An estimated 3.2 million kids aged 5 to 12 take mixed-martial arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults' Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a January report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the swaggering, Mohawked Derek "Crazy" Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina "The Black Widow" Awana, 7. Kids under age 12 fight each other without regard to gender, and blows above the collarbone are always prohibited (along with attacks on the groin, kidneys and back). "Crazy" was described delivering merciless forearm chest smashes to a foe before the referee intervened, and the Black Widow won her match in less than a minute via arm-bar submission. Parental involvement appears to be of two types: either fear of their child's getting hurt or encouragement to be meaner. [ESPN The Magazine, 1-7-2013]

-- Breaking Bad (and Quickly!): Tyrone Harris, 26, reported for his first shift at Dunkin' Donuts in Morristown, N.J., in January and received his name tag. Seven minutes later, according to police, he was on his way out the door with $2,100 from his supervisor's desk. (Apparently, the supervisor had opened his drawer a little too far when reaching for the name tag, giving Harris a glimpse of the cash.) [NJ.com (Newark), 1-21-2013]

-- In a January submission to India's Supreme Court, an association of the country's caste councils begged for greater sympathy for men who commit "honor killings" of wayward females. The councils denied encouraging such killings, but emphasized that fathers or brothers who murder a daughter or sister are usually "law-abiding, educated and respectable people" who must protect their reputations after a female has had a "forbidden" relationship -- especially a female who intends to marry within her sub-caste, which the councils believe leads to deformed babies. [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-15-2013]

-- Aubrey Ireland, 21, a dean's-list senior at the University of Cincinnati's prestigious college of music, went to court in December to protect herself from two stalkers -- her mother and father, who, she said, had been paranoiacally meddling in her life. David and Julie Ireland put tracking devices on Aubrey's computer and telephone and showed up unannounced on campus (600 miles from their home), telling officials that Aubrey was promiscuous and mentally imbalanced. A Common Pleas Court judge ordered the parents to keep their distance. [Cincinnati.com, 12-27-2012]

-- Medium-Tech Warfare: (1) The mostly rag-tag army of Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime unveiled its first jerry-built armored vehicle in December. The "Sham II" is an old diesel car with cameras for navigation, a machine gun mounted on a turret with a driver looking at one flat-screen TV and a gunner another, aiming the machine gun via a Sony PlayStation controller. (2) Video transmissions from drone aircraft rose stiflingly to more than 300,000 hours last year (compared to 4,800 in 2001). With input expected to grow even more, Air Force officials acknowledged in December seeking advice from a private-sector company experienced in handling massive amounts of video: ESPN. [The Atlantic Wire, 12-9-2012] [USA Today, 12-19-2012]

-- Dog trainer Mark Vette showed off his best work in Auckland, New Zealand, in December: dogs driving a Cooper Mini on a closed course. Using knobs fitted to the dogs' reach, Vette taught mixed-breed rescue dogs "Monty" and "Porter" 10 discrete actions, including handling the starter, steering wheel, gearshift, and brake and gas pedals, and then put them behind the wheel on live television. Monty handled the straightaway flawlessly, but Porter, assigned to steer around a bend, ran off the road. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 12-11-2012]

-- Stress Relief for Students: (1) In November, students at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, ordered three therapy dogs and set up a room for "super stressed" final-exam studiers. The dogs typically are loaned to hospital patients and senior citizens. (2) In December, Cornell University staff installed a patch of grass inside the Olin Library (trucked in from the Adirondack mountains) because, said an employee, the sight of it has a "cognitive relaxing effect." [National Post, 11-29-2012] [Cornell Daily Sun, 12-3-2012]

-- Jorge Sanchez, 35, was arrested in Burbank, Calif., in February after walking into a Costco store, brazenly stuffing 24 quart cans of motor oil under his clothing (some affixed with bungee cords), and heading for the exit. A security guard noticed him, but Sanchez fled and actually outran the guard (though some of his cargo came loose). Still carrying 15 cans, he made it eight blocks before police overtook him. Sanchez said he services cars part-time and that motor oil prices were just too high. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 2-1-2013]

Gregory Bruni, 21, was arrested in North Fort Myers, Fla., in January after allegedly breaking into a residence at about 7 p.m. (first scurrying across the roof and jumping on one resident who came to investigate). According to police, Bruni was naked, ran maniacally around screaming in gibberish, failed to be intimidated when the female resident fired three "warning shots" with a handgun, fell to the floor after the third shot and began masturbating, and defecated near the front door and in a hallway. Police soon arrived and Tasered him. [Fort Myers News-Press via WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 1-25-2013]

