Pastor John Renken's Xtreme Ministries of Memphis, Tenn., is one of a supposedly growing number of churches that use "mixed martial arts" events to recruit wayward young men to the Christian gospel. Typically, after leading his flock in solemn prayer to a loving God, Pastor Renken adjourns the session to the back room, where a New York Times reporter found him in February shouting encouragement to his violent parishioners: "Hard punches!" Renken yelled. "Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!" One participant told the Times that fight nights bring a greater masculinity to religion, which he said had, in recent years, gone soft.

-- Over-Connecting the Dots: At age 8, Mike Hicks is a frequent air traveler with his mother, and while she is seldom noticed by airport screeners, "Mikey" almost always is because he shares a name with someone on the enhanced-security list that is one level below "no fly" (one of 1,600 such Michael Hickses in the U.S.). His mom told The New York Times in January that Mikey has been patted down by security since he was 2. (But sometimes government under-connects the dots. Delaware pediatrician Earl Bradley's January arrest and February indictment for allegedly sexually molesting 103 children came only after he was cleared in two police investigations in three years, involving eight complaints, and despite one ex-colleague's routinely referring to Dr. Bradley as a "pedophile.")

-- Better Late Than Never? (1) Ten days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down the Christmas Day airliner over Detroit, the State Department officially revoked his visa. (2) Eight days after the Christmas Eve demolition of Minneapolis' historic Fjelde House (as a fire hazard), the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission awarded the site "interim protection" for its historic value.

-- Too Much Diversity: (1) In January, the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division posted a job announcement supposedly in line with current affirmative-action policy. The division is seeking "experienced attorneys" and was encouraging "qualified applicants with targeted disabilities" to apply. Legally protected "targeted disabilities" include the traditional, such as blindness, but also "mental retardation." (2) In February, aspirants for taxicab licenses in Portsmouth, England, were officially informed by the City Council that application forms are available in other languages or in "audio," "large print" or "Braille."

-- When "You Lie!" Doesn't Quite Capture the Moment: Legislator Abel LeBlanc was suspended from Canada's New Brunswick Assembly in February for giving middle-finger salutes to two colleagues, calling one a "punk" and declaring himself ready to "walk outside with any one of yas here." "Don't ever laugh at me," he continued. "Yes, I gave you that (the finger). And I'll give you that again. And (to another colleague) I'll give you this (finger) if you want to go outside."

Just after Christmas, the Anglican Church of St. Peter in Great Limber, England, unveiled artist Adam Sheldon's 6-foot-high representation of the crucifixion consisting of 153 pieces of toast. Sheldon browned the bread himself, then painstakingly either scraped (to lighten) or torched (to darken) each piece to fashion the tableau.

-- They Don't Make Cops Like They Used To: Sheriff's deputy John Franklin of San Luis Obispo, Calif., filed a lawsuit in December against the Catholic Church and former priest Geronimo Cuevas for the "emotional trauma" he suffered by being propositioned for sex while working undercover in 2007. Deputy Franklin was patrolling a public park near Avila Beach when Father Cuevas reached out and touched Franklin's clothed genital area. Cuevas was arrested and convicted, but Deputy Franklin said he is not yet over the feelings of "anger, rage, disgust and embarrassment."

-- Chutzpah: Former Stoughton, Mass., police sergeant David Cohen was convicted in 2007 of attempted extortion and witness-tampering and sentenced to 30 months in jail. In November 2009, he filed a formal demand for payment of at least $113,000 he said the department owes him for unused vacation, sick leave and comp time. He also claims extra pay because, while still on the job, he had to spend 481 hours in court and 280 hours preparing in order to defend himself against the criminal charges.

Arrested in January in Memphis, Tenn., and charged with having carnal knowledge of an underage girl: Mr. Knowledge Clark, 29. Arrested in January in Hellertown, Pa., and charged with cashing a stolen check: Richard Fluck, 47, and Bryan Flok, 47. Arrested in Denver in February and charged with using another person's driver's license as identification: Mr. Robin J. Hood, 34. Arrested in Kingston, Pa., in January and charged with cocaine trafficking: Carlos Laurel, 30, and Andre Hardy, 39. Arrested in February in DeFuniak Springs, Fla., and charged with possession of crystal meth: Crystal Beth Williams, 21.

(1) Victim Debra Wilson testified that she had been driven nearly into bankruptcy by loan shark Robert Reynolds, 39, who extorted over time the equivalent of about $135,000. In December, Reynolds was convicted in Durham Crown Court but ordered to repay only the equivalent of about $2,300. (However, the judge warned that if Reynolds failed to pay, he could be jailed for up to 35 days!) (2) In September 2008, veteran criminal Waled Salem and two partners were discovered burglarizing the home of businessman Munir Hussain. Salem, wielding a knife, restrained Hussain, his wife, and children and resumed the ransacking. Hussain freed himself and chased the men away, catching up only with Salem, whom he then beat with a cricket bat. In December 2009 in Reading Crown Court, Salem was sentenced to probation, but Hussain got 30 months in jail for assault.

