Saddam Hussein Back in the News: (1) Mohamed Bishr, an Egyptian man bearing a remarkable resemblance to the late Iraqi dictator, claimed in October that he had been briefly kidnapped after spurning an offer to portray Saddam in a porn video. Bishr's adult sons told the al-Ahram newspaper in Alexandria that their father had been offered the equivalent of $330,000. (In 2002, according to a 2010 Washington Post report, the CIA briefly contemplated using a Saddam impersonator in a porn video as a tool to publicly embarrass Saddam into relinquishing power prior to the U.S. invasion.) (2) In October, former British soldier Nigel Ely offered at auction in Derby, England, a two-foot-square piece of metal that he said came from the iconic Baghdad statue of Saddam toppled by U.S. Marines in April 2003. Ely said he had grabbed the piece indiscriminately, but remembers that it was a portion of Saddam's buttocks.

-- Apparently, officials at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport felt the need for professional guidance on rebranding their facility to (as one put it) "carry it into the modern era," and so hired the creative talents of Big Communications of Birmingham, Ala., to help. Big's suggested name for the airport, announced to great fanfare in September: "Chattanooga Airport."

-- Justice! ... Now! (1) Elsie Pawlow, a senior citizen of Edmonton, Alberta, filed a $100,000 lawsuit in September against Kraft Canada Inc., parent company of the makers of Stride Gum, which brags that it is "ridiculously long-lasting." Pawlow complained that she had to scrub down her dentures after using Stride, to "dig out" specks of gum -- a condition that caused her to experience "depression for approximately 10 minutes." (2) Colleen O'Neal filed a lawsuit recently against United/Continental airlines over the "post traumatic stress disorder" she said she has suffered since a 20-minute flight in October 2009 -- in which, during turbulent weather, the plane "banked" from side to side and lost altitude.

-- In August, a state court in Frankfurt, Germany, awarded 3,000 euros (about $4,200) to Magnus Gaefgen, 36, on his claim that during a 2002 police interrogation, officers "threat(ened) ... violence" against him if he did not disclose what he knew about a missing 11-year-old boy who was later found dead. In 2003, Gaefgen was convicted of the boy's murder and is serving a life sentence, but the court nevertheless thought he should be compensated for his "pain and suffering."

-- Names in the News: The man stabbed to death in Calgary, Alberta, in August: the 29-year-old Mr. Brent Stabbed Last. Among the family members of Jared Loughner (the man charged with shooting U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in January) who were interviewed by authorities regarding mental illnesses in the Loughner family: Loughner's distant cousin Judy Wackt. Passed away in May in Fredericksburg, Va.: retired Army Sgt. Harry Palm. Charged with murder in Decatur, Ill., in September: a (predictably underrespected) 15-year-old boy named Shitavious Cook.

-- Hey, It Could've Happened: (1) The British recreation firm UK Paintball announced in August that a female customer had been injured after a paintball shot hit her in the chest, causing her silicone breast implant to "explode." The company recommended that paintball facilities supply better chest protection for women with implants. (2) The Moscow, Russia, newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets reported in October that a local woman's life had been saved by her "state-of-the-art" silicone breast implant. Her husband had stabbed her repeatedly in the chest during a domestic argument, but the implant's gel supposedly deflected the blade.

(1) In Charlotte, N.C., in October, a female motorist was arrested for ramming another woman's car after that woman said "Good morning" to the motorist's boyfriend as the women dropped kids off at school. (2) In Arbutus, Md., in October, a woman was arrested for throwing bleach and disinfectant at another woman in a Walmart (an incident in which at least 19 bystanders sought medical assistance). Police learned that the arrestee's child's father had become the boyfriend of the bleach-targeted woman. (3) In a hospital in Upland, Pa., in October, two pregnant women (ages 21 and 22) were arrested after injuring a woman, 36, and a girl, 15, in a brawl inside a patient's room.

