Arkansas Time Machine, Back to the 1950s: In McGehee, a town of 4,200 in southeastern Arkansas, a black girl (Kym Wimberly) who had finished first in her senior class was named only "co-"valedictorian after officials at McGehee High changed the rules to avoid what one called a potential "big mess." As a result, in an ironic twist on "affirmative action," the highest-scoring white student was elevated to share top honors. Said Kym's mother, "We (all) know if the tables were turned, there wouldn't be a co-valedictorian." In July, the girl filed a lawsuit against the school and the protocol-changing principal.

(1) Roy Griffith, 60, John Sanborn, 53, and Douglas Ward, 55, were arrested in Deerfield Township, Mich., in July and charged with stealing a 14-foot-long stuffed alligator from a barn, dragging it away with their truck, and using it to surf in the mud ("mudbogging"). When the gator's owner tracked down the three nearby, they denied the theft and insisted that theirs is an altogether-different 14-foot-long stuffed alligator. (Ward's blood-alcohol reading was 0.40.) (2) When deputies in Monroe County, Tenn., arrested a woman for theft in August, they learned that one of the items stolen was a 150-year-old Vatican-certified holy relic based on the Veil of Veronica (supposedly used to wipe Jesus' face before the crucifixion). The painting had been stolen from the closet of a trailer home on a back road in the Tennessee mountains, where a local named "Frosty," age 73, had kept it for 20 years with no idea of its significance.

-- Of the 1,500 judges who referee disputes as to whether someone qualifies for Social Security disability benefits, David Daugherty of West Virginia is the current soft-touch champion, finding for the claimant about 99 percent of the time (compared to judges' overall rate of 60 percent). As The Wall Street Journal reported in May, Daugherty decided many of the cases without hearings or with the briefest of questioning, including batches of cases brought by the same lawyer. He criticized his less lenient colleagues, who "act like it's their own damn money we're giving away." (A week after the Journal report, Judge Daugherty was placed on leave, pending an investigation.)

-- Gee, What Do We Do With All This Stimulus Money? The Omaha (Neb.) Public School system spent $130,000 of its stimulus grant recently just to buy 8,000 copies of the book "The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change" -- that is, one copy for every single employee, from principals to building custodians. Alarmingly, wrote an Omaha World-Herald columnist, the book is "riddled with gobbledygook," "endless graphs," and such tedium as the "cultural proficiency continuum" and discussion of the "disequilibrium" arising "due to the struggle to disengage with past actions associated with unhealthy perspectives."

-- Once hired, almost no federal employee ever leaves. Turnover is so slight that, among the typical causes for workers leaving, "death by natural causes" is more likely the reason than "fired for poor job performance." According to a July USA Today report, the federal rate of termination for poor performance is less than one-fifth the private sector's, and the annual retention rate for all federal employees was 99.4 percent (and for white collar and upper-income workers, more than 99.8 percent). Government defenders said the numbers reflect excellence in initial recruitment.

-- Bats' Rights: In January, Alison Murray purchased her first-ever home, in Aberdeen, Scotland, but was informed in August that she has to relocate, temporarily, because the house has become infested with bats, which cannot be disturbed, under Scottish and European law, once they settle in. Conservation officials advised her that she could probably move back in November, when the bats leave to hibernate.

-- In June, the Five Guys Burger and Fries restaurant in White Plains, N.Y., was robbed by five guys (well, actually, four guys and a woman). One of the guys worked at Five Guys. All five "guys" were arrested.

-- Catch-22: NYPD officer James Seiferheld, 47, still receives his $52,365 annual disability pay despite relentless efforts of the department to fire him. He had retired in 2004 on disability, but was ordered back to work when investigators found him doing physical work inconsistent with "disability." However, Seiferheld could not return to work because he repeatedly failed drug screening (for cocaine). Meanwhile, his appeal of the disability denial went to the state Court of Appeals, which found a procedural error and ordered that Seiferheld's "disability" benefits continue (even though the city has proven both that he is physically able and a substance-abuser).

