What actually happened was a little more ambiguous, to say nothing of strange. Also, it revolved around a teepee.

To invest in the high-volume, low-boil soap opera that seized a tiny corner of downtown Oakland today, one must trace Occupy's strange evolution in recent weeks, and then one must throw all that out because Oakland's its own weird thing. Militant, politically shrewd, economically screwed, energized, immature, determined, obsessive, scarred or none of the above, the Bay Area city has a proud history of inspiring passionate ambivalence. Occupy Oakland, for its part, is either a can of Jolt for a flagging international movement, or an embarrassment to a steadier one. Depends whom you ask is often as true about Oakland as it is about Occupy.

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How else to account for a man who approaches a female chimp nursing its wide-eyed newborn, takes aim amid howling protests from nearby apes and blasts the mother with a tranquilizer dart -- then snatches the sobbing infant and delivers it to an otherwise thoughtful, loving woman, who whisks the creature off to her New York brownstone?

It was science, this was the '70s, and the gauntlet had been thrown down by none other than Noam Chomsky. While nonhumans may communicate with one another, the MIT linguist said, they are fundamentally incapable of language. Columbia University professor Herbert Terrace set out to disprove the assertion with an ambitious and groundbreaking study. The experiment that followed involved a cleverly named chimpanzee and some less-than-clever human choices. The fascinating, ultimately heartbreaking account has finally been told in journalist Elizabeth Hess' primate biography, "Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human."

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Here's the problem, looking back: I don't know what to do with the world's Wesley Autreys.

My heart isn't a pebble but it is a corrupted little capitalist sponge; almost immediately after the New York construction worker's stunning subway rescue, I found myself hoping some kindly billionaire would discreetly deliver him a whopping check for his incomprehensible good deed. (For those living under rocks, the 50-year-old jumped onto a subway track before an oncoming train to protect a teenager who'd suffered a seizure; Autrey laid his body on top of the young man's, positioned himself between the rails, and let the train pass over them.) Later, when Donald Trump announced he'd be coughing up a $10,000 award, I snorted at his stinginess.

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"Women generally prefer that you jam your penis into their vaginas as quickly as possible during sex, ideally before it is wet at all, so they can really feel it. They will express their appreciation for this by saying, 'ow.'"

Karson, naturally, claimed the whole thing was a joke -- a joke and a lesson, in fact. He publishes "The Yeti" to shine a light on the very issues "people should be talking about but aren't talking about."

"I wanted to bring it out to light," he said, "to show how ridiculous it was that women are treated this way."

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Having worked to establish herself as a non-threatening chocolate lover and toiler "on behalf of America's children," Warner writes, Pelosi must now put her gavel where her mouth is. "American families," she says, "are cracking at the seams." The self-described mother and grandmother must get serious about the mending as she's promised.

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A high-level U.N. panel endorsed the creation of an agency focused specifically on women yesterday. Special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis has been pushing for such an agency, and argued that such a body "holds the prospect of transforming the lives of women -- removing the worst poverty and oppression, saving lives in the midst of the AIDS pandemic and other massive health problems."

The proposal comes amid mounting frustration within the U.N. over internal sprawl, fragmentation and ineffectiveness. The creation of the agency, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan hopes to approve by the year's end, would consolidate efforts around the world -- and do so "fully and ambitiously funded."

The agency would be "one of the panel's boldest recommendations," said June Zeitlin, executive director of the Women's Environment and Development Organization. Others both inside and outside the U.N. issued similar statements about the boldness, even radicalism, of the idea.

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Times Online: Dr. Giuseppi Del Priore of New York Downtown Hospital says he plans to perform the nation's first uterus transplant. The news spread fast, but the procedure will be costly and dangerous -- womb to spare jokes will likely be more common than actual transplants for the foreseeable future.

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The question was ignored by the mainstream press, which fixated on the effect of the attack ad -- featuring a fictional white woman inviting Ford to call her -- on white voters. But Slate's Mickey Kaus considered it two weeks ago, as did Political Sapphire and Booker Rising, a site for black moderates and conservatives.

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Slow out of the blocks, the U.S. eventually found its compass for the Balkans wars of the '90s, and violence against Bosnian Muslim women was something of a lodestar. Mladic, among others, came to represent the organized, systematic rape -- of as many as 30,000 to 50,000 women, the American press claimed at one point -- that helped instigate a humanitarian intervention movement in the West.

To spend even a little time in Sarajevo is to see that terrible things did happen to helpless civilians. Through countless fictions, this truth filtered down to a great many Americans in the '90s. Key exceptions notwithstanding, feminists were among the first to call for airstrikes.

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"For the first time, less than half of the Weber Grill-Line callers reported men to be the primary griller in their household," Weber tells us in its latest marketing materials. (Weber is referring, incidentally, to the Weber Grill-Line, 1-800-Grill-Out -- "the nation's only toll-free outdoor cooking hotline" -- celebrating its 10th anniversary.) Anyway, the numbers are in, and the largest-selling single brand of grills in the world has recruited "Betty, Marsha, Christina, Theresa, Edna, Jeanine, Ginger, Brooke and the other Girls of Weber" to reel in the newest demographic.

"Weber's Girls' Guide to Grilling," a slim volume of barbecue basics, safety guidelines and actual recipes, is a puny, insouciant, snarky, breezy, down-to-earth little primer of a P.R. mailing. "How About a Little Grill Talk" is one section. Also "Flirting With Flank Stank" and "Practicing Safe Sizzle." More cleverness has never gone into a booklet about barbecuing -- if Lorrie Moore wrote about outdoor cooking, this would be her 40-page opus. Likewise, if opuses could make human choices, this one would choose "Ally McBeal" and then some "Bridget Jones" before bed.