-- The North Koreans called it a "cruise ship" and tried to establish a business model to attract wealthy tourists from China, but to the New York Times reporter on board in September, the 40-year-old boat was more like a "tramp steamer" on which "vacationers" paid the equivalent of $470 to "enjoy" five days and nights at sea. More than 200 people boarded the "dim" and "musty" vessel, "sometimes eight to a room with floor mattresses" and iffy bathrooms. The onboard "entertainment" consisted not of shuffleboard but of "decks of cards" and karaoke. Dinner "resembled a mess hall at an American Army base," but with leftovers thrown overboard (even though some of it was blown back on deck). The trip was capped, wrote the Times, by the boat's crashing into the pier as it docked, knocking a corner of the structure "into a pile of rubble."

-- The thief who made off with the valuable lamp from St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Winson Green, England, in October might well return to the building soon, for confession. Clearly visible on the surveillance video inside was the man, as he was just about to snatch up the lamp, making the sign of the cross.

-- Sally Stricker was angry that the Nebraska troopers patrolling the state fair grounds in September had told her that she had an "illegal" message on her T-shirt and that if she wished to remain at the fair, she would have to either change shirts or wear hers inside out. The "message" was a marijuana leaf with the slogan "Don't panic, It's organic." Stricker was at the fair to attend the night's live concert -- starring (marijuana-friendly) Willie Nelson.

-- Boise State University's highly rated football team suspended three players for several games at the beginning of the season for violating eligibility rules by receiving impermissible financial benefits. According to an October news release by the school, the most prominent player sanctioned was Geraldo Boldewijn, the team's fastest wide receiver, who had improperly received the use of a car. (However, it was a 1990 Toyota Camry with 177,000 miles on it.)

(1) It's Bad for You: A 44-year-old woman was hospitalized with a head injury and a broken clavicle in September after she inadvertently walked into a still-moving train at the Needham Center station near Boston. Her attention had been diverted because she was trying to light her cigarette as she walked. (2) Sometimes, It's OK: A 51-year-old woman told police she fought off an attempted street robbery in Pennsville Township, N.J., in October by burning the age-20-something assailant with her lit cigarette. She said the man yelled "Ouch" and ran away.

In a 1992 issue of the journal Sexual and Marital Therapy, two therapists at the Institute of Psychiatry in London described "orgasmic reconditioning" they performed on their patient, "George," age 20. They reported "partial" success in getting George to switch his masturbatory stimuli from the family car (an Austin Metro) to photographs of naked women. George had reported arousal previously only when sitting in the car or when squatting behind it while the engine was running. (Before that, George was sexually preoccupied with urination by women, children and dogs.)

"My ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live," explained the former Alfred David, 79, otherwise known in his native Belgium as "Monsieur Pingouin" (Mr. Penguin), so named because a 1968 auto accident left him with a waddle in his walk that he decided to embrace with gusto. (His wife abandoned the marriage when he made the name change official; evidently, being "Mrs. Penguin" was not what she had signed up for.) Mr. Pingouin started a penguin-item museum that ultimately totaled 3,500 items, and he created a hooded, full-body black-and-white penguin outfit that, according to a September Reuters dispatch, he wears daily in his waddles around his Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek.

-- Though South Korean children score among the highest in the world on standardized reading and math tests, their success comes at a price, according to an October Time magazine dispatch. They supposedly suffer "educational masochism" -- punishing themselves by overstudy, especially in high school preparing for university admissions tests (a process so competitive that even test-coaching schools are picky about accepting students). Earlier this year, to curb the "masochism," the government began enforcing a 10 p.m. curfew on coaching-school activities, and in Seoul, a six-man team conducts nightly after-hours raids on classes that run late-night sessions behind shuttered windows. (Ironically, Time acknowledged, American educational reformers want U.S. students to study harder, like Asians do, but Asian reformers want their students to relax, like American students.)

