Japan Again “Toto” is to sophisticated toilets in Japan as “Apple” is to consumer electronics in America. In September, Toto unveiled a prototype motorcycle with a toilet bowl to convert a driver’s waste into fuel, not only making it self-gassed-up but contributing to the company’s goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent within six years. The company was launching a monthlong, cross-country publicity tour (presumably featuring a gastro-intestinally robust driver). And in America, the quest for perfectly straight teeth can lead to orthodontia bills of thousands of dollars, but in Japan, a dental “defect” — slightly crooked canine teeth — makes young women more fetching, even “adorable,” say many men. Women with the “yaeba” look have canines pushed slightly forward by the molars behind them so that the canines develop a fang-like appearance. One dental salon, the Plaisir, in Tokyo, recently began offering non-permanent fixtures that replicate the look among straight-toothed women.

Marketing Genius Apparently, officials at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport felt the need for professional guidance on rebranding their facility to (as one put it) “carry it into the modern era,” and so hired the creative talents of Big Communications of Birmingham, Ala., to help. Big’s suggested name for the airport, announced to great fanfare in September: “Chattanooga Airport.”

March Of The Eccentrics “My ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live,” explained the former Alfred David, 79, otherwise known in his native Belgium as “Monsieur Pingouin” (Mr. Penguin), so named because a 1968 auto accident left him with a waddle in his walk that he decided to embrace with gusto. (His wife abandoned the marriage when he made the name change official; evidently, being “Mrs. Penguin” was not what she had signed up for.) Mr. Pingouin started a penguin-item museum that ultimately totaled 3,500 items, and he created a hooded, full-body black-and-white penguin outfit that, according to a September Reuters dispatch, he wears daily in his waddles around his Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek.

False Comfort The British recreation firm UK Paintball announced in August that a female customer had been injured after a paintball shot hit her in the chest, causing her silicone breast implant to “explode.” The company recommended that paintball facilities supply better chest protection for women with implants. Also, the Moscow, Russia, newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets reported in October that a local woman’s life had been saved by her “state-of-the-art” silicone breast implant. Her husband had stabbed her repeatedly in the chest during a domestic argument, but the implant’s gel supposedly deflected the blade.

Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’ The North Koreans called it a “cruise ship” and tried to establish a business model to attract wealthy tourists from China, but to the New York Times reporter on board in September, the 40-year-old boat was more like a “tramp steamer” on which “vacationers” paid the equivalent of $470 to “enjoy” five days and nights at sea. More than 200 people boarded the “dim” and “musty” vessel, “sometimes eight to a room with floor mattresses” and iffy bathrooms. The onboard “entertainment” consisted not of shuffleboard but of “decks of cards” and karaoke. Dinner “resembled a mess hall at an American Army base,” but with leftovers thrown overboard (even though some of it was blown back on deck). The trip was capped, wrote the Times, by the boat’s crashing into the pier as it docked, knocking a corner of the structure “into a pile of rubble.”

Weeding Out The Riffraff Sally Stricker was angry that the Nebraska troopers patrolling the state fair grounds in September had told her that she had an “illegal” message on her T-shirt and that if she wished to remain at the fair, she would have to either change shirts or wear hers inside out. The “message” was a marijuana leaf with the slogan “Don’t panic, It’s organic.” Stricker was at the fair to attend the night’s live concert — starring (marijuana-friendly) Willie Nelson.

Truth In Stereotypes Italian men are notorious “bamboccionis” (“big babies”) who exploit doting mothers by remaining in their family homes well into adulthood, sometimes into their 30s or later, expecting meals and laundry service. Many mothers are tolerant, but in September an elderly couple in the town of Mestre announced (through a consumer association) that if their 41-year-old, gainfully employed son did not meet a deadline for leaving, the association would file a lawsuit to evict him. (A news update has not been found, perhaps indicating that the son moved out.)

Going Medieval Freemon Seay, 38, was arrested in Thurston County, Wash., in October on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after disciplining his 16-year-old daughter for leaving home without his approval. Seay allegedly forced the girl to suit up in armor and helmet, with a wooden sword, and to fight him (also in armor, with a wooden sword) for over two hours until she could no longer stand up. Seay’s wife (the girl’s stepmother) was booked as an accessory and was said by deputies to have been supportive of her husband’s “Renaissance fair” enthusiasm (which Freemon Seay called a “lifestyle”).

Wrong Dolly The Learning Channel’s “Toddlers & Tiaras” series has pushed critics’ buttons enough with its general support of the competitive world of child beauty pageants, but a recent episode provoked unusually rabid complaints, according to a September New York Post report. Mother Lindsay Jackson had costumed her 4-year-old Maddy as “Dolly Parton,” with anatomically correct chest and backside. The Post described Maddy as “embarrass(ed)” at her chest when another 4-year-old pointed at her and asked, “What is that?” (Ultimately, the judges liked Maddy — for “sweetest face.”) In related news, while too many children in Third World countries die from starvation or lack of basic medicines, the preschoolers of the TLC TV channel’s “Outrageous Kid Parties” reality show celebrate birthdays and “graduation” (from or to kindergarten) with spectacular events that may cost their parents $30,000 or more. Typical features, according to an August ABC News report, included a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, a dunking booth, animal rides and a cotton candy machine, as well as the obligatory live music and limo or horseback (for grand entrances).

Thankfully No Swirlie Chicago’s WLS Radio reported that a man (unnamed in the story) filed a $600,000 lawsuit on Sept. 2 against the Grossinger City Autoplex in the city, claiming that five employees had physically harassed him during business hours over a two-month period in 2009. Included was the man’s claim that he had been given multiple “wedgies,” one of which was a “hanging” wedgie.