-- Unclear on the Concept: In April, Robert Williams conscientiously completed his San Diego police officers' application, answering truthfully, he said, questions 172 (yes, he had had sexual contact with a child) and 175 (yes, he had "viewed or transacted" child pornography). Three weeks later, the police had not only rejected his application but arrested him. Williams' wife, Sunem, said the police department has "integrity" problems because "telling the truth during the hiring process brings prosecution. ..."

Beginning in 2002, a man was reported sidling up to women on crowded New York City subway trains and rubbing against them until he ejaculated. Police were unable to identify him but were concerned enough that they obtained an indictment -- "naming" the suspect only as whoever's DNA it was who committed the subway crimes. In July 2011, they finally obtained a match, to Darnell Hardware, 26, who had been in the system repeatedly (drug and indecent-exposure charges) but not until July in offenses that obligated collection of DNA.

News of the Weird has reported on life-sized, anatomically correct dolls manufactured in fine detail with human features (e.g., the "Real Doll," as one brand is called), which are as different from the plastic inflatable dolls sold in adult stores as fine whiskey is to $2-a-bottle rotgut. An early progenitor of the exquisite dolls, according to new research by Briton Graeme Donald, was Adolf Hitler, who was worried that he was losing more soldiers to venereal disease than to battlefield injuries, and ordered his police chief, Heinrich Himmler, to oversee development of a meticulously made doll with blonde hair and blue eyes. (However, according to Donald, the project was stopped in 1942 and all the research lost in the Allies' bombing of Dresden, Germany.) Among those who had heard of Hitler's earlier interest, according to Donald, were the creators of what later became the Barbie doll.

In his signature performance art piece, John Jairo Villamil depicted both the excitement and danger of the city of Bogota, Colombia, by appearing on stage with a tightened garbage bag over his head and his feet in a bucket of water, holding a chain in one hand and a plant's leaf in the other. At a May show at Bogota's Universidad del Bosque, Villamil, 25, fussed with the tightened bag and soon collapsed to the floor, stirred a little, and then was motionless. The audience, likely having assumed that the collapse was part of the performance, did not immediately render assistance, and Villamil lost consciousness and died in a hospital five days later.

In March (1998), trial began in Lesli Szabo's $1.7 million lawsuit against a Hamilton, Ontario, hospital for not making her 1993 childbirth pain-free. (Physicians said that painless childbirth cannot be achieved without the anesthesia's endangering the child.) Szabo admitted to previous run-ins with physicians, explaining, "When I'm in pain, the (words) that come out of my mouth would curl your hair." In the lawsuit, Szabo said she expected to be able to read or knit while the baby was being delivered. (The parties eventually settled the lawsuit.)

LEAD STORY

Berjuan Toys is already selling its Breast Milk Baby online ($70) and expects to have it in stores later this year. The doll works by the child-"mother" donning a halter top with flowers positioned as nipples, and when the baby comes into contact with the a flower, sensors mimic sucking sounds. Although dolls that demonstrate toileting functions are already on the market, breastfeeding activists are more enthusiastic about this one, hopeful that girls' comfort with breastfeeding will result in decreased bottle-feeding later on. (Opponents have denounced the doll as forcing girls to "grow up" too soon and with choices too complicated for their age, which according to the manufacturer is as young as 3.)

-- Frances Ragusa, 75, was back in court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in June claiming child support she said was never paid by husband Philip Ragusa, 77, in their divorce settlement of 33 years ago. (The "children," of course, long ago became adults, but the $14,000 judgment has grown, with interest, to about $100,000.) Frances told the New York Post in July that she called Philip several months earlier to discuss the amount but that Philip merely began to cry. "Don't let this case go to trial," she recalled telling him. "(I)f you think I'm going to forget it, Phil, you're stuck on stupid."

-- Carole Green was fined $1,000 in July by a court in Leavenworth County, Kan., for littering the property of the same Bonner Springs resident "most afternoons" for the past two years. Green apologized and said the charge was a complete surprise. She said when she starts out in her SUV every day, and drinks a bottle of tea, it just happens that she finishes it at about the same spot on her journey -- in front of Gary Bukaty's property -- and that's where she tosses the bottle. She promised to stop.