-- In America, the quest for perfectly straight teeth can lead to orthodontia bills of thousands of dollars, but in Japan, a dental "defect" -- slightly crooked canine teeth -- makes young women more fetching, even "adorable," say many men. Women with the "yaeba" look have canines pushed slightly forward by the molars behind them so that the canines develop a fang-like appearance. One dental salon, the Plaisir, in Tokyo, recently began offering non-permanent fixtures that replicate the look among straight-toothed women.

-- Polls report that as many as 57 percent of Russians "notice" signs of a "cult" surrounding Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to a September Spiegel Online dispatch, and a chief cult leader is "Mother Fotina," 62, who has a following of thousands among Russian Orthodox practitioners and believes herself to be the reincarnation of Joan of Arc and Putin to be St. Paul. "God," she said, "has appointed Putin to Russia to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ." Mother Fotina was a convicted embezzler in the 1990s, and critics suspect her devotion to Putin is a ruse to deflect law-enforcement attention.

-- Sheriff's deputies in Bergholz, Ohio, arrested three Amish men in October and charged them in incidents in which other Amish men and women had their homes invaded and their hair (and men's beards) cut off -- supposedly grave insults. The three are part of an 18-family breakaway sect of Amish who were said to be exacting revenge upon mainstream Amish for insufficiently pious behavior. The "bishop" of the breakaways, Sam Mullet, 65, denied the arrestees were acting under his authority.

-- "Snakeman" Raymond Hoser, of Park Orchards, Australia, was about to be fined in August for violating his Commercial Wildlife Demonstrator License -- by failing to keep at least three meters' distance between his venomous snakes and the public -- when he hit upon a defense: He would prove that he had de-venomized the deadly taipan and death adder snakes by allowing them to bite his 10-year-old daughter on the arm. (Though both bites drew blood, the girl was otherwise unhurt. Said Hoser, "(I)f they'd been venomous, she'd have been dead in two minutes.")

-- For the 10-year remembrances of Sept. 11 this year, many cities recalled the tragedy with monuments and public events, including Washington Township, N.J., about 20 miles from ground zero. A large commemorative plaque was unveiled, but provoked immediate outrage because the only names on it were not victims' but only the mayor's and those of the five council members who approved the plaque. Said one retired police officer, "It made my blood boil." (Mayor Samir Elbassiouny later apologized and ordered a steel overlay to obscure the politicians' names.)

-- A judge in Nice, France, ruled in September that Article 215 of the French civil code (defining marriage as a "shared communal life") in fact requires that husband and wife have sex. A husband identified only as Jean-Louis B. had evidently lost interest years earlier, and his wife was granted a divorce. Apparently emboldened by her victory, she then filed a monetary claim against the husband for the 21-year-long lack of sex, and the judge awarded her 10,000 euros (about $13,710).

-- It might well be "excessive force" if a sheriff's deputy beats and pepper-sprays a black motorist who had been stopped only because the deputy saw the motorist without a fastened seatbelt. A district court judge had concluded that the force was surely justified, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in August that excessiveness of force was for a jury to evaluate. (The deputy's explanation: The motorist, waiting for the deputy to finish his report, was sitting on a curb eating a bowl of broccoli, and the deputy had to beat him down, he said, out of fear that the motorist would throw the broccoli at him and then attack him.)

"Urban farming" is growing more popular among city-dwelling progressives committed to eating local foods, but that usually involves gardens in backyards. For Robert McMinn and Jules Corkery, it means raising two chickens in their one-bedroom apartment in New York City -- just to have a supply of fresh eggs. "I don't think it's the ideal situation," McMinn told the New York Daily News in October. However, he said, the hens are "cute. They're fun to (watch) run around. They're excited when we come home." On the other hand, he said, "(T)hey poop everywhere."

