If society were ever attacked by zombies, we would probably be doomed, and quickly. That was the conclusion of two university researchers in Ottawa, Ontario, who set up mathematical models hypothesizing zombie attacks as infectious diseases with the well-known characteristics of zombie biology from popular fiction. In fact, according to a July BBC News report, zombies are more threatening than virulent diseases because they can regenerate (unless decapitated or incinerated, of course). More troubling was the researchers' presumption that zombies move slowly, as in older movies, but in recent fiction, they're super-quick, making them nearly invincible.

-- Scared-y Cat Brits: (1) In June the Peterborough City Council ordered retirees who come together for weekly coffee at the public library to give up hot drinks, in case one accidentally spilled on a child. (2) In July the Dagenham Pool in Essex, citing (according to the manager) drowning risks, banned swimmers from doing "lengths" and forced them instead to swim "widths." (3) In June the Brighton and Hove City Council ordered nature-lover Hilaire Purbrick, 45, out of the cave that has been his residence for 16 years, citing its lack of a "fire exit."

-- In April, the Pelham (Mass.) Board of Selectmen notified residents that it proposed to "alter a (four-mile) portion of Amherst Road" and needed their co-operation. The board said the road, in service with exactly the same contour since 1822, must better conform to what Amherst Road looked like on an 1822 map. Thus, some property owners along the route were asked to cede some rights to the government to un-modernize the road.

-- Among the personal tasks allegedly demanded by Portsmouth (Va.) mayor James Holley of his public-payroll assistant Lorraine Stokes (from a list Stokes released in August, alleging Holley's abuse): affixing labels to boxes identifying Holley's assorted-color argyle socks; placing orders for "tummy support T-shirts" and "90-minute abs" videos; and locating retailers for his favorite English Leather cologne, Stri-Vectin Cream (for "turkey neck"), geese repellant, T. Barry underwear, grass seeds and Gillette hair paste.

-- Latest Domestic Disturbance Calls: (1) A couple fought with each other using water, mouthwash and powdered whey protein (Bremerton, Wash., July). (2) A wife repeatedly punched her husband and then, as officers arrived, pulled him inside the house by his ear (Niceville, Fla., August). (3) A 78-year-old woman kicked her husband in the groin several times recently because she believes he had an affair 35 years ago (Lynnwood, Wash., May).

-- Unclear on the Concept: San Antonio police chief William McManus announced in August an upgraded training program to teach his officers how to obey the law while off-duty. The department has had to fire 10 officers so far this year for law-breaking, and included in McManus' program is a personal talk to each incoming cadet to stress that police officers must not commit crimes.

(1) In August, Jorge Iglesias petitioned a judge in Madison, Wis., to regain custody of his 66 roosters and hens that police confiscated in a suspected cockfighting raid. Iglesias said he feared that the Dane County Humane Society, temporarily holding the animals, was treating them with "cruel and barbaric" abuse. (2) Afghan refugee Fridoon Sadiqi filed a lawsuit against Britain's Home secretary in August after being turned down for political asylum because he had presented a forged passport to enter the U.K. According to Sadiqi, the rejection made him clinically depressed.

-- Elsie Poncher decided reluctantly in August to go back on a promise she had made to her late husband. Richard Poncher had purchased a crypt (for himself) just above the one in which the body of Marilyn Monroe rests in a Los Angeles memorial park, but Elsie now needs money and thus offered the crypt for sale in August, planning to move Richard to a less prominent place. Richard had been assured by Elsie that he could spend eternity lying face down "over Marilyn."

-- Ultra-Dangerous Activities: (1) In May, a man in his 20s was killed in a fight at a community center in Calgary, Alberta, following a dominoes tournament. (2) Kenneth Reppke, 54, was charged with assault in Fraser, Mich., in July for allegedly smacking a woman in the head, knocking off her glasses, because she refused to sell him Boardwalk and Park Place in a Monopoly game. (3) Jason Keller, 40, was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June of hitting a fellow homeless man in the face with a skateboard. According to testimony, Keller had become angry during a discussion about particle physics.

Geography professor Melanie Patton Renfrew, 54, was convicted in Burbank, Calif., in August of violating a judge's order to stop stalking KNBC-TV weatherman Fritz Coleman. Renfrew had badgered Coleman for two years, via e-mail and telephone calls, about his "error" in terminology, confusing "onshore" winds with "offshore" winds. Coleman, she insisted, needed to apologize. "Offshore" winds blow out to sea; "onshore" winds blow in.

Lisa Newsome, 42, was arrested in Zachary, La., in August, caught trying to smuggle a 24-can case of beer out of a convenience store. The heavyset, housecoat-clad Newsome was squeezing the 20-pound case between her legs as she waddled from the cooler toward the front door. When police arrived, Newsome offered to pull up the dress to demonstrate how she carried the case, but, said a police captain: "I told her, no thanks. I wasn't into that."

