Here’s a chance to catch up on some of the oddest news of 2006.  But more importantly, it is your opportunity to feel good about yourself, and who doesn’t need that sometimes? 

You should feel superior if you didn’t leave your fingertip behind in an attempted burglary, or commit a crime while flashing a fake ID bearing Brad Pitt’s photo, or fail to pay for plastic surgery, only to see your surgeon send out photos of your enlarged breasts in the form of a “wanted” poster to help police track you down.

Pat yourself on the back if you’re not a doctor who agreed to amputate limbs for beggars to make them more sympathetic, or a pilot who got locked out of the cockpit after going to the washroom.

And, take a bow if you didn’t get caught driving your dead mother across country to save on mortuary transportation costs, or pull a gun on your son’s football coach to demand more playing time. You may be a little more normal than the folks who did those things.

Congratulations, and let’s all meet back at this blog for an even odder year coming up. Meanwhile, here is Erik Kirschbaum’s look back at a very strange year:

Jan Vinzenz Krause of the Institute for Condom Consultancy poses with a prototype of a spray-on condom, in Singen December 5, 2006. REUTERS/Miro Kuzmanovic

We told you last week how the Boston Herald is taking advantage of the Red Sox signing pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka by publishing Sox- and Matsuzaka-themed articles in Japanese as well as English.

Now, enter the Boston Globe, which agreed to post excerpts of Major League Baseball coverage from the Globe, the Boston.com site and affiliated fan site Boston Dirt Dogs on the Japanese-language Web site Go-RedSox.com.

More from Boston.com: “This arrangement follows the dramatic upsurge in interest in the Boston Red Sox within Japan following the signing earlier this month of Japanese pitching star Daisuke Matsuzaka. Reliever Hideki Okajima also joined the Red Sox roster this offseason. In another sign of interest in Red Sox coverage among Japanese sports fans, the Globe’s Gordon Edes has committed to a twice-monthly column for Sankei Daily Sports, Japan’s leading sports publication.”

What the article doesn’t mention is that it also follows the Globe’s smaller competitor’s decision to turn Japanese first. That’s fine; as Akira Kurosawa pointed out, it’s enlightening to get more than one version of the story.

The Johnson family knew they had made a mistake in hiring a cut-rate moving company, the minute they saw the crew trying to set up the furniture in their new dining room… Or maybe that isn’t what’s going on here, at all. Feel free to contribute your own clever captions via Post a Comment.

Acrobats train to balance on chairs at an acrobatic troupe in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province December 22, 2006. REUTERS/Jianan Yu

You know Auld Lang Syne, that grand, nostalgic song we sing every New Year’s Eve, the one where you kind of mumble because you never learned the lyrics?  It turns out nobody else knows them, either. 

New research shows that only six percent of us claim to know the words, and when you throw in the margin of error, it’s possible that not a single soul in Times Square actually knows what they’re singing.

Of course, thanks to quite a few cups of kindness, there is very little chance that any trusted friend is going to notice what words you’re mumbling. So this Sunday night, sing it loud, just like you do in church with all those hymns you don’t know. Here is the story courtesy of The Daily Mail:

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth joins hands with Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Duke of Edinburgh and Cherie Blair to sing ’Auld Lang Syne’ in a 2000 photo.

Actually, it began as a nice gesture.  This guy offered to take his six-year-old step-daughter’s little beagle out for a walk.

Problem is, he only walked the dog as far as his local bar, where he sold it so he could buy beer. Here’s the story:  

A beagle something like this one… A beagle on the beach in a 2005 photo. REUTERS/Lucy Pemoni

For just the right young lady, it’s all there waiting for you. Sun, sand, water, Adam Croot, diving, dining - and did I mention Adam Croot?

It turns out this guy had planned a dream vacation at a resort in Jamaica to propose to his girlfriend, but she dumped him before he had the chance. So, if you’d like to spend time with a dude who’s that good at reading social signals, maybe you should go to eBay and bid on her half of the dream trip.

Here is our story, and you can go here to see pictures of Adam and the resort, and to make your offer. 

(eBay screen shot)

According to a survey, nearly half of Brits regularly chat with friends and family on their home phone while naked. 

I didn’t find that to be terribly shocking. People are going to be buck-naked at home sometimes, and it stands to reason the phone is going to ring. What would shock me is to find people who refuse to answer a ringing phone until they throw something on. Now, that’s weird. 

The survey also looked into what sort of multi-tasking people do while speaking on the phone: ironing, cooking, etc.  The best single stat: 63 percent of men confessed to watching television while carrying on phone conversations!  The second-best stat? Ten percent admitted to walking away from the phone at times and leaving callers talking to nobody. Here’s the story, courtesy of The Sun’s Website: 

The woman in this picture isn’t smiling because she’s engaged in witty repartee.  

She’s actually watching a movie, thanks to a personal video screen in her special eyeglasses. This will be very good news for people who don’t want to go to all the work of slipping a DVD into their laptop and watching movies the old-fashioned way. Sonia Legg reports:

Former U.S. President Gerald Ford, who has died at his home in California at age 93, was remembered Wednesday by President Bush as a ‘calm and steady hand.’ Vice President Cheney, in a statement, called Ford a ‘dear friend and mentor’. Alexander Haig, Ford’s chief of staff, told CNN that Ford’s pardon of former President Richard Nixon “was one of the most courageous acts a president ever took.” Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, an act that stunned the nation. More facts about ex-President Ford here.

In other tributes and commentaries, The Washington Post, the paper that broke the Watergate scandals that eventually brought down Nixon, posted archived stories and a video interview with Bob Woodward on the story.

The Detroit Free Press (Ford was from Michigan) reported a “steady stream” of visitors at a makeshift shrine outside the Gerald R. Ford musuem (pictured right/REUTERS). In an editorial, the newspaper declared the former president had  ”earned a revered place in American history by making the ultimate political sacrifice.”

Comedian Chevy Chase, who protrayed Ford on ‘Saturday Night Live’ , called him “a very, very sweet man… He took my wife and I on a whole lovely trip through Grand Rapids to show us where he had been as a child and what not.” See full Reuters interview here
A lively comment thread surfaced on the left-leaning blog Daily Kos, with some of the posts on topic. On the right, blogger Michelle Malkin links to a  tribute from columnist Martin Schram, who recalls ”a very comfortable professional relationship between a very important Washington politician and a very inexperienced young journalist.” Religious blog Mondaymorninginsight compiles quotes attributed to Ford over the years, including “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.” From the markets, Peter Cohen concludes in bloggingstocks, that the U.S. stock market performed “surprisingly well” during Ford’s 895-day tenure.

Green Bay Packers fans behind Packerama detail two of Ford’s connections to the famed football franchise. That Ford dedicated the original building of the Packer Hall of Fame is but only one of them. More chat on Ford’s influence, at least from the college football “micro angle”, here at Collegefootballresource.  Hookedongolfblog posts an old photograph of Ford with a personal touch.

Send us your comments to the link below.

Dear Blog Guy,
Sometimes I have second thoughts about my career. How can I tell if I’m spending my life doing what’s right for me?
Hard Worker

Well, Hard Worker, these are very personal choices, but I have one rule of thumb I apply.  Look around your work station. If you see a large tub of gunpowder and tools for pounding and tamping, you may have made a bad career choice at some point.  I hope this helps.

A worker places gunpowder into cardboard cylinders at firecracker factory in Sta. Maria town in the Bulacan province, north of Manila, December 27, 2006. REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo