NOTE: So much "weird" news just involves different people caught in the middle of the same old weirdness. For this week and next, check out recent Recurring Themes (plus important Updates of previous stories):

-- Larry Walters made history in 1982 with perhaps the most famous balloon ride of all time -- in an ordinary lawn chair, lifted by 45 helium-filled weather balloons -- soaring to over 16,000 feet in Southern California before descending by shooting the balloons one by one. In 2008, gas station manager Kent Couch of Bend, Ore., made a similar lawn-chair flight and had scheduled another, for November 2011, to float over now-allegedly peaceful Baghdad, to raise money for Iraqi orphans. (Couch subsequently postponed his flight until March 2012 to give the charities more time to organize.)

-- Corruption in some Latin American prisons has allowed powerful criminals to buy extraordinary privileges behind bars. News of the Weird's report on Venezuela's San Antonio prison in July described the imperial reign of one drug lord-inmate, who presided over a personal armory, a local-community drug market and private parties (and with his own DirecTV account). In a surprise raid in November on a prison in Acapulco, Mexico, the usual drugs and weapons turned up, but also 100 fighting roosters for daily gambling, along with a prisoner's two pet peacocks.

-- The lives of many choking victims have been saved by the Heimlich Maneuver -- even one received inadvertently, such as the one a Leesburg, Fla., motorist gave himself in 2001, after gagging on a hamburger, then losing control and smashing into a utility pole. As he was thrust against the steering wheel, the burger dislodged. In November 2011, as the mother of 8-year-old Laci Davis drove her to a Cincinnati hospital after a locket stuck in her throat and caused her to double over in pain, Mom hit a pothole, which jarred Laci and dislodged the locket loose into her stomach (later to come out naturally).

-- It seemed a rare event (first reported in 1994 but initially regarded as an "urban legend"). However, twice now recently, workers have played a particularly dangerous prank on a colleague. A month after the recent News of the Weird story about Gareth Durrant's lawsuit in England against co-workers who had inserted a compressed-air hose into his rectum, a carpenter's assistant in Nicosia, Cyprus, was jailed for 45 days for pulling the same stunt on his colleague, rupturing his large intestine.

-- Sometimes professionals who overbill for their hours go too far, claiming obviously impossible schedules, such as lawyers News of the Weird reported on in 1992 and 1994 (one, a Raleigh, N.C., lawyer, submitted one client bills averaging nearly 1,200 hours a month -- even though a month only has 744 hours). New York City officials said in October 2011, however, that it's quite possible that city prison psychiatrist Dr. Quazi Rahman actually did work 141 hours one week, including 96 straight (because of a shortage of staff and because he could properly nap during his shifts). They ordered him to return only a tiny amount of his $500,000 in overtime payments for the last year.

-- Ten years ago, the fashionable bulletproof clothing industry was in its infancy, with Miss Israel creating a stir at the 2001 Miss Universe pageant with a bulletproof evening gown. Since then, technology and design improvements (along with more rich people!) have enabled leading stylist Miguel Caballero of Colombia to add to his fashion line. The New Yorker reported in September 2011 that Caballero had made a bulletproof dinner jacket for Sean Combs and kimono for Steven Seagal, and that Caballero clothes are available in strengths of bullet-stopping, from "9 mm" to "Uzi."

-- Rumors that daring youth are inserting tampons soaked in vodka into body orifices to speed alcohol delivery have been around for at least 10 years. Curiously, the only regular-sourced news stories come from TV stations in Phoenix (KNXV-TV in 2009 and KPHO-TV in 2011), and the "urban legends" source Snopes.com calls the whole idea far-fetched. Nonetheless, in November 2011, a school resource officer told KPHO's Elizabeth Erwin that there are "documented cases" and that "guys," too, engage by inserting the tampons into their rectums. Dr. Dan Quan of the Maricopa Medical Center cautioned against the practice, warning of the dangers of mucosal irritation.

-- Anti-government survivalists engaged in high-profile standoffs have made News of the Weird -- most recently the story of Ed Brown and his wife and supporters, resisting a federal tax bill, holed up for nine months in the New Hampshire woods near Plainfield in 2007. (The Browns were arrested by a U.S. marshal who tricked his way inside.) The longest-running standoff now is probably that of John Joe Gray, 63, and his extended family in a 47-acre, well-fortified compound in Trinidad, Texas, southeast of Dallas. They have lived ascetic settlers' lives since Gray jumped bail in 2000 on a traffic charge. Gray has said he feels free on his land and warned authorities "better bring plenty of body bags" if they try to re-arrest him.

-- Unlicensed "surgeon"-castrator Edward Bodkin re-surfaced recently after more than a decade under the radar. He was sentenced to four years in prison in 1999 in Huntington, Ind., for unauthorized practice of medicine (removing the testicles, with consent, of five men). Bodkin was arrested in August 2011 in Wetumpka, Ala., and charged with possession of child pornography, but authorities also recovered castration equipment, videos of castrations, photos of testicles in jars and a form contract apparently used by Bodkin to obtain the consent of men going under his knife.

