Wow, remember when 2024 seemed like a bad year? See “Goodbye, 2024” (subtitle: “You sucked.”). It wasn’t all bad, because O.J. Simpson died, reportedly from cancer, although cancer claimed it was innocent and has been out looking for the real killer ever since. See “O.J. Simpson Embarks on Long, Slow Bronco Ride Into Eternity” (Apr. 12, 2024) (collecting previous references to him). Unfortunately, O.J. didn’t have the decency to die again in 2025, so that year was arguably worse than its predecessor.

And yet somehow, one now longs to have it back.

• Jan. 7: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un reportedly declares that trafficking in and/or eating hot dogs will henceforth be considered treason. Too popular in South Korea, you see. Another source claims the dictator’s official jet is code-named “Air Force Un,” which would be funny if true but Kim Jong-un would still be a dick.

• Jan. 14: An Iowa lawmaker introduces a bill meant to protect Iowans from shark bites, though the only example of a shark biting someone there in recorded history involved an 18-inch-long bamboo shark that bit a local aquarium employee. The bill is quickly tabled, suggesting maybe it was not seen as a priority.

• Jan. 17: A British Columbia court rejects a man’s claim that he should receive a larger divorce settlement because he is “totally functionally incapacitated.” As I am always telling people, if you want to make such a disability claim, it’d be best if your wife doesn’t find out you and your new girlfriend have been out tromping around British Columbia “on one of [your] many expeditions in search of Sasquatch.” No one listens.

• Feb. 20: New Mexico’s Supreme Court holds that a prosecutor who “repeatedly accuses a defendant of witchcraft” during trial, using “theatrics, hyperbole, and disparaging inflammatory statements, such that the extent of the misconduct cannot be fully conveyed in this opinion,” has committed misconduct so serious that it’s reversible error and precludes a retrial. The court also notes that if you’re the defense attorney in such a case, you should probably object at some point.

• Feb. 24: A member of Parliament gets 10 weeks in prison for punching a constituent.

• Mar. 4: Members of Serbia’s parliament get no jail time for punching each other, or for lighting flares, throwing smoke bombs, and trying to disrupt opposing MPs’ speeches by blowing whistles and vuvuzelas.

• Mar. 5: Yet another arsonist is caught on video setting himself on fire, which will never not be funny.

• Mar. 20: The Associated Press reports two men are on trial in Zambia for allegedly threatening that country’s president with “a mysterious white powder, a red cloth, and an unidentified animal’s tail,” which is arguably a crime there under the Witchcraft Act 1914 (as amended). Ha! Only in a benighted Third World country would the government accuse people of witchcraft.

• Mar. 26: The person who used AI to create a video “avatar” to handle an oral argument for him, without first asking the court for permission, quickly learns he will have to handle the argument himself.

• Apr. 3: CBS News reports the Trump administration has imposed a 10% reciprocal tariff on goods from the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which would have upset the territory’s inhabitants if they weren’t all penguins. “Reciprocal,” the president said in his announcement. “That means they do it to us, and we do it to them.” Yep, that’s what that means, but in this case they didn’t and we won’t.

• Apr. 7: Further shirking its duty, the U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari in Morford v. Cattelan, thus refusing to decide whether there is a “striking similarity” between an artwork that is a banana duct-taped to a wall and one that is a banana and an orange duct-taped to a wall. Lower courts found no infringement.

• Apr. 8: California AB 666 is “held without recommendation” by the relevant committee, so the state will have to wait another year before making “the creature known as Bigfoot” its official state cryptid.

• May 11: Who is legally responsible if a patron’s prosthetic leg flies off during a carnival ride, bounces off the pavement, hits two children, then bounces off the pavement again and hits a third child? Is it (a) the carnival operator, (b) the leg manufacturer, (c) the leg owner, (d) the children’s parents, (e) all of the above, or (f) none of the above? Select all that apply. If not (f), write down the percentage of liability you would assign to each, and then throw the paper away because who cares.