The issue of "background checks" for gun purchases occupies center stage in the current gun-regulation debate, even though, ironically, current federal law on such checks is apparently half-heartedly enforced. In the latest data available (from 2010), nearly 80,000 Americans were denied the right to purchase guns because their applications contained false information (even though applicants swear, under penalty of law, that all information is true). However, The New York Times reported in January that of the nearly 80,000 applicants, only 44 were prosecuted for lying, and federal officials said the practice, well-known among applicants with shaky backgrounds, is known as "lie and try." [New York Times, 1-14-2013]

Lawrence Adamczyk, 49, was arrested in Riverside, Ill., in January after reports that he was loitering at Riverside Brookfield High School during a swim meet. Police said he was quite talkative in custody, admitting that he was at the school to leer at boys (after being tipped off via "brainwave" messages from the singer Justin Bieber) and that moments before police arrived, he had been engaged in a solo sex act while ogling the swimmers. Amazingly, police found that Adamczyk was not on any sex offenders' registry even though he had been arrested (with at least one conviction) for similar incidents in 2005, 2009 and 2011, and was on parole at the time of the Riverside arrest. [WBBM-TV (Chicago), 1-13-2013]

(1) After a 51-year-old man was found dead in Everett, Wash., in January with his heavier girlfriend (192 pounds) lying face down on top of him, sheriff's deputies attributed cause of death as his having been smothered by the 50-year-old woman's breasts. Neighbors said they had heard the man screaming for the woman to get off of him. (2) In January, New York City police, arriving to check out an altercation and a death on the tracks at the East 125th Street subway station, found that the two incidents were unrelated. The man who was killed had actually fallen off of a train near the station while he was squatting between cars, defecating. [KIRO-TV (Seattle), 1-14-2013] [New York Times, 1-15-2013]

(1) Sophie Laboissonniere pleaded guilty in January to participating in the 2011 street riot in Vancouver, British Columbia, as part of a crowd that broke into a drugstore following the hometown Canucks' loss in the Stanley Cup finals. Months before the riot, in the Miss Coastal Vancouver beauty pageant, she had been voted Miss Congeniality. (2) On Nov. 4, "Holly" -- Jacob and Bonnie Richter's 4-year-old cat -- fled the couple's motor home (apparently frightened by fireworks) parked at the Daytona International Speedway and did not return. Searches were futile, and the Richters drove home to Palm Beach Gardens, about 190 miles away. Two weeks later, Holly appeared, disheveled with paws rubbed raw, about a mile from the Richters' home, and the finder returned her to the Richters based on Holly's microchip ID. [Associated Press via CBS News, 1-9-2013] [WPBF-TV (West Palm Beach), 1-7-2013]

Thanks This Week to Derek Costello, Jon Johnson, Bruce Leiserowitz, Annie Thames, Perry Levin, John McGaw, and Rich Heiden, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Cliche Come to Life: The Kerry, Ireland, county council voted in January to let some people drive drunk. The councillors reasoned that in the county's isolated regions, some seniors live alone and need the camaraderie of the pub, but fear a DUI arrest on the way home. The councillors thus empowered police to issue DUI permits to those targeted drivers. Besides, reasoned the councillors, the area is so sparsely populated that such drivers never encounter anyone else on the road at night. (The councillors' beneficence might also have been influenced, reported BBC News, by the fact that "several" of the five voting "yea" own pubs.) [BBC News, 1-22-2013]

-- Spare the Waterboard, Spoil the Child: William Province, 42, was arrested in Jefferson County, Mont., in December and charged with waterboarding four boys, two of whom were his own sons, at his home in December. (Also in January, Kirill Bartashevitch, 52, was charged with making "terroristic" threats to his high-school-age daughter after he allegedly pointed his new AK-47 at her because her report card showed 2 B's instead of all A's. He said he had recently purchased the gun because he feared that President Obama intended to ban them.) [KXLF-TV (Butte), 12-20-2012] [St. Paul Pioneer-Press, 1-16-2012]

-- Emma Whittington, of Hutchinson, Kan., rushed her daughter to the ER in December when the girl, 7 months old, developed a golf-ball-sized lump on her neck. Two days later, at a hospital in Wichita, a doctor gently pulled a feather out of the lump and hypothesized that it had been in the midst of emerging from her throat. Doctors said the girl probably swallowed the feather accidentally, that it got stuck in throat tissue, and that her body was trying to eject it through the skin. [KWCH-TV (Wichita), 12-13-2012]

