(Thought I’d published this about two weeks ago. Turns out I hadn’t: so it’s a little later than previously anticipated)

Let’s see… what’s been happening in the last couple of weeks? Well… there was something of a selection of weirdness…

The Prague Daily Monitor reports on activity ‘experts cannot explain’, although they seem to think calling the thing ‘a poltergeist’ is sufficient explanation for anyone. There’s the happiness hat, which drives a metal spike into your head if you should stop smiling (no, seriously).

A bank robber has failed in his appeal to give his mother visiting rights. Well, I say his mother: it’s the cat his mother has reincarnated as. If you’ve not already seen it, there’s the forklift truck driver who had a bad day at work…

On the theme of accidents, there’s the man who survived accidentally ejecting himself from his plane. While not specifically causing an accident, there was the man who had been visiting a fancy dress party and was arrested for drink driving while dressed as a breathalyser. You’d have thought he’d have blown on himself before setting off…

Mind you, he probably wasn’t as drunk as the chap who challenged a lamppost to a fight.

There’s the aftershocks still being felt from the earthquake in the early 1800s, the man who turned up alive at his own funeral.

There’s the woman who discovered on her wedding night that she’s allergic to her husband’s sperm. Yeah, I bet she’s got a headache as well. Mind you, there was this other woman who has amnesiac episodes whenever she climaxes. I think that while the woman who has a court order restraining her from loud noises during sex might be a little more embarrassing, it’s probably less to worry about in the long run.

You could always gag her, after all. Indeed, if I am to believe the porn-related spam comments on my filter, there is a specific niche of people who are very interested in this idea. Although to me it seems to miss the point. Surely during sex is the one time when the missus won’t be complaining that it’s about time you hoovered the dining room…

And then there’s the woman who likes to live as a vampire. Bloody Anne Rice has a lot to answer for…

…and then the Telegraph report on the police spending £20 grand on a murder hunt after a psychic tip-off, only for it to transpire — obviously — that their initial suspicions of suicide were correct. If this gave you some concerns about the police, these may be added to when you hear the police tasered a man who was rescuing his family from a house fire (although there are hints that the police’s side of the story might be different). Only a few days later, a police worker fired for backing psychic investigations claims religious discrimination. Wonder if he’d had anything to do with that ‘murder’ tip-off…

Also on the legal front, it turns out that the French never got round to repealing a law which bans women from wearing trousers in Paris.

More worryingly, NASA say the world will not end in 2012. I say worryingly, because I didn’t believe it was going to until then. Fortunately someone is around to debunk the 2012 apocalypse theories. Continuing the apocalyptic feel, the Mail tell us that an asteroid passed 30 times closer than the moon and nearly hit us, and we only had 15 hours warning of its approach! Shock! Although they do ruin a good scare story headline in the detail, which points out that the thing was only 23 foot across, would have completely burned up in the atmosphere and have had no impact on the ground.

The lost army of Cambyses may have been found(-ish), there’s a coral that eats jellyfish, Jupiter’s moon may have tons of fish (yeah, right)… and the Indonesian hobbits are a new species of human (if now sadly extinct).

There was a Glasgow research centre which tried to determine whether Friday 13th was actually unlucky. Presumably unless they find a way to counteract the unluckiness (or Murphy’s Lawiness) of it, they’ll never get accurate results… meanwhile the universe continues to conspire against the Large Hadron Collider as a bird drops a bit of bread on it, breaking it.

There’s the guy with the bionic bottom, the human body parts sold to a kebab shop, the Vatican researcher who has ‘proved’ the Shroud of Turin real;

But what, you may ask, what news is there from our American cousins? Well, Texas may have accidentally made marriage illegal; it appears Balloon boy’s parents may plead guilty; the FBI are hunting a bank robber in his 70s who uses oxygen and who has hit five banks in the last three months

But after all the science, the law, the sex, the drunkenness, and the general stories of madness, I have to return to crime for my personal favourite of the last few weeks. There was a roadside cafe by Keighley in West Yorkshire… until someone nicked it. I can’t imagine many opportunist thieves would have the wherewithal to shift a large green building… but I’ve got to give a grudging credit to any that seem to have managed it!