-- David Winkelman, 48, was arrested in Davenport, Iowa, in September on a misdemeanor warrant, still sporting "The Tattoo." In late 2000, Winkelman, reacting to a radio "contest," had his forehead inked with the logo of radio station KORB, "93 Rock," because he had heard on-air personalities "offer" $100,000 to anyone who would do it. Winkelman had the tattoo done before checking, however, and the disk jockeys later informed him that the "contest" was a joke. (Winkelman filed a lawsuit against the station, but it was dismissed. Ten years later, the "93 Rock" format has expired, but Winkelman's forehead remains busily tattooed.)

-- For most of 2010, California's dysfunctional legislature could find no acceptable tax increases or spending cuts to keep the state from going broke, and only in October did it manage to cobble together enough pie-in-the-sky bookkeeping tricks to create the illusion of a balanced budget. Nonetheless, the legislature has been busy. It created a "Motorcycle Awareness Month" and a "Cuss Free Week," considered changing the official state rock, and made it illegal to use non-California cows in the state's marketing materials (a decision that entailed five committee votes and exhausted eight legislative analyses, according to a September Wall Street Journal report).

-- At a U.S. Senate committee grilling in September, the head of enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission admitted that not a single agency staff member has been fired or demoted over the multiple missed signals handed to them in some cases 11 years before the Ponzi schemes of Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Stanford were uncovered. Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said it appeared that "one side of the agency was screaming that there was a fire," but the other side of the agency demurred because putting it out would have been hard work.

-- The Prudential Financial corporation, holder of life insurance contracts on U.S. troops, modified the standard payout method in 1999 -- by encouraging beneficiaries to take not lump sums but "checking accounts" on which survivors could draw down proceeds "as needed." Though this arrangement obviously benefited Prudential, it was unclear to Bloomberg News (which broke the story in September 2010) why the Department of Veterans Affairs had endorsed it -- implicitly in 1999 and then in writing in September 2009.

-- Among the Medicare billings only recently discovered as fraudulent (after being paid): (1) Brooklyn, N.Y., proctologist Boris Sachakov was paid for performing 6,593 hemorrhoidectomies and other procedures over a 13-month period -- an average of 18 every day, 365 days a year (and 6,212 more than the doctor who billed the second-highest number). (2) Two Hialeah, Fla., companies, "Charlie RX" and "Happy Trips," between them billed Medicare $63,000 for penis pumps -- including a total of four to the same patient (by the way, a woman).

-- In October, the award-winning London theater company Duckie announced plans for a June 2011 production, "Lullaby," at the Barbican Pit, that would feature music and performances so soothing that patrons will be encouraged to attend in pajamas and lounge overnight in bed-seats, with an early morning shower included in the ticket price of 42 pounds ($66). Producer Simon Casson noted that, irrespective of the play, it is almost impossible to find overnight facilities in central London for that price.

-- A September one-woman "dance" recital of performer-writer Ann Liv Young as a naked "Cinderella" at a theater in Brooklyn, N.Y., ran overtime because Young could not answer a scripted call of nature, which was to have been performed live on stage. According to an incredulous New York Times reviewer, Young sought tips from the audience to get her bowels moving but finally gave up and ended the performance. The reviewer cited the show's "many layers of failure."

-- (1) People with tough times ahead: Donald N. Duck, 51 (arrested for DUI, Massillon, Ohio, June). Lord Jesus Christ, 50 (pedestrian injury, Northampton, Mass., May). Tara Wang (marrying Austin DeCock in Moorhead, Minn., in October). (2) Police saw them coming: Jerry Dick, 46 (pleaded guilty to indecent exposure, Greensboro, N.C., August). Kermit Butts, 26 (arrested in the slaying of Samuel Boob, Madisonburg, Pa., August). Cum Starkweather, 56 (arrested for prostitution, Springfield, Ohio, August). (3) Keeping the name but making all municipal signs theft-proof: Shitterton village in Dorset County, England.