-- In January 2009, the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services removed three kids from the home of Heath and Deborah Campbell in Holland Township, apparently after becoming alarmed that the Campbells might be white supremacists. Though a court later concluded that the kids had been "abused," the Campbells told the New York Daily News in October 2011 that the state acted only based on the names the parents had given the kids -- Adolf Hitler Campbell, who was then 3, and his then-1-year-old sisters, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell. The Campbells have consistently denied that they are neo-Nazis.

-- It is almost No Longer Weird that Western chefs attempt to get as exotic as they can serving plants, insects and obscure parts of animals in their dishes that are usually only experienced by cultures far removed from America. Jennifer McLagan's recent book on how to cook animals' "odd" parts describes various recipes for cooking hearts, heads, tongues and ears, and guesses that the next big thing in Western eating will be testicles. "(S)teaks and chops are like bulletproof to cook," she said. "Any idiot can cook a steak, right?"

-- Thomas Beatie was big news in March 2008 when he and his wife, Nancy, decided to start a family, except that Thomas, not Nancy, took on the child-bearing responsibilities. (Thomas, born a female, had his breasts removed but retained his reproductive organs.) Thomas got pregnant, appeared on "Oprah," and subsequently had three children (who mugged delightfully for the cameras on the syndicated TV show "The Doctors" in October 2011). He also revealed on the show that it might be time to get his tubes tied, as each pregnancy requires him, irritatingly, to abandon his male hormone regimen.

Only the Government: Stung by criticism in 2007 that they were neglecting severely wounded service members, the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have now gone extreme the other way, routinely providing at least a half-dozen (and as many as two dozen) caseworkers per patient. A Government Accountability Office report in October said the result was "duplication, confusion and turf battles," according to a November Washington Post story, leaving the members and their families often conflicted and overwhelmed about prognoses. At times the Pentagon (serving active-duty personnel) and the VA (ex-military) balked over coordinating their treatments. The agencies, however, told the Post that any duplication was intentional, even though the Post cited military families who each wished they had a single, authoritative case manager they could turn to. A GAO official called the situation "crazy" and "disturbing."

-- The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has reached "the nadir of absurdity," wrote Wired.com, after a December report in The Atlantic revealed that Pakistan "secures" its tactical nuclear weapons by moving them around the country in ordinary unmarked vans ("without noticeable defenses"). It supposedly uses the "Econolines of Doom," "hidden" in plain sight on the country's highways, because it fears the U.S. (its "ally") would steal the bombs if it knew where they were. Dizzyingly, wrote Wired, the U.S. funds Pakistan yet regularly invades it, though desperately needing Pakistan's help in Afghanistan, even as Pakistani soldiers fight alongside Afghan insurgents against the U.S.

-- In October, the super-enthusiastic winners of a Kingston, Ontario, radio station contest claimed their prize: the chance to don gloves and dig for free Buffalo Bills' football tickets (value: $320), buried in buffalo manure in a child's plastic inflatable pool. The show's host, Sarah Crosbie, reported the digging live (but, overcome by the smell, vomited on the air). More curious was a runner-up contestant who continued to muck around for the second prize, even though it was only tickets to a local zoo.

-- In a federal lawsuit for malicious prosecution, a judge found a "strong" likelihood that EPA agent Keith Phillips "deliberately" set up a hazardous-waste enforcement case against Hubert Vidrine for the purpose of facilitating his own work/sex relationship with a female EPA agent. According to the court, Phillips was married and unable to carry on with the agent (stationed in another city) except when they worked together, which they did periodically over a three-year period on the Vidrine case. In October, Vidrine was awarded $1.6 million in damages.

-- Least Competent Plans: (1) L.B. Williams, a black man married to a white woman in Panama City, Fla., reported that the Ku Klux Klan had burned a cross in his driveway in November and left a threatening note. However, the note did not demand that the couple move from the neighborhood; it demanded that they stay. Since the Klan is not known for supporting mixed-race couples, the police were suspicious and ultimately charged Williams with making the threats himself -- to frighten his wife into abandoning the divorce she had recently requested. (2) Paul Moran, possessing (according to his lawyer) "considerable intellectual ability," nonetheless attempted a procedure to turn his own feces into gold (and was sentenced in October to three months in jail in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, after accidentally setting his apartment on fire in the process).

-- Cry for Help: Math teacher Paul LaDuke, 75, was fired in November from the Schaumburg (Ill.) Christian School after a student reported seeing him brazenly masturbate, with his pants lowered, as he sat behind his desk in a full classroom. LaDuke had been at the school for 26 years, and police believe (according to a Chicago Tribune report) he had "committed similar acts at the school several times a year for a decade or longer."