Colt Heltsley, 20, had been spotted by police in 2008 at the Preble County (Ohio) Fair, "looking around, acting nervous" in the area of a row of portable toilets and in one 30-minute sequence continually moving empty toilets until they were close together. He was eventually convicted of voyeurism, peeping at a female using the facility. In December 2009, a state appeals court rejected Heltsley's defense that police had violated his right to privacy with their surveillance.

Elderly drivers' recent lapses of concentration, accidentally confusing the brake pedal with the gas: An 89-year-old man crashed through the front of Sussex Eyecare opticians in Seaford, England (June). A driver "in her late 80s" crashed into the Buttonwood Bakery in Hanover Township, Pa. (September). An 86-year-old man crashed into the Country Boy Family Restaurant in Dunedin, Fla. (October). An 82-year-old man crashed into the Egypt Star Bakery in Whitehall Township, Pa. (November). A 78-year-old woman drove off of a 30-foot cliff (but the car's plunge was halted when it lodged against a tree) near Hannibal, Mo. (August). A 92-year-old man crashed into the Biscuits 'N' Gravy and More restaurant in Port Orange, Fla. (January) (but was not deterred amidst the rubble he created, as he calmly went inside, sat down and ordered breakfast).

In August 1994, Sanford, Fla., judge Newman Brock picked up hair clippers and went to the local Seminole County Jail for his regular biweekly haircut from his longtime hairstylist, Rick Thrower, who was serving 45 days for DUI violations. Said Thrower, "(The judge is) a very loyal customer."

When Dexter Blanch's dog nearly died from complications during spay surgery, he decided to use the event as inspiration and recently brought to market a chastity belt to give pet owners more control of their animals' animal instincts. The Pet Anti-Breeding System harness is especially valuable to professional breeders who may want to keep a female out of one or more "heat cycles" without resorting to sterilization. So far, said Blanch, the belts have been proven effective, but he admitted to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in February that horndog males pose severe tests by gnawing relentlessly at the leather straps that are crimping their style.

-- The Importance of the Dictionary: (1) When Donald Williams was publicly sworn in as a judge in Ulster County, N.Y., on Jan. 2, offices were closed, and no one could find a Bible. Since holy books are not legally required, Williams took the oath with his hand on a dictionary. (2) Merriam Webster's 10th edition dictionary is so influential that the Menifee Union School District in Southern California removed all copies from its elementary schools' shelves in January in response to a parent's complaint that the book contains a reference to "oral sex."

-- "Texting" While Driving Is Not the Problem: (1) Briton Rachel Curtis, 23, was sentenced to 12 months in prison by Bristol Crown Court in October for leading police on a high-speed chase while injecting heroin. (2) Authorities in Scottsboro, Ala., in December arrested a man after a high-speed chase during which he allegedly had methamphetamine cooking in the front seat. (3) Long-haul trucker Thomas Wallace was charged with manslaughter in Buffalo, N.Y., in January after his rig struck a parked car, killing the occupant, while Wallace was distracted watching pornography on his laptop computer.

-- Too-Swift Justice: It is not unheard of for someone to commit a crime and then immediately surrender, usually for safety or for the comfort of a warm jail cell (such as Timmy Porter, 41, did in Anchorage, Alaska, in October immediately after robbing the First National Bank Alaska). However, Gerard Cellette Jr., 44, tried to be even more helpful. Knowing that he would soon be arrested (and probably convicted) for running a $53 million Ponzi scheme in the Minneapolis area, he walked into a county judge's chambers in December and offered to begin serving time. The judge explained that Cellette would have to wait until charges were filed and a plea recorded.

-- Timing Is Everything: Guido Boldini (and his mother Constance Boldini) pleaded guilty last April to soliciting a hit man to take out Guido's ex-wife, Michelle Hudon, after a contentious child-custody battle in Keene, N.H. The "hit man" was, of course, an undercover cop, and the son and mother are now serving a combined 12 to 35 years in prison. However, unknown to the Boldinis, Michelle Hudon had been diagnosed with cancer, and in September, she died.

-- An official in Shijiazhuang, China, told Agence France-Presse in December that the city's new "women only" parking lot was designed to meet females' "strong sense of color and different sense of distance." That is, the spaces are 3 feet wider than regular spaces and painted pink and purple. Also, attendants have been "trained" to "guide" women into parking spaces.

-- Lenoir County, N.C., sheriff's deputies raided a suspected marijuana farm in January and learned that the grow operation was all underground. The 60 live plants were being cultivated inside an abandoned school bus, which had been completely buried, using several backhoes, accessible by a tunnel and with a garage built on top of it.