Score! Madrid’s Getafe soccer club, struggling for customers, startled Spain this summer by commissioning a porn movie, with zombies, hoping to attract more fans. As if that were not quixotic enough, it then tied the movie to a campaign to solicit sperm-bank donations. Explained the film’s producer, Angel Torres, “We have to move a mass of fans to seed the world with Getafe supporters.” A promo for the film follows a Getafe fan, armed with a copy of the movie for his viewing pleasure, as he disappears into a clinic’s private cubicle to fulfill his donation.

Metal Lite A New York Times obituary for former lead singer Jani Lane of the heavy metal band Warrant revealed that Mr. Lane’s birth name (he was born a year after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy) was John Kennedy Oswald. Rebellious musicians (Warrant’s debut album was Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich) often adopt provocative stage names to enhance their image, but Mr. Lane must be one of the very few to have abandoned a provocative birth name in favor of a bland one.

9/11: A Great Excuse Among the aftershocks of the 9/11 attacks on America was the colossal budget-busting on “homeland security” — a spending binge that, additionally, was thought to require something approaching uniform disbursement of funds throughout the 50 states. (Endless “what if” possibilities left no legislator willing to forsake maximum security.) Among the questionable projects described in a Los Angeles Times August review were the purchase of an inflatable Zodiac boat with wide-scan sonar — in case terrorists were eyeing Lake McConaughy in Keith County, Neb.; cattle nose leads, halters and electric prods (to protect against biological attacks on cows, awarded to Cherry County, Neb.); a terrorist-proof iron fence around a Veterans Affairs hospital near Asheville, N.C.; and $557,400 in communications and rescue gear in case North Pole, Alaska, got hit.

Struck By Turtle An update of the official index for classifying medical conditions (for research and quality control, and for insurance claims) was released recently, to take effect in October 2013, and replaced the current 18,000 codes with 140,000 much more specific ones. A September Wall Street Journal report noted, for example, 72 different codes for injuries involving birds, depending on the type. “Bitten by turtle” is different from “struck by turtle.” Different codes cover injuries in “opera houses,” on squash courts, and exactly where in or around a mobile home an injury occurred. “Walked into lamppost, initial encounter” is distinct from “walked into lamppost, subsequent encounter.” Codes cover conditions stemming from encounters with extraterrestrials and conditions resulting from “burn due to water skis on fire.” “Bizarre personal appearance” has a code, as well as “very low level of personal hygiene.”

Horse Feathers! Earlier this year, Marion Laval-Jeantet won a notable Prix Ars Electronica award for her “hybrid” work that, she said, intends to blur the boundaries between species. Laval-Jeantet stepped onstage in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as a horse-human, having earlier injected herself with horse blood (after prepping her body for several months with different horse immunoglobulins). She also walked with stilts that had “hooves” affixed to the bottom. She capped the show by extracting some of her own presumably-hybrid blood, to be frozen and stored for future research.

Ready For The Big League In October (1995), Richard King, 36, pleaded guilty to making threatening and obscene phone calls to two boys who were star players on his son’s Little League team in Blue Springs, Mo., to get them to reconsider their plans to quit the team. According to prosecutors, King called the boys several times while he was on a business trip in China and threatened to kill one kid and his parents and to commit sodomy on the kid’s whole family.

Great American Pastimes The New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter achieved his milestone 3,000th major league hit in July, and Steiner Sports Marketing of New Rochelle, N.Y., was ready (in partnership with the Yankees and Major League Baseball). Dozens of items from the game were offered to collectors, including the bases ($7,500 each), 30 balls used during the game ($2,000 each, unsigned), and even Jeter’s sweaty socks ($1,000). Steiner had also collected five gallons of dirt (under supervision, to assure authenticity), and uberfans can buy half-ounce containers of clay walked upon by Jeter during the game (from the shortstop area and the right-hand batter’s box) — for a not-dirt-cheap $250 each.

On Second Thought The initial explanation by Melvin Jackson, 48, upon his arrest in June for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in Kansas City, Mo., was to deny that he would ever do such a thing. Rather, he said, “I thought the lady was dead.” The initial explanation by Thomas O’Neil, 47, upon his arrest in Wausau, Wis., in June for criminal damage to property (breaking into a neighbor’s garage and defecating on the floor) was to claim that he thought he was in his own garage.

Them Thar Avenues “The streets of 47th Street are literally paved with gold,” said one of New York City’s gold wranglers, as he, down on all fours and manipulating tweezers, picked specks of gold, silver and jewels that had fallen off of clothing and jewelry racks as they were rolled from trucks into stores. The man told the New York Post in June that he had recently earned $819 in redemptions for six days’ prospecting.

Kids Today… A loaded handgun fell from the pocket of a kindergarten student in Houston in April, firing a single bullet that slightly wounded two classmates and the “shooter.” In Grant County, Wis., prosecutors filed first-degree sexual assault charges recently against a 6-year-old boy, stemming from a game of “doctor” that authorities say he pressured a 5-year-old girl into in 2010. And in Lakewood, Colo., police attempting to wrest control of a sharpened stick that a second-grade boy was using to threaten classmates and a teacher, gave him two shots of pepper spray. (The boy had just finished shouting to police, “Get away from me you f—ers.”)

China’s Got Balls Zhou Xin, 68, failed to get a callback from the judges for the “China’s Got Talent” TV reality show in June, according to a CNN report (after judge Annie Yi screamed in horror at his act). Zhou is a practitioner of one of the “72 Shaolin skills,” namely “iron crotch gong,” and for his “talent,” he stoically whacked himself in the testicles with a weight and then with a hammer.