-- Proportionality: (1) Daniel Vilca, 26, was ordered to prison for the rest of his life (without possibility of parole) following his conviction in Naples, Fla., in November for having pornographic photos of children on his computer. He had no previous criminal record, nor was there evidence of any contact with children. The judge computed the sentence by multiplying a five-year term by the 454 photos police found. (2) A week earlier, a judge in Dayton, Ohio, sentenced former CEO Michael Peppel, 44, for defrauding his shareholders by overstating revenue in a company that went on to lose $298 million and cost 1,300 employees their jobs. Sentencing guidelines recommended an 8- to 10-year term, but federal judge Sandra Beckwith ordered Peppel to jail for seven days.

-- Dog walker Kimberly Zakrzewski was found not guilty in October of violating the poop-scooping ordinance of Fairfax County, Va., despite photographic "evidence" of dog piles submitted by neighbors Virginia and Christine Cornell (who had previously been feuding with Zakrzewski). The jury chose to give greater weight to testimony by the dog's owner that the photographed piles were bigger than anything she had ever seen from "Baxter." The owner also revealed that she had brought to court one of Baxter's actual piles but decided to leave it in her car.

-- Bad Shots: (1) A 22-year-old man was shot in the face on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in September; his companion on the camping trip thought he was shooting at a bear. (2) An 85-year-old man was shot in the face in Augusta, Ga., in September; a female acquaintance thought she was shooting at an opossum. (3) A 20-year-old woman was shot in Vilas County, Wis., in July; deputy sheriff Ty Peterson (a relative) thought he was shooting at a cougar.

-- Can't Stop Himself: Convicted child-sex offender Charlie Price, 57, was arrested in Pittsfield, Mass., in October, but only for disturbing the peace -- because the "victim" was merely made of cardboard. Price, spotting a sunglasses display in a Rite-Aid pharmacy, had begun kissing and licking the face of the pictured model, and groping her.

-- (1) Two men outfitted as zombies were arrested for assault at a Halloween party at a nudist resort in Pasco County, Fla. (One bit a security guard, but he was not infected.) (2) Jeffrey Lluis, 27, who performed stand-up comedy at clubs around Tampa, apparently held a day job as bank robber (charged in November with knocking off a SunTrust bank -- twice).

-- Thinning the Herd: (1) In October, a 30-year-old woman and her unidentified boyfriend were killed as they carried their domestic brawl from their car onto Interstate 485 near Pineville, N.C., and were struck by separate vehicles. (2) A 27-year-old man was killed in a one-car crash in Broward County, Fla., in October. He (a passenger) had punched his wife (the driver) in the face, causing her to lose control and careen into a lake. (She and the couple's 3-year-old daughter, in the backseat, survived.)

-- John Moore, 67, golfs nearly every day and has for about 20 years, according to a July (2007) St. Petersburg Times report. The golf he plays, though, consists of hitting 35 long-iron shots (five shots with each of the seven balls he owns) on a grassy median strip along Interstate 275 in downtown Tampa. "You can't play this game one day, two days in a week," he said. "You have to play it all the time if you want to do something with it." What Moore wants to do with it, he told the Times, is to someday soon make his first-ever appearance on an actual golf course.

Chinese Education Values: To get to their school, 80 children (aged 6 to 17) in the mountaintop village of Pili, China, near the borders with Tajikistan and Afghanistan, make a 120-mile journey that includes 50 miles on foot or by camel. The most dangerous parts of the route are an inches-wide path cut into a cliff (over a 1,000-foot drop), a 600-foot-long zip-line drop and crossings of four freezing rivers (easier in winter when they are frozen solid). The kids must make the chaperoned treks four times a year -- coming and going for each of two long sessions. According to one teacher, Ms. Su, the kids generally enjoy the adventure. The government is building a road to the village, but it will not be finished until 2013.

-- Globally (except in Japan), family-run businesses underperform those run by professional managers. Japanese corporations often seem to have a talented son to take over for his father. The main reason for that, according to an August Freakonomics radio report, is that the family scions usually first recruit an ideal "son" and then adopt him, often also encouraging their daughters to marry the men. (Japanese adage: "You can't choose your sons, but you can choose your sons-in-law.") If the man is already married, sometimes he and his wife will both get adopted. In fact, while 98 percent of U.S. adoptions are of children, 98 percent of Japan's are of adults.

-- At an October ceremony in the Satara district in India's Maharashtra state, 285 girls were allowed to change their names, as each of them had originally been named the Hindi word "Nakusa," which translates to "unwanted" (expressing their parents' disappointment at not having had a son). In Satara, only 881 girls are born for every 1,000 boys, reportedly the result of abortion, given the expense of raising a girl (whose family is expected to pay for any wedding and give a dowry to the groom's family).

