"Why are you still alive?" is the question doctors ask Ozzy Osbourne, the hard-rock singer and reality-TV star, who says he is now clean and sober after a lifetime of almost unimaginably bad habits. In June, he started two new ventures: undergoing the three-month process of genetic mapping (to help doctors learn why, indeed) and becoming a "health advice" columnist for London's Sunday Times. At various points in his life, the now-cholesterol-conscious, vegetarian Osbourne said he drank four bottles of cognac a day, smoked cigars like they were cigarettes, took 42 prescribed medications and many more "backstage" drugs that he could not even identify. Osbourne also has a Parkinson's-like genetic tremor, was once in a medically induced coma after an accident, and endured anti-rabies shots after famously biting into a bat on stage ("I thought it was a rubber toy").

-- An intense lightning storm on June 14 around Monroe, Ohio, destroyed the iconic 62-foot-high statue of Jesus (the "King of Kings" structure of the Solid Rock Church) alongside Interstate 75. While townspeople mourned, it was also noteworthy what the lightning bolts completely missed: the large billboard, on the other side of the road, advertising the nearby Hustler Hollywood pornography store.

-- Despite a scary moment in May, Massachusetts state Rep. Mike Moran said he still supports "comprehensive" immigration reform (taken to mean that restrictions on illegal immigrants be tempered with a special "path to citizenship" for those already here). Rep. Moran's car was rear-ended (though he was not seriously hurt) by illegal immigrant Isaias Naranjo, who was charged with DUI and speeding. According to police, Naranjo, 27, who was dressed in a Mexican party costume, laughed when told of the charges, informing officers that they could do nothing to him since he had already made plans to return to Mexico. (Furthermore, Massachusetts is forbidden by state law from even notifying U.S. Immigration officials of Naranjo's case.)

-- Over the years, according to a June Chicago Sun-Times report, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois has freely used "swagger and braggadocio in talking about his 21 years of military service" as qualification for office. When one contrary fact after another about his record was pointed out by reporters, Kirk explained, "I simply misremembered it wrong." He admitted that, contrary to his numerous public statements, he was not actually "in" the Iraq Desert Storm war; did not actually "command the Pentagon War Room" when he was assigned there as a Navy Reservist; and was not actually once Naval "Intelligence Officer of the Year." He is now vying for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Barack Obama.

-- In May, Douglas Ballard and Joseph Foster were indicted for allegedly selling fraudulent loans in exchange for bribes, while they were vice presidents of the Atlanta-area "faith-based" Integrity Bank. The bank opened in 2000, touting Christian principles, giving Bibles to new customers, and encouraging prayer at employee gatherings. (The bank closed in 2008, thought then merely to be the victim of sour real-estate loans, and in fact the bank's more-spiritual founder, Steven Skow, had left the bank by 2007.)

-- (1) British actor Nicholas Williams, 33, was acquitted of domestic assault in June even though he had, among other things, "waterboarded" his girlfriend by pulling her shirt over her head and holding her under a shower during a two-hour rampage. Williams persuaded the judge that the anti-smoking drug Champix made him unable to control himself or even to remember the events of that evening. (2) Laith Sharma, 49, admitted in June that he had stalked and fixated upon, "for marriage," a 14-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario, but doctors' testimony won him a sentence of mere house arrest. Sharma, they said, suffers from the popularly known "maple syrup urine disease," so-called because the excreted scent is a marker for brain damage that prevents impulse control.

-- Compelling Explanation: Tony Chrum was the one apprehended for allegedly buying $160 worth of cocaine from a man who turned out to be a police informant in Lincoln County, Mo., in May, but his brother, who is Winfield, Mo., police officer Bud Chrum, 39, was the mastermind. According to police and unknown to the informant, Bud had needed to replace 2 grams of cocaine from the police evidence locker because he had accidentally spilled something on it, and Tony agreed to help.