News of the Weird reported in June 2006 that a second forensic expert had concluded that an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, had been executed in Texas in 2004 -- that the "arson" that killed his three daughters was surely only a tragic accident. One of the experts had made a last-second appeal to the Texas pardons board and Gov. Rick Perry to spare Willingham's life, but his report was ignored. Since 2006, two more forensic fire experts have concluded that the fire was not a crime and, said one (in August 2009), the trial testimony of local fire investigators had more resembled the musings of "mystics or psychics." (Nonetheless, in an unrelated 2009 case, two U.S. Supreme Court justices noted that the Constitution has "never" declared it wrong to execute an actually innocent man who nonetheless has been convicted.)

More people who accidentally shot themselves recently: A 44-year-old man, shoving a shotgun down his pant leg after an argument with his girlfriend, blew his little toe off (Alameda, Calif., July). A 21-year-old man, stopping in an alley to urinate with a gun in his pocket, shot himself in the thigh (South Bend, Ind., July). A 26-year-old man, teaching gun safety to two people, was killed when he fired his supposedly unloaded gun at his own head (Phoenix, May). A 15-year-old boy impulsively grabbed the gun that was slipping down his pants from his waistband and shot himself in the penis (Brooklyn, N.Y., September).

In March 1996, an 18-year-old dockworker at Roadway Express in Dallas was arrested at a local Western Union office and charged with forgery after trying to cash a check made out to his employer. The man produced a homemade photo ID that gave his name as Mr. "Roadway V. Express." After questioning him, the Western Union manager said, "OK, Mr. Express, I'll be right back (with the money)," but went into another room and called the police.

Breakthroughs in Eye Hair: The pharmaceutical company Allergan has introduced eyelash-thickener Latisse, a $120 per month prescription "medication" to help a woman overcome feelings of inadequacy if she suffers from scrawny lashes. Alternatively, eyelash transplants are now available in the U.S. and Britain, originally developed to restore lashes for burn victims, but, according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, now to market to women dissatisfied with their own (at about $6,000). And in May, Washington, D.C., resident Brian Peterkin-Vertanesian petitioned the Guinness Book to recognize "Wally," his 6 3/8-inch eyebrow hair as the world's longest, beating the current record by almost an inch.

-- Juvenile disruptions by "Girls Gone Wild" video producer Joe Francis in two recent federal lawsuit depositions have apparently backfired on him. Under questioning by plaintiffs' lawyers, Francis had persistently and solemnly claimed not to understand common words and, during one session, repeatedly passed gas. At another deposition, he appeared indignant when asked if he had paid two teenage girls to fondle him ("disgusting allegations (against) a man of my integrity"). One judge summarily ruled against him on a $3 million Las Vegas gambling debt, and the other judge was considering a similar course in a class-action lawsuit by some of Francis' allegedly underage "models."

-- With no help from Verizon Wireless, law enforcement agencies managed to hunt down a disturbed, 62-year-old man sought in an 11-hour manhunt following a domestic violence call in Carrollton, Ohio, in May. Deputies had wanted to use the man's cell phone signal to locate him, but the company had shut off his service over an unpaid $20 bill and refused to turn it on, even for a few minutes, unless deputies paid the $20. The sheriff was reluctantly about to pay when deputies found the man.

-- Union Rules: (1) One subway line in Boston is still forced to employ two drivers per train when the other Boston lines, and most all subway systems worldwide, use only one. A June Boston Globe analysis estimated that the second driver, doing virtually nothing useful, costs the government $30 million annually. (2) At any one time, the New York City school system is forced to keep about 1,600 teachers on full salary and benefits (costing about $100 million per year) even though they cannot be required to work. Six hundred are in a multiyear arbitration process for terminable misconduct or incompetence, and 1,000 are long-term layoffs from shuttered schools but whom principals continually pass over for transfer.

-- The New Torture: (1) In August, Glasgow hosted the sixth annual World Pipe Band Championship, with 200 bagpipe bands competing. (Professional piping often hits a sound level of 100 decibels and can go to 120, which is louder than a pneumatic drill.) (2) Two musician-beggars in the village of Moseley, England, were banned from performing in the area in August after a magistrate court heard complaints by desperate residents that the pair played only two songs (Oasis' "Wonderwall" and George Michael's "Faith") over and over and over.