-- As if 9/11 and the resultant air travel restrictions had never happened, travelers for some reason continue to keep Transportation Security Administration agents busy at passengers' carry-on bag searches. From a TSA weekly summary of confiscations in January: 33 handguns, eight stun guns and a serrated wire garrote. Among highlights from 2012: a live 40mm grenade, a live blasting cap, "seal bombs" and six pounds of black powder (with detonation cords and a timing fuse). [The TSA Blog (blog.tsa.gov), 1-11-2012]

-- A man with admittedly limited English skills went to a courthouse in Springfield, Mass., in December to address a traffic ticket, but somehow wound up on a jury trying Donald Campbell on two counts of assault. Officials said the man simply got in the wrong line and followed jurors into a room while the real sixth juror had mistakenly gone to another room. The jury, including the accidental juror, found Campbell guilty, but he was awarded a new trial when the mistake was discovered. [The Republican (Springfield), 12-13-2012]

(1) Timothy Crabtree, 45, of Rogersville, was arrested in October and charged with stabbing his son, Brandon, 21, in an argument over who would get the last beer in the house. (2) Tricia Moody, 26, was charged with DUI in Knoxville in January after a 10-minute police chase. The officer's report noted that Moody was still holding a cup of beer and apparently had not spilled any during the chase. (3) Jerry Poe, 62, was charged in a road-rage incident in Clinton on Black Friday after firing his handgun at a driver in front of him "to scare her into moving" faster, he said. (Poe said he had started at midnight at one Wal-Mart, waited in line unsuccessfully for five hours for a sale-priced stereo, and was on his way to another Wal-Mart. [Kingsport Times-News via KnoxNews.com (Knoxville), 10-16-2012] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 1-22-2013] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 11-26-2012]

Twin brothers Aric Hale and Sean Hale, 28, were both arrested on New Year's Eve in Manchester, Conn., after fighting each other at a hotel and later at a residence. Police said a 27-year-old woman was openly dating the two men, and that Sean thought it was his turn and asked Aric for privacy. Aric begged to differ about whose turn it was. [Hartford Courant, 1-3-2013]

-- Voted in December as vice presidents of the U.N. Human Rights Council for 2013 were the nations of Mauritania and the Maldives, both of which permit the death penalty for renouncing Islam. In Mauritania, a person so charged has three days to repent for a lesser sentence. (An August 2012 dispatch in London's The Guardian reported widespread acceptance of slavery conditions in Mauritania, affecting as many as 800,000 of the 3.5 million population. Said one abolitionist leader, "Today we have the slavery (that) American plantation owners dreamed of (in that the slaves) believe their condition is necessary to get to paradise.") [Reuters via Yahoo News, 12-10-2012; The Guardian, 8-14-2012]

-- Non-medical employees of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have been campaigning for union representation, suggesting that their current wages leave many workers dangerously close to poverty. Though raises have not materialized, UPMC (according to a November Pittsburgh City Paper report) has now shown sympathy for its employees' sad plight. In a November UPMC newsletter, it announced that it was setting up "UPMC Cares" food banks. Employees (presumably the better-paid ones) are urged to "donate nonperishable food items to stock employee food pantries that will established on both (UPMC campuse)." One astonished worker's response: "I started to cry." [Pittsburgh City Paper, 12-11-2012]

-- In December, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed, through a public records check, that the appointed Collector of Revenue for St. Louis County has failed since 2008 to pay personal property taxes. Stacy Bailey and her husband owe taxes on three cars and in fact filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Bailey's boss, Director of Revenue Eugene Leung, told the Dispatch that he had checked Bailey's real-estate tax status but not personal property taxes. Nonetheless, he said, "Knowing what I know now, she's still the most qualified person for the job," among the 155 applicants. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12-13-2013]

First-World Problems: Before "cellulite" appeared in popular culture around 1972, almost no one believed the condition especially remarkable, wrote London's The Guardian in December. Similarly, the new concern about "wobbly" arms -- flesh dangling loosely when a woman's arm is raised horizontally -- seems entirely made-up. However, Marks & Spencer and other upscale British retailers now sell "arm corsets" to fashionably hold the skin tighter for sleeveless tops. Wrote the Guardian columnist, "I wish I didn't know that my arms weren't meant to wobble. I'd be happier." [The Guardian, 12-8-2012]

