About 20 percent of Japan's adult-video market is now "elder porn" with each production featuring one or more studly seniors and Shigeo Tokuda, 76, among the most popular. He told Toronto's Globe and Mail in October that he still "performs" physically "without Viagra," in at least one role a month opposite much younger women. His wife and adult daughter learned only two years ago, by accident, of his late-onset career (which began at age 60 when a filmmaker hired him for his "pervert's face"). Tokuda figures the "elder porn" genre will grow with Japan's increasing senior population.

-- In Afghanistan, as in many less-developed countries, boy babies are much preferred to girls for economic reasons and social status, but some thus-unlucky Afghan parents have developed a workaround for "excess" girls: simply designate one a boy. All references to her are male, and she dresses as a boy, plays "boy" games and does "boy" chores, at least until puberty, when many parents of the "bocha posh" convert her back. In some tribal areas, according to a September New York Times dispatch, superstition holds that creation of a bocha posh even enhances prospects of the next child's being a boy.

-- Although India has forbidden discrimination against lower-caste "Dalits" (so-called "untouchables"), rampant oppression still exists, especially in rural areas. In October, police were investigating reports that a higher-caste woman had disowned her dog after it had been touched by an "untouchable" woman. A village council in the Morena district of Madhya Pradesh state had reportedly awarded the higher-caste woman the equivalent of $340 compensation after she witnessed the dog being given food scraps by the Dalit woman.

-- Symbols: (1) Although the dress code at Clayton (N.C.) High School prohibits it, freshman Ariana Iacono demanded in September that she be allowed her nose ring, which she said is "essential" to her practice of religion. Her Church of Body Modification, she said, teaches that "the mind, body and soul are all one entity and that modifying the body can bring the mind and soul into harmony." (2) Some Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews came under criticism in September during the pre-Yom Kippur Day of Atonement because, unlike most Jews, they shunned the euphemistic twirling of substitute objects over their heads for forgiveness insisting on hard-core expression by twirling sacrificed chickens.

-- If Only They Had Been Less Religious ...: (1) Ten people were killed in an October stampede when a scuffle broke out at a Hindu temple in the Indian state of Bihar where 40,000 had taken their goats to be sacrificed for prosperity. (2) In July in Montcalm County, Mich., four teenagers attending a Bible church camp were killed when lightning struck an umbrella they were huddling under on a field.

-- Cheerful, articulate Catholic Opus Dei official Sarah Cassidy, 43, granting a long interview to London's Daily Mail in September about her joy of life, waxed eloquent about bringing herself pain for two hours every night as reminders of God's love. Complained another Opus Dei "numerary," our "materialistic, hedonistic society" understands pain "if you go jogging and pounding the streets ... just because you want to be thinner" (or endure Botox injections or cram your toes painfully into tiny shoes) but somehow they don't understand when Cassidy wraps the spiked "cilice" tightly around her leg every night for God.

In June, the Mexican government filed a brief in Arizona challenging the constitutionality of that state's proposed law that required police to check the immigration status of detainees, which, according to its Foreign Ministry, "violates inalienable human rights." However, a May USA Today dispatch from Tultitlan, Mexico, noted that Mexico has a similar law ("Article 67" of its immigration code) and that police allegedly harass immigrants from Honduras and other Central American countries. Said one pro-immigration activist, "There (the U.S.), they'll deport you. In Mexico, they'll probably let you go, but they'll beat you up and steal everything you've got first." (Bills to overturn Article 67 have been pending in the Mexican legislature for months.)

-- Awkward: (1) The charity Brain Injury New Zealand, organizing a community benefit in the town of Rotorua, decided in October to stage -- of all things -- a "zombie walk," inviting townspeople to shuffle around in support. The TV station TVNZ reported numerous complaints alleging BINZ's insensitivity. (2) The city government in Seoul, South Korea, warned in October that the local delicacy "octopus head" contains toxic amounts of cadmium and recommended a two-head-per-week maximum. Fishermen and restaurateurs, as well as those who eat octopus head for its supposed libido-enhancement, protested.

-- For months, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has been indifferent to humanitarian appeals on behalf of sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott, who were convicted in 1993 of luring two men to a robbery (total take, $11; no injuries) but who were each mysteriously sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. (The actual robbers got two years.) Beyond the questionable sentence is Jamie's extremely poor health (double kidney failure). Gov. Barbour's unyielding position is to direct the appeals to the state's parole board. In 2008, bypassing the parole board, Gov. Barbour independently pardoned four vicious murderers who were serving life sentences, even though none had particularly claimed unfair conviction. The four had participated in a prison-sponsored odd-jobs program, helping out around the governor's mansion.