• June 6: Damien Charlotin’s AI Hallucination Database, which collects cases where lawyers have been caught using artificial “intelligence” to write briefs, records its 140th entry. An expert in legal writing and humor is quoted as saying one shouldn’t use AI to write briefs at all, and if one must, one shouldn’t expect it to say things that are true. Seven months later, the database now has 767 entries, so the expert is starting to think one is not listening.

• June 19: “According to a quick survey of some lawyers and judges,” suggests the Manchester Journal, “the idea of importing actors and providing scripts” for their testimony in a criminal case “appears to be a novel idea.” The defense lawyer learned just before trial that the “witnesses” had responded to a newspaper ad the client placed seeking people to portray witnesses in a “movie,” and wisely chose not to call them to the stand.

• June 26: The BBC reports on the “underground network where members risk arrest, jail, and hefty fines by carrying out covert and unlicensed releases of beavers,” which as you know is strictly forbidden by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

• July 3: Sources report that in the early 1970s, when an aging Justice John Marshall Harlan II was losing his eyesight, but the Court was obliged to review certain adult films in obscenity cases, Harlan’s clerk was forced to describe to him what was happening on the screen. This “often prompt[ed] Harlan to [exclaim] ‘By Jove!’ or ‘extraordinary!’,” according to the report.

• July 11: Again an arsonist is caught on camera setting himself on fire, and again it is funny. Also: you should always clear your browser history after googling the phrase “can you be extradited for treason,” but it’s OK with me if you don’t.

• Aug. 7: The U.S. Constitution reappears on congress.gov, having mysteriously vanished from that site a couple weeks before. It doesn’t mean anything, though. Neither does its disappearance.

• Aug. 13: A jury in Utah finally gets the chance to convict Nicholas Rossi, or Nicholas Alahverdian, or Arthur Knight, or whoever else he had claimed to be during 17 years on the run. It does.

• Sept. 8: The CBC reports that a man was arrested for driving a child-size pink Barbie Jeep while under the influence, which is notable partly because it’s not the first time someone’s been arrested for doing that.

• Sept. 9: Is there probable cause to believe someone might try to kill a federal judge if he is seen at his local library printing a 236-page manifesto entitled “How to Kill a Federal Judge?” If your answer is “no,” explain through interpretive dance.

• Sept. 30: In a too-long-delayed ruling, a judge grants Nirvana’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing—and this is still a real thing that happened—child-pornography claims brought against it by the former baby who is shown naked on the cover of the album “Nevermind.”

• Oct. 7: Somebody threw a shoe at India’s Chief Justice, BR Gavai, claiming that Gavai “made fun of the Lord Vishnu.” (He didn’t.)

• Nov. 6: A jury acquits Sean Charles Dunn, who was—and this is also true—charged with felony assault for throwing a sandwich at a CBP agent. The victim, Gregory Lairmore, claimed the sandwich “exploded” when it struck him in a vulnerable spot (his bulletproof vest). “[I] could smell the onions and the mustard,” he testified, evidently still traumatized. He was lying (at least about the explosion), because the sandwich was still wrapped when it fell to the ground. Still, kudos to him, I guess, for not shooting the guy in the face.

• Nov. 8: Kim Kardashian announced she had failed the California bar exam. So if you were waiting to see what happened with that, now you know.

• Nov. 15: The New York Times reports that CBP agents recently arrested a man at the border after noticing “a bulge in [his] groin area” that turned out to be two “heavily sedated” orange-fronted parakeets (an endangered species). So, you know, credit where credit’s due.

• Dec. 11: A Louisiana man sues Anne Erin Clark, better known as “St. Vincent,” alleging he was injured by negligent stage-diving and/or crowd-surfing during a show in New Orleans. He alleges Clark seriously injured his spine by leaping onto him and “inexplicably wrapping her arms and legs around him,” though he admits he did not fall down and instead “swayed uncomfortably until event staff could remove Ms. Clark from his torso….”

I wish you the best of luck in 2026.