First, farmer Dick Kleis of Zwingle in eastern Iowa, composing a birthday note to his wife, arranged more than 60 tons of manure in a pasture to spell out "Happy Birthday, Love You" in shorthand. Then, for Valentine's Day, farmer Bruce Andersland created a half-mile-wide, arrow-pierced heart from plowed manure at his farm near the town of Albert Lea, Minn. "Now I've got my valentine!" shouted wife Beth, when she first viewed the aerial image.

Helmut Kichmeier, 27, a hypnotist "trainee" who appears as Hannibal Helmurto in Britain's Circus of Horrors, accidentally hypnotized himself in January as he was practicing in front of a mirror. (Being in such a trance helps him swallow swords on stage.) His wife called Kichmeier's mentor, Dr. Ray Roberts, who, as a "voice of authority," was able to snap Kichmeier out of it over the phone.

(1) A death-row inmate has a right to question the fairness of the sentencing jurors if they appear to be so friendly with the judge that they give him (and the bailiff) post-trial gag chocolates shaped like breasts and penises. The U.S. Supreme Court in January ordered a lower court to consider a rehearing request from convicted killer Marcus Wellons of Georgia. (2) Seattle-area resident Patricia Sylvester, on trial for vehicular assault in October, was declared "not guilty" by the jury, but her sense of relief quickly faded. Polling the jurors individually, the judge learned that the verdict was not unanimous, as required by law. He sent them back to deliberate further, and Sylvester was this time unanimously found "guilty" (although of a lesser charge).

Didn't Think Ahead: (1) Two men tied up employees at a recycling company in Chicago in December, intending to take away the ATM on the premises, which is normally used to pay people who bring in scrap metal. However, the two men fled empty-handed after realizing that they were not strong enough to carry the 250-pound machine out to their truck. (2) Lloyd Norris, 57, was arrested in Gwinnett County, Ga., in February and charged with mortgage fraud, after he tried to buy a house with "cash" consisting of a nonsensical $225,000 "U.S. Treasury" promissory note, supposedly "certified" by Secretary Timothy Geithner. Norris had prepared $1 billion worth of the documents on his computer and apparently assumed that banks would not look too closely at them.

(1) A 31-year-old man was stabbed in St. Cloud, Minn., in January. He told police that he and another man were approaching each other on a sidewalk, and when neither man gave way, the other man stabbed him. (2) Scott Elder, 22, was charged with shooting a 24-year-old man in Savannah, Ga., in October after an escalating argument that started when one of the two strangers sent a text message to a wrong number. One comment led to another, and the men agreed to meet in a downtown parking lot to settle things. (3) Lankward Harrington, 25, was walking past a gardener working on lawn in Washington, D.C., in October 2006 when grass clippings blew onto his clothes. At his trial in October 2009, Harrington was convicted of murder for shooting the gardener four times in the face. Said Harrington, on the witness stand: "He got grass on me. (I) take pride in my appearance."

Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University Medical School, told a conference in Brisbane, Australia, in March 2005 that he donates blood regularly, largely because he believes it will prolong his life. Women outlive males, Dr. Perls believes, mainly because they menstruate. Perls said iron loss inhibits the growth of free radicals that age cells. "I menstruate," he said, "every eight weeks."

In all likelihood, convicted murderer Paul Powell would have been sentenced to life in prison for his 1999 crime, but he could not resist gratuitously ridiculing the prosecutor. Powell's original sentence of death was overturned because of a technicality in Virginia law: The "aggravated" circumstance in a murder that warrants the death penalty must be committed against the actual murder victim (whereas the prosecutor had proved only that Powell had also raped the victim's sister). Powell assumed that the prohibition against "double jeopardy" thus ruled out the death penalty and so decided to gloat, calling the prosecutor "stupid" and taunting him with details of his crimes. For the first time, Powell admitted that he had also raped the murder victim. That was evidence of a new aggravated circumstance (i.e., no "double jeopardy"), and the prosecutor obtained a death sentence. In January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Powell's appeal.

-- A Toronto restaurant, Mildred's Temple Kitchen, announced that its Valentine's Day promotion this year would not just be a romantic dinner but would also include an invitation for couples to have sex in the restrooms. Toronto Public Health officials appeared unconcerned, as long as there was no sex in food-preparation areas and as long as the restrooms were clean. "Bodily fluids" were not a concern, said one unruffled health official, because after all, that's what restrooms are for.

-- Women's rights activists in Uganda finally got the attention of the Western press in December, when London's The Independent verified the plight of Jennipher Alupot, who periodically for seven years had been forced to breastfeed her husband's hunting dogs as she was nursing the couple's own children. Farmer Nathan Awoloi of Pallisa explained that his dogs needed to eat, and since he was forced to send Jennipher's family two milk cows in order to win her hand, he felt his demands were reasonable.