-- Animals Gone Wild: (1) In July, scuba divers around San Diego were forced out of the water by the estimated 1 million human-sized Humboldt squid that infested the area. Usually deepwater dwellers, they swarmed near the shore for several weeks, flashing their "razor-sharp beaks and toothy tentacles," according to a KABC-TV report. (2) In June, in Ana Lee Spray's garage in Riverside County, Calif., a full-grown mountain lion was cornered and held at bay for 45 minutes by Spray's three Chihuahuas, yapping at it relentlessly. Eventually, animal control officers arrived and removed the grateful lion.

-- Agile Athletes: (1) Chicago Cubs' pitcher Ryan Dempster missed a month with a broken toe suffered in July when he tripped on a railing while leaving the dugout to celebrate a victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. (2) Kansas City Royals' Jose Guillen missed over a month after tearing a ligament in his knee while leaning over to put on a shin guard before his turn to bat in a July game. (3) Appalachian State quarterback Armanti Edwards, a three-time All-American, was to miss the first month of the season after injuring his foot in August while mowing his lawn.

-- In August, Democrat Michael Heagerty failed by one name to meet the ballot requirements to run for re-election to the city council in Syracuse, N.Y. He was credited with 334 of the 335 necessary signatures, but realized too late that he had forgotten to list his own name. (He said he would run for re-election, anyway, as an independent.)

Danny Brawner, 46, was indicted in Albuquerque, N.M., in August for aggravated indecent exposure. A police officer and his 10-year-old son had seen Brawner with his pants down around his ankles, performing simulated sexual intercourse against the trunk of his car. The officer also said Brawner was shouting and swinging his arms, as if enjoying the real thing.

Two home invaders in East St. Louis, Ill., holding 11 people hostage as police surrounded the house, were eventually tricked outside by the captives and arrested. The hostages, borrowing an idea from several movie scripts, convinced the invaders that their only shot at freedom was to change clothes to look less conspicuous and then to release everyone. The two would appear to be part of the hostage group, and the hostages "promised" to tell police that the home invaders had already escaped earlier. However, as everyone walked out, the captives merely pointed out to police the two invaders.

For at least the third time in eight years, geography-challenged vacationers bought airline tickets for an Australian holiday but failed to notice (until they landed in "Sydney") that their tickets took them to Sydney, Nova Scotia. Dutch man Joannes Rutten and his grandson appeared shocked when they de-planed in Canada, even though they had boarded an earlier connecting flight in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In December 2008, an Argentine woman made a similar mistake, and in August 2002, a young British couple, after realizing their error, decided to spend their holiday in Nova Scotia, after all.

(1) In Torrington, Conn., in June, a teenage girl, hearing a woman she lived with screaming in another room, summoned four of her friends, who quickly arrived and beat up the 25-year-old man who was with the woman. It turns out that the couple were having consensual sex (and good sex, at that). The girl and three of the boys were charged with assault. (2) Keith Griffin, 48, was arrested in Martin County, Fla., in August for possessing child pornography on his computer. He tried to talk detectives out of the arrest by claiming that his cat often walks on the keyboard and must have stepped on some combination of keys that resulted in the downloading of about 1,000 images.

Postal worker Douglas C. Yee, 50, was indicted in February 1996 in San Mateo, Calif., for pulling off bulk-mail scams totaling $800,000. Found in Yee's garbage were notes he had written to God expressing gratitude for his continued help in evading police detection. Read one, "Lord, I am having a difficult time myself seeing you as a God who hides crime, yet your Word says that it's your privilege (or glory) to do just that."

A woman offering child-care services in Melbourne, Fla., was dismayed to learn in August that a scam pulled on her by a diaper-wearing man in his 40s was not illegal. A man called her, on behalf of his disabled adult "brother," who has a mental age of 5 and poor bladder control, and she began assisting him in her home during the day for $600 a week. She was later outraged to learn that the "brother" was really the caller and was actually normal (except for his perversion). However, as Brevard County Sheriff's officials told Florida Today, since the woman consented to changing diapers and was fully paid for her services, they were unable to charge the man with a crime.

-- At press time, Rhode Island legislators were scrambling to fix an oversight in state law that came to light only earlier this year. While the state treats 16 as the age of sexual consent and the age at which most child labor laws no longer apply, the under-18 sex-worker law bans only "prostitution" and "lewd" activities, leaving girls age 16 and 17 free to work as strippers. (Nudity, by itself, is not "lewd" under constitutional law.) Other Rhode Island laws bar under-18s from, for example, serving drinks, working with power tools or buying pornography. (The city of Providence is also now trying to fix its own ordinance in which prostitution appears to be illegal only for streetwalkers, thus legalizing the trade for those working indoors.)

-- The August issue of Gourmet magazine highlighted the apparently high quality of sushi prepared and sold at a BP gas station near the intersection of Ridgeway and Poplar in Memphis, Tenn. A sushi chef works on-site and reportedly sells 300 orders a day.

