TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

* The Miami Herald reported in September that David McAllister, 77 and blind, a nursing-home invalid in North Miami Beach, FL, receives daily visits from Chris Carrier, 32, who reads to McAllister from the Bible. Their only previous relationship occurred during a few days in December 1974, when McAllister kidnapped young Carrier at a bus stop and left him for dead in the Everglades with cigarette bums on his body, ice pick holes in one eye, and a gunshot wound that left him blind in the other eye. Said Carrier, "I don't stare at my potential murderer.
I stare at a man, very old, very alone and scared."

ORIGINAL, IF NOTHING ELSE

* The Arkansas Democrat -Gazette reported in December that a female inmate at the Yell County Jail in Dardanelle had been receiving regular shipments of methamphetamine via Federal Express. Jail officials had finally become suspicious and obtained the necessary search warrant to check her frequent deliveries.

SPORTS CLASSICS

* During the Christmas Handicap race at a track in Melbourne, Australia, the horse Cogitate threw its rider and bumped the horse Hon K wok Star sending Hon's jockey, apprentice Andrew Payne, into the air. To break his fall, Payne grabbed the neck of Cogitate and then climbed into the stirrups and rode that horse across the finish line (though the official records would show that both horses were disqualified).

BOTTOM OF THE GENE POOL

* In December, Frederick Lundy was to report for a court hearing in Akron, Ohio, in which he had been told: Plead not guilty to a parole violation and be released until trial, or plead guilty and go to jail immediately. Lundy pleaded guilty and was abruptly led away. That decision could be explained, perhaps, by Lundy's desire to get on with his punishment. What was not explained was why he had come into the courtroom under the circumstances with 41 rocks of crack cocaine in his pocket, which were discovered in a routine, pre-incarceration search.

* In November at the Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, Anthony Valencia and Fitzgerald Vandever, both age 20, were arrested and accused of roaming the Intensive Care Unit, looking to steal patients' food off warming carts. Said a hospital spokeswoman, "Actually, we've got some pretty good [food] down there."

* In October in Massapequa Park, NY, four men, ages 19-21, intending to follow a recipe in the Underground Steroid Handbook, failed to wait patiently until the Drano-like concoction had reached a satisfactory pH level to make it milder. The four were hospitalized with bad internal bums, and the concoction also burned rescuing police officers when the four men vomited on them.

* In November in Santa Maria, TX, Luis Martinez, Jr., 25, was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle by his uncle, allegedly to punish Martinez for not sharing his bag of Frito' s.

* In October a 20 year-old man was hospitalized in Guthrie, OK, after encouraging his friend Jason Heck to kill a millipede with a .22- caliber rifle; after tworiQochets, Heck's bullet hit the man just above his right eye, fracturing his skull.

I DON'T THINK SO

* David S. Peterson filed a lawsuit against New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson in August for racketeering, seeking three times the sum of money that Peterson had given his girlfriend to buy him clothes but which she had lost gambling at an Indian tribal casino. Peterson said Gov. Johnson was so much a supporter of the Indian gaming industry that it was his fault Peterson was out the money.

NO LONGER WEIRD

* Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: #15 The burglar with poor planning skills who attempts to enter a building after hours through a chimney or vent and gets stuck, as Baltimore, MD, police say Dwayne Terry, 33, did at a convenience store on Christmas morning. And #16 certainly the thousands of times a year (about 50 the past year in Fremont, CA, alone) that trial-bound defendants and others cheerfully place their belongings on the X-ray machines at the entrances of courthouses, only to have their illegal drugs detected.