More Pricks Than Kicks Self-described Las Vegas “performer” Staysha Randall took 3,200 different piercings in her body during the same sitting on June 7 to break the Guinness world record by 100 prickings. Coincidentally, on the very same day in Edinburgh, Scotland, the woman with the most lifetime piercings (6,925) got married. Elaine Davidson, 46, wore a full white ensemble that left bare only her face, which was decorated green and sported 192 piercings. The lucky guy is Davidson’s longtime friend Douglas Watson, a balding, 60-something man with no piercings or tattoos.

Unentitled Pablo Borgen has apparently been living without neighbors’ complaints in Lakeland, Fla., despite general knowledge that he is, according to sheriff’s officials, one of the area’s major heroin traffickers, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a month. Following a drug sting in June, however, neighbors discovered another fact about Borgen: that he and some of his gang were each drawing $900 a month in food stamps. Formerly indifferent neighbors were outraged by Borgen’s abuse of benefits, according to WTSP-TV. “Hang him by his toes,” said one. “I’ve been out of work since February (2008). I lived for a year on nothing but … food stamps.”

For All My Dothan Pals Two undercover policewomen running a prostitution sting in Dothan, Ala., in October (1999) declined to arrest a pickup-truck-driving john, around age 70, despite his three attempts to procure their services. He first offered the women the three squirrels he had just shot, but they ignored him (too much trouble to log in and store the evidence). A few minutes later, he sweetened the offer with the used refrigerator in the back of his truck, but the officers again declined (same reason). On the third trip, he finally offered cash: $6 (but no squirrels or refrigerator). The officers again declined. They later said they had resolved to arrest him if he returned, but he did not.

Blondes On Parade “Hundreds” of blondes paraded through Riga, Latvia, on May 28 at the third annual “March of the Blondes” festival designed to lift the country’s spirits following a rough stretch for the economy. More than 500 blondes registered, including 15 from New Zealand, seven from Finland, and 32 from Lithuania, according to a woman who told Agence France-Presse that she was the head of the Latvian Association of Blondes. Money collected during the event goes to local charities.

Oh Dear… Tokyo’s Kajimoto Laboratory has created a tongue-kissing machine to enable lovers to suck face over the Internet, according to a May CNN report. At separate locations, the pair place special straws in their mouths and mimic a deep kiss, which is recorded and transmitted to each other’s straws. Researcher Nobuhiro Takahashi sees profit in “celebrity” tongue-kissing applications, but said more work is needed to establish individual taste, breathing and tongue moistness. (Another team of Japanese researchers, using a harness-type device, reported making similar advances — in Internet “hugging,” with sensors that mimic lovers’ heartbeats and even their spine’s “tingling” and stomach’s “butterflies.”)

Nickel Diming The Columbus, Ohio, school board accepted principal Kimberly Jones’ resignation in May following revelations by The Columbus Dispatch that she, though earning $90,000 a year, swore on federal forms that she made just $25,000 — so that her own two children would qualify for reduced-price school lunches. And Prime Healthcare Services, with a reputation for rescuing financially failing hospitals, reported that two new acquisitions, in Victorville, Calif., and Redding, Calif., somehow curiously experienced rates about 40 and 70 times the state average in patients with a rare Third World Ghanian sickness that, conveniently, qualified the hospitals for enhanced Medicare reimbursements.

Unhappy Birthdays Principal Terry Eisenbarth apologized to parents and children at Washington Elementary School in Mount Vernon, Iowa, in May and promised to stop his ritual “whammies,” in which he summons kids on their birthdays to his office, sings “Happy Birthday” to them, and ceremonially spanks the child’s backside with a cushioned hockey stick (with the number of whacks equaling the child’s age). Elsewhere, Joseph Hayes, 48, was arrested in South Memphis, Tenn., in June after allegedly threatening (with a gun in his waistband) the hostess of a birthday party to which his kids had been invited but which ran out of cake and ice cream. “Y’all didn’t save my kids no damn ice cream and cake,” he was heard to say, and “I ain’t scared to go to jail.”

Altitudinally Challenged In May, a federal appeals court reinstated the Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit filed in 2007 by Darrell Miller after he was fired as a bridge maintenance worker by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Miller had been medically diagnosed with a fear of heights, and could not work on many projects, but a lower court dismissed his lawsuit, concluding that working at heights was an unavoidable condition of bridge maintenance. (The appeals court said that a jury “might” find that bridge maintenance could be done in “teams” with one worker always on the ground.)

Claptrap In December (1993), a New York appeals court rejected Edna Hobbs’ lawsuit against the company that makes the device called “The Clapper.” Hobbs claimed she hurt her hands because she had to clap too hard in order to turn her appliances on: “I couldn’t peel potatoes (when my hands hurt). I never ate so many baked potatoes in my life. I was in pain.” However, the judge said Hobbs had merely failed to adjust the sensitivity controls.

The Great Gall Of China Nightclub singer Simon Ledger was arrested following a performance at the Driftwood Beach Bar on Britain’s Isle of Wight in April after a patron complained to police. Ledger was covering the 1974 hit “Kung Fu Fighting,” and two customers of Chinese descent reported that they felt victims of illegal “racially aggravated harassment.”

Def! Alleged gang members Barbara Lee, 45, and Marco Ibanez, 19, were arrested in Hallandale Beach, Fla., in April and charged in the assault and stabbing of four deaf people. Lee was at the Ocean’s Eleven Lounge one evening when she saw several people in a group make hand signs that she interpreted as disrespecting her own gang’s signs, and, according to police, left to recruit Ibanez to come administer retribution. Unknown to Lee or Ibanez, the group were deaf people using sign language and had no idea they were making “gang” signs.

