Newspapers in Sweden reported in January that two of the country's most heinous murderers apparently fell in love with each other behind the locked doors of their psychiatric institution and, following a 26-day Internet-chat "courtship," have decided to marry. Mr. Isakin Jonsson ("the Skara Cannibal") was convicted of killing, decapitating and eating his girlfriend, and Michelle Gustafsson ("the Vampire Woman") was convicted of killing a father of four and drinking his blood. Said the love-struck Jonsson (certainly truthfully), to the newspaper Expressen, "I have never met anyone like (Michelle)." The pair will almost certainly remain locked up forever, but Gustafsson, on the Internet, wrote that she hopes they will be released, to live together and "have dogs and pursue our hobbies, piercing and tattoos."

-- In December, music teacher Kevin Gausepohl, 37, was charged in Tacoma, Wash., Municipal Court with communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, allegedly convincing a 17-year-old female student that she could sing better if she tried it naked. Gausepohl later told an investigator of his excitement about experimenting at the "human participant level" to determine how sexual arousal affects vocal range. The girl complied with "some of" Gausepohl's requests, but finally balked and turned him in.

-- Thinking Outside the Box: (1) Rock Dagenais, 26, pleaded guilty recently to weapons charges after creating a siege by bringing a knife, a sawed-off rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition to a Quebec elementary school. He eventually surrendered peacefully and said he was only trying to send the kids a message not to disrespect each other by bullying. (2) Daniel Whitaker has been hospitalized in Indianapolis ever since, in November, he drove up the steps of the Indiana War Memorial with a gun, gasoline and an American flag, and set the steps on fire. In an interview in December, he told WRTV that he was only trying to get everyone's attention so they would think of Jesus Christ and "love each other."

-- Ghosts in the News: (1) Michael West, 41, of Fond du Lac, Wis., at first said his wife hurt herself by falling, but finally acknowledged that she was attacked -- but by ghosts, not by him. (He was charged, anyway, in January.) (2) Anthony Spicer, 29, was sentenced in January in Cincinnati after being discovered at an abandoned school among copper pipes that had been cut. He denied prosecutors' assertions that he was collecting scrap metal -- because he said he was actually looking for ghosts, since the school "is supposed to be haunted."

-- The 547-acre FBI Academy on the grounds of Quantico (Va.) Marine Base houses a firing range on which about a million bullets a month are shot by agents in training, but it also happens to be a de facto wildlife refuge for the simple fact that the academy is off-limits to Virginia hunters. Thus, according to a December ABC News dispatch, deer learn that, despite the gunfire (sometimes at astonishingly close range as they wander by the targets), none of them ever gets hit. The academy is also a "sanctuary" for foxes, wild turkeys and other critters.

-- Equity Lifestyle Properties of Chicago fired receptionist Sharon Smiley after 10 years' service because she violated company policy by declining to stop working during her lunch hour. (The company's strict policy is apparently based on avoiding liability for overtime pay, but Smiley had in fact clocked out for lunch while remaining at her desk.) Smiley subsequently applied for unemployment benefits, but the administrator denied them because the firing was for insubordination. However, in January, a state appeals court granted the benefits.

-- A South Carolina circuit court ruled in December that the sales contract on a former theater in downtown Laurens, S.C., was binding and that the rightful owner is the African-American-headed New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church -- even though the property's only current tenant is the Redneck Shop, which features Confederacy and Ku Klux Klan merchandise. (New Beginnings purchased the church in 1997 from a Klan member who was unloading it because of a personal riff with the head klansman and who wanted it back after they reconciled.)

-- Librarians typically can shush patrons whose conversation disturbs others, but, at least in Washington state, librarians are powerless to prevent another "disturbance" -- when a pornography user's computer screen disgusts other library patrons who inadvertently glimpse it. A visitor to the Seattle Public Library complained in February that the librarian said she was bound by a 2010 state supreme court decision upholding the right of consumers of otherwise-legal pornography not to be censored.

