In October in Orange County, Calif., Billy Joe Johnson, who had just been convicted of murder as a hit man for a white supremacist gang, begged the judge and jury, in all sincerity, to sentence him to death. Johnson knew that those on California's death row get individual cells and better telephone access, nicer contact-visit arrangements, and more personal-property privileges than ordinary inmates. The Los Angeles Times reported that the state's spending per death-row inmate is almost three times that for other inmates. The current death-row census totals 685, but because of legal issues, only 13 have been executed since 1977 (compared to 71 death-row fatalities from other causes). In fact, Johnson was so eager to be put on death row that he tried to confess to two murders that no one yet knew about.

-- Veteran marathoner Jerry Johncock, 81, was four-fifths through the Twin Cities Marathon in October when he was overtaken by a medical problem common to men of his age: urinary blockage. As he stopped to discuss his plight with officials, noting that he would have to quit the race to get to a hospital before his bladder burst, a spectator overheard the conversation and offered him the use of a "spare" catheter he had in his car. Johncock repaired to a rest room, administered the catheter, and returned to finish the race.

-- Shipments of Ford passenger vans arrive each month in Baltimore from a Ford plant in Turkey, but each time, workers immediately rip out the non-driver seats and replace the side windows with steel. The reason, according to a September Wall Street Journal report, is to avoid an expensive tariff on imported "delivery vans," which is 10 times the tariff on "passenger vans." Ford found it less costly to re-fit passenger vans than to acknowledge importing delivery vans. Ironically, the tariff was imposed in 1963 specifically to protect the U.S. auto industry from foreign imports.

-- In October, Poland's Polskieradio reported a settlement in the 18-month legal battle between two neighbors in Mikowice over a plastic bucket worth about $4.50. One had sued, accusing the other of ruining the bucket by kicking it. The respondent had elaborately offered proof of innocence by submitting video of the neighbor continuing to use the bucket as before, but the neighbor had countered by calling an "expert" witness, who examined the bucket and concluded that it was probably damaged.

-- Lisa Blair and her six sisters were enjoying a Thanksgiving meal in Hamilton, Ontario (in Canada, Thanksgiving was Oct. 12), when they began noticing suspicious flecks in the food and realized that their necklace lockets, containing the ashes of their mother (who had passed away two weeks earlier) were leaking. A local funeral services store restocked and sealed the lockets.

-- In November, researchers roaming the depths of Scotland's Loch Ness in a submarine, looking for the legendary monster, reported finding mainly "hundreds of thousands" of golf balls at the bottom, from popular use of the lake as a driving range. A recent Danish Golf Association report lamented the slow decomposition of golf balls (taking 100 to 1,000 years), and one U.K. legislator has called golf balls "humanity's signature litter."

-- The October "Miss Asia" beauty pageant in Hong Kong mostly followed a traditional script, but special bonus competitions were added, according to a report in The Straits Times. Contestants appeared behind boards with only certain body parts exposed so that judges could comment without knowing which woman they were observing. Breast-judging turned out well for each of the three finalists, as did waist-judging. However, the judges had harsh words for two contestants' hair. Wang Zhi Fei was criticized for "lots of dandruff and oily scalp," and Wang Chen learned the hard way that she had significant "signs of hair loss."

-- In September, prominent chocolate food engineer Hanna Frederick introduced her latest concoction at a conference of the Meat Industry Association in New Zealand: dark chocolate truffles tinged with venison and salami. Said Frederick: "There's this smoky taste to start, then a strong chocolate flavor comes in, and at the end you have this wonderful taste of salami." Earlier in the year, she had introduced chocolates injected with Tongkat Ali, a Southeast Asian herb reputed to stimulate testosterone production.

-- In August, the Thorpe Park amusement facility in Chertsey, England, posted signs on its roller coaster admonishing riders not to wave their arms during the ride. According to director Mike Vallis: "We've found that when the temperature tops 77 degrees (F), the level of unpleasant (underarm) smells can become unacceptable, and we do receive complaints."