Piddling Concern In June, as five young men gathered around the Mount Tabor Reservoir near Portland, Ore., one urinated in it, thus “contaminating” the 7.2 million gallons that serve the city, and, said Water Bureau administrator David Shaff, necessitating that the entire supply be dumped. Under questioning by the weekly Portland Mercury whether the water is also dumped when an animal urinates in it (or worse, dies in it), Shaff replied, certainly not. “If we did that, we’d be (dumping the water) all the time.” Well, asked the reporter, what’s the difference? Because, said Shaff (sounding confident of his logic), “Do you want to be drinking someone’s pee?”

Inverse Mortgage Bank of America (BA) had the tables turned on it in June after the company wrongfully harassed an alleged mortgage scofflaw in Naples, Fla. BA had attempted to foreclose on homeowners Warren and Maureen Nyerges last year even though the couple had bought their house with cash — paid directly to BA. It took BA a year and a half to understand its mistake — that is, until the Nyergeses sued and won a judgment for expenses of $2,534, which BA promptly ignored. The Nyergeses’ attorney obtained a seizure order, and two sheriff’s deputies, with a moving truck, arrived at the local BA branch on June 3 to load $2,534 worth of furniture and computer equipment from the bank’s offices. After about an hour on the phone with higher-ups, the local BA manager issue a check for $2,534.

“Classy” Hobby Louis “Shovelhead” Garrett is an artist, a mannequin collector and a quilter in the eastern Missouri town of Louisiana, with a specialty in sewing quilts from women’s panties, according to a report in the Hannibal Courier-Post. After showing his latest quilt at a women’s luncheon in Hannibal in March, he told the newspaper of his high standards: “No polyester. I don’t want those cheap, dollar-store, not-sexy, farm-girl panties. I want classy — silk or nylon.”

The Not-So Dark Knight On Halloween day (1989), Tallahassee, Fla., K-Mart employee Jeff Sablom was taking a break in the back of the store to try on the Batman costume he had planned to wear to a party that night when a security guard asked for his help to apprehend a shoplifter. Said the guard later, “You should have seen that man’s eyes when he looked back and saw Batman chasing him.” Sablom recovered four cartons of cigarettes and two videocassettes.

Our Gubmint In April, Texas state Rep. John Davis of Houston proposed a tax break — aimed at buyers of yachts valued at more than a quarter-million dollars. Davis promised more yacht sales and, through a ripple effect, more jobs if Texas capped the sales tax on yachts at the amount due on a $250,000 vessel — a break of almost $16,000 on a $500,000 boat. Elsewhere, the federal government failed to foresee that fighting two wars simultaneously, with historically high wound-survival rates, might produce surges of disability claims. Just in the last year, according to an April USA Today report, claims are up over 50 percent, and those taking longer than two months to resolve have more than doubled. (Tragically, Marine Clay Hunt, who was a national spokesman for disability rights and who suffered from post-traumatic stress, killed himself on March 31, ultimately frustrated that the Department of Veterans Affairs had lost his paperwork. “I can track my pizza from Pizza Hut on my BlackBerry,” he once said, “but the VA can’t find my claim for four months.”)

Aerostar Cabbage The local board of health closed down the Wing Wah Chinese restaurant in South Dennis, Mass., briefly in August (1992) for various violations. The most serious, said officials, was the restaurant’s practice of draining water from cabbage by putting it in cloth laundry bags, placing the bags between two pieces of plywood in the parking lot, and driving over them with a van. Said Health Director Ted Dumas, “I’ve seen everything now.”

Breeding And Refinement Sharon Newling, 58, was arrested in Salisbury, N.C., in April and charged with shooting at her stepson with a .22-caliber rifle. She denied shooting “at” him, but said she was just shooting toward him “to make him stop working on his truck.” In April in Greensboro, N.C., Stephanie Preston and Bobby Duncan were married in front of family and friends at the local Jiffy Lube. Lastly, 25-year-old man in Okaloosa County, Fla., was arrested and charged with misdemeanor trespassing after he entered the Club 51 Gentlemen’s Club, from which he had been banned after a February incident. The man told police that he knew he had been banned from a strip club but couldn’t remember which one.

Dangerously Delicious Erie County (N.Y.) jail officials suspended guards Lawrence Mule, a 26-year veteran, and James Conlin, a 29-year veteran, after they scuffled at the County Correctional Facility on April 21, reportedly over a bag of chips. An inmate had to break up the fight.

Unbearable Whiteness Of Being An anti-terrorism drill scheduled for Pottawattamie County, Iowa, in March, which was to practice community co-ordination after an attack by a hypothetical white supremacist group angry about illegal immigration, had to be canceled. The sheriff said callers claiming to be white supremacists were angry at being picked on as “terrorists” and had threatened a school in Treynor, Iowa, with an attack that closely resembled the kind of imagined attack that would have preceded the simulated drill.

Tea Fairies In Chinese legend, tea leaves picked by fairies using not their hands but just their mouths yielded brewed tea that would bring prosperity and cure diseases, and now the historic, picturesque Jiuhua Mountain Tea Plantation (in Gushi, Henan province) has promised to hire up to 10 female virgins to provide the equivalently pure and delicate tea leaves, picked with the teeth and dropped into small baskets worn around the women’s necks. According to an April report in London’s Daily Mail, only virgins with strong necks and lips (and a bra size of C-cup or larger), and without visible scars or blemishes, will be considered for the equivalent-$80-a-day jobs (an almost unheard-of salary in China, especially for agricultural field work).

Erring On The Side Of Seagal! A tank and several armored vehicles with dozens of SWAT officers and a bomb robot rolled into a generally quiet Phoenix neighborhood on March 21, startling the residents. Knocking down a wall, deputies raided the home of Jesus Llovera, who was “suspected” of running a cockfighting business, and, indeed, 115 chickens were found inside, but Llovera was alone and unarmed, and his only previous connection to cockfights was a misdemeanor conviction in 2010 for attending one. “We’re going to err on the side of caution,” said Sgt. Jesse Spurgin. Adding to neighbors’ amazement was the almost-fanciful sight — riding in the tank — of actor Steven Seagal, who had brought his “Lawman” reality TV show to Phoenix.

