Condo developer Larry Hall is already one-quarter sold out of the upscale doomsday units he is building in an abandoned underground Cold War-era Atlas-F missile silo near Salina, Kan. He told an Agence France-Presse reporter in April that his 14-story structure would house seven floors of apartments ($1 million to $2 million each, cash up front), with the rest devoted to dry food storage, filtered-water tanks and an indoor farm, which would raise fish and vegetables to sustain residents for five years. The 9-foot-thick concrete walls (built to protect rockets from a Soviet nuclear attack) would be buttressed by entrance security to ward off the savages who were not wise enough to prepare against famine, meteors, nuclear war and the like.

Can’t possibly be true

n Dan O’Leary, the city manager of Keller, Tex. (pop. 27,000), faced with severe budget problems, was unable to avoid the sad job of handing out pink slips. For instance, he determined that one of Keller’s three city managers had to go, and in April, he laid himself off. According to a March Fort Worth Star-Telegram report, O’Leary neither intended to retire nor had other offers pending, and he had aroused no negative suspicions as to motive. He simply realized the city could be managed more cost-effectively by the two lower-paid officials.

n Herman Wallace, 70, and Albert Woodfox, 65, have been held in solitary confinement (only one hour a day outside) since 1972 in the Louisiana State Prison at Angola, after being convicted (via flimsy evidence and a convenient prison snitch) of killing a guard. A third convict for the murder, Robert King, who was in solitary for 29 years but then released, explained to BBC News in an April dispatch what it’s like to live inside 54 square feet for 23 hours a day, for over 14,000 straight days. The lawyer working to free Wallace and Woodfox said the soul-deadened men were “potted plants.”

That sacred institution

n A federal court magistrate in Melbourne, Australia, decided to split a divorcing couple’s assets in half in February after listening to tedious details of their 20-year marriage. The “couple” lived apart except for vacations and kept their finances separate, constantly “invoic[ing] each other,” according to the Daily Telegraph, for amounts as trifling as a $1.60 lightbulb.

n Though many Americans act as though they are in love with themselves, only Nadine Schweigert became an honest woman. She married herself in March in front of 45 family members and friends in Fargo, N.D., vowing “to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self.” And then she was off on a solo honeymoon.

Questionable judgments

On Feb. 1st, the New Jersey Honor Legion -- a civic association with more than 6,000 members in law enforcement -- nominated Frank DiMattina as “Citizen of the Month” for offering his catering hall in Woodbridge, N.J., numerous times for gatherings of police and firefighters. The nomination came three weeks after DiMattina (also known as “Frankie D”) was convicted of shaking down a rival bidder for a school-lunch contract in New York City. Federal prosecutors told the New York Daily News that DiMattina is mobbed up--an associate of the Genovese family’s John “Johnny Sausage” Barbato.