosis.

When Christina Vanderclip dropped by the house of her former boyfriend, Travis Schneller, in Greeley, Colo., in June, they soon began to argue. According to police, Travis hit her and pulled her hair, then Travis' mother jumped on Christina's back and pulled her hair, then Travis' younger brother Michael and father, Robert, jumped on Christina, too, hitting and choking her. Christina managed to escape, and police, after a 10-hour standoff, entered the home and arrested the entire Schneller family.

(1) Jose Villarreal, charged in Georgetown, Texas, with assaulting his girlfriend, decided to take his chances at trial and rejected the prosecutor's offer of five years in prison. In May, the jury deliberated one minute before finding him guilty, and he got 16 years. (2) Charles Dumas, 37, insisting on his innocence, was convicted of raping a young girl in 1998 and sentenced to 10-years-to-life, but began begging for a DNA test. Finally, earlier this year, prosecutors relented, and a solemn Dumas told a Columbus Dispatch reporter: "This test means my life. It's my last chance to prove to my children that I didn't do this." In May, the results came back: Guilty.

Drivers Who Were Run Over by Their Own Cars: (1) A 21-year-old man in Santa Fe, N.M., inebriated, shifted into reverse, thinking it was "park," and fell out the driver's door (November). (2) A 52-year-old man in Tobyhanna, Pa., ran over himself after falling out of his truck trying to reach the controls of the access fence at his gated community (May). (3) A 56-year-old woman in Santa Monica, Calif., was killed when she left her stalled car in "drive" while she crawled underneath to determine why it wouldn't start. She accidentally triggered the starter with a screwdriver, and the car drove over her (May).

(1) According to a recent report in Britain's Police Review Journal, the government's "Intensive Alternatives to Custody" pilot program has recently assigned young offenders, in lieu of incarceration, to attend skill-building classes in gardening, fishing and learning how to apply for government benefits. (2) The U.S. Department of Justice, with British government cooperation, has been trying for 10 years now to extradite three al-Qaida operatives in British custody to stand trial in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, but Britain's legal system has permitted the suspects to stall with nearly endless bureaucratic tactics. Since the jihadists claim indigent status, all of the challenges are paid for by British taxpayers, with the current tab (according to a May Washington Post report) amounting to the equivalent of nearly $900,000.

On a hot July 2005 day in Stamford, Conn., firefighters not only had to break a car window but overcome the car's owner, who couldn't bear to see her Audi A4 damaged. The 23-month-old son of Susan Guita Silverstein, 42, had been accidentally locked inside, along with the key, for at least 20 minutes on a sweltering, 88-degree day. Silverstein (who was later charged with reckless endangerment) begged firefighters to wait so she could go home and retrieve her spare key, to save her window.