(1) In October in Seminole, Fla., near Tampa, two men, ages 36 and 52, sitting on a porch, drew the attention of two passersby, who made derisive comments and eventually beat up the porch-sitters, who were in costumes as beer bottles. (2) In Portage, Ind., in July, Michael Perez, 36, and brother Eric, 28, got into a fistfight, then ran outside, jumped into their respective pickup trucks, and commenced to ram each other. Multiple charges were filed against both after Eric accidentally crashed into a mobile home.

Two men robbing a Waffle Shop in Akron, Ohio, in October ushered customers and employees into the back and had them give up their cell phones, which were collected in a bag, with the plan to lock the phones in a supply room, retrievable only long after the robbers had fled. However, one robber walked out the restaurant's front door, which automatically locked behind him, and when the other robber walked into the supply room to drop off the bag, an alert hostage locked him inside (and resisted when the robber began "demand(ing)" to be let out).

(1) A 55-year-old woman was seriously injured in October near Defuniak Springs, Fla., when -- and alcohol was involved -- she fell from a motor home traveling on Interstate 10. She had walked to the back to use the rest room, discovered that the door was stuck, and pushed against it -- to learn too late that it was the exit. (2) A 75-year-old man in Levis, Quebec, became the latest person to fall victim to his own protective booby trap. He had apparently forgotten the exact location of the trip wire he had connected to a shotgun to deal with trespassers, and he was killed.

The Pasadena, Calif., Humane Society, using private funds, recently began construction of a $4.3 million dog-and-cat shelter, with towel-lined cages, skylights, "microclimate" air-conditioning, an aviary, sculptured bushes, "adoption counseling pavilions" in which people can meet with their prospective "companion animals," and, according to the architect, "a very subdued classical painting scheme." The Los Angeles Times (in March 1993), noting that there are four times as many shelters in the U.S. for animals as for battered women, quoted an outraged caseworker for a local homeless-person shelter: "It's mind-boggling. I want to know (who) their (funders) are."

Belt-Tightening Greeks: In October, Greece's largest health insurance provider announced, in a letter to a diabetes foundation, that it would no longer pay for the special footwear that diabetics need for reducing pain but suggested it would pay instead for amputation, which is less expensive. The decision, which the foundation said is not supported by international scientific literature, was published in the prominent Athens newspaper To Vima (The Tribune) and reported by the U.S. news site DailyCaller.com.

-- Retail Breakthroughs: (1) A shop in Santa Cruz, Calif., opened in September selling ice cream infused with extract of marijuana. Customers with "medical marijuana" prescriptions can buy Creme De Canna, Bananabis Foster or Straw-Mari Cheesecake, at $15 a half-pint (with one bite supposedly equal to five puffs of "really good" weed, according to the proprietor). (2) Spotted outside subway stations in Nanjing, China, in October: vending machines selling live Shanghai Hairy Crabs, in plastic containers chilled to 5 degrees C (41 degrees F), for the equivalent of $1.50 to $7, depending on size.

-- Good News for Frisky Married Muslims: (1) Abdelaziz Aouragh's recently opened Internet site sells Shariah-compliant aids to promote the "sexual health" of married couples, mostly lubricants, lotions and herbal pills, with lingerie coming soon (but no videos or toys). (All products have been cleared by Saudi religious scholars.) He says he aspires to open actual storefronts soon. (2) Ms. Khadija Ahmed, attending to customers while dressed in flowing robe and head scarf, is already open for business in Manama, Bahrain, offering, since 2008, lingerie, orgasm-delaying creams and even some sex toys. ("Vibrators" are "against Islam," she said, because they are intended as replications of a body part, but "vibration rings" are permitted.) Bahrain, obviously, is among the most liberal countries in the Persian Gulf region, but Ahmed is considering expanding to Dubai and Lebanon.

-- Shareholder James Solakian filed a lawsuit in October against the board of directors of Bible.com, on the ground that the website address -- a potential "goldmine," he says -- was not being properly exploited financially. Although the company's business plan was, explicitly, to become "very, very profitable," it also vowed, according to a Reuters report, to be governed by "Christian business principles."

