Can't Possibly Be True
An Oregon district attorney's office set out two years ago to prosecute David Simmons for having sex the year before with his girlfriend, then 14, while he was 17. A grand jury in Jefferson County refused to indict Simmons, but the prosecutor acted exactly like the indictment had gone through, and no one, even Simmons, noticed the mistake. Only when Simmons agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a 30-day sentence in October 2006 did the news finally reach the foreman of the grand jury that had "no-billed" Simmons, and the foreman's complaint caused the judge to dismiss the conviction. However, in December 2008, prosecutors in neighboring Lane County charged Simmons anew for that 2005 tryst, claiming that "double jeopardy" does not apply because the Jefferson County case never legally happened (in that Simmons was never really indicted). [Register-Guard (Eugene), 12-17-08]

Creme de la Weird
Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December Wall Street Journal roundup was "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder," in which a person, when startled, would "jump, twitch, flail their limbs and obey commands given suddenly, even if it means hurting themselves or a loved one." It was first observed in 1878 among lumberjacks in Maine but has been reported also among factory workers in Malaysia and Siberia. It is believed to result from a genetic mutation that blocks the calming of the central nervous system (but could be merely psychological, from the stress of working in close quarters). [Wall Street Journal, 12-30-08]

A News of the Weird Classic (May 1997)
Ms. Courtney Mann, the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the white-supremacist National Association for the Advancement of White People, and who is a single mother who works as a tax preparer, was rebuffed in an attempt to join a Ku Klux Klan-sponsored march in Pittsburgh in April, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though she has been in the NAAWP for at least four years, the Pennsylvania KKK Grand Dragon turned her down for the Klan march because Mann is black. "She wanted me to send transportation (to bring her to the rally)," said the Grand Dragon. "She wanted to stay at my house (during rally weekend). She's all confused, man. I don't think she knows she's black." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4-13-97]

They're either earnestly civic-minded or people with issues, but in several dozen cities across the country, men (and a few women) dress in homemade superhero costumes and patrol marginal neighborhoods, aiming to deter crime. Phoenix's Green Scorpion and New York City's Terrifica and Orlando's Master Legend and Indianapolis' Mr. Silent are just a few of the 200 gunless, knifeless vigilantes listed on the World Superhero Registry, most presumably with day jobs but who fancy cleaning up the mean streets at night. According to two recent reports (in Rolling Stone and The Times of London), unanticipated gripes by the "Reals," as they call themselves, are boredom from lack of crime and (especially in the summer) itchy spandex outfits. [Rolling Stone, 12-25-08; The Times, 12-28-08]