-- Non-Humans' Human Rights: (1) Elena Zakharova of New York City became the most recent litigant to challenge a state law that regards pets as "property" (and that, thus, the owner of an injured or disfigured pet is entitled to no more consideration than for a defective appliance). She sued a pet store that had sold her a dog with allegedly bum knees and hips, claiming that dogs are living creatures that feel love and pain, that have souls, and that should be compensated for their pain and suffering. The case is pending. (2) In February, a federal judge in San Diego, Calif., heard arguments by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that SeaWorld was confining its show whales in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 13th Amendment (the Civil War-era prohibition of slavery). Two days later, he ruled that the amendment applies only to human slavery.

In Plain Sight: The embarrassing disclosure in November by the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah, of the CIA's major clandestine operations in Beirut, likely resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen anti-Hezbollah CIA "assets," according to ABC News reports. Among the details made public by Hezbollah was that it learned of the agents' meetings with the potential "assets" (which took place at a Beirut Pizza Hut restaurant) by intercepting agents' email messages that used the sly, stealthy "code" word "PIZZA."

News of the Weird has long reported on gallery patrons' inability to distinguish "abstract impressionist" works by human artists (even by masters) from the scribbles drawn by toddlers -- and even animals. To attempt to add sophistication to the topic, a museum at University College London recently opened a comparative installation of "works" from an elephant and several kinds of apes, leading the museum manager to observe that "art produced by apes is a lot more creative." The elephant, with brushes affixed to its trunk, "is not deliberately doing anything" when it stomps or swirls the paint around on the canvas, but ape art is "much freer" and "expressive" -- "almost indistinguishable from abstract art by humans ...." But, he added sheepishly, "Whether this is actually art is the big question."

-- (1) South Korea's Customs Service arrested eight men in January for a 2010 scheme to smuggle gold into Japan without paying import fees. The smugglers allegedly broke down gold bars into small beads and brought them in in their rectums. (2) In an advertising campaign in December for a new line of extreme push-up bras, the Dutch department store Hema hired as its fashion model the androgynous (but flat-chested) superstar Andrej Pejic.

-- Antidote to Multitasking: The U.K. household services broker LocalTraders.com announced in December that it is planning, for central England in 2012, a "world watching-paint-dry championship," with a short list selected on "mental strength, concentration and endurance." Finalists will be asked their favorite color, which will be painted on a wall, and whoever stares the longest without turning away will win. Said a spokesman, "Previous paint-watching experience is not essential."

Part-time Devon, England, vicar Gavin Tyte, who serves churches in Uplyme and Axmouth, recently produced a rap video of the Nativity, in which he plays a shepherd, an angel and the narrator. Sample lyrics (about Mary placing her baby in a cattle trough and angels calming the frightened shepherds): "No hotel, motel, custom baby-changer / She wrapped the baby up and laid him in a manger" and "Chill out, my friends, there's no need for trepidation / Got a message for the world, and it's elation information."

-- Apparently, not only will there be fewer overall resources for disabled people in Greece (due to government austerity), but the resources will be spread over a larger number of recipients. The Labor Ministry in January expanded the category of eligible "disabled" (with reduced-amount payments) to include pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists, sadomasochists, pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs. The National Confederation of Disabled People said the changes would inevitably reduce funds available for the blind and the crippled and other traditional categories of need.

-- Even at a time of schoolteacher layoffs nationally, the Buffalo, N.Y., school system continues to cover all costs for cosmetic surgery for teachers. The benefit was established in the calmer 1970s, and no one, it seems, anticipated the facelift and liposuction crazes that subsequently developed. The annual expense in recent years, for about 500 benefit-takers a year, has been from $5 million to $9 million (equivalent to the average salaries of at least 100 teachers). The teachers' union said it is willing to give up the benefit in a new collective bargaining agreement, but a quirk in New York law lessens the incentive of teachers to negotiate such a contract (in that the current, highly lucrative contract remains in force until replaced).