-- Uganda's independent national newspaper, The Daily Monitor, reported in May the arrest of hunter Nathan Awoloi, who was accused of forcing his wife to breastfeed his five puppies after their mothers, who were essential to his occupation, were killed. When Awoloi was released on bond, Caroline Odoi, Ugandan coordinator for the ActionAid International anti-poverty agency, led protests demanding his re-arrest because of evidence that one of Mrs. Awoloi's own babies, who was nursing at the same time as the puppies, died of symptoms that resembled rabies. Police said the investigation was continuing.

-- Admitted gang member Alex Fowler, 26, of Jasper, Texas, was arrested in July and charged with an attempted home-invasion robbery that went bad. Tough-guy Fowler, who has the words "Crip for Life" tattooed on his neck, was chased from the house by the 87-year-old female "victim" pointing a can of Raid insect repellant at him, threatening to spray.

-- Hong Kong's largest political party, the Democratic Alliance for Betterment and Progress, said it was only trying to alert vulnerable women in August when it publicized a list of shopping mall locations in which females ascending stairs or escalators are particularly susceptible to having "upskirt" photographs taken surreptitiously by cell phone cameras. A spokesman said that perverts probably already knew about the locations.

-- In April 2008, Jeanette Jamieson of Toccoa, Ga., finally paid off her state income tax lien (covering 1998 through 2005) of $45,000, but a year later was indicted for failing to file state tax returns for 2006 and 2007, when her income was at least $188,000. In Jamieson's day job, she runs a tax preparation service. Also, for the past 24 years, until defeated in 2008, she was a member of the Georgia House of Representatives.

-- According to the Detroit Free Press, City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson is a fierce advocate for getting more money to the impoverished city from state and federal grants, but was herself shorting the city treasury. Municipal records revealed that somehow she managed to be billed only $68 a year in property tax for a well-kept home in a neighborhood where her neighbors' property tax ranges from $2,000 to $6,500 annually. She told the newspaper she never realized she was paying too little and assumed the low amount was because of "tornado damage," even though Detroit's last tornado was in 1997.

(1) Cussing Is Good for You: A study by psychology researchers at Britain's Keele University in July showed that people who swear in response to a danger are better able to endure pain than those who use milder language. (2) Urinate in the Shower to Save the Forests: The Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica this summer began encouraging people to urinate in the shower to save the Atlantic Rainforest (one avoided flush per day saving 1,100 gallons of water a year).

Theresa Winters, 36, who lives in Luton, England, with her unemployed boyfriend, Toney Housden, is pregnant (and chain-smoking) with her 14th child (his 12th) and remains totally dependent on public assistance, which officials estimate has totaled "millions" of pounds. Social workers recently removed the kids still living with her (five were born with disabilities), and Winters defiantly told The Sun in July that, if they also take away her 14th in November, she and Housden will just keep making more until she gets one to keep. Housden said he would "love" to go to work, but only for "the right reasons" (specifically, not, he said, to earn money for family counseling because that is the government's responsibility).

The most recent examples of men who decided to steal money only after they had already identified themselves: (1) Jarell Arnold, 34, in line at the Alaska USA Federal Credit Union in Anchorage in August, showed his ID in order to check his balance, took the account slip from the teller, wrote his holdup note on it, gave it back and escaped with $600 (but only briefly). (2) A long-time customer of Penny Lane Records in Sydenham, New Zealand, picked out a CD in August, asked the clerk to reserve it, and even wrote his name and address on it to make sure they held it. Moments later, he saw an opportunity, grabbed cash from the cash drawer and fled (but only briefly).

At press time, Hong Kong's High Court was still pondering the final recipient of the estate of the woman once thought to be Asia's richest, Nina Wang, who died in 2007 and left several billion dollars either to charity (a 2002 will, written in Chinese) or to Tony Chan, her personal feng-shui master (a 2006 will, written in English legalisms). Chan was her spiritual teacher and companion and assisted her in "contacting" her beloved late husband, and after she died, Chan also claimed that the two were lovers. Chan had reportedly convinced Wang to burn cash for good luck and to hide jewels in feng-shui holes dug around Hong Kong. The will Chan produced was termed a likely forgery, according to testimony by Chan's own handwriting expert.

Adventures With Lubricants: In January 2004, a National Park Service ranger arrested Marvin Buchanon for drug possession along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Buchanon had been discovered sitting in a truck one evening, naked, covered with baby oil and with women's underwear at his feet. And four months later, Roger Chamberlain, 44, was arrested in Binghamton, N.Y., after having allegedly smeared 14 containers' worth of petroleum jelly on nearly every inch of the walls and furniture of a Motel 6 room (and who was found shortly afterward at another motel, his own body covered with the substance).