-- (1) The ski-mask-wearing armed robber who knocked off a Wendy's in Atlanta on July 31 has not been apprehended, but police said he later called the store to ridicule the staff for having so little cash: "(N)ext time, there better be more than $586." (2) Ronald White, 35, was arrested in Cinnaminson, N.J., in July, and charged with shoplifting, and was released after posting $400 bail. Only afterward did police realize that some of the money was counterfeit, but five days later, White was re-arrested when he returned to the station to demand a partial refund for "overpaying" the bail.

-- In September, when Ms. Nomatter Tagarira was sentenced to 39 months in jail for fraud, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and several officials were hoping to close the book on an embarrassing episode. Tagarira had convinced them in 2007 that she had the ability, by chanting into a rock, to find diesel fuel in the ground and make it shoot to the surface. Of course, this could only be accomplished by Tagarira's having henchmen behind bushes using a pump, but apparently it worked, as she was rewarded with a $2.7 million fee and given use of a 50-vehicle convoy for her dowsing missions. Her ruse was not discovered until a year later.

-- No Time for Disguises: Larry Shawn Taylor, 18, was arrested in Seattle in September, having been rather easily identifiable when police stopped him. Two victims had reported being robbed by a man with "GET MONEY" shaved into his haircut on one side and "GET" tattooed on his right hand and "MONEY" tattooed on the left. (At least Taylor did not claim that someone else must have had the same configuration.)

-- (1) A 49-year-old Bakersfield, Calif., doctor, whose relationship with her boyfriend was described as "on-again, off-again," was killed in August when, after he had locked her out of his house, she tried to enter by sliding down the chimney, where she got stuck and asphyxiated. (2) A 29-year-old man, in a group of 12 "ghost hunters" on a field trip in Iredell County, N.C., in August, was killed by a speeding train. The 12 were investigating a rumored "ghost train" that killed 30 people in an 1891 crash and supposedly returns every year on the anniversary date.

-- News of the Weird reported in December 2002 that Inga Kosak had won the first World Extreme Ironing Championship in Munich by pressing a designated garment over a course of several ironing stations (e.g., ironing in trees, in the middle of streams). An October 2003 Wall Street Journal story shows the "sport" growing in prominence. South African Anton Van De Venter, 27, broke the high-altitude record in August by ironing his national flag at the 20,000-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, while nude, in freezing temperatures (quote: "I came, I saw, I pressed a crease"), and British diver Ian Mitchell sawed through ice in Wisconsin in March and submitted photos of himself in a wet suit "ironing" (with a Black & Decker Quick 'n' Easy) a shirt that was braced against the underside of the ice.

Thanks This Week to Nancy Korenchan, Adriel Reed, Joe Weckbacher, Roger Leduc, Jeff Carrick, Bruce Leiserowitz, Steve Dunn, Jonathan Bearce, Gil Nelson, Elaine Weiss, Brent Hunter, Peter Hine, and Mike Mendenhall, and to many finders of Lord Jesus Christ, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

-- More Creative Alternate-Site Surgery: Doctors from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington announced in September that they could just as well handle certain brain surgeries by access not in the traditional way through the top of the skull but by drilling holes in the nose and, more recently, the eye socket. (Since classic brain surgery requires that the top of the skull be temporarily removed, the breakthroughs mean fewer complications.) These innovations follow on the inroads in recent years in performing kidney-removal and gall-bladder surgery not by traditional abdominal incisions but through, respectively, the vagina and the anus.

-- In a heartwarming climax to an adopted son's emotional search for his birth mother (who gave him up for adoption 33 years ago), Richard Lorenc of Kansas managed to track down mom Vivian Wheeler, 62, living in Bakersfield, Calif., where she is retired -- as a circus-sideshow "bearded lady" (the result of hypertrichosis, also known as "werewolf syndrome"). Lorenc said he can see their similarities right through Wheeler's beard, which she keeps now at a length of 11 inches. The relationship was to be confirmed by a DNA test paid for by the Maury Povich TV show, but at press time, the result had not been announced.

