and newswise, it seemed as though there were more odd news stories locally than history-making, earth-shaking ones - at least that was the informal consensus among several Telegraph reporters last week.

Of course, we can’t forget the senseless homicides in Alton this year. No one is forgetting those victims and their families, and especially what must be a painful, sad holiday season for them with a missing loved one. We also have compassion for people who lost their homes and belongings to fires; those who were seriously injured in traffic crashes; or had other tragic events happen to them this year.

We also have sympathy for everyone in the area who had loved ones die this year, including some Telegraph staff members’ parents.

As the newspaper will show in coming days when it publishes its annual Top Ten stories, there certainly were events of note in our readership area. Some of those stories, when they originally broke, took a lot of work to pull information together and then write concisely to best convey the facts to readers.

But at every year’s end, several of us love reminiscencing about the silly stories of the past year, particularly about “stupid criminals.” We couldn’t make up this stuff.

We will never forget one year on Stop Smoking Day when someone in an area town lit up a cigarette - and ignited oxygen from his attached tank. There also was the man who ran out of a small police station, still handcuffed to a wooden chair. What a sight that must have been. His escape was short-lived.

Regularly, we hear of people who let police come into their homes during “knock and talk” details, apparently forgetting to take their drugs and paraphernalia off the coffee table or dresser that are in full view. Ooops.

Then there are the people - OK, men - who haunt certain parts of Alton looking for prostitutes, but come up with all kinds of outlandish excuses and denials when they area arrested. Guys, it’s just a bad idea all around.

Who can forget the case this year of someone leaving a deer head on the hood of a young woman’s car? Gross and bizarre. Some readers complained that I gave a general location of the incident, but I think people want to know if it happened near their home or not. Obviously, the culprit knows where he left the head. Then when another newspaper followed my story, the reporter gave the street location.

Only a few weeks later, someone outdid the deer head depositer. This hunter left the entire carcass in a man’s yard, not too far from where the first head was found.

We also had a case of a 375-pound man (if he isn’t lying about his weight), who was charged with exposing himself to students riding by on a bus - not funny, but sick and odd. Adding to the “bizarre,” shortly thereafter, the same man sat down at an Alton restaurant and consumed a steakburger, three cheeseburgers with fixings, two large orders and one small order of fries and a - yes - DIET soda at about 4 a.m. That food might have boosted his cholesterol level and weight, but what got him in trouble was that he refused to pay the $18.99 bill.

Maybe it’s because it’s the holiday season or there is a full moon coming that make some people crazy. Just this week, a woman who held up an Alton milk store came back to supposedly tell the clerks she would repay the money that she took at gunpoint a week before. She said she would put the cash in the mailbox and then ran off. As of today, she still was at large. No word on any money left in the mailbox.

Just today, a 46-year-old woman called police to say that her boyfriend hit her in the face and shook her shortly after 3 a.m. While that certainly is not humorous, you have to shake your head at the reason: The woman had driven the man, 49, to White Castle, where he bought 30 belly-bombers. When they got home, he got mad when she told him her children didn’t eat White Castles. And what youngsters would want them at 3 a.m. anyway?

In another odd case in Alton, in October a woman was charged with five offenses after she allegedly ran down a man she is dating on a sidewalk, breaking several bones in his foot. The man was not cooperative with police, either.

It was an odd year in some respects, terrible in some ways and beautiful in others.

A dose of humor and a bit of fatalism sometimes is what we need to get through a year of covering news, and 2007 gave us plenty of reasons for needing both.

We’ll all have to see together what 2008 brings - news staff and dear readers. Best wishes to all of you for the 12-month journey ahead.

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