"If Google told you to jump off a cliff, would you?" asked a Fortune magazine columnist, describing the lawsuit filed in May by Lauren Rosenberg, asking for damages of more than $100,000 against Google Maps after she was struck by a car. Rosenberg had queried the map service for a "walking route" between points in Park City, Utah, but a short stretch of the suggested route lacked sidewalks. Rosenberg was hit while walking in the street. Though Google and other map services "warn" users against walking in the street, Rosenberg's route was delivered on her small Blackberry phone screen.

-- Update: News of the Weird reported in 2005 on a Welshman's invention of the "Mosquito," a device that emits an irritating, pulsating, very-high-pitched noise and is marketed to shopkeepers to drive away loitering children and teenagers, since the pitch is audible to them but rarely to anyone older than in the mid-20s (because audio range contracts as we age). In June, following an investigation, the Council of Europe (which oversees the European Court of Human Rights) declared the Mosquito a "human rights violation," in that the sounds it emits constitute "torture."

-- Britain's Crown Prosecution Service announced a proposed anti-social behavior order against Ellis Drummond, 18, to prohibit him from wearing low-slung trousers in public that allow his underwear to show, but Drummond challenged it in Bedford magistrates' court. In May, Judge Nicholas Leigh-Smith ruled that such an underwear-suppressing order would violate Drummond's "human rights."

-- Jihadists: They blow themselves up by mistake (such as Pakistani terrorist Qari Zafar did in June); they botch airline shoe- and underwear-bombing and buy the wrong fertilizer for urban car bombs; they brag too much; and they watch far too much Internet pornography. Evidence amassed by Daniel Byman and Christine Fair, writing in the July/August issue of The Atlantic, has led them to suggest that America and its allies should treat jihadists as "nitwits" rather than as "savvy and sophisticated killers" (the latter being an image that helps them with recruiting). It is possible, the authors conclude, that there has not been a truly competent jihadist terrorist since Mohammad Atta led the Sept. 11, 2001, missions.

-- Matadors: Christian Hernandez, 21, making his big-time bullfighting debut at Plaza Mexico in Mexico City in June, ran from the ring trembling in fear at the first sign of his bull. He was then coaxed to return and man-up, but once again fled and immediately submitted his resignation. Though Hernandez was contrite ("I didn't have the ability. I didn't have the balls."), he was arrested for violating his contract and released only after he paid a small fine.

The West Tennessee Detention Facility (Mason, Tenn.) made a video pitch for California inmates, hoping some would volunteer to be outsourced under that state's program to relieve overcrowding. The hard-timers should come east, the video urged, because of West Tennessee's "larger and cleaner jail cells, 79 TV channels, including ESPN, views of peaceful cow pastures, and ... the 'Dorm of the Week,' (with its inmates) staying up all night, watching a movie and eating cheeseburgers or pizza," according to a March (2007) description in Nashville's Tennessean. "You're not a number here," said one inmate. "You come here, it's personalized." (California's outsourcing program is facing a lawsuit from the prison guards' union, anxious about job loss.)

A severe but underappreciated American drug problem (sometimes deadly and often expensive) is patients' failure to take prescribed medications -- even to save their own lives (such as with anti-coagulants or cholesterol-regulating statins). In recent pilot programs, according to a June New York Times report, compliance rates have been significantly improved -- by giving patients money ($50 to $100 a month, sometimes more) if they remember to take their drugs. Data show that, indeed, such compliance subsidies reduce society's overall health care costs by preventing expensive hospital admissions. Beyond health care costs is the social benefit when violent schizophrenics take their meds and refrain from attacking people.

-- Labor unions' sweet, recession-proof contract with the New York City area's severely cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year provided 8,074 blue-collar workers (conductors, engineers, repairmen, etc.) with six-figure compensation, including about 50 who earned $200,000 or more. Researchers cited by The New York Times in April found that one Long Island Rail Road conductor made $239,148, about $4,000 more than the MTA's chief financial officer and about $48,000 short of being the highest-paid person in the entire system. Included in some of the fat payouts for LIRR locomotive engineers was special "penalty" pay (about $94,600 in one case) for engineers who are required to move a train to a different location from its normal assignment.