(1) Kenny Jackson, 30, was arrested in St. Paul, Minn., in August after rampaging through his house, destroying furniture and menacing his son, 4, upon finding the boy wearing a blue shirt, which happens to be the color favored by a rival gang (to Jackson's Bloods). (2) In April, Helen Ford was evicted from her home of 30 years in Cambridge, Mass., the result of, she says, being tricked by her son six years earlier to sign the house over to his "business associates" (who recently defaulted on the mortgage). Her son is former college and pro basketball player Rumeal Robinson, 43, who is under federal indictment for bank fraud. Ford (for exemplary community service) and Robinson (for basketball fame) are both prominent citizens of Cambridge, and the house in question sits on Rumeal Robinson Way.

(1) The victim of fatal gunshots in Buffalo, N.Y., in October: Mr. Mister Rogers, 23. (2) Arrested for flashing women in Annville Township, Pa., in October: Mr. Hung Thanh Vo, 19. (3) Sentenced for burglary in Portland, Ore., in November (for a December 2008 incident in which he, nude, was detained by the 88-year-old female homeowner, who had grabbed hold of his scrotum): Mr. Michael G. Dick, 47. (4) Arrested (for the second time; the first was also reported in News of the Weird) for prostitution in Forsyth County, Ga., in October: massage parlor employee Mi Suk Yang, 47.

(1) From a police report in the Oct. 6 Jersey Journal: An out-of-state visitor who parked his Ferrari Modena overnight on the street in Jersey City returned the next morning to find the car burglarized and a $100,000 Audemars Piguet watch that he had left inside the car missing. (2) A still-unidentified driver who had just spent $1.25 million on a 2006 Bugatti Veyron EB (at 1001 horsepower, reputed to be the fastest and most expensive car in the world) was distracted by a low-flying pelican while driving in LaMarque, Texas (on Galveston Island), and accidently drove the car into a salt-water inlet.

Widower Charlie Bonn Kemp, 77, of Vero Beach, Fla., took especially hard the loss of his wife, Lee, in 2006 because she was unquestionably the love of his life even though the couple had stopped having sex even before they got married in 1978. According to a June 2007 St. Petersburg Times profile, Lee had been Charlie's gay lover for 26 years, until revealing in 1978 that he could no longer resist the urge to become a woman, and especially a housewife. Such was their attachment that, following Lee's full sex change, she and Charlie decided to take advantage of Lee's new status and legally marry, and continue their devotion, even though Charlie remained sexually attracted only to men.

Their Health Care Is Just Fine Without "Reform": (1) In September, the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, along with four physicians and three surgical nurses, donated their services for delicate brain surgery on a 25-year-old silverback lowland gorilla at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. (2) Among the health-insurance upgrades demanded by Philadelphia-area transit workers and agreed to by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in November was removal of the 10-tablet-per-month rationing of Viagra and similar medications, to allow as many as 30 per month (according to a Philadelphia Daily News report). (The final contract, reportedly even more beneficial to the union, was being voted on by union members at press time.)

-- For its Halloween gala, the Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati had set up an exhibit featuring skeletons dressed to resemble, among other deceased celebrities, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, Ed McMahon, TV salesman Billy Mays, Sonny Bono (his skeleton in front of a tree) and Ted Williams (his skeleton in front of a freezer). Alongside was a marker board labeled "agenda," with those names crossed off but others still listed, including Bernard Madoff and the comedian Carrot Top. (Following a WLWT-TV preview of the exhibit in September, the park quickly canceled it, with a spokesman declaring, "We were not intending to be distasteful.")

