In 2012, Florida was a state where a lifeguard got fired for saving a life, a woman got arrested for riding a manatee and a man repeatedly used 911 as a phone sex service.

Think that's weird? It gets worse and more tragic.

In one of the state's most horrifying stories of the year, a man in Miami stripped a homeless man naked, chewing off most of his face before being fatally shot by police. And it wasn't the only story of its kind. In Manatee County, deputies used multiple Tasers to subdue a naked man who bit off part of another man's arm.

Later in the year a man won a roach-eating contest outside a Deerfield Beach pet store and then dropped dead in front of the store when body parts of the dozens of roaches he swallowed blocked his airway.

"We tend to be a magnet from every direction for all kinds of sketchery," said Billy Corben, a documentary film director whose works include "Cocaine Cowboys" about Miami's cocaine wars in the 1980s. "It's very late in the game where we go, 'That dude? I guess he seemed kind of weird.'"

Corben, whose "The Billy Pulpit" website compiles weird Florida news, said Floridians tend to show up in high numbers on "The Jerry Springer Show" and "America's Most Wanted." And odd stories elsewhere always seem to have a Florida tie — like former CIA director David Petraeus's extramarital affair being exposed through a Tampa socialite.

And when anti-virus software founder John McAfee ran from Belizean authorities who wanted to question him about the slaying of a neighbor, he wound up in Miami Beach, where he shopped, ate sushi and posed for photos with tourists.

"The state seems to either passively or directly endorse all of this lunacy in some way or another," Corben said.