-- Arizona (viewed by some as hard-hearted for its April law stepping up its vigilance for illegal immigrants) showed a soft side recently, implementing a $1.25 million federal grant that it believes will save the lives of at least five squirrels a year. The state's 250 endangered Mount Graham red squirrels risk becoming roadkill on Route 366 near Pima, and the state is building a rope bridge for them to add to several existing tunnels.

-- At a June concert in Australia's Sydney Opera House, American musicians Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performed Anderson's 20-minute, very-high-pitched composition, "Music for Dogs," an arrangement likely to have been largely unmelodious to humans, who generally cannot hear such high pitches, but of more interest to dogs, who can. (Dogs were permitted in the audience, but news reports were inconclusive about their level of enjoyment.)

-- Many jihadist recruiting pitches are dry and pious, but in May, the Somali activist Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, 26, who was born in Alabama, began streaming Internet rap "music" videos to encourage warrior sign-ups. (Sample verse: "It all started out in Afghanistan / When we wiped the oppressors off the land / The Union crumbled and tumbled / Humbled, left them mumbled / Made a power withdraw and cower.") Actually, there was no music but merely al-Amriki singing, presumably because in the version of Islam favored by Somali jihadists, "music" is not permitted.

-- West Virginia's Division of Culture and History announced in June it would hold a state-sponsored art exhibition, showcasing the state's arts talent. Until now, the state has refused such projects because the last one, in 1963, turned out badly. The grand prize that year, supposedly representing the character and tradition of the state, went to "West Virginia Moon," which was a collection of broken boards and a screen door.

In May, the chief media spokesman of the Nye County, Nev., sheriff's office, Det. David Boruchowitz, announced to the press the arrest of a man charged with burglary and assault. The suspect's name, he reported, was Det. David Boruchowitz. The chief investigator on the case, Det. Boruchowitz told reporters, was Det. David Boruchowitz. (Three days later, the charges were dropped, but that announcement was made by someone else.)

-- In Rehoboth Beach, Del., it is illegal for men and women to publicly reveal their genitals and for women to reveal their breasts, but Police Chief Keith Banks, confronted in June with complaints about some beachgoers flouting their shapely breasts, said there was nothing he could do. Banks said the offenders were actually biological males in the midst of hormonal transgendering. As Banks explained, "(T)hey had male genitalia. Therefore, they were not guilty of a crime."

-- In April, Prince Edward Island (Canada) judge John Douglas acquitted minor league hockey player Chris Doyle of assaulting his former girlfriend, though Doyle had arrived at her home uninvited, had annoyed and berated her, and would not leave. The girlfriend was injured when Doyle punched a door, causing it to smash against her face, but Judge Douglas accepted that Doyle honestly did not know she was behind the door. Said the judge, "If he was charged with being a colossal asshole, I would find him guilty. Of 'assault causing bodily harm,' I find him not guilty."

-- Russia: On television in May, the governor of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, recounted that he had been abducted in a spaceship in 1997 and forced to communicate with aliens telepathically, and later entertained some in his apartment. One opponent seized the moment and called for an inquiry into whether Ilyumzhinov had telepathically spilled government secrets while under the aliens' spell. Then, former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov announced he would challenge Ilyumzhinov for the position of head of the World Chess Federation (which Ilyumzhinov has been since 1993), but yet another Russian chess icon, Arkady Dvorkovich (who is President Medvedev's chief economic adviser), said he still backed Ilyumzhinov because of the latter's superior managerial talent.