Julie Griffiths, 43, of Newcastle-Under-Lyme, England, received her first Anti-Social Behavior Order in 1999 for too loudly berating her husband, Norman (who one neighbor told the Daily Telegraph is "the sweetest man you could ever meet"). After many complaints (from neighbors, never from Norman), Griffiths was fined the equivalent of about $700 in 2010 and vowed to be quieter. The complaints hardly slowed, and in July 2012, environmental-health officials installed monitoring equipment next door and caught Griffiths venting at Norman 47 times in three months. However, the Stoke-on-Trent Magistrates Court merely issued a new, five-year ASBO. [Daily Telegraph, 12-20-2012]

(1) Recently, a 67-year-old woman set out to drive to a train station in Brussels, Belgium, 38 miles from her home to pick up a friend, but her GPS was broken, and she wound up three countries away, in Zagreb, Croatia, before she sought help. Drivers older than her have been similarly lost, but not to the extent of crossing five borders and passing road signs in three languages while traveling 900 miles. (She said only that she was "distracted.") (2) In January, a 68-year-old Florida man got out of a van to open a garage door so that his friend could back in, but he left the van door open, and the driver's dog leaped excitedly into the vehicle and landed on the gas pedal. The man was fatally crushed against the garage door. [Daily Mail (London), 1-14-2013] [Panama City News Herald, 1-15-2013]

Thanks This Week to Chris O'Hare, Margaret Thomas, Kelly Egnitz, Rey Barry, John.McGaw, Michael Hull, Mark Svevar, and Jan Linders, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

California activist Jonathan Frieman finally got his day in court in January, but a Marin County judge quickly rejected his argument that he is entitled to use the state's carpool lanes accompanied only by a sheath of corporate papers in the passenger seat. (During the 2012 Republican primaries, Mitt Romney famously asserted a corporation's general right under the law to be treated as a "person.") The judge decided that the state legislature's carpool law was intended only to reduce traffic clutter and that driving with no passenger except corporate papers was unrelated to that goal. Frieman told reporters that he had been carrying the papers around for years, hoping to be challenged. [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-8-2013]

-- The U.S. Congress may suffer dismal popularity ratings (less savory than head lice, according to one survey), but it is saintly compared to India's legislatures, which contain six accused rapists at the state level and two in the national parliament. Thirty-six local officials, as well, have been charged with sexual assault (according to India's Association for Democratic Reforms). In fact, the association reported in December that 162 of the lower house of Parliament's 552 members currently face criminal charges. The problem is compounded by India's notoriously paralyzed justice system, which practically ensures that the charges will be unresolved for years, if not decades. [Wall Street Journal, 12-30-2012]

-- Many Japanese men seem to reject smartphones in favor of a low-tech 2002 Fujitsu cellphone, according to a January Wall Street Journal dispatch -- because it can help philanderers keep their affairs from lovers' prying eyes. The phones lack sophisticated tracking features -- plus, a buried "privacy" mode gives off only stealth signals when lovers call and leaves no trace of calls, texts or emails. A senior executive for Fujitsu said, "If Tiger Woods had (this phone), he wouldn't have gotten in trouble." [Wall Street Journal, 1-11-2013]

-- China's national legislature passed a law in December to establish that people have a duty to visit their aged parents periodically. China's rapid urbanization has not developed nursing homes and similar facilities to keep pace with the population, and sponsors of the law said it would give the parents a legal right to sue their children for ignoring them. [Associated Press, 12-28-2012]

-- Redemption! Senior pastor Claude Gilliland III was forced to admit to his flock at the New Heart church in Cleburne, Texas, in January that he is a convicted sex offender and that he and his ex-wife had worked in the pornography industry. Gilliland, 54, served four years in prison in the 1990s for sexually assaulting his ex-wife, but in January was nonetheless defended by his congregation. "If we believe in the redemptive work of Christ," said one parishioner, "then this man is a miracle." (Gilliland believes he needs no redemption for the assault, for he was innocent of that -- but that he had done other bad things during that time that did require redemption.) [WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 1-6-2013]