-- Robert and Roberta Masters of Prior Lake, Minn., were arrested in October and charged in connection with a series of mailbox explosions over the summer, which police say were carried out by seven teenagers who had been supplied by the couple. Police said Robert Masters bought black powder for the kids and had said it "would be a good educational tool for the kids to build pipe bombs." Roberta Masters allegedly encouraged the teens to learn on the Internet how to make pipe bombs because it would be "constructive" (but she said she had told them to be careful).

-- In April, Richard Huether, the manager of the HoneyBaked Ham outlet in Cary, N.C., was shot in the stomach during a robbery of the store and hospitalized, with medical bills paid through worker compensation and his employee health benefits. In September, when his worker compensation expired (and though still at least three months away from returning to work), HoneyBaked fired him (forcing him to begin paying 100 percent of his insurance premiums and making subsequent insurance prohibitively expensive because of his new "pre-existing condition"). However, HoneyBaked human resources executive Maggie DeCan told WRAL-TV that the firing was for Huether's own good, in that it would clear the way for him to receive Social Security disability payments. Said DeCan, "We couldn't feel any worse for Rich, and we would do anything we could for him (except keep him on the payroll)."

-- Those Overhead Costs! (1) The price of gasoline for U.S. troops in Afghanistan is about $400 per gallon, according to a U.S. House subcommittee in October, citing Pentagon officials (factoring in the security necessary to bring fuel through Pakistan). (2) Patient Jim Bujalski complained to St. Anthony's Central Hospital in Littleton, Colo., in September about the cost of his prescription Plavix and Crestor tablets, which he was forced to "buy" from the hospital because it administers only drugs under its control. The Plavix was $248 each (he pays $8 at home), and his Crestor ($3 at home) was $65. The medications were part of his $58,000, one-day hospital stay.

-- Nurses might best treat patients who have self-cutting disorders by helping them in their endeavor, according to an October advisory from Britain's Royal College of Nursing. "Assisted self-harming" should be considered as part of nursing care plans, according to the advisory, benefiting patients by having skilled professionals at their side, for example supplying sterile blades and providing the quick stanching of blood and dressing of wounds.

-- On July 13, William Thomson, 55, feeling bad recently about having violently resisted arrest by the Salisbury, Mass., police in a drunk-driving incident in 1997, brought hot coffee to a Salisbury station house and sought symbolic forgiveness from the officers on duty. The very next day, however, Thomson was arrested again in a drunk-driving incident, and again he forcefully resisted, punching a Breathalyzer machine, threatening an officer, and attempting to flood a lock-up cell in the station house.

-- In Ogden, Utah, in October, Adam Manning, 30, accompanied his pregnant girlfriend to the McKay-Dee Hospital emergency room as she was going into labor. According to witnesses, as a nurse attended to the woman, Manning began flirting with her, complimenting the nurse's looks and giving her neck rubs. When Manning then allegedly groped the nurse's breast, she called for security, and Manning was eventually arrested and taken to jail, thus missing the birth of his child.

-- After James Cedar admitted to police that he was the one spotted peeping into his Toronto neighbor's window at night, the victim, Patricia Marshall, installed a video camera at that window to discourage him from re-offending. In September, when all parties reported to court for a final resolution of the peeping case, Cedar's lawyer served legal papers on Marshall, threatening to sue her over the camera. Since Cedar's house sits within the view outside Marshall's window, he complained that the camera could capture images through his windows and thus invades his privacy.

When police in Brimfield, Ohio, stopped Jaime Aguirre, 42, for a traffic violation in October, they found some conventional photos of nude and near-nude women, but were especially surprised at a stash of x-rays and mammograms, which they supposed came from Aguirre's job as technician at an imaging center in Tiffin, Ohio. The Brimfield police chief said he believed the stash was used by Aguirre for sexual gratification, and since some of the x-rays and mammograms were of girls under the age of 18, Aguirre was charged with possession of child pornography.