-- Swedish Judges Get Tough: (1) A court dismissed charges against two 20-year-old men in October, accused of having bared a passed-out, 18-year-old woman's breasts at a party and taken photographs. Since the woman was not "aware" that she was being molested, the act was not a crime, ruled the Stockholm District Court. (2) Also in October, the Falun District Court in central Sweden convicted 23 women of possession of "large quantities" of child pornography, but gave them suspended sentences, merely fining them in amounts as low as the equivalent of $375. Their male "ringleader" was sentenced to one year in prison.

-- Dubai is a city of towering, architecturally brilliant skyscrapers, but since all were built only in the last several decades, the city's central sewer system has not been able to keep up. Consequently, reported NPR's "Fresh Air" in November, only a few are hooked up to the municipal system, and the remainder must hire fleets of tanker trucks to carry away the waste water. The trucks then must queue up, sometimes for 24 hours at a time, to dispose of it at treatment plants.

-- Factory worker Billy Hyatt, who was fired in 2009 by north Georgia plastics company Pliant Corp., filed a lawsuit in August alleging illegal religious discrimination. Pliant (now called Berry Plastics) required its employees to wear stickers indicating the number of consecutive accident-free days, and March 12, 2009, was the 666th day. When Hyatt refused to wear "the mark of the beast" (embracing that number, he thought, would condemn him to hell), he was suspended and then fired.

-- The International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Mo., recently celebrated 12 consecutive years of around-the-clock musical praying, which Pastor Mike Bickle and his evangelical congregation believe is necessary to fight the devil's continuous infiltration of the realms of power in society (business, media, government, etc.). "To keep the music going," according to an October Los Angeles Times dispatch, "the church has 25 bands playing throughout the week in two-hour sets," divided between "devotional" music and "intercessions," in which God is petitioned to help some cause or place. Bickle claims that there are "thousands" of 24/7 prayer groups in the world.

-- Israelis lately experience attacks not just from the outside but from its own ultra-Orthodox communities (about 10 percent of the country, and growing), whose activists have jeered and stoned "immodestly" dressed women and girls (as young as 6) on the street, defaced women's images on billboards, forced illegal gender segregation in public facilities (including buses and sidewalks), and vandalized businesses that treat women as equals (such as one ice cream shop -- since female customers lick the cones in public). An especially violent minority, the Sikrikim, employ some tactics reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan in America.

Each August in Urakawa, Japan, a "hallucination and delusion competition" takes place among visiting alcoholics and sufferers of mental disorders, who in principle are helped by bonding with fellow patients and revealing their failures and successes. The Bethel Festival, named for its sponsor, brings about 600 people together for on-stage presentations (sometimes in the form of song or dance) and awards a grand prize to a standout visitor (one year, to a woman who lived for four days in a public restroom after a voice in her head told her to, and in another year, to a man who had overcome a 35-year stretch of never straying more than two yards from his mother). (Some mental-disorder professionals believe the festival is too-easily mockable by insensitive outsiders.)

How does an extortionist (or kidnapper) safely collect the money that has been dropped off for him? In July, police staking out a vacant field in Colerain Township, Ohio, after leaving the $22,000 ordered by alleged extortionist Frank Pence, waited for about an hour, but Pence failed to show. Then, one officer noticed the money slowly moving across the field and finally caught up to Pence, who was pulling a very, very long, partially concealed rope from a location a distance from the drop site.

Authorities in Washington County, Ore., said in October that they would not file charges against a very weird 21-year-old woman who had felt compelled, as a tribute to her horse that had just died of old age, to get naked and climb inside the horse's carcass, to "feel one" with it. Her boyfriend recorded the extremely bloody adventure with numerous photographs (many showing her smiling joyously), which made their way onto the Internet and available to any viewers with strong stomachs. Said Deputy Sgt. Dave Thompson: "At some point in your career, you say, yeah, I've seen a lot of bad stuff (and) you see this kind of picture and you realize maybe you haven't seen everything."

A lawyer's first rule of cross-examination is to never ask a question you don't already know the answer to, but criminal defendants who act as their own lawyers typically do not get that memo. Philome Cesar, charged with about 25 robberies in the Allentown, Pa., area, began questioning his alleged victims at his trial in November. Please describe, he asked the first, what the robber sounded like. Answered victim Daryl Evans, "He sounded like you." After Cesar asked a second victim the same question and received the same answer, he decided to stop cross-examining the victims. (He was convicted of 19 counts.)

In New Braunfels, Texas, in November (2005), Robert Villarreal, 34, was sentenced to 50 years in prison after he sold drugs to the same undercover officer for the third time in a 14-year period. He had actually argued "entrapment," claiming that for the first sale, in 1988, he was so young (age 18) that he shouldn't be expected to remember later what the officer looked like.