-- In February, Kenneth Gunn, of the U.K.'s Scottish Borders Council, decried the budget cutbacks that closed down local offices that had previously posted marriage notices. By making it more difficult for the public to be aware of specific marriages, Gunn feared an inevitable increase in incest. "I am aware in my own ward of brothers sitting beside sisters they do not know in primary school." (The problem is more serious in Iceland, whose 300,000 people are far more self-contained. However, a new website containing genealogical data back 1,200 years is expected to help reduce the risk of incest.)

-- But, Why? (1) Two British designers (who claim they had the idea independently and learned of the other only after they finished) recently produced elegant pieces using parts from a 2012 Ford Focus. Judy Clark made a dress and a biker jacket adorned with car keys, radio and dashboard components, seat covers, a speedometer and red taillights. Katherine Hawkins created a necklace using dials, springs, buttons, seat materials and instrument panel switches. (2) Swiss artist Christoph Buchel has now secured local permits to bury a Boeing 727 38 feet under a patch of California's Mojave Desert, near Bakersfield. Visitors will take a tunnel down in order to tour the 153-foot-long plane.

-- In February, a German court awarded artist Stefan Bohnenberger the equivalent of about $2,600 from the Munich gallery that had previously housed his work, "Pommes d'Or," which consisted of two ordinary french fries contrasted with two golden-leafed ones. The gallery returned the golden-leafed ones but claimed it could not find the ordinary fries, and, anyway, pointed out that they were nothing but old french fries.

-- Police officers are of course generally forbidden to engage in sex acts in order to gather evidence. Thus, a scandal erupted in the U.K. in January when The Guardian revealed that two undercover officers had fathered children (to enhance their credibility) while infiltrating protest groups beginning in the 1980s. After the two women learned in late 2011 who their kids' fathers really were, they filed lawsuits against the responsible police agencies. (In Sydney, Australia, a state contractor operated under no such restriction when it hired a brothel inspector in January. Brothels are legal and regulated in Sydney, and if off-books facilities are providing sex illegally, the inspector can testify from first-hand knowledge.)

-- Mayor Jim Preacher of the town of Norway, S.C., was pulled over by a state trooper in January for speeding. Preacher was unable to convince the trooper that his speeding was necessary in the performance of a mayoral duty, and their encounter apparently ended bitterly. As soon as the trooper drove off, the mayor turned on his own blue lights, chased the trooper down and accused the trooper of speeding. (Norway disbanded its police department last year, and a question remains whether the mayor has police powers.)

-- The Price Is Right: (1) Ms. Khadijah Baseer was arrested in Los Angeles in January on suspicion of prostitution. According to several men, Baseer had opened their car doors in the drive-thru lane at a McDonald's, offering them oral sex in exchange for Chicken McNuggets. (2) Misty Kullman, 25, was arrested for prostitution in Shelby, N.C., in January after police stopped a man who said Kullman performed an act for the agreed-upon price of $6. The man said he paid Kullman with a $2 bill, three $1's and coins.

An elite squad of six Chinese soldiers, performing a training ritual for a public audience in Hong Kong in January, stood in a circle and passed a satchel of live grenades from man to man, counting down to the expected moment of explosion. At the last possible second, the man caught holding the satchel discards it, and all dive into a hole for protection. At the exhibition, according to Chinese Central Television, it worked out fine.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) An unidentified man fled and is still at large after attempting to break into the change machine at the Busy Bubbles laundromat in Winter Haven, Fla., in January. The surveillance video showed the man shooting at the machine four times with a handgun, but no money came out. (2) Two men were arrested in Albuquerque in January after being caught in the act of a home burglary by a neighbor, who called the police. The men were apprehended with various burglarized goodies as they made their getaway in a grocery store shopping cart.

