Weird news 2012: Burning rocks, LL Cool J, McNuggets and more

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The headlines constitute a paean of sorts to quirky California -- a place where beach rocks self-immolate and where McDonald’s fare can lure a nude man off a radio tower and compel a woman to offer her body for sale.

California’s odd stories of 2012, collected by the Los Angeles Times, include the decidedly strange as well as the very sad -- men who allegedly cooked their wives and parents who allegedly planted drugs in a PTA president’s car.

Then, of course, there’s the celebrity angle. LL Cool J walloped a burglar and Kim Kardashian pondered a mayoral run. (Lindsay Lohan didn’t make the cut.)

PHOTOS: California’s odd stories of 2012

For animal lovers, there was a meatball-loving bear, a proposed memorial to fish killed at a vehicle crash site and a woman and a monkey who employed the same tactic -- biting -- though for very different reasons: The woman lost a parking spot, whereas the monkey was likely sick of eating Frosted Flakes. (If only he’d been fed Chicken McNuggets ....)

See more of the unique and bizarre in our California odd-news gallery.

It’s enough to make you wonder if there’s something to that Mayan apocalypse stuff.

ALSO: Bear spotted snacking on trash, napping in Monrovia

Man finds $175,000 in pot in backyard, then things get weird

35,000 rubber ducks in Santa, reindeer outfits seized at L.A. port

-- Ashley Powers

Photos, from left: LL Cool J performs in February; the 400-pound ‘Glen Bearian’ roams around in April; bank robbers throw money out of a car during a car chase. Credit, from left: Ethan Miller / Getty Images; KTLA-TV, Channel 5; Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times