-- Sports Fans Over the Line: (1) Marie Murphy, a fifth-grade teacher in Stratford, N.J., and her husband lost almost everything in a house fire in April, but when she arrived at the burning home, she defied firefighters and dashed inside to retrieve a single prized possession: her Philadelphia Phillies season tickets. "My husband was so mad at me..." (Later, a Phillies representative gently informed her that the team would have reprinted her tickets for free.) (2) Justin Witcombe, 31, showed a reporter in Geelong, Australia, in September his full body of tattoos of his three idols in life: boxer Mike Tyson, the rock group KISS, and his local Collingwood soccer team, whose mascot is inked prominently on Witcombe's penis.

-- At least 13 percent of U.S. teenagers report having intentionally injured themselves as cries for help, and among the more extreme manifestations is "embedding" -- the insertion of glass, wood, metal and other material, just under the skin. Writing in the October issue of the journal Radiology, a doctor at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, followed up on 11 cases involving 76 self-embedded objects in arms, neck, feet and hands, including an astonishing 35 placed by one boy (staples, parts of a comb, parts of a fork).

-- Jennifer Tesch's daughter, Kennedy, was kicked off her cheerleader squad (supporting a youth flag-football team) in Madison Heights, Mich., after complaining to her mother about the saucy language of one of the cheers in the girls' repertoire: "Our backs ache!/Our skirts are too tight!/We shake our booties!/From left to right!" Kennedy and Jennifer thought that was inappropriate, considering that Kennedy is 6 years old. The team, given the chance to renounce the cheer, voted in September to keep it and instead to punish Kennedy for taking the dispute public.

-- The older the religion, the seemingly more likely its practitioners are to adopt clever workarounds to theological obligations that modern society has rendered inconvenient. Orthodox Jews are among the most creative, as News of the Weird has demonstrated, reporting their imaginative treatments of divorce rituals and expanding the concept of the "home" in which practitioners must remain during the Sabbath. In September, in preparation for the Yom Kippur holy day, caffeine addicts -- traditionally hard-hit by the day's fasting requirement that prohibits ingesting anything "by mouth" -- reportedly made a run on drug stores in Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn, N.Y., to buy caffeine suppositories.

-- A Breakthrough in Political Campaign Technology: New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, waging a particularly contentious battle, mailed out a flier in September suggesting that Democratic state politicians are corrupt, with photos of seven of that party's current and recent office-holders and accompanied by a special odor-triggering paper that releases a "garbage-scented" smell when exposed to air (and which supposedly grows even more foul over time).

-- Sherin Brown, 23, happened to be walking through a Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood in August at the exact moment that a tractor-trailer accidentally clipped a light pole, sending it crashing to the sidewalk. First responders found Brown pinned under the pole, screaming for help, and had her taken to a hospital. Afterward, investigators discovered a nearby surveillance camera, which revealed that Brown had stepped out of the way of the falling pole but then, with no one else around, had crawled underneath and began wailing in "pain," perhaps in anticipation of a future lawsuit.

-- Steven Black, one of five suspects in a federal credit card and check-cashing fraud ring, was arrested on Aug. 30 in Maryland Heights, Mo., following a car chase. In a search, police discovered that Black was carrying $1,540 in cash, in a roll tied with a shoelace to his scrotum.

-- Outsmarted Himself: Gene Cranick, who lives outside the city of South Fulton, Tenn., was offered firefighter service by the city for an annual $75 fee but declined to pay. In September, firefighters stood by watching as Cranick's home burned to the ground. (They had been called to the scene by Cranick's neighbor, who had paid the fee and feared Cranick's fire might spread to his property.)

-- Donald Denney and his father (also named Donald Denney) concocted a plan on the telephone for Dad to smuggle the son a ball of black-tar heroin into his Colorado prison (for eventual resale) during visiting hours, to be passed through the mouth by a deep kiss from a female visitor. However, Dad could not find a woman with a clean-enough record to be admitted as a visitor. Still enamored of the plan, however, the father decided to be the drug mule, himself, and inserted the packaged heroin into his rectum for later transferral to his mouth (even though the eventual deep kiss would be awkward). The Denneys were apparently unaware, despite audio warnings, that all the son's phone calls were being monitored, and in September, prison officials were waiting for the father, with a body-cavity search warrant, as he entered the prison.

-- Mean Streets: (1) A 23-year-old man on Chicago's South Side is still alive after he reported being shot twice on Sept. 17 by different people in different neighborhoods. He was shot above the armpit just after midnight, was treated and released at a hospital, and then was shot again in the leg about 10 hours later. (2) During a shootout in New York City on Aug. 8, Angel Alvarez, 23, was brought down in a hail of gunfire and taken to Harlem Hospital, where doctors saved his life, though they found 21 bullet wounds (Alvarez's lawyer said 23). Alvarez's sister called her brother's miraculous survival "ridiculous."

-- Hallmarks in Testing: (1) According to a July (1995) Associated Press story, Ellie Jenkins' job, as a counter for the Mosquito Control Commission in Savannah, Ga., is to drive around to 38 specified locations and stand with her arms and legs spread -- to see whether she'll be bitten five times in a minute (which is the threshold to summon county spraying trucks). And a June (1995) Toledo Blade story reported on the work of Mike Pixley, who tests La-Z-Boy chairs at the company plant in Monroe, Mich. Pixley rocks back and forth 2,800 times a day, earning $6 an hour. Supervisor Judy Fay praised Pixley as "self-motivated" and a man who "sets (his) own personal goals."

Thanks This Week to Phil Carhart, Dave Stout, Joe Church, and Ron Crumpton, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Edible "dirt" has recently appeared on the menus of several of the world's most renowned restaurants (e.g., the top-rated Noma in Copenhagen, Shakuf in Tel Aviv, Gilt in New York City). "People are really wowed to see dirt on their plates," said Gilt's head chef. Actually, the "dirt" only looks and feels like dirt. Each chef creates signature tastes from dried or charred powders with the appearance and consistency of sand, soil or ash -- from a base of plants, vegetables or eggs, or even dried beer. Said a reviewer, "These chefs are reminding people where food actually comes from."

-- Until August, Nettleton Middle School near Tupelo, Miss., had a strict policy for election of class officers for 6th-, 7th- and 8th-graders: Only white students could be president, and only black students could be vice president. (Other officers were segregated by race, as well.) Officials explained that it was one way to assure black representation even though three-fourths of the students are white. A school memo was leaked to The Smoking Gun website in August, and a day later the school district rescinded the policy.

-- After two Mexican fishermen were dragged from their boats and "chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified by their own families," according to a Daily Express review of an August British TV documentary, warnings were issued along the Pacific coast about the northern migration of Humboldt squid. They grow to 8 feet long, weigh up to 100 pounds, travel up to 15 mph, have eight swim/hold tentacles -- and two "attack" tentacles that are studded with 40,000 or more razor-sharp "teeth"-like nubs that help each devour almost seven tons of fish a year. Furthermore, female Humboldts are capable of laying 30 million eggs.

-- Briton Tania Doherty believed in 2008 that she was finally rid of ex-boyfriend Kawa ali Azad, who had stalked and assaulted her (once beating her unconscious) after she ended their affair in 2006. Azad had been arrested and ordered deported to his native Iraq, but when Iraq refused to take him, he applied to stay in Britain and, pending an immigration decision, was released by a judge sensitive to the "human rights" of someone seeking international "asylum." Azad immediately resumed harassing Doherty (who was chagrined to learn of the breadth of her violator's "human rights").

-- Notorious killer Jon Venables, convicted in 1993 at age 11 of the torture-murder of a 2-year-old Merseyside boy, was held until age 18 and then released on conditions and with a new identity to protect him from harassment. In July 2010, after violating the conditions, Venables was sentenced to two years in jail for possessing and exchanging "violent" child pornography. According to a Daily Telegraph report, the Ministry of Justice has accepted that it will have to supply Venables yet another new identity upon his eventual release (with set-up likely to cost the equivalent of almost $400,000 and security to run the equivalent of an additional $1.6 million a year).