-- Florida: (1) While still chairman of the Florida Republican Party, Jim Greer was revealed to have ordered the continuous shuttling of emergency "notes" to him during a Republican National Committee meeting, and according to an April Orlando Sentinel profile, the "notes" were all blank. A Florida RNC official concluded that Greer was simply trying to make himself appear important to his colleagues. (In June, Greer was indicted on six felony counts related to raiding the state party's treasury.) (2) At a forum in May for county school board aspirants in Orlando, candidate John Mark Coney took the floor to read passages from the Bible and then to emphasize his suitability for office by announcing that he, at age 53, is a virgin.

In 2007, News of the Weird reported what looked like the bizarre dreams of an attention-seeking Muslim cleric: that contrary to popular belief, strict, Wahhabi Islam allows unrelated people of the opposite sex to meet, unchaperoned, provided that they were both breastfed by the same woman (thus symbolically making them "siblings"). In June 2010, two more-prominent Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia reintroduced the debate, according to an AOL News report, by agreeing that the workaround could be used by a boyfriend and his girlfriend's mother. However, they disagreed on whether the Quran requires the boy to take the milk directly from her breast or allows him to feed from her stored milk.

"Reeking" Is His Business Model: Homeless New Jersey man Richard Kreimer said in February (2006) that he had settled, on undisclosed terms, part of his most recent lawsuit, against a transit company and two drivers, for having denied him rides because of his foul odor. Kreimer's history includes a $150,000 settlement with the public library in Morris County, which had tried to keep him out because of his odor, and, by his count, $80,000 in additional lawsuit-related income (though some went for legal expenses). Kreimer filed another foul-odor lawsuit in February against a transit company and a train station in Summit.

-- In the midst of World Cup fever, readers might have missed Germany's win over host Barbados in June for the Woz Challenge Cup, following an eight-team polo tournament with players not on horses but Segways. The sport is said to have been created by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, whose Silicon Valley Aftershocks competed again this year in Barbados (but last won the Cup in 2007). Wozniak told ESPN.com that his own polo skills are fading, but the San Jose Mercury News reported in May that Woz's fearlessness on the Segway seems hardly diminished. (The Mercury News report, on the Aftershocks' local, nerd-populated league, described the players as "the pudgy and the pale" and "geek chic.")

-- Stories of epic sportsmanship warm the public's heart, but there is also epic "cutthroat," such as by Monrovia (Calif.) High School girls' track coach Mike Knowles. Knowles' team had just been defeated for first place in the last event of the April league championship meet -- by a record-setting pole vault by South Pasadena High School's Robin Laird, edging her team over Monrovia, 66-61. But then Knowles noticed that Laird was wearing a flimsy, string "friendship" bracelet, thus violating a national high school athletics' jewelry rule. He notified officials, who were forced to disqualify Laird and declare Monrovia the champion, 65-62. "This is my 30th year coaching track," Knowles said later. "I know a lot of rules and regulations."

-- Universal health insurance cannot come soon enough for uninsured Kathy Myers, 41, of Niles, Mich., who, suffering an increasingly painful shoulder injury, has been continually turned away from emergency rooms because the condition was not life-threatening. In June, as a last resort, she took a gun and shot herself in the shoulder, hoping for a wound serious enough for ER treatment. Alas, she missed major arteries and bones and was again sent home, except with even more pain.

-- Britain's Countess of Wemyss and March, now 67, is a hands-on manager-fundraiser for the Beckley Trust -- UK's leading advocacy organization for legalizing marijuana, according to an April profile by the Daily Mail. However, she has not forsaken an earlier psychotropic-promoting campaign. In her early 20s, when she was Amanda Feilding, she extolled the virtues of trepanation (to "broaden ... awareness" by increasing the oxygen in the brain, directly, by drilling a hole in one's head). Feilding's first boyfriend wrote the book on the process ("Bore Hole"), and her husband, the flamboyant 13th Earl of Wemyss, has also been trepanned. The Countess still expresses hope that the National Health Service will eventually cover trepanning.