Inferior Designers Businesses typically resist government regulation, but in March Florida’s interior designers begged the state House of Representatives to continue controlling them, with a theatrically ham-handed lobbying campaign challenging a deregulation bill. Designers righteously insisted that only “licensed professionals” (with a minimum six years of college and experience) could prevent the nausea Floridians would suffer from inappropriate color schemes (affecting the “autonomic nervous system” and salivary glands). Also, poorly designed prison interiors could be turned into weapons by inmates. Furthermore, deregulation would contribute to “88,000 deaths” a year from flammable materials that would suddenly inundate the market in the absence of licensing. Said one designer, addressing House committee members, “You (here in this chamber) don’t even have correct seating.” (If deregulation is successful, competition will increase, and lower fees are expected.)

Cure For Mosquito Bites Young girls “grow up” prematurely, often aided by hungry retailers such as the U.S.’s Abercrombie & Fitch and the British clothiers Primark and Matalan, each of which this spring began offering lines of padded bras for girls as young as 7 (8 at Abercrombie & Fitch for the “Ashley Push-Up Triangle”), with Matalan offering one in size “28aa.” Child advocates were predictably disgusted, with one Los Angeles psychologist opining that permissive mothers were trying to compensate through their daughters for their own lack of sexual appeal.

Don’t Mess With Their Priorities In January, while the Texas Legislature debated budget cuts that would almost certainly cost Allen High School (just north of Dallas) at least $18 million and require layoffs of teachers and other school personnel, construction was continuing on the school’s new $60 million football stadium. Noted a New York Times report on the stadium (which 63 percent of voters approved in a 2009 bond referendum), “(O)nly football supersedes faith and family (among Texans).”

Death Panels? Marla Gilson, 59, was fired in April after her employer callously rejected her offer to work from home in Chevy Chase, Md., at reduced salary, while she recovers from chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant for her leukemia. Gilson’s job was chief executive of the Association of Jewish Aging Services of North America, which serves 112 facilities that help frail and elderly Jews during their final years. Gilson’s termination also made her health care much more expensive and potentially made her uninsurable in the future if her treatment is successful. (Nonetheless, the board of directors thanked her for her service and wished her a “speedy recovery.”)

Up The Bum Marie Stopes International is a prominent London charity that robustly promotes a woman’s right to choose abortion, but a whimsical public service campaign in January has created unusually savage criticism. The organization partnered with the British comedy music band The Midnight Beast to produce a video suggesting anal sex as a contraceptive of choice. Among the lyrics of one song, “One up the bum, and it’s no harm done/One up the bum, and you won’t be a mum.”

Ducking Insane A Tulsa, Okla., physician, writing in a 1992 issue of the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, reported on a 32-year-old woman whose neighbors had just had a large satellite dish installed in their yard. The woman became convinced that she was being wooed by Donald Duck and that the dish had been placed there to facilitate his communicating with her. She spent lots of time “hovering” around the dish and eventually undressed and climbed into it, where she said later that she had consummated marriage to Mr. Duck.

Nice Piece! Sigurdur Hjartarson’s life’s work is his Phallological Museum in the fishing town of Husavik, Iceland. As the world’s only all-penis attraction, it draws tourists by the thousands, eager to see the 276-specimen collection of desiccated or stuffed organs from a wide range of animals. However, only in April (15 years after it opened) did the museum acquire a human penis, donated by the late Pall Arason, an acquaintance who, said Hjartarson, “liked to be in the limelight … to be provocative.” To an Associated Press reporter inquiring of the “size” of Arason’s donation, Hjartarson said only, “You will just have to come and see it.”

Madness Is The Brother Of Invention The German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur reported in November (1992) on Japanese inventor Kenji Kawakami’s “New Idea Academy,” which features his own innovations and counts among his most successful products a portable washing machine that straps onto the user’s leg (swirling the clothes with each step); a travel necktie with room for writing utensils and a calculator; padded booties for cats so they can dust the floor while walking around; and a “solar flashlight” that provides a strong beam of light as long as the sun is shining.

Sensitive Limeys British drug dealer Luke Walsh-Pinnock, 22, recently released after a prison stint, threatened in February to sue police in the Kilburn neighborhood of London after officers distributed a leaflet near his mother’s home warning that Walsh-Pinnock was once again free. Walsh-Pinnock said he felt “humiliated” by the leaflet, in violation of his “human rights.” And Britain’s Oxfordshire County Council, which oversees youth swimming classes, banned goggles from the pools in February because of the fear that kids might snap the elastic bands and hurt their eyes. Lastly, Malvern Primary School in Huyton, Merseyside, recently banned play with regulation soccer balls because they are made of leather. “Football,” it ruled, must be played with less-dangerous sponge balls.

Righteous Fur New Orleans clothing designer Cree McCree, an ardent environmentalist, ordinarily would never work with animal fur, but the Louisiana state pest, the nutria (swamp rat), is culled in abundance by hunters, who leave the carcasses where they fall. Calling its soft-brown coat “guilt-free fur that belongs on the runway instead of at the bottom of the bayou,” McCree has encouraged a small industry of local designers to create nutria fashions — and in November went big-time with a New York City show (“Nutria-palooza”). Now, according to a November New York Times report, designers Billy Reid and Oscar de la Renta are sampling nutria’s “righteous fur.”

The F State Florida Senate Bill 1246, introduced in February, would make it a first-degree felony to take a picture of any farmland, even from the side of the road, without written permission of the land’s owner. (The bill is perhaps an overenthusiastic attempt to pre-empt campaigns by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.) Though Florida faces a serious budget shortfall, another Senate bill, 1846, would authorize the state to borrow money for golf courses and resorts in at least five state parks and would require that the courses be designed by golf legend Jack Nicklaus’ firm. (Update: SB1846 was too excessive even for Florida and was withdrawn.)