-- Police in New Albany, Ind., arrested two alleged counterfeiters in August but believed that a much bigger operation was in play. Subsequently, the Indiana State Police made a public plea for informants, focusing on the people most likely to be cheated by counterfeit money: local drug dealers. "What we are asking today," said ISP Sgt. Jerry Goodin, "is we want all the drug dealers to call us. We want to get all of your information and exactly what happened in (any of your dealings)." Goodin added, "Trust us."

-- In June, Raytown, Mo., farmer David Jungerman mounted a sign on a tractor-trailer denouncing "parasites" who "always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them." Following news reports about the sign, the Kansas City Star reported that Jungerman himself had received more than $1 million in federal crop subsidies since 1995. (He later explained that a "parasite" pays no taxes at all yet seeks handouts. By contrast, Jungerman said, he pays taxes.)

-- The administrative staff for Queen Elizabeth II, running a budget shortfall in 2004 (according to recently released documents), asked the governing Labour Party if the royal family's palaces could qualify for government home-heating subsidies. The documents, obtained by London's The Independent, indicated that the Labour Party was initially receptive but then rejected the idea.

-- Playboy magazine has long published an audio edition, and the Library of Congress produces a text edition in Braille. However, as a Houston Chronicle reporter learned in August, a Texas organization (Taping for the Blind) goes one step further, with volunteer reader Suzi Hanks actually describing the photographs -- even the Playmates and other nudes. "I'd say if she has large breasts or small breasts, piercings or tattoos," said Hanks. "I'll describe her genitalia. ... I take my time describing the girls. ... Hey, blind guys like pretty, naked girls, too!"

America's most prolific litigant (and News of the Weird mainstay) may finally have met his match. In September, federal prosecutors asked a judge in Kentucky to supervise Jonathan Lee Riches' future filings to eliminate the frivolous ones (which likely means all of them). Riches is serving 10 years in prison for stealing credit card numbers and has filed an estimated 3,800 lawsuits from behind bars (more than one for every day of incarceration), alleging wrongs done to him by such people as George W. Bush, Britney Spears, the philosopher Plato, the Dave Matthews Band, Tiger Woods (luggage theft), baseball player Barry Bonds (illegal moonshine), and football player Michael Vick (who allegedly stole Riches' pit bulls, sold them on eBay, and used the proceeds to buy missiles from Iran).

Mark Smith, 59, was arrested at a bank in Watsonville, Calif., in September after he had allegedly threatened a teller with a bomb (spelled "bom") and demanded $2,000. The teller, apparently skeptical of Smith's toughness, tried to convince him, instead, to borrow the money, and she had him wait while she retrieved an application (during which time she called 911). By the time police arrived, Smith was filling out the loan form.

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Larry Wayne Call, Faith, N.C. (September); Kenneth Wayne Carlson, Hines Creek, Alberta, Canada (August); Timothy Wayne Morgan, Eugene, Ore. (August); Julius Wayne Willis Jr., Minneapolis (July); Scott Wayne Eby, Wilmington, Ill. (May, charged in a 2004 murder); Douglas Wayne Jones, Oxford, Miss. (May); Kenneth Wayne Rogers, Dallas (April, charged in a 2008 murder). Indicted for murder recently and awaiting trial: Gary Wayne Pettigrew, Tarrant County, Texas (August, indicted in a 1983 murder). Pleaded guilty to murder: Edward Wayne Edwards, Akron, Ohio (August, involving a 1977 murder, not the ones News of the Weird listed him for in August 2009). Convicted of murder: David Wayne Alexander, Pittsburgh (July 2009).

Innumeracy: In July 2004, a federal appeals court ruled that the leak-safety standards for the long-awaited nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain were too weak, in that the Environmental Protection Agency could regard the facility as safe for "only" the next 10,000 years (100 centuries). One National Academy of Sciences panel had recommended against the site unless leak safety could be certified for at least 300,000 years. In August 2005, EPA issued a revised durability standard, claiming, somehow, that the site would be free of unsafe leaks for 1 million years. (Perspective: Everything we know about radiation has come in just the last 110 years. Now, imagine a radiation-safety "learning curve" expected to go flat for the next 10,000 -- or 300,000 -- or 1 million years.)