* When Leona Helmsley's now-deceased dog Trouble inherited about $12 million from her estate in 2007, it called attention to the occasional decision by lonely rich people to pass on millions of dollars to their pets. In December, the former stray cat Tommasino inherited the equivalent of about $15 million in Italy when his owner, real estate holder Maria Assunta, died at age 94. The only pets richer than Tommasino were the German shepherd Gunter (equivalent of about $140 million in 2000) and the Australian chimpanzee Kalu (equivalent of about $60 million, though the estate he inherited was revealed in 2010 to be worthless).

(1) Fritz Gall, a self-described failed inventor, opened the Museum of Nonsense in Herrnbaumgarten, Austria, recently to pay homage, apparently, to even greater failures than his own. Among the exhibits are the "portable anonymizer" (a stick holding a black bar that one holds over his eyes to obscure identity), a transportable hat rack, a bristleless toothbrush (for people with no teeth), and a "portable hole" (similar to those that appear in the ground whenever the Road Runner needs something for Wile E. Coyote to fall into). (2) Take a Wild Guess: An unidentified man was taken into custody in Chesapeake, Va., in October after he rushed into the Regional Medical Center with a machete and a can of gasoline and demanded to know the "test results."

LEAD STORY

Sri Lanka has, as an "unwritten symbol of pride and culture," the world's highest per-capita rate for eye-donation, according to a January Associated Press dispatch from Colombo. Underpinning this national purpose is the country's Buddhist tradition that celebrates afterlives. "He's dead," said a relative of an eye recipient about the donor, "but he's still alive. His eye can still see the world." Doctors even report instances in which Sri Lankans consider giving up an eyeball while still alive, as a measure of virtue. A new state-of-the-art clinic, funded by Singaporean donors, is expected to nearly double Sri Lanka's eyeball exports.

-- Melissa Torres was a passenger in an April 2011 auto accident in Texas City, Texas, in which the five people involved were reported "uninjured" by police, and indeed, Torres was released from the Mainland Medical Center emergency room after a routine evaluation (for which she was billed $4,850). In fact, records from April 2011 until September showed her balance as $4,850. However, in December, Mainland learned that Torres had made an insurance claim against the driver and settled it for $30,000. The hospital quickly "updated" her balance to $20,211 and filed a claim against the settlement.

-- Hospitals, of course, are obligated to render emergency care to anyone who needs it, even to undocumented immigrants and irrespective of ability to pay. However, various state laws, such as New York's, also prohibit hospitals from releasing a patient who has no safe place to be discharged to. A January New York Times report noted that New York City hospitals currently house about 300 of those "continuing care" patients, with many in the five-year-long range and one patient now in his 13th year. (In some states, even, the laws' wording permits "pop drops," in which adult children leave "ailing" parents at a hospital when the children decide they need a break.)

-- A November Comtel airlines charter flight from India to Birmingham, England, stopped in Vienna, Austria, to refuel, but the pilots learned that Comtel's account was overdrawn and that the airport required the equivalent of about $31,000 for refueling and take-off charges, and thus, if the passengers were in a hurry, they needed to come up with the cash. After a six-hour standoff, many of the 180 passengers were let off the plane, one by one, to visit an ATM, and eventually a settlement was reached.

Paul Rothschild, 40, was facing a Dec. 9 court date in Lake County, Ill., on a charge of indecent solicitation of a minor -- a charge that could have sent him to prison for five years. Apparently oblivious of the imminent danger, Rothschild was arrested on Dec. 7 after a months-long campaign to entice another minor girl to engage in sex.

-- In November, Rickie La Touche, 30, was convicted in England's Preston Crown Court of killing his wife in a rage over her having allegedly destroyed the Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker memorabilia that he had collected since childhood. And in January, a judge in Portland, Ore., ordered a 45-day jail sentence, plus mental evaluation, for David Canterbury, 33, after he attacked Toys R Us customers with a lightsaber in each hand. And in February in Brooklyn, N.Y., Flynn Michael expanded his search for his stolen $400 custom-made lightsaber. "I guess that's the joke," said Michael, self-pityingly. "Some Jedi I turned out to be."