Bank Robbers Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Thomas Love, 40, was arrested in New Castle County, Del., in October after he had walked out of a WSFS Bank empty-handed. According to police, Love had presented a demand note to a teller, who couldn't make out the writing and handed it back, provoking Love to flee. (2) Henry Elmer, 56, was arrested in Yuma, Ariz., in October where he had just sat down to enjoy a beer at the Village Inn Pizza Parlor. Police identified Elmer as the man who just moments earlier had robbed the Wells Fargo bank in the same block and "fled" the few steps to the Village Inn (which is also just across the street from the Yuma Police Station).

Soon, it might be absolutely impossible to get hurt in Britain -- because of stringent health and safety rules. St. Mary's Church in Cottingham announced it would go without an overhead light because government rules require that it rig scaffolding to change the light bulb in its 30-foot-high ceiling. (Using a ladder would be unsafe.) And following the August riots in London, hundreds of volunteers took to the streets to speed the cleanup process, but at several junctures, police turned them away, fearful that the civic-minded workers lacked the sense to avoid cutting themselves on the broken glass and debris.

In January (1994) at the Lake Como Fish and Game Club near Syracuse, N.Y., Brian Carr beat out three dozen competitors in the annual ice-fishing derby with 155 catches. The temperature that day was minus-30(F), and prize money for the top three anglers was, respectively, $8, $6.50 and $5.

London Fashion Week usually brings forth a shock or two from cutting-edge designers, but a September creation by Rachel Freire might have raised the bar: a floor-length dress made from 3,000 cow nipples (designed to resemble roses). Initial disgust for the garment centered on implied animal abuse, but Freire deflected that issue by pointing out that the nipples had been discarded by a tannery and that her use amounted to "recycling." The 32-year-old Freire, who has worked with mainstream entertainers such as Christina Aguilera, was kept so busy with the animal-abuse angle that she was largely spared having to explain another issue -- why anyone would want to wear a dress made with cow nipples.

-- Death is big business in Japan, with 1.2 million people a year passing away and overtaxing the country's cemeteries and crematoriums. With the average wait for disposal at least several days, and space running short in funeral homes, "corpse hotels" have opened in many cities, with climate-controlled "guest rooms" renting for the equivalent of about $155 a night, with viewing rooms where relatives can visit the bodies daily until cremation is available.

-- The world's real economy may be flagging, but not necessarily the make-believe economy of online multiplayer games, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal (July) and the website Singularity Hub (August). For example, entrepreneur Ailin Graef's Anshe Chung Studios is worth "millions" of real U.S. dollars, earned mostly by managing rentals of make-believe real estate and brokering make-believe money transactions in the game Second Life. Graef also commands top (real) dollar for her designs of make-believe fashions for players' game characters (avatars). Two other companies are suing each other in federal court in San Francisco over the copyright to their lucrative business models of creating make-believe animals (horses, rabbits) that sell very well to players who take them on as game pets for their characters or breed them to make other make-believe animals.

-- No sooner had Anthony Sowell been convicted in August of murdering 11 women in Cleveland and burying their remains around his property than entrepreneur Eric Gein of Florida had hired someone to fill sandwich bags of soil from Sowell's property so that he could sell the souvenir dirt for $25 a gram on the Internet. (Gein follows well-publicized salesmen who have famously collected the pubic hair of New York prostitute-killer Arthur Shawcross, the crawlspace dirt from the house of John Wayne Gacy, and the "fried hair" of Ted Bundy -- that fell on the floor as he was executed.)

-- In July, a surgeon from Britain's Oxford Radcliffe Hospital announced a cure for a 57-year-old man with a rare condition that made, in his mind, audible and ever-louder sounds whenever his eyeballs moved. "Superior canal dehiscence syndrome" elevates the interior sounds of the body (such as heartbeat and the "friction" of muscles moving against muscles) to disturbing levels.

-- Artificial meat (grown in a test tube from animal stem cells) has been theoretically planned for about 10 years, but a European Science Foundation audience in September heard predictions that lab-grown sausage might be available as soon as next year. The meat is produced in sheets ("shmeat") and would be prohibitively expensive at first, in that the largest specimen produced so far measures only about one inch long and a third of an inch wide. The biggest drawback facing artificial muscle tissue: that even lab-grown muscles require exercise to prevent atrophy.