-- The Perfect Society: Rules to assure correct, "progressive" behavior were recently proposed by the San Francisco Commission of Animal Control and Welfare and the Colorado Department of Human Services. The San Francisco agency would ban the sale of all pets in the city limits, from dogs to gerbils to goldfish. ("Why fish? Why not fish?" asked one exasperated commission member, bristling at criticism.) Animals sold as food for other animals would be included but not animals sold as food for humans. Day care centers in Colorado would be required, if it made dolls available at playtime, to have dolls of three different races.

-- A Southampton (England) University researcher told an academic conference in Stockholm in July that his work, demonstrating that women who stop smoking even after becoming pregnant will have healthier babies, is important because he found that pregnant women rationalize continued smoking, in part to have smaller babies that will be less uncomfortable to deliver.

-- Small Town Democracy: The City Council of Gould, Ark. (pop. 1,100), voted in July to make it illegal for its citizens to form "groups" without written permission from the council. (The mayor and the city council are feuding over the budget, and the council, attempting to stifle lobbying by a group supporting the mayor, has taken down all "groups" -- except that the ordinance appears to blatantly violate the First Amendment.)

-- Inmate Johnathan Pinney, 26, petitioned U.S. District Court in Chicago in July, demanding that state and federal officials stop arresting him (because he did nothing illegal, he wrote, despite his current four-year sentence for aggravated battery on a police officer). Pinney helpfully suggested a way for the federal government to compensate him for all the grief it has caused him: The government should give him $50 billion "restitution" and award him uninhabited land so that he can start his own country, with sovereign and diplomatic immunity. WBBM Radio noted that Pinney appeared to solicit romance on his MySpace page by writing that he "hopes to get into a committed relationship with a woman, but wouldn't mind if it meant 'leaving this world and marrying an alien with similar attonomy (sic) and genetics.'"

-- Even though Michigan schoolteacher Marcie Rousseau was sentenced in December to at least four years in prison for having sex with a high school boy in Saginaw and Midland counties, the episode is not over. Now, the "victim" has filed a lawsuit against Rousseau and school officials for what his lawyer described as "not consensual" sex. The unnamed, then-16-year-old admitted to at least 100 acts of sexual intercourse, and 75 "other" sex acts, and asks at least $1 million for "physical, psychological and emotional injury." (To use the "minimum" numbers, that works out to at least $5,700 per sex act, and since $1 million is sought on each of the seven federal-law claims and three state-law claims, the best-case scenario regards each sex act as a $57,000 burden.)

Jonathan Schwartz called 911 in New York City in July to report that he had stabbed his mother to death. A few minutes later but before police arrived, Schwartz called back 911 to report a correction: "No, she committed suicide." (The mother's body was found with multiple stab wounds, and police, notwithstanding Schwartz's "correction," charged him with murder.)

Jerry Prieto, 38, pleaded guilty in July in Benton County, Wash. (possession of methamphetamine and "malicious mischief with sexual motivation"), and was sentenced to 45 days in jail. Prieto had been arrested with the drugs in October 2010 in a stall at a highway rest stop. According to the prosecutor, Prieto had written sexual notes on the floor with a felt-tipped pen and drawn an arrow pointing directly to his stall. (As a condition of his sentence, Prieto is allowed in rest-stop bathrooms only for "traditional" purposes.)

(1) Ronald Adams, 49, was arrested in June for assaulting an 8-year-old boy in his home in Ouachita Parish, La., after an argument over which TV program to watch. Adams allegedly threw a TV remote, hitting the child in the head, because the kid insisted on "cartoons" while Adams preferred "wrestling." (2) Authorities in St. Lucie County, Fla., investigated an incident in May in which a woman allegedly fired an AR-15 rifle at a target inside her bedroom closet and in which the gunshots went through the wall and damaged a washing machine, springing a water leak throughout the residence. (Officials said the woman's husband fired shots, too, and that it wasn't the first time the couple had engaged in bedroom target practice.)