-- Recent Newsmakers: In a Christmas Eve alcohol-related auto accident in Buffalo, N.Y., the injured victims included Chad Beers, and the man charged was Richard Booze Jr. In Burnett County, Wis., in October, Scott Martini, 51, was arrested for suspicion of DUI, which would be his fourth offense. In Madison, Wis., in January, police filed weapon and drug charges against the 30-year-old man who had legally changed his name to Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop. And charged with vandalism of a Rhode Island state troopers' barracks in November was the 27-year-old Mr. Wanker Rene.

-- In 2011, for the first time in 10 years, Jose was not the most popular baby name in Texas (it was Jacob), but more interesting were the outlier names from the birth register examined by the Houston Press in December. Among last year's Houston babies were boys with the first names Aa'den, Z'yun, Goodness, Godswill, Clever, Handsome, Sir Genius and Dallas Cowboys. Girls' names included Gorgeousg'zaiya, A'Miracle, Dae'Gorgeous and Praisegod. The newspaper had previously combed the register of convicts in Harris County (Houston) and found Willie Nelson de Ochoa, Shi'tia Alford, Petrono Tum Pu, Charmin Crew and Anal Exceus.

-- Bill Robinson, 66, of Decatur, Ga., was arrested on a misdemeanor firearm charge in December for gathering holiday mistletoe in the "best way" he knew -- shooting it out of a tree with a 12-gauge shotgun. The fact that the tree was in the parking lot of the suburban North DeKalb Mall (filled with holiday shoppers) apparently completely escaped his attention. "Well," said Robinson to WGCL-TV, "about the time I did it, I got to thinking about it. ... I guess I assumed that everybody knew what I was doing."

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: Mostafa Hendi was charged with attempted robbery of the We Buy Gold store in Hendersonville, N.C., in December, but clerk Derek Mothershead stopped him. As Hendi reached for the money, Mothershead punched him in the face, momentarily knocking him out cold. He held Hendi down with one hand and called 911 with the other, and as the two waited for police, Mothershead handed Hendi cleanser and paper towels and ordered him to clean up his blood off of the floor.

-- Needed to Think It Through Better: Car salesman Frank Ready was showing his inventory to Pedro Prieto and Yordan Llauger at his lot in Austin, Texas, in December, and they had settled on a Nissan Maxima for around $9,000. "They asked if I took Visa," Ready told KVUE-TV. "I said, 'Yeah.'" The next day, Prieto and Llauger returned with 90 $100 Visa gift cards. Naturally, Ready called police, who later found at least 28 counterfeit credit cards on the pair and charged them and a third person with fraud and identity theft.

Almost No Longer Weird: (1) Fifteen firefighters on three crews (estimated cost per hour, the equivalent of $1,400) were dispatched to Norwich market in Norwich, England, in January to rescue a gull entangled on tree branches and, according to the animal rescue society, "in distress." (2) Women in Dado village on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao went "on strike" last year to persuade the men to stop their fighting over land disputes. ("If you do bad things," a September Agence France-Presse dispatch quoted one woman, "you will be cut off, here," motioning below her waist.) These sex strikes do not always work, but, reported AFP, this one did.

Recent Public Appearances of Jesus and/or the Virgin Mary: Wiltshire, England, June (Jesus in candle wax dripping from a church's pulpit). Anderson County, S.C., July (Jesus on a Walmart receipt). Kinston, N.C., June (Jesus' body on a cross formed by kudzu on a telephone pole). Orpington, England, December (Jesus on a sock). Fortitude Valley, Australia, January (Jesus on a tomato that had remained in an office refrigerator a little too long). Yuma, Ariz., August (Mary in a dried mango slice). Blue Springs, Mo., December (Jesus on crayons melted for a science class project ("(W)hat better sign to get than (one) right in front of you?" asked the student's mother.).