Americans Fantasize, Germans Act: Two formerly well-off retired couples in Speyer, Germany, whose nest egg was largely wiped out by investments in sub-prime Florida mortgages, vented their anger by kidnapping their investment adviser, James Amburn, in June. They took him to the vacation home of one of the couples near the Austrian border, bound him like a mummy and beat and tortured him over several days, fracturing two ribs, in repeated attempts to punish him and extort his own property as partial compensation for their losses. Police rescued him after he managed to send a coded message by fax.

-- People With Too Much Money: (1) A resident at 48 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood paid $300,000 in June for one outdoor, uncovered parking space, according to the listing agent. (2) Texas accountant Randy Reeves, 50, paid $1,500 cash in April for the dentist's mold of the upper and lower teeth of Tiny Tim, which the late singer had given to the seller.

-- In May, the University of Washington ran a two-month campaign of compassion to help out people hurt by the downturn in the economy. Fans of UW's football team who lost their jobs or are otherwise financially unable to renew their Huskies' season tickets can tap into a special philanthropic fund. A donor's $500 tax-deductible gift to "Dawgs Supporting Dawgs" would permit a hard-hit fan to maintain his place on the priority season-ticket list (though this year's seats would be in an inferior location).

-- They Get Paid for This? (1) Researchers from Cleveland State University, for a recent journal article, assessed the physical traits of 195 female characters from the first 20 James Bond films, revealing that more were brunette than blond and that at least 90 percent were young, slim and of above-average looks. (2) In June, a branch of the National Institutes of Health awarded a $423,000 grant to the Kinsey Institute to find out why men seem to prefer not to use condoms during sex. (ABC News, reporting the announcement, contacted a sex-advice blogger, who revealed, free of charge, that it's because the condom reduces sexual sensation.)

-- Anna Ryan, 42, of Blue Springs, Mo., was baffled for years why her normal 140 pounds sometimes ballooned to as much as 260 despite her consistently rigorous diet and exercise regimen. Finally, two years ago (according to a June 2009 dispatch in London's Daily Mail), nocturnal tests performed by Overland Park, Kan., physician Scott Eveloff revealed a disorder: Ryan was a sleepwalker whose routine included as many as eight kitchen visits a night in which she gorged herself but of which she had no memory the next morning.

-- "Heyyyy, Like 'Arf-Arf,' Man": Nestor Waddell had to rush his 11-year-old Labrador mix, Jack, to the vet in May when he started acting strange during a walk, which had taken him into some bushes. The vet concluded that Jack had discovered and devoured some dry, harvested marijuana. According to Waddell, "(Jack's) eyes were kind of glossed over. ... When he was trying to walk, he was looking at his paw, and then looking at the ground and then trying to get his paw to reach the ground, but was unsuccessful."

(1) Marcus Johnson, 33, of Wichita, Kan., was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May for an incident last year in which, angered by a police officer's demand to lower the volume of his car radio, Johnson immediately drove to City Hall, went up a ramp at about 45 mph, crashed through the front door and continued on through the building. (2) Robert Caton, 50, was arrested in Andover, England, in May after he drove his Rolls-Royce through the front window of a Tesco store. His wife said he had been upset to find out that the bed they had ordered did not come with a mattress.

-- In May, a court in Montreal, Quebec, ordered the Cinemas Guzzo theater to pay a woman $10,000 (CDN) for violating her family's privacy during an inspection of her and her daughters' bags (searching for video equipment that could illegally record a movie). Employees found no equipment but did uncover the teenage daughter's birth control pills, which the mother and the daughter figured would have been better left unrevealed to each other.

-- Oops! (1) Calvin Wells beat a certain, mandatory 10-year prison term for felony possession of cocaine because the verdict form signed by the jury contained a typographical error. Wells had 100 grams, but the verdict form certified "ten one hundred (100) grams," which an Ohio appeals court ruled in June could have meant "10/100th grams," which would be a misdemeanor whose maximum time Wells had already served. (2) Retired Florida judge Rogers Padgett said in March that he is trying to undo an error he made in sentencing Kenneth Young to life without chance of parole for a series of armed robberies committed at age 14. Padgett said he thought the Florida no-parole law for kids applied only to murder and sexual assaults and never meant for Young, now 23, to be forever ineligible.

As the U.S. House of Representatives was voting on legislation in April to expand the protections of hate-crimes law to "gender identity" and sexual orientation, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida publicly ridiculed a colleague (unnamed) who apparently confused homosexuals with fetishists. The colleague had proposed an amendment specifying that protection of the law would not extend to exhibitionists, pedophiles or voyeurs, as well as "apotemnophiliacs, asphyxophiliacs, autogynephiliacs, coprophiliacs, klismaphiliacs" or people who practice something called "toucherism." (The amendment failed; thus, there is, for example, no enhanced penalty for assaulting a toucherist.)

(1) Victor Delfi was arrested and charged with robbing the Lincoln Park Savings Bank in Chicago, having tipped off authorities when he tried to deposit red-dye-stained money into his own account at another bank. (2) Marlon Moore, 39, was indicted in Miami in June in what the Internal Revenue Service said was a series of attempts to cheat the U.S. Treasury. Using several aliases, Moore allegedly requested bogus tax refunds in the amounts of $5.959 trillion, $2.975 trillion and $6 trillion. (Also, under his own name, he asked for a tax refund of $10 million.)

(1) A 34-year-old man survived a single-car rollover accident in Nelson, Calif., in May, extricating himself and walking away, but was struck and killed minutes later by an Amtrak train as he crossed railroad tracks. (2) In April in Houma, La., a 23-year-old motorist, having sideswiped a driver waiting to make a turn, drove away without stopping and was killed minutes later when he crashed into another car.

Ronnie Darnell Bell, 30, was arrested in Dallas in February 1998 and charged with attempting to rob the Federal Reserve Bank. (In the 1995 movie "Die Hard With a Vengeance," knocking off the New York Fed required a small army of men and truckloads of weapons.) According to police, Bell was initially confused because there are no tellers, and so handed a security guard his note, reading, "This is a bank robbery of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, of Dallas, Texas, give me all the money. Thank you, Ronnie Darnell Bell." The guard pushed a silent alarm while an oblivious Bell chatted amiably, revealing that only minutes earlier he had tried to rob a Postal Service office, but that, "They threw me out."

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."