Children Left Behind Principal Angela Jennings of Rock Chapel Elementary School in Lithonia, Ga., resigned after an investigation revealed that she had temporarily unenrolled 13 students last year for the sole purpose of keeping them from annual statewide tests because she feared their scores would drag down her school’s performance. (When the test was over, Jennings re-enrolled them.) The resignation, effective in June, was revealed in February by Atlanta’s WSB-TV.

Lovin’ The Brock Over the last 10 years, newspaper vendor Miljenko Bukovic, 56, of Valparaiso, Chile, has acquired 82 Julia Roberts face tattoos on his upper body — all, he said, inspired by scenes from the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

The Age Of Compromise In April (2006), a dead, decaying cow got caught on a tree branch at a dam near West Milford, W.Va., and remained there for “several weeks,” according to an Associated Press report, grossing out neighbors, while five government agencies split hairs to keep from getting involved. Could the West Milford city government move the cow? (No, outside city limits.) State Department of Natural Resources? (No, they handle only wild animals.) State Environmental Protection agency? (No, the cow presents no ecological danger.) State Agriculture Department? (No, it’s a local issue.) Regional Water Board? (No, just no.) Finally, workers from the state Division of Highways, along with volunteer firefighters, removed the cow.

Redneck Cavalcade Timothy Walker, 48, was hospitalized in Burlington, N.C., in February after he fell off of an SUV while he was on top, holding down two mattresses for the driver, who apparently rounded a curve too fast. Elsewhere, in Bellevue, Wash., three people were hospitalized in January when their van stalled and then exploded as the ignition was re-engaged. They were carrying two gallons of gasoline in an open container and had been feeding the carburetor directly, through an opening in the engine housing (between the seats), as the van was in motion. (It was not reported why they were doing it that way.) Arkeen Thomas, 19, broke into a home in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in March, but the residents were present, and the male resident immediately punched Thomas in the mouth, sending him fleeing. (Minutes later, a woman identified as Thomas’ mother arrived, picked up her son’s gold teeth that had been knocked out, and left.)

Of Mice And Men In February, a New York City gallery began offering classes in “anthropomorphic taxidermy,” described as a “Victorian hobby” in which mouse carcasses are not only meticulously cleaned and stuffed, but outfitted in handmade miniature 19th-century clothing, such as bloomers. British practitioners are said to have created elaborate scenes featuring scores of the costumed bodies. Class instructor Susan Jeiven said the mice have to look “classy.” “I don’t like rogue taxidermy.”

Lint for Lent Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum is already home to an artist’s rendition of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” made from burned toast, and now comes a recent version by Laura Bell of Roscommon, Mich.: da Vinci’s masterpiece made with clothes-dryer lint. Bell said she did about 800 hours of laundry of various-colored towels to obtain lint of the proper hues, and then worked 200 more hours to construct the 14-foot-long, 4-foot-high mural.

Bastion of Good Taste Wal-Mart announced in January that it would soon offer a full line of makeup especially for 8-year-olds (and up), by GeoGirl, including mascara, sheer lip gloss, pink blush and purple eye shadow, all supposedly designed for young skin. (An executive of Aspire cosmetics said her research revealed a potential market of 6-year-olds.)

Presto! In November, a Taiwanese factory owner accidentally dropped 200 $1,000 bills (worth about $6,600 in U.S. dollars) into an industrial shredder, turning them into confetti. Luckily, Taiwan’s Justice Ministry employs a forensic handwriting analyst who excels at jigsaw puzzles on the side. Ms. Liu Hui-fen worked almost around the clock for seven days to piece together the 75 percent of each bill sufficient to make them legally exchangeable.

“The Vagina Dance” A suburban Chicago high school health-class instructor’s technique for teaching the names of female reproductive parts caught the ire of the Illinois Family Institute religious organization in January. To some of the kids, teacher Jacqulyn Levin’s “game” was nothing more than a mnemonic to facilitate memorizing the anatomy, but others told the institute that Levin’s play on words was chantable, could be set to the tune of the “Hokey Pokey,” and was referred to by several students as “the vagina dance.” Said a complaining parent, “It is disrespectful to women and removes modesty about the reproductive parts.”

Curses! The government of Romania, attempting both to make amends for historical persecution of fortune-telling “witches” and to collect more tax revenue, amended its labor law recently to legalize the profession. However, “queen witch” Bratara Buzea, apparently speaking for many in the soothsaying business, told the Associated Press in February that official recognition might make witches legally responsible for future events that are beyond their control. Already, witches are said to be fighting back against the government with curses — hurling poisonous mandrake plants into the Danube River and casting a special spell involving cat dung and a dead dog.

Scared Straight Thomas Walkley, a lawyer from Norton, Ohio, was charged in January with indecent exposure for pulling his pants down in front of two 19-year-old males, but Walkley said he was merely “mentoring” at-risk boys. He said it is a technique he had used with other troubled youths, especially the most difficult cases, by getting them “to think differently.” Said Walkley, “Radical times call for radical measures.”

Spirited Ideas The Panamanian company Scottish Spirits recently introduced a straight Scotch whisky in 12-ounce cans, for a market of mobile drinkers who prefer not to invest in a whole bottle. The international Scotch whisky trade association expressed alarm. And in December, a company in eastern Ukraine (a country known for hard drinking) announced a “drinking buddy” service in which, for the equivalent of about $18, it would supply a barroom companion for the evening, “qualified” to discuss politics, sports, women, etc., and even to offer psychological counseling if appropriate.