-- God and Shoes: (1) "Prophet" Cindy Jacobs said in a January Internet broadcast that God has revealed Himself to her by mysteriously removing critical shortages in her life, such as her car's well-worn tires that just kept rolling. "I remember one time that I had a pair of shoes that I wore and wore and wore and wore and wore and it just -- for years, these shoes did not wear out." (2) Dublin, Ireland, inventor David Bonney recently decided to change the marketing of his new shoes to "Atheist Shoes." Two years earlier, he had started the business with the idea of selling "Christian" shoes that contained water in the soles so that wearers could walk on water. ["God Knows" videocast, 1-9-2013, via RawStory.com, 1-9-2013] [Irish Times, 12-8-2013]

-- Four days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., officials at Public School 79 in New York City decided it would be a good time for a full-blown lockdown drill -- with no advance warning. Though P.S. 79 is a high school and not an elementary school, it is composed of about 300 students with special needs (autism, cerebral palsy, severe emotional disorders) who, with their teachers, were startled to hear the early- morning loudspeaker blaring, "Shooter (or, possibly, "intruder"), get out, get out, lockdown." One adult said it took her about five minutes to realize that it was only a drill. Still, said another, "It was probably the worst feeling I ever had in my life." [New York Times, 12-19-2012]

-- Neighborhood observers reported in December that the asbestos-removal "crew" working at the former YWCA in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, consisted merely of volunteer teenagers who are students at the local religious Buckeye Education School. State regulations require that asbestos (known to cause deadly respiratory illnesses) be handled only by certified contractors using hazardous-materials gear. Buckeye and other officials, while emphasizing that the students were volunteers, declined to say who authorized them to work. [WKYC-TV, 1-8-2013]

-- In November, Tokyo's Kenichi Ito, 29, bested his own Guinness World Record by a full second (down to 17.47 seconds) in the 100-meter dash -- on all fours. Ito runs like a Patas monkey, which he has long admired, and which (along with his self-described monkey-like face) inspired him nine years ago to take up "four-legged" running. He reported trouble only once, when he went to the mountains to train and was shot at by a hunter who mistook him for a wild boar. [The Guardian (London), 11-16-2012; Reuters, 4-18-2012]

Generally, clients are held to account for their lawyers' errors because the lawyers are their "agents," but death row inmates might be treated differently, for they usually do not select or pay for their lawyers -- and because the stakes are so high. Alabama, though, looks at the problem unsympathetically, according to a January New York Times report. When an Alabama death row inmate misses an appeals-filing deadline only because of his lawyer's error (in murder client Ronald Smith's case, only because lawyer C. Wade Johnson was an often-incapacitated methamphetamine addict), the client forgoes the appeal. The Smith case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. (Alabama also remains the only state in which judges overrule juries and impose the death penalty instead of life in prison.) [New York Times, 1-7-2013]

William Michael Martin, 45, was charged in January with burglary of the East Texas Medical Center in Lufkin, Texas, where he went apparently in search of women's underwear and employees' personal photos, which police said he used as masturbation aids. At his home, police discovered a cache of women's underwear and several beach balls, which officers learned from photos were so that Martin could put them under his clothing and pose as pregnant. [KTRE-TV (Lufkin) via Houston Press, 1-11-2013]

Benjamin Greene, 22, was charged in December with shoplifting a nude blow-up doll from a Spencer's Gifts store in Spartanburg, S.C., but on closer inspection, the doll was less than met the eye. It was one of the manufacturer's "Super Star Series" of dolls, suggesting resemblances to celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan, but which are apparently all the same generic plastic doll resembling no specific human. The packaging on Greene's $19.99 "Finally Mylie! Love Doll" suggests singer Miley Cyrus ("finally" presumably to honor Cyrus' having recently turned 18 and "legal"), but it, too, was the generic plastic doll. [The Smoking Gun, 12-13-2012]

(1) In December, the Illinois Times reported that emergency workers were called to a Springfield, Ill., church to rescue Father Tom Donovan, who said that he had been playing with a pair of handcuffs in the rectory and accidentally got stuck. He was also wearing "some sort of gag," according to the police report. The church told reporters that Father Donovan immediately went on administrative leave and was unable to answer questions. (2) Donald Blood III, 55, was charged with DUI in December in Dorset, Vt., after driving into a yard, thinking it was a parking lot. It was actually historic property: the 1852 home in which Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was born and which is "a place of sanctuary where people can come to give thanks to God for their new lives." [Illinois Times (Springfield), 1-3-2013] [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 12-27-2012]

Thanks This Week to Peter Smagorinsky, Scott Huber, Neb Rodgers, and John McGaw, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.