Arrested (again) for prostitution (this time, Columbus, Ga., April; previously in News of the Weird, in Tampa, Fla., 2009), Ms. Suk Kim Ho, 46. Charged with conspiracy to commit child molestation (Woodstock, Ga., June), Mr. Patrick Molesti, 58. Arrested for lewdness for allegedly exposing himself (Howe Township, Pa., June), Mr. Handy H. Wood, 35 (not to be confused with the man arrested in Columbia, Mo., in July, on suspicion of the same thing, Mr. Willy Wood, 54). Charged with DUI in a crash into a library (Buffalo, N.Y., July), Mr. Jack Goff, 47.

In November (2000), Mr. Auburn Mason, 62, was sentenced to four years in prison in England for a 1999 British Airways hijacking. He had grabbed a flight attendant, held scissors to her neck, and threatened to blow up the plane with the bomb he was holding, screaming "Take me to Gatwick (airport in London)!" At that point, the flight was 15 minutes away from its scheduled destination, which was Gatwick airport. (Minutes later, passengers disarmed Mason.)

For years, many traditional funerals in Taiwan -- especially in rural areas or among working classes -- have included pop singers and bikinied dancers, supposedly to entertain the ghosts that will protect the deceased in the afterlife. According to a recent documentary by anthropologist Marc Moskowitz, some of the dancers until 20 years ago were strippers who did lap dances with funeral guests, until the government made such behavior illegal. Contemporary song-and-dance shows, like the traveling Electric Flower Car, supposedly appeal to "lower" gods who help cleanse the deceased of the more mundane vices such as gambling and prostitution (compared to the "higher" gods who focus on morality and righteousness).

-- California's state and local governments are rarely discussed these days without the pall of budget cuts looming, but apparently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is safe because it is spending a reported $1.5 million to move a big rock in from Riverside, about 60 miles away. It's a 340-ton boulder that the museum intends to display above a sidewalk ("Levitated Mass"). The move will require a 200-foot-long trailer with 200 tires, with one semi-tractor pulling and one pushing, at night, maximum speed 8 mph.

-- Tennessee State Rep. Julia Hurley apologized in July and said she would pay for the refinishing of her desk in the legislative chamber after it was revealed that she had carved her initials in it during a January session. "It was like one in the morning on the last day of the session," she told WSMV-TV. "I wasn't thinking straight." Rep. Hurley, 29, who has a daughter, 14, unseated a nine-term incumbent legislator in 2010 with a campaign that touted her time as a Hooters waitress. "If I could make it at Hooters," she wrote in the restaurant's magazine, "I could make it anywhere."

-- In June, the California Court of Appeals threw out the three counts of possession of child pornography for which Joseph Gerber had been convicted, even though what Gerber had done was paste face shots of his own 13-year-old daughter onto ordinary pornographic photos. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2002 that a conviction for making "child pornography" requires actual sexual abuse. (Gerber had also been convicted of supplying the daughter with drugs and the court ordered Gerber re-sentenced.)

-- Georges Marciano, co-founder of the clothing company Guess? Inc. and ostensibly in no trouble with IRS, nonetheless demanded in 2009 that the agency audit him over the previous several years. IRS turned him down, and he sued the agency in federal court in Washington, D.C., but in July, a judge rejected the case, declaring that federal law and the U.S. Constitution do not give anyone a "right" to demand that IRS collect more taxes from them. (Marciano perhaps hoped for IRS to uncover cheating by his former employees and accountants, whom he thought were stealing from him. Paying higher taxes might have been worth it if the agency had made it easier for him to sue any cheaters.)

-- A Singaporean army draftee caused a public stir in March when he was photographed by a visitor as he underwent physical training in army fatigues but with his maid following behind him carrying his backpack on her shoulders. (Army officials told reporters the draftee had since been "counsel(ed).")