Oops! (1) Three men and a woman from Atlantic City, N.J., were arrested in August and charged with robbing the Artisans Bank in Bear, Del. Their escape after the robbery had been delayed when they accidentally left the keys to the getaway car in the bank. (2) Andrew Burwitz, 20, was arrested in Appleton, Wis., in November and charged with drive-by shootings into two residences. No one was hit, and the major damage was done to Burwitz's car, in that Burwitz fired the first shot before he remembered to roll down the window.

Thousands of airline passengers continue to attempt to bring prohibited carry-on items on board. The New York Post reported in September that the Transportation Security Administration had confiscated 123,000 items so far this year from just the three main airports serving New York City. Included were 43 explosives, 1,600 knives, a 10-point deer antler, several fire extinguishers, a tree branch, nunchucks, a grill, a baby alligator, "unwashed adult toys," a gassed-up chain saw and a kitchen sink.

In Milwaukee, the family of Robert Senz demanded shortly after his burial last July (1996) that Borgwardt Funeral Home dig up the body because Senz's wallet was missing. Sure enough, the wallet containing $64 and credit cards was still in Senz's pocket. In February (1997), Borgwardt sent the now-$64-richer family a re-burial bill for $2,149, but after the family protested, decided the whole thing was the county medical examiner's fault and sent the bill there.

The first line of "defense" at the 400 Iraqi police checkpoints in Baghdad are small wands with antennas that supposedly detect explosives, but which U.S. officials say are about as useful as Ouija boards. The Iraqi official in charge, Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, is so enamored of the devices, according to a November New York Times dispatch, that when American experts repeatedly showed the rods' failures in test after test, he blamed the results on testers' lack of "training." The Iraqi government has purchased 1,500 of the ADE 651s from its manufacturer, ATSC Ltd. of the UK, at prices ranging from $16,000 to $60,000 each. The suicide bombers who killed 155 in downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25 passed two tons of explosives through at least one ADE-651-equipped checkpoint.

-- Many mixed-race ("coloured") teenage boys in Cape Town, South Africa, secure their ethnic identity by having several upper front teeth removed, according to an October dispatch in London's Daily Telegraph. A University of Cape Town professor said fashion and peer pressure were primary motives for creating the tooth-gap, and not the popular myth among outsiders that coloureds do it to facilitate oral sex. (The ritual includes fitting dentures for the gap just in case, to give the boys flexibility.)

-- What a Difference a Day Makes: (1) Charles Wesley Mumbere, 56, was a longtime nurse's aide at a nursing home in Harrisburg, Pa., until July, when the Ugandan government recognized the separatist Rwenzururu territory founded in 1962 by Mumbere's late father. In October, Mumbere returned to his native country as king of the region's 300,000 subjects. (2) Jigme Wangchuk, 11, was a student at St. Peter's School in Boston when he was enthroned in November by a Buddhist sect in India's Darjeeling district as its high priest, covering territory extending to neighboring Nepal and Bhutan. He will live in seclusion in his monastery, except for contact with Facebook friends he made while in Boston.

-- An unprecedented toilet-building spree has taken hold in India over the last two years, spurred by a government campaign embraced by young women: "No Toilet, No Bride" (i.e., no marriage unless the male's dowry includes indoor plumbing). About 665 million people in India lack access to toilets, according to an October Washington Post dispatch.

-- Tradition: (1) The town of Waiau, New Zealand, had once again planned an annual rabbit-carcass-tossing contest, to a chorus of complaints from animal rights activists concerned that children not associate dead animals with fun. (In New Zealand, rabbits are crop-destroying pests, doing an estimated NZ$22 million (US$16 million) damage annually, but nonetheless, the town canceled the contest.) (2) As the Irish Parliament debated whether to lower the blood-alcohol reading that would earn drivers a DUI charge, legislator Mattie McGrath begged colleagues to keep the current, more generous standards: "(Modest drinking) can make people who are jumpy on the road, or nervous, be more relaxed."