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It was May 2001 that the Harvard Living Wage Campaign ended its 21-day occupation of the building housing the president's office, the longest sit-in in the university's history, and certainly one of the most effective. The campus group had been working for years to convince the school to begin paying workers a wage appropriate to living costs in the area. Over 1,000 campus employees were said to earn less than $10.25 an hour, the minimum wage in Cambridge, Mass. -- in many cases much less. Despite petitions, rallies and meetings with the administration, the group saw no results.

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"I am innocent," Barrett said at a press conference two weeks ago, responding to allegations that he molested a boy 34 years ago. "My reputation has been tarnished, and I wonder how I am supposed to refute unsubstantiated and terribly false accusations."

On the surface Barrett may be no different from the scores of other men accused of sexual misconduct each day, but his predicament couldn't be more central or timely. Nearly 200 priests have resigned or have been dismissed since the first wave of accusations early this year, according to the Boston Globe. As this number grows in the coming months, the potential for hysteria is likely to build -- and a strange, furious fellowship of false-accusation sentinels will be watching closely.

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Under the watchful eyes of Secret Service experts, according to his spokesman, Bush backed a 2002 Chevrolet Camaro down a practice track and spun 180 degrees at 40 mph. The car continued front-end-first in the same direction -- an evasive maneuver known as the "J turn" that Secret Service drivers might make if they came under attack while ferrying him or other dignitaries ...

Bush also fired several guns during his visit to the unmarked, 493-acre complex outside Washington ... Shedding his jacket and tie, [the president] also rode in a limousine that confronted a mock explosion, viewed weapons used by the Secret Service, watched as a dog picked out a suitcase with "explosives" in it and saw a simulated water rescue of an agent.

-- Associated Press, April 20, 2002

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My fellow Americans, I stand before you having executed a J-turn, which is -- make no mistake -- the most challenging turn an American can make.

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A month later, not far away in North Miami-Dade County, police acting on neighbors' tips swept four homes and confiscated 201 cats and dogs. In one house, 52 beagles were found without proper food and surrounded by feces. Near another home, 72 dogs and cats, plus chickens, waded in an open sewer line. The Miami Herald reported that healthier animals found in the raids -- around 90 -- could go up for adoption. The rest, presumably, would be destroyed.

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KPCC, the Southern California public radio station, revealed last week that President Bush's Jan. 13 fainting episode had less to do with a pretzel than with a heart arrhythmia called sinus bradycardia. Sinus bradycardia is any heart rate slower than 60 beats per minute; we know from a Jan. 14 Los Angeles Times article that the president's ticker clocks in at around 34-45. The pretzel was still a key player, but only insofar as the gagging slowed the president's heart rate even further, via stimulation of the vagus nerve. Medically, bradycardia is nothing to worry about and I wouldn't bring the whole thing up if it weren't for the alien abduction thing -- it seems to have happened to both me and our president. But more on that later.

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Hello!! Once again, digital technology makes the headlines: At a cost of about $100,000, and at the request of his godchild -- firestarter-turned-pacifist Drew Barrymore -- Steven Spielberg is retrofitting "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial":

"The brilliant director plans to re-release 'E.T.' in late March," Neal Travis reported in the New York Post last week, "but the guns that appear in the final scene as [FBI] agents surround the spaceship will be replaced with walkie-talkies."

Barrymore's plan is more than just a thoughtful attempt at curbing worldwide violence; it's an untapped revenue stream! The potential markets extend well beyond actresses, into the dollar-rich world of niche demographics. Get these groups' special message into a popular film and they'll finance 50 "E.T.s"! Think of it as retroactive product placement. I've highlighted a few obvious marriages:

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2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

12 grapes, mashed

8 cubes ice

5 cups fruit juice (from concentrate)

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 tbsp. sugar

2.75 cups seltzer water

1 vitamin (any kind), ground

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tbsp. applesauce

Mix ingredients together in large pitcher. Stir and mash for 45 seconds. Serve cold or lukewarm. Hot might be good, too. Best drunk from dark glass or mug, under medium- or low-level lighting.

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One day Brian came over after some planning by our mothers. We were immediately bored and went to the kitchen. We took out a plastic pitcher and started rooting through the pantry for things to put in it. There was lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, grapes, ice, cinnamon, sugar, ground vitamins and a good deal more. We took turns stirring and mashing. In retrospect, the pivotal ingredients were fruit juice and seltzer. The other items succeeded because we couldn't taste them.

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As protest mastermind Will "the Thrill" Viharo tells it -- yells it -- Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven" is the last straw in Hollywood's systematic and shameful plundering of holy cinematic history. Viharo is a movie nut, but more than that, he's a Rat Pack nut, and the 1960 version of "Ocean's 11" is sacred territory.

Beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, he, his wife, Monica, and a few others positioned themselves in front of Oakland's Jack London Cinemas and began shouting at passing cars. The cars occasionally slowed down and asked why they were being shouted at. They're robbing our past, the protesters explained. These new guys don't know the first thing about "cool," and yet they're trying to remake a movie that's about nothing else.

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The novel hovers around Naipaul's familiar themes of dislocation, racial intersections, shame and class, but it never feels grandiose; ultimately Willie's is a navigation of minor social excursions. "Half a Life" is full of sharp stories. Nobody describes prolonged discomfort with quite so many funny, sad moments. Naipaul writes simply and gently. Even in moments of grotesquerie -- when, say, Willie brings a woman into a spitting cobra-infested castle and spreads out a rubber sheet for sex -- the writing stays restrained.

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