Riding the Cobra Mental health practitioners, writing in the January issue of the journal Substance Abuse, described two patients who had recently arrived at a clinic in Ranchi, India, after allowing themselves to be bitten by cobras for recreational highs. Both men had decades-long substance-abuse issues, especially involving opiates, and decided to try what they had heard about on the street. One, age 44, bitten on the foot, experienced “a blackout associated with a sense of well-being, lethargy and sleepiness.” The other, 52, reported “dizziness and blurred vision followed by a heightened arousal and a sense of well-being,” and apparently was so impressed that he returned to the snake charmer two weeks later for a second bite.

Nailed It! From time to time a woman appears in the news proudly displaying her years-long cultivation of fingernail growth. This time it was Ms. Jazz Ison Sinkfield, a grandmother from Atlanta, who showed off her hands for WXIA-TV in February. She admits some handicaps from her 20- to 24-inch long nails that skew and curl in seemingly random directions (e.g., no bowling, shoe-tying or computer work, and the expense of a five-hour, $250 salon session each month), but claims to be unfazed if people she meets find the sight of her nails repulsive. Said Sinkfield, “Some people are jealous.”

Thanks Again, Japan The SEGA video company’s Japan division began test-marketing its new Toylets game in January, designed for men’s urinals. With sensors in the basin and a video screen at eye level, men score points based on the strength and accuracy of their streams. Among the suite of games: sumo wrestling (squirt the opponent out of the circle), graffiti-erasure (strong streams wipe out more graffiti), and skirt-raising (the stronger the stream, the higher a woman’s skirt is “blown” upward).

Take That, Keef Three men and two juveniles were charged with burglary in Silver Springs Shores, FL, in January following a December break-in that netted them electronics and jewelry and what they thought was a stash of cocaine. The men told police they had snorted some of the powder. The police report identified the powder as the ashes of the resident’s late father and of two Great Danes. (Some of the ashes were later recovered.)

When Life Gives You Lemons… When Bernie Ecclestone, CEO of the Formula One racing circuit, was mugged in November and had his jewelry stolen, he sent a photograph of his battered face to the Hublot watch company and convinced its chief executive to run a brief advertising campaign, “See What People Will Do for a Hublot.”

Opossum Droppings Among the annual events marking the New Year (similar to the ball-dropping at New York’s Times Square), according to a CBS News report: a pickle dropped into a barrel in a North Carolina town, a dropped bologna in Pennsylvania, a dropped frozen carp in Wisconsin, and, in Brasstown, NC, the dropping of the opossum. (However, according to Clay Logan, founder of the event, the opossum is merely lowered, not dropped.)

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being By his own testimony, John Ditullio is a hateful neo-Nazi who despised his next-door neighbors in New Port Richey, FL (a white woman with an African-American friend and a son who was openly gay), but when the son was murdered and the mother attacked in 2006, Ditullio denied involvement, and though he earned a hung jury in his first trial, his retrial was scheduled for November 2010. For each day of the trial, a makeup artist was hired (paid for by the government at $135 a day) to cover up Ditullio’s swastika neck tattoo and crude-phrase cheek tattoo so as to keep jurors from being unfairly prejudiced. (Nonetheless, Ditullio was convicted in December and sentenced to death.)

Kalle Anka! Every December 24 in Sweden, at 3 p.m., a third to a half of all Swedes sit down to watch the same traditional television program that has marked Christmas for the last 50 years: a lineup of historic Donald Duck cartoons. According to a December report on Slate.com, the show — popularly known as “Kalle Anka” in Swedish — is insinuated in the national psyche because it was the first big holiday program when Swedes began to acquire television sets in 1959. Entire families still watch together, repeating their favorite lines.

Redneck Cavalcade The Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard near Cherokee, AL, is reserved as hallowed ground for burial of genuine coon dogs, which must be judged authentic before their carcasses can be accepted, according to a December report in The Birmingham News. The Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association must attest to the dog’s having had the ability “to tree a raccoon.” (In March, a funeral for one coon dog at Key Underwood drew 200 mourners.) In Safety Harbor, FL, trailer-park neighbors Joe Capes and Ronald Richards fought in December, with sheriff’s deputies called and Capes arrested for assaulting Richards. The two were arguing over whether the late country singer Conway Twitty was gay. Sought as a suspect in a convenience store killing in Largo, FL, in December (and an example of the highly revealing “Three First Names” theory of criminal liability), Mr. Larry Joe Jerry — who actually has four first names (Larry Joe Jerry, Jr.). Lastly, in a December incident near Orlando, a former Ku Klux Klan “Cyclops,” George Hixon, 73, and his son, Troy, 45, and Troy’s girlfriend fought, resulting in Troy’s allegedly firing gunshots toward the woman’s feet and the subsequent arrests of the two men. According to Osceola County deputies, the altercation was precipitated by the girlfriend’s unhappiness that she got the “cheap beer” while the men kept the “good beer” (Budweiser) for themselves.

Crazy Deal! The Cabral Chrysler dealership in Manteca, CA, was so desperate for a sale in October that one of its employees picked up potential customer Donald Davis, 67, at his nursing home, brought the pajamas-and-slippers-clad, dementia-suffering resident in to sign papers, handed him the keys to his new pickup truck (with the requested chrome wheels), and sent him on his way (even tossing Davis’ wheelchair into the truck’s bed as Davis sped away). Shortly afterward, Davis led police on a high-speed chase 50 miles from Manteca. He was stopped and detained (but at a hospital the next morning, he passed away from heart failure). The Cabral salesman said Davis had called him twice the day before, insisting on buying a new truck.

