truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Among the best-selling and most controversial toys of this past holiday season were the $39.95 Mattel "Gotta Go" Doll and the $59.95 Hasbro Baby Alive, both because of their interactive features, especially their digestion/excretion functions. The latter doll comes with its own food ("green beans," "bananas") and a warning ("May stain some surfaces"). The Gotta Go includes a toilet and brings the flushing process to life for the child. An industry insider told the Washington Post that next season's toys would be even more realistic.

Twenty million Chinese have their residences in caves, but that is often not a bad deal, according to a December McClatchy Newspapers dispatch from Miaogou Village. In addition to the obvious advantages (e.g., no mortgage), some caves have been in the family for generations and have electrical wiring, plumbing and cable television, and some are part of communities of connected caves. Researchers said that earthen insulation keeps the inside temperature from dropping below about 55 degrees Fahrenheit even in the dead of winter.

A South Korean man identified only as Kim, wanted in Seoul for murder, had a more enduring grudge. Police charged the 37-year-old man with the November slaying of his high school music teacher after stewing for 21 years over the teacher's 1987 accusation that Kim cheated in class.

Freud de Melo, 73, operates a quirky tourist park in central Brazil that features stone models of Noah's Ark and other sculptures, but he also notoriously suffers from taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, and one of his sculptures is his own elaborate, fear-assuaging crypt. His vault houses a TV and fruit pantry, has access to fresh air, and features two built-in plastic cones that act as megaphones to the outside, reassuring de Melo that if he is buried too soon, he will be able to protest (as he demonstrated for a Wall Street Journal reporter, for an October dispatch, screaming into the countryside, "Help me! Come quick! I've been buried alive!"). (Taphephobia was more common in centuries past, afflicting George Washington among others, because doctors often missed lingering signs of life in sick patients.)

In September, after a Chinese Shandong airline flight landed safely in Zhengzhou, the engine died, and the airline was forced to enlist some of the 69 passengers to help employees push the plane to the gate.

Two musician-beggars in the village of Moseley, England, were banned from performing in the area in August after a magistrate court heard complaints by desperate residents that the pair played only two songs (Oasis' "Wonderwall" and George Michael's "Faith") over and over and over.