THE DOUBLE-DOG DARE WAS TOO COMPELLING

Two fourth-grade boys mimicking a scene from the movie A Christmas Story wound up with their tongues stuck to a frozen flagpole in Chesterton, Ind.

Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander were on flag duty at Jackson Elementary School on Jan. 25, with the job of raising and lowering the school's flags. They decided to see whether their tongues really would stick to the cold metal.

"I decided to try it because I thought all of the TV shows were lies, but turns out I was wrong," Gavin said.

Karen Alexander, James' mother, said her son told her he got the idea from the movie, which is based on stories about a boy growing up in northwest Indiana in the 1940s.

He just stood there -- chillin'

A man who calls himself a tantric master broke his own world record by standing engulfed in ice in New York for 72 minutes.

Wim Hof, 48, stood on a Manhattan street in a clear container filled with ice for an hour and 12 minutes Saturday.

Hof said he survives by controlling his body temperature through tantric meditation. Tantra is an Eastern tradition of ritual and meditation said to bring followers closer to their chosen deities.

Hof set the world record for full-body ice contact endurance in 2004, when he immersed himself in ice for 68 minutes.

Hof's feat kicked off Brainwave, a five-month series of events in New York exploring how art, music and meditation affect the brain.

Everybody wants a piece of Lincoln

The owners of some Illinois farmland once owned by Abraham Lincoln want to give people a chance to own about a square inch of history.

The Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Historical Farm plans to sell tiny parcels of the land, said Dale Parsons, manager of the group, based in Rockford, Ill.

Some of the money would go to charity, Parsons said last week. Some of the land might be reserved for charities to buy and resell during fund-raisers, he said.

He was not sure how many parcels would be sold, but he said there are more than 6 million square inches in an acre.

The land is near Lerna, not far from the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site.

Lincoln bought the land from his father, Thomas Lincoln, who needed the money. Thomas Lincoln continued farming the land.

The group bought the land last fall for $1.25 million from Raymond Phipps, whose family owned the property for more than a century.

A similar plan by Phipps to sell square-inch parcels of the land several years ago led to a legal squabble over unpaid taxes. Parsons said his group has hired real estate experts to avoid similar problems.

The group has hired a history professor to write a book about the location, and it hopes to restore a cabin on the site and turn it into a visitors center, Parsons said.

'A guy walks into the Statehouse ...'

Go ahead. Laugh at Vermont state Rep. Jason Lorber. He encourages it.

Lorber does stand-up gigs, produces comedy shows and runs improv workshops when he's not making laws.

"When I first came here, people said, 'You're the first comedian to come to the Statehouse.' I say, 'I'm the first professional comedian to come to the Statehouse,'" he said.

He says legislating and performing are both passions for him.

Lorber grew up in California, making him a "flatlander," or non-native to Vermonters. That gives him an outsider's view on things New Englanders take for granted.

For example: "I'm used to directions based on what street you're supposed to turn on. In Vermont, directions are based on landmarks that burned down 15 years ago."

Stand-up comedy isn't exactly big business in Vermont -- the state has no comedy clubs -- but some of Lorber's colleagues appreciate what he's doing.

"Anybody who can stand up in front of a group of people and try to elicit laughter, maybe being a legislator is the easy part of his life," state Rep. Floyd Nease said.

A bad day: croc bite, bullet wound

A farmhand rescued his co-worker from the jaws of a crocodile in northern Australia but accidentally shot him in the process, police said.

The two men were collecting wild crocodile eggs on a riverbank Jan. 22 in the Northern Territory city of Darwin when a crocodile snatched Jason Green by the arm, police said in a statement.

Green's co-worker shot the croc, causing it to let go of Green, but then a second shot hit Green in the arm.

The two men had been collecting eggs to boost the crocodile population at the farm. Their employer sent a helicopter to fly Green to a Darwin hospital for surgery.

Police Cmdr. Bob Harrison said Green's injuries were not life-threatening.

"He's going to be very sick and sorry and have a very good story to tell," Harrison told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Police could provide no information about the crocodile's condition.