-- Recent Alarming Headlines: (1) "Miami Invaded by Giant, House-Eating Snails" (up-to-10-inch-long snails that attach to, and slowly gnaw on, stucco walls). (2) "Scientists Develop Blood Swimming 'Microspiders' to Heal Injuries, Deliver Drugs" (spider-like "machines," made of gold and silica, smaller than a red blood cell yet which can travel through veins carrying drugs and be directionally controlled by researchers).

-- In an art-science collaboration in August, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi and Utah State researcher Randy Lewis produced a prototype bulletproof skin -- or at least skin that would limit a .22-caliber bullet to only about 2 inches' penetration into a simulated human body. Genetically engineered spider silk (reputed to be five times stronger than steel) was grafted between layers of dermis and epidermis. Mused Essaidi, we "in the near future ... (may) no longer need to descend from a godly bloodline in order to have traits like invulnerability...."

Turned down once before, liquor manufacturer EFAG convinced Germany's Federal Patent Court in September to award trademark protection to its schnapps with the brand name Ficken, which in German translates directly into what in English is known as the F word. The court acknowledged that the name is unquestionably in poor taste but is not "sexually discriminatory" and does not violate public morals. In fact, the court noted, the word is widely used in Germany. (In March 2010, the European Union trademarks authority granted a German brewery the right to call its beer "Fucking Hell" -- the first word of which is the actual name of an Austrian village and the second a German word referring to light ale.)

(1) The Department of Motor Vehicles office in Roseville, Calif., was closed for a week in July after a driving school student crashed into the building and left a five-foot hole in the wall. (2) A young man taking a test at the drivers' center in Brisbane, Australia, in August lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a bench outside the building, hitting his mother, who was waiting for him. (3) A 56-year-old DMV driving tester was killed in July when the woman she was evaluating ran off the road in Williamsburg, Va., and struck a tree.

In October, a court in Ottawa, Ontario, sentenced pornography collector Richard Osborn, 46, to a year in jail on several charges, but dismissed the more serious child porn counts. Judge Robert Fournier ruled that Osborn's hard-core images of Bart and Lisa Simpson, and Milhouse, were not illegal, on the grounds that he could not be sure of the characters' ages. (Baby Maggie Simpson was depicted, but she was not involved in sex.) Judge Fournier was clearly exasperated at Osborn's perversions, among them his homemade video of swimsuit-clad youngsters, interspersed with shots of Osborn himself masturbating, aided by a Cabbage Patch doll whose mouth had been cut open. At one point, a disgusted Judge Fournier cut off the presentation of evidence. "Enough," he said. "We are not paid by the taxpayers to sit here and torture ourselves."

One would think the robber of a gas station would consider filling the tank before fleeing. However, Moses Gift, 47, was arrested in September in Winston-Salem, N.C., and charged with robbing the Huff Shell station -- shortly before running out of gas a short distance away. And in Winder, Ga., Micah Mitchell was arrested in October shortly after, according to police, he crashed through the front door of a BP station to steal merchandise. He was arrested minutes later a few miles from the station, where he had run out of gas.

In April (1994), defendant Arthur Hollingsworth, despite previous recalcitrance, for some reason agreed, reluctantly, to waive his constitutional right of silence and to testify on his own behalf in his trial for armed robbery of a Houston convenience store. Prosecutor Jay Hileman first got Hollingsworth to admit that he was in the store at the time it was robbed and that he was armed. Then Hileman asked, "Mr. Hollingsworth, you're guilty, aren't you?" Hollingsworth replied, "No." Hileman repeated the question: "Mr. Hollingsworth, you're guilty, aren't you?" Hollingsworth: "Yeah." Hileman said he had no further questions.