-- Janis Ollson, 31, of Balmoral, Manitoba, is recovering nicely after being almost completely sawed in half in 2007 by Mayo Clinic surgeons, who concluded that they could remove her bone cancer no other way. In experimental surgery that had been tried only on cadavers, doctors split her pelvis in half, removed the left half, her left leg and her lower spine (and the tumor) in a 20-hour, 12-specialist procedure. The real trick, though, was the eight-hour, 240-staple reconstruction in which her remaining leg was reconnected to her spine with pins and screws, leaving her in an arrangement doctors likened to a "pogo stick." A September Winnipeg Free Press story noted that, except for the missing leg, she is enjoying a normal life with her husband and two kids and enjoys snowmobiling.

-- Kyle Johnson shattered his skull so badly in a high-speed longboard accident in June that ordinary "decompressive craniectomy" (temporarily removing half of the skull to relieve pressure) would be inadequate. Instead, doctors at McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah, removed both halves, leaving only a thin strip of bone (after placing Johnson in a drug-induced coma) and kept the skull frozen to prevent brittleness. After the swelling subsided, they reattached the skull to his head and woke him up gradually over a week's time. Johnson admits some memory problems and cognitive dysfunction, most notably his inability to focus on more than one concept at a time -- even when they are part of the same scene, such as two crayons on a table. Johnson said he probably won't go back to the longboard but, curiously like Janis Ollson, looks forward to snowmobiling.

-- Obese patients with an array of symptoms known as "prediabetes" have seen their insulin sensitivity improved dramatically via "fecal transplants," i.e., receiving the stool of a thin, healthy person into the bowel, according to researchers led by a University of North Carolina professor. Researchers said the strangers' implants were significantly more effective than those of a control group, in which a person's own feces was implanted. (News of the Weird has previously reported on success in treating certain gastrointestinal infections by stool transplants that contain the bacteria Clostridium difficile.)

-- Two University of Sydney researchers reported recently that the food-acquisition "strategy" of the brainless, single-cell slime mold appeared to resemble one of the strategies familiar to us so-called brain-containing humans, specifically, making a selection only after comparing it to readily available alternatives. Furthermore, Japanese researchers who mapped the slime mold's search for food found that its nuclei are arranged in a pattern that is seemingly just as logically helpful in food procurement as the service arrangements are in Tokyo's acclaimed railway system. (In October, the Japanese researchers were awarded a satirical "Ig Nobel" prize by the Annals of Improbable Research.)

-- In research results announced in June, a team led by a University of Oklahoma professor, studying Mexican molly fish, discovered that females evaluate potential mates on sight, based on the prominence of the moustache-like growths on males' upper lips. More controversially, the researchers hypothesized that males further enhance their mating prowess by employing the "moustache" to tickle females' genitals. (Catfish have similar "whiskers" and perhaps use them for similar purposes, said the researchers.)

-- In September, Russia's finance minister publicly urged citizens to step up their smoking and drinking, in that the government's new "sin" taxes mean more revenue: "If you smoke a pack of cigarettes," he said, "that means you are giving more to help solve social problems." (Alcohol abuse is already said to kill 500,000 Russians a year and to significantly lower life expectancy.)

-- Executive Brigitte Stevens announced in September that her perpetually underappreciated advocacy institution, Wombat Awareness Organization, had just been pledged $8 million by a single donor. According to Stevens, the $1 million annually she will receive in each of the next eight years is about 13 times the previous annual budget for the Mannum, South Australia, organization. The U.S. donor, who demanded anonymity, became interested in 2008 when, on an onsite visit, he was enthralled with "southern hairy-nosed" wombats.

Signs of the Times: (1) A 24-year-old Muslim woman was strangled in Newcastle, Australia, in April when the bottom of her burqa became tangled in the wheels as she was driving playfully at a go-cart track. (2) A 45-year-old, out-of-town man was killed in a street robbery in Oakland, Calif., in July after he became distracted while typing a location into his cell phone's map program to find his way to a job interview. The appointment was at Google Inc. (3) Horatio Toure, 31, was arrested in San Francisco in July after snatching an iPhone from a woman on the street and bicycling away. Unknown to him, the woman was conducting a real-time demonstration of global positioning software, and thus Toure's exact movement was registering on her company's computers. He was arrested within minutes.

In September (1991), the Avon, Colo., town council resorted to a contest to name the new bridge over the Eagle River, linking Interstate 70 with U.S. Highway 6. Sifting through 84 suggestions (such as "Eagle Crossing"), the council voted, 4-2, to give it the official name "Bob." "Bob The Bridge" is, still, a theme for several local festivals.

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.