-- Helping Disaster Victims: (1) In May, following near-record floods in fields south of Montreal, Quebec, farmer Martin Reid made sure to apply for his fishing license because he had learned the hard way that when his land gets flooded, he cannot remove the fish washed onto it unless he is a licensed fisherman. After flooding in 1993, Reid and his father failed to secure a license and were fined $1,000. A second offense brings a fine of $100,000. (2) Two weeks after the catastrophic April tornadoes hit Alabama and neighboring states, Bailey Brothers Music Co. of Birmingham offered to help. To soothe those suffering depression and grief from devastating property losses, Bailey Brothers sponsored weekly drum circles.

-- Must Be Guilty: Arrested in Woodbridge, Va., in July for burglary after being discovered by police inside the MVC Late Night adult store: U.S. Army officer Justin Dale Little Jim, 28 (who was found physically engaged with a "blow-up doll"). Little Jim's chances for acquittal are slim under News of the Weird's insightful theory of criminal culpability known as the "Three First Names" hypothesis.

-- In June in the Houston suburb of Alvin, Texas, a petite, 42-year-old Walmart customer came across three men running out of the store carrying shoplifted beer. She decided that it was up to her to take a stand because, as she said later, she was "sick of the lawlessness." The woman (whose name, coincidentally, is Monique Lawless) chased the men, climbed onto the hood of their getaway car, even jumping up and down on it, to delay their escape. The three were eventually arrested: Sylvester Andre Thompson and his brothers Sylvester Durlentren Thompson and Sylvester Primitivo Thompson.

(1) If Yogi Berra Wrote the Headline: "Woman Missing Since She Got Lost" (Chicago Sun-Times, 5-17-2011). (2) Please Explain: "Teen Dies of Shaken Baby Syndrome" (Chicago Tribune, 3-9-2011). "Man With Clown Nose in New Cumberland Poses No Serious Threat" (Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa., 7-3-2011). (3) Run for the Hills: "Return of the Giant Carnivorous Hermaphrodite Snails" (Yahoo News-LiveScience.com, 6-3-2011). (4) Not What You Think: "Showboat Casino Hotel to Become First Dog-Friendly Casino in Atlantic City" (Press of Atlantic City, 2-3-2011) (Guests' dogs can be admitted to the floor, but dogs are still forbidden to play poker.)

The usual furtive restroom photographer is male, but sheriff's deputies in Plantation, Fla., arrested Rhonda Hollander, 47, in July and charged her with several misdemeanors and a felony stemming from an episode in which she allegedly followed a man inside the men's room at the West Regional Courthouse and snapped photos of him at a urinal. Hollander insisted she had violated no law, and indeed the charges against her were only for conduct after she was confronted by deputies (when she continued to take pictures as they led her away). Hollander is actually Judge Hollander, who works in the building as a traffic magistrate.

Advances in DNA testing have improved society in several ways in the last two decades, especially in criminal justice, but in many states, one area remains a backwater, as News of the Weird has noted over the years: men's obligation to pay support for children they did not father. Ray Thomas of Houston is the most recent frustrated complainant, with a court refusing to relieve him of the $52,000 in back child support he owes for a "daughter" that DNA has subsequently shown is not his. Ironically, in March the Texas legislature became one of the few to allow men like Thomas to present DNA evidence in order to end court-ordered support, but the state attorney general noted that the new law covers only prospective judicial orders.

Board-certified Kansas City, Mo., psychiatrist (and University of Kansas School of Medicine graduate) Dr. Donald Hinton told reporters in February (2002) that "Elvis Aron Presley, the entertainer (whom) everybody believes died in 1977," is alive and that Hinton has been treating him for migraine headaches, among other things, for five years. Hinton, 35, said he has several items from Presley containing his DNA and has continually denied that he's running a scam. An Elvis Presley Enterprises official was unfazed, insisting that Elvis is still "in the garden (at Graceland)." (Update: Dr. Hinton subsequently self-published a book, co-authored with Elvis, explaining their relationship, and was subsequently investigated by the Missouri Healing Arts Board, which ultimately closed the investigation without charges.)