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Welcome to the 15th annual edition of Strange Days, the News &
Record's roundup of the idiotic, the ironic and the just plain weird.

You're probably about as sick of this year's election as we are, so
this version is relatively politics free. Relatively, because
otherwise, the only big thing we're left to talk about is the economy,
which, well -- not funny.

Still, even in hard times people deserve amusement, so without further ado ...

And if thy hand offendeth thee, cut it off. And cook it: An Idaho man who believes he bears the biblical "mark of the beast" cuts off his hand and microwaves it before calling 911.

What if they gave a war on terror and nobody paid?: Phone-company wiretaps have been canceled because of the FBI's repeated failure to pay phone bills on time, a Justice Department report says.

Could've been worse. Could've been "Saw 5": Two fourth-grade boys in Chesterton, Ind., try to prove that a scene in the movie "A Christmas Story" in which a boy's tongue sticks to a frozen flagpole couldn't happen in real life. They wind up with tongues stuck to a frozen flagpole.

Ohhh, that memo: Two days after a Greensboro city attorney says a requested police department memo doesn't exist, it is published in The Rhinoceros Times and on the blog The Troublemaker.

Second prize in our sales contest is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're drowned: A former sales associate for a motivational coaching business in Utah has sued the company, claiming he was waterboarded as a "motivational technique," the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Two words, Jim: due diligence: Days before investment bank Bear Stearns loses 90 percent of its market value, CNBC host Jim Cramer tells viewers, "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out."

Two words, JIM: fiduciary responsibility: As Bear Stearns worked with the Federal Reserve and investment bank J.P. Morgan Chase to arrive at a deal to keep from going under, its chairman, Jimmy Cayne, was competing in a card tournament, The Wall Street Journal reports.

One down, 169 to go: Democratic state Rep. Thomas Wright is expelled from the General Assembly under a cloud of corruption charges for which he is eventually sent to prison.

Just think how much they would have gotten if they'd actually run the company well: For leading their mortgage company into trouble so deep that Bank of America bought it out, Countrywide Financial Corp.'s president and CEO will receive a combined $19 million, CNN reports.

She can beat you up, too: A 12-year-old, 6-foot-1 girl in Beaverton, Ore., with "Michael Jordan-style skills" has been told she can no longer play on a boys' basketball team because she's too good, the Oregonian reports.

Leaving it all on the field -- including blood: A photographer covering a high school track and field meet in Provo, Utah, is wounded in the leg by a thrown javelin. The throw -- 170 feet, 6 inches -- wins the competitor a state championship.

Medical malpractice: About 5 percent of Americans in physical rehabilitation want to kill their doctors, NewScientist.com reports.

It still won't run Windows Vista without crashing: Scientists at the Los Alamos federal laboratory announce they have built the world's fastest computer.

Guess they had to forgo the traditional after-game swapping of jerseys: As part of the soccer tournament Euro '08, Austrian women defeat German women 10-5 in topless soccer.

Touchdown! Well, more like a safety: Duke University wins the dismissal of a suit filed by the University of Louisville for canceling three scheduled football games after Duke attorneys argue that their team, 13-90 since 1999, was so bad that any Division I school could have replaced it.

Darn: Comedian George Carlin, whose routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" generated a landmark Supreme Court ruling on obscenity, dies at 71.

So, that Second Amendment thing is for real: Only about 220 years after the Constitution was adopted, the Supreme Court rules for the first time that individuals do, indeed, have the right to bear arms.

Dictatorial and weird, yeah. But evil? Not so much: President Bush announces that he may remove North Korea from his previously designated "Axis of Evil."

See what happens if you don't vote for Democrats?: The third vice chairwoman of the Durham County Democratic Party and her husband are charged with various crimes after accusations that they were involved in Satanic rituals, shackled people to beds, caged them and deprived them of food and water.

New home of the New York Mets: Screwed Taxpayer Stadium: Institutions such as AIG and Citi that have received billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts are using them in part to hang on to their nine-digit sponsorships of sports facilities and teams, ABCNews.com reports.

Another candidate for the Braves' bullpen?: An Iraqi journalist throws two shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Baghdad, reportedly to protest U.S. occupation of that country.

-- From Staff, Wire and Online Reports