-- "Bonnet books" are a "booming new subcategory of the romance genre," reported The Wall Street Journal in September, describing "G-rated" Amish love stories that sell well among outside readers but have found an even more avid audience among Amish women themselves. The typical best-seller is by a non-Amish writer, perhaps involving a woman inside the community who falls in love with an outsider. In one book described by the Journal, the lovers "actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages."

-- More Sharia Weirdness: (1) The radical Islamist group Al Shabaab in Somalia recently began accosting and beating robed women whose bras made their breasts (even though covered) look too provocative. One mother told Reuters in October that police told her that any "firm(ness)" must be natural and not bra-enhanced. (2) In September, prominent Egyptian scholar Abdul Mouti Bayoumi of al-Azhar University urged the death penalty for people selling virginity-faking devices that make women appear to bleed on their wedding nights. One such gadget, made in China, was openly for sale in Syria for the equivalent of about $15, according to a September BBC News report.

-- "Ultrarunning" (whose signature event is the 100-mile marathon) takes such a degree of commitment that 5 to 10 percent of participants are said even to have permanently removed their toenails in order to eliminate one of the potential sources of runners' discomfort. A sports podiatrist told the New York Times in October that many "ultras" consider their toenails "useless appendages, remnants of claws from evolutionary times," but on the other hand, said one ultrarunner, "You know any sport has gone off the rails when you have to remove body parts to do it."

-- After her two kids, ages 5 and 3, died in a house fire in Rialto, Calif., in May, Viviana Delgado, 27, worked her way through the stages of grief until deciding in October on one final tribute. She turned the vacant, charred dwelling into a showcase haunted house for Halloween. To the average visitor, it's just a spookily decorated house, but neighbors know that kids died inside, and they know what the two tombstones in the front yard represent.

(1) Walking: Daredevil Scottish stunt bicyclist Danny MacAskill, whose electrifying feats are featured on popular YouTube videos, suffered a broken collarbone in October when he tripped on a curb while out for a walk in downtown Edinburgh. (2) Truck-Driving: Phillip Mathews, 73, whose logging truck is equipped with a tall boom arm to facilitate loading, forgot to lower the arm after finishing a job in Bellevue, Iowa, in October, and when he returned to the highway, the boom proceeded to snap lines on utility poles he passed for the next 12 miles until motorists finally got his attention.

The British Health Care Bureaucracy: (1) When social workers praised the progress 10-year-old Devon Taverner was making with her prosthetic leg (necessary because of a birth defect), bureaucrats terminated her disability payments, which instantly made her life harder. For example, the lack of a car allowance means she cannot travel without, each trip, removing and re-attaching the prosthesis. (2) On the other hand, Britain's High Court ruled in September that inmate Denis Roberts, 59, a murderer, was entitled to free surgery to remove a birthmark, and the National Health Service in August granted a free prescription for Viagra to recidivist sex offender Roger Martin, 71, whose latest conviction, last year, involved an 11-year-old boy.

(1) The epic drought that hit central Texas this year, causing a 30-foot drop in the water level of Lake Travis near Austin, also helped police solve three stolen-vehicle cases. Of the three exposed at the bottom of the lake in July was one, with key still in the ignition, missing since 1988. (2) Emergency-room doctors writing in the Archives of Surgery in September reported that light alcohol-drinkers survived brain injuries better than either non-drinkers or heavy drinkers.

"The final taboo" and "a second coming out" are what John Outcalt, a 42-year-old New York City filmmaker, calls the Gainers and Encouragers gay subculture of men who (the gainers) try to transform their bodies by eating all the food they can or who (the encouragers) get a sexual thrill out of enabling the gainers. The of-average-weight Outcalt said (in a December 2000 issue of the weekly Time Out New York) he's a "chub chaser" who helps organize conventions (Encouragecons) and likes watching bodies "going from point A to point B, and whether it's gaining hair, getting larger, or getting fat, I find it sexy and exciting."