-- People who live or work in New York City believe themselves to be among the world's toughest and hardiest, but at least 51 of them are apparently legendarily soft: the 51 city bus drivers who between them took 3,200 days of paid leave last year to "heal" over the single workplace "injury" of being spit on by passengers. (Thirty-two other spit-upon drivers did not request leave.) An official with the Transport Workers Union called spitting "physically and psychologically traumatic" and requiring "recuperat(ion)." -- The prominent Howrah bridge in Calcutta, India, has become a serious safety risk, according to a May report for the Calcutta Port Trust, because the steel hoods protecting the pillars holding up the bridge have been thinned by 50 percent in recent years. Engineers believe the corrosion has been caused almost entirely by the chemicals in gutkha, the popular chewing tobacco/herb concoction, which produces expectorants routinely hocked onto the bridge by the 500,000 pedestrians who cross it every day.

-- (1) At a public meeting of the Dixon, Calif., City Council in May, Councilman Michael Ceremello refused to yield the floor to a colleague ("(Y)ou don't have the floor. Please sit back and shut the (F-word) up"). (2) Paul Gogarty, a Member of Ireland's Parliament, during a public session in May, answering the criticism of an opponent ("With all due respect ... (F-word) you, Deputy Stagg, (F-word) you.").

-- Inventor Jiro Takashima, 75, maintains that his Pro-State massager is a serious medical device (retailing for about $80), but his daughter-partner Amy Sung, 35, simultaneously markets it as a prostate sex-play toy called the Aneros at adult novelty stores (retailing for about $50). According to a June Houston Chronicle report, Takashima's booth at medical conventions is popular, but at sex expos, he and his daughter are "rock stars." However, since the Pro-State/Aneros was intended as a medical device, competing sex-toy makers have felt free to copy Aneros' design, and Takashima's lawsuit to stop them is now before a federal court in Houston.

-- Washington, D.C., Attorney General Peter Nickles ordered an investigation in June after learning that the city's payroll office had, over a seven-year period, failed to remit the life-insurance premiums deducted from the paychecks of at least 1,400 employees. Already, one employee had been told that her policy had been canceled because of the unremitted premiums. (Until the investigation is finished, it is impossible to say which of the two usual explanations of chronic D.C. bureaucratic dysfunction -- theft or "large-scale human error" -- is applicable.)

-- In the space of about 30 minutes on a June morning, according to a Dayton Daily News report, Brian Horst, 35, shoplifted several packages of meat and a jug of Mad Dog 20/20 wine from a store, inexplicably rolled a stainless-steel tank of carbon dioxide on wheels away from a restaurant, and disabled an ATM by pounding it with a rock (after several witnesses spotted him in conversation with the screen, apparently trying to reason with the machine or possibly with an imaginary employee inside it).

-- Recent Playdates: (1) Old Forge, Pa., February (Jesus appearing in a bucket of sauce at Brownie's Famous Pizzeria). (2) Lockport, N.Y., December (joint appearance of Jesus and Mary in an orange, sliced open on Christmas morning). (3) Rockford, Ill., April (Jesus appearing in the MRI of a thoracic spine examination). (4) Brownsville, Texas, May (Mary appearing on bark from a tree toppled during a storm). (5) Salford, England, February (Jesus appearing on a frying pan following the burning of a pancake). (6) Old Hatfield, England, February (Jesus appearing on a partially burned log in a fireplace).

-- Tensions were brewing in the family of Zell Kravinsky, 48, and his psychiatrist-wife Emily over what she believes is his excessive altruism (according to an August 2003 profile in The New York Times). Kravinsky is not just a passionate philanthropist (from his fortune in commercial real estate), but such a strict utilitarian that he says he would sacrifice his one good kidney (he's already donated the other one) if it were needed by someone doing more social good than he. "No one should have two kidneys," he says, "until everyone has one." He said he cannot value his own kids more than anyone else's, a point that has angered his parents and caused Emily to threaten divorce and two friends to abandon him.