Modern Mummies: New York City artist Sally Davies offered in October the latest evidence of how unattractive today's fast foods are to bacteria and maggots. Davies bought a McDonald's Happy Meal in April, has photographed it daily, and has noted periodically the lack even of the slightest sign of decomposition. Her dog, who circled restlessly nearby for the first two days the vittles were out, since then has ignored it. (Several bloggers, and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, have made discoveries similar to Davies'.) Food scientists "credited" a heavy use (though likely still within FDA guidelines) of the preservative sodium propionate but also the predominance of fat and lack of moisture and nutrients -- all of which contribute to merely shrinking and hardening the burger and fries.

-- Maybe Just Safekeeping It for a Friend: Raymond Roberts, 25, was arrested in Manatee County, Fla., in September after an ordinary traffic stop turned up a strong smell of marijuana. At deputies' behest, Roberts removed a baggie of marijuana from his buttocks, but when the deputies saw another plastic bag right behind it (containing a white substance believed to be cocaine), Roberts said, "The weed is (mine)," but "(t)he white stuff is not ...."

-- Firefighter Richard Gawlik Jr. was terminated by Allentown, Pa., in August for abusing sick leave after he posted his daily golf scores on a public website during three days in which he had called off from work. Allentown firefighters' contract allows them up to four consecutive days' sick leave without a doctor's note, and given their shift schedule of four days on, four days off, a four-day, undocumented sick call effectively means a 12-day holiday -- a pattern that describes 60 percent of all firefighter "sick" days, according to an analysis by the Allentown Morning Call. (Gawlik's union president said the union would appeal and that "playing golf was well within the guidelines of (Gawlik's illness).")

-- Woody Will Smith, 33, was convicted in September of murdering his wife after a jury in Dayton, Ky., "deliberated" about 90 minutes before rejecting his defense of caffeine intoxication. Smith had claimed that his daily intake of sodas, energy drinks and diet pills had made him temporarily insane when he strangled his two-timing wife with an extension cord in 2009, and made him again not responsible when he confessed the crime to police. (In May 2010, a judge in Pullman, Wash., ordered a hit-and-run driver to treatment instead of jail, based on the driver's "caffeine psychosis." Some doctors believe the condition can kick in with as little as 400 mg of caffeine daily -- an amount that, given America's coffee consumption, potentially portends a sky-high murder rate.)

-- An Iowa administrative law judge ruled in September that former police officer William Bowker of Fort Madison deserved worker's compensation even though he had not been "laid off" but rather fired -- for having an affair with the wife of the chief of police. Although the city Civil Service Commission had denied him coverage (based in part on other derelictions, such as sleeping and drinking on duty and refusing to attend a class on search warrants), the judge ruled that Bowker's dismissal seemed too much like improper retaliation for the affair.

-- A lawyer in Xian, China, filed a lawsuit in September against a movie house and film distributor for wasting her time -- because she was exposed to 20 minutes of advertisements that began at the posted time for the actual movie to begin. Ms. Chen Xiaomei is requesting a refund (equivalent of about $5.20) plus damages of an equal amount, plus the equivalent of about 15 cents for "emotional" damages -- plus an apology.

-- In an April journal article, University of East Anglia professor Brett Mills denounced the 2009 British TV documentary series "Nature's Great Events" on the ground that the program's omnipresent and intrusive video cameras violated animals' privacy. "(The animals) often do engage in forms of behavior which suggest they'd rather not encounter humans," he wrote, "and we might want to think about equating this with a desire for privacy."

-- British entrepreneur Howard James, who runs several online dating sites, opened another in August to worldwide attention (and, allegedly, thousands of sign-ups in the first five days): dates for ugly people. James said new members (accepted from the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and Ireland) will have their photos vetted to keep out "attractive" people. (Based on the web pages available at press time, the photo-evaluation process is working well.)

-- Beyond "MacGyver": Keith Jeffery's book on the British intelligence service MI6, published in September and serialized in The Times of London, revealed that the first chief of the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) during World War I recommended, as the best invisible ink, semen, in that it "would not react to (ink-detecting) iodine vapor" and was, of course, "readily available."

(1) Mr. Hamen Vile was transferred from Gulgong Hospital in Australia, in August, to another about 30 miles away after Gulgong was discovered with dangerous levels of asbestos. Vile had lived full-time at Gulgong since 1952, when he suffered an accidental gunshot in the back. (2) Recently, MSNBC and The New York Times discovered that 104-year-old Montana copper-mine heiress Huguette Clark has cloistered herself for the last 20 years in an ordinary room at an unnamed New York City hospital. All of Clark's affairs are handled by an attorney who has almost no contact with her but oversees her three well-maintained estates in Connecticut, Santa Barbara (Calif.) and New York City, worth, respectively, $24 million, $100 million and $100 million.

Overconfident: (1) Xavier Ross, 19, passing by a piano at an art exhibit in front of the Grand Rapids, Mich., police station in October, could not resist sitting down to play a few notes -- and was arrested when officers recognized him from a recent home invasion case. (2) Selma Elmore, 44, was arrested in Lockland, Ohio, in October when she flagged down a police car to ask if there was an arrest warrant out on her. (Officers checked; there was; she ran; the warrant was minor; "resisting arrest" was more serious.) (3) Jason Williams, 38, was convicted in Maidenhead, England, in October of stealing a neighbor's window curtains, which he had immediately installed on his own windows -- in plain view of the neighbor's window.

Almost Impossible: (1) According to a case report in the New Zealand Medical Journal, announced in August, yet another person has swallowed whole a standard-size toothbrush. (A 15-year-old girl, running with the toothbrush in her mouth, tripped and fell, and her gag reflex did the rest.) (2) Ms. Cha Sa-soon, 69, became a national heroine in South Korea in May when she passed her driver's license written test on the 950th try (after taking two-hour bus rides to the test center almost daily for three years). (It took her only 10 more tries to pass the driving test, and Hyundai gave her a new car as a reward.)

Orange County (Calif.) Superior Court clerks discovered last fall (1989) that they had failed to complete the paperwork to make nearly 500 pre-1985 divorce judgments final, thus leaving the parties still legally married. The worst-case scenario for one husband occurred in April (1990) when an appeals court ruled that his supposedly-ex-wife, Bonita Lynch, was entitled to one-fourth of his $2.2 million lottery jackpot. The couple had been scheduled for final divorce 11 days before the jackpot was announced.

-- 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.