-- In January, the Justice Department's Inspector General released a long-anticipated report detailing the FBI's post-9/11 corner-cutting in obtaining individual Americans' phone records. Federal law permits such acquisition only with a "terrorism" subpoena ("National Security Letter") unless the FBI documents emergency ("exigent") circumstances to a telecom company. The Inspector General found that, from 2002-2006, the FBI had representatives of three telecom companies set up in the FBI unit so that agents could request phone records orally, without documentation, and in some cases merely by writing the requested phone numbers on Post-it Notes and sticking them on the telecom employees' workstations. Some of the acquired records were uploaded to the FBI's database.

-- Police are still baffled by how Gregory Denny, 37, was able to "deport" Cherrie Belle Hibbard from her home in Hemet, Calif., in January back to her native Philippines. According to Hemet police, Denny, with a gun and fake U.S. Marshal's badge and shirt, knocked on Hibbard's door and convinced her that he was there to escort her to the airport and out of the country and that Hibbard's husband had to buy her the ticket. Denny then accompanied Hibbard through airport security and put her onto a flight. Upon questioning by police later, Denny apparently remained in character, continuing to insist that he is a Marshal. Denny was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, impersonating a peace officer and several other charges.

-- Buffalo, N.Y., television meteorologist Mike Cejka was arrested in December after a brief police chase and charged with trespassing after he was spotted at 4 a.m. tinkering with the covering of a motorcycle in a stranger's yard. Cejka told police he was on his way to work at the station and had merely stopped to admire the motorcycle he had remembered seeing in that yard over the summer. He was wearing a dress shirt and shoes and leather chaps topped by a pair of sweat shorts.

-- A 27-year-old man was arrested for trespassing in January in Seattle's Lusty Lady peep-show arcade, whose layout is a strippers' dance stage surrounded by private viewing stalls for customers. According to police, the man climbed from his stall, through a ceiling panel, and navigated the overhead crawl space, which only allowed him to peep at the strippers from a different angle.

-- In December, British Columbia's District of Sechelt Council approved a bylaw making it illegal for licensed dogs to chase squirrels, seagulls and other wild animals. The councillors added a defense of "provocation" but left it undefined, which might be especially problematic in instances in which the dog is the only witness to the alleged provocation.

-- In February, the Board of Trustees of Saugatuck Township, Mich., scheduled a May referendum asking voters for an increase in the property tax in order to cover unanticipated new expenses. The budget overrun was due to the mounting costs of defending lawsuits by people and companies complaining that the Township's property taxes are too high.

-- University of Montreal School of Social Work professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse, intending to research the effects of pornography on men's relationships with women and needing a control group for comparison, advertised in the local community for up to 20 nonusers of pornography, but he was forced to radically alter his research model when no one signed up. Concluded Lajeunesse, in December: "Guys who do not watch pornography do not exist."

-- Poorly Conceived: (1) Travis Copeland, 19, bolting from a courtroom in Waukegan, Ill., in January, ran down a hallway and then lowered his shoulder and thrust himself at a window, intending to crash through it to freedom. Courthouse windows are bulletproof, and Copeland merely bounced off, staggered away and fell to the floor in pain. (2) Chamil Guadarrama, 30, was arrested in Springfield, Mass., in February after a store security guard spotted him with 75 bottles of lotion stuffed down his pant legs (which were tied off at the ankles), making him look like a nearly immobile Michelin Man. Said a cop: "(We) could not fit Mr. Guadarrama into the cruiser because ... he could not bend over."

-- Rathkeale, Ireland, July (Mary on a tree stump). Apia, Samoa, September (Mary on the outside wall of a church). Velyky Berezny, Ukraine, September (Jesus on the outside wall of a factory). Ravena, N.Y., September (Jesus in a coffee stain on a mason jar). Bishopville, S.C., October (Jesus on a kitchen curtain). Southampton, England, November (Jesus in a flatbread at an Indian restaurant). Methuen, Mass., November (Jesus in a stain on the bottom of an iron). Florissant, Mo., December (Jesus on a splotch in a sink). Jonesborough, Tenn., November (Jesus, morning after morning, in window condensation on a pickup truck). (Apparently, only the three foreign sightings have drawn significant pilgrimage to the sites.)

-- Least Competent Circus Knife-Thrower: News of the Weird reported twice on staffing problems of British circus knife-thrower Jayde Hanson. One assistant walked off the job in 2001 after being nearly hit in the foot, which would have been her third wound that season (equaling the number of injuries a previous girlfriend had suffered as Hanson's assistant before she quit the year before). In April 2003, Hanson was performing with his new girlfriend, Yana Rodianova, 22, live on Britain's "This Morning" television show, displaying his world-record form as a speed knife-thrower, when one knife hit Rodianova in the head, drawing blood.