More Monkeys! Researchers learned from reports in early 2010 of a new monkey species in Myanmar, with a nose so recessed that it habitually collects rainfall and constantly sneezes. However, according to an October National Geographic dispatch, by the time scientists arrived to investigate, natives had eaten the monkey. (The sneezing makes them easy for hunters to detect.) (Researchers studying a rare species of Vietnamese lizard had an easier time in November. After learning of the species and rushing to Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, a two-man team from La Sierra University in Riverside, CA, found the lizards being routinely served in several restaurants’ lunch buffets.)

Feminism Comes Full Circle The women’s group Femen is growing in popularity in Ukraine (according to a November Reuters dispatch), helped in large part by its members’ willingness, during the group’s ubiquitous street protests, to remove their tops. Also, the Socialist Party in Spain’s Catalonia region offered an election video in November on the joy of voting, in which an attractive, increasingly excited woman simulates an orgasm as she fills out her ballot, climaxing at the moment she drops it into the slot. And the nativist Danish People’s Party called in November for an anti-immigration film that featured bare-breasted women sunbathing, as one way to convince religious fundamentalists abroad not to immigrate to Denmark.

All At Sea Glenn Crawley, 55, who describes himself as a “man of the water,” flipped his catamaran off the coast of Newquay, England, in September for the 13th time and had to be rescued, running the costs of attending to his miscues to the equivalent of nearly $50,000. Although officials have pleaded with him to give up sailing (terming him “Captain Calamity”), Crawley said: “I do what no one else is doing. So I’d appreciate it if people would get off my case and give me some support.”

“Quidditching” September (2002) reports in the New York Post and the Toronto Star, quoting parents’ website “reviews” of the Mattel $19.99 Nimbus 2000 plastic-replica riding broomstick from the (then-)latest Harry Potter movie, highlighted its battery-powered special effect — vibration. Wrote a Texas mother: “I was surprised at how long (my daughter and her friends) can just sit in her room and play with this magic broomstick.” Another said her daughter fights her son for it but complains that “the batteries drain too fast.” Still another mother, age 32, said she enjoyed it as much as her daughter.

For The Kids In July, a 5-year-old boy in Dublin, Ireland, was awarded the equivalent of about $9,900 from a shopkeeper who had grabbed his arm and accused him, erroneously, of being a thief. Under the law, the boy had to prove that he has, at age 5, a “reputation in the community” for truth-telling and that his reputation had been damaged. And a New York City judge ruled in October that an 87-year-old woman who was accidentally knocked down by several kids racing bicycles on the sidewalk could sue the kids, including one who was 4 (and who is thus legally presumed to understand the difference between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” behavior).

Animal Logic An October Houston Chronicle review of “authorities” on animal “consciousness” suggested that perhaps dogs are embarrassed when their owners dress them in tacky Halloween costumes. “Pet Psychic” maven Sonya Fitzpatrick said she was certain that some feel shame at their owners’ poor fashion sense, but another practitioner said dogs’ reactions were probably only to their physical discomfort with the clothing itself. And a conservation organization in China’s Sichuan province routinely dresses caregivers in panda suits to socialize baby pandas that have lost their mothers so that the babies do not become accustomed to humans. However, as London’s Daily Telegraph reported in a December dispatch, experts acknowledge that they have no idea whether the babies are fooled. Finally, Gloria Clark, 62, was charged in the death of her 98-year-old mother in St. George, SC, in December after the mother’s body was found among squalid conditions at her home. Though Clark denied she had been neglectful, the mother’s pet parrot might have disagreed. According to the police report, the parrot, in the mother’s bedroom, continually squawked — mimicking “Help me! Help me!” followed by the sound of laughter.

]]> http://thebeachsideresident.com/2011/02/news-of-the-weird-february-2011/feed/ 0 http://thebeachsideresident.com/2011/01/news-of-the-weird-january-2011/ http://thebeachsideresident.com/2011/01/news-of-the-weird-january-2011/#comments Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:43:26 +0000 admin http://thebeachsideresident.com/?p=8527 Naval Maneuvers Librarian Graham Barker, 45, of Perth, Australia, casually revealed to a reporter in October that his hobby of 26 years — harvesting his own navel lint daily, just before he showers — has now won acclaim in the Guinness Book of World Records. His three-jar collection (a fourth is in progress) has been sold to a local museum. His pastime, he told London’s Daily Mail in October, “costs nothing and takes almost no time or effort so there is no compelling reason to stop.” Barker, who also collects McDonald’s tray liners, said he once did a “navel lint survey,” and “a handful of respondents” “confessed” to the hobby. “One guy might have persisted, but he got married, and his wife ordered him to stop.”

Famous Last Words Ms. Rajini Narayan’s lawyer told the court in Adelaide, Australia, in September that she killed her husband by accident after intending only to torch his penis for alleged infidelities. The lawyer said she might have lost control of the gasoline she was holding when her husband said, “No, you won’t (burn me), you fat dumb bitch.” In May, when a fox terrier answered a call of nature in the yard of notoriously lawn-fastidious Charles Clements, 69, in Chicago, Clements confronted the dog’s 23-year-old owner. That led to mutual bravado, which continued even after Clements pulled a gun. The dog-walker was killed immediately after shouting (according to witnesses), “Next time you pull out a pistol, why don’t you use it.”

Mashing One’s Squidger Dave “The Dragon” Lockwood and his tournament-tested sons Max, 16, Jon, 13, and Ben, 10, of Silver Spring, Md., might become to competitive tiddlywinks what the Manning family of quarterbacks is to football, according to a January (2006) Washington Post story. Dave was previously ranked No. 1 in the English Tiddlywinks Association (and is currently No. 8, with Max No. 52). “Tiddlywinks doesn’t sound very serious,” said Max, but “(t)here’s so much strategy.” (For the uninformed: You mash a “squidger” down on a “wink” to propel it either into the “pot” or to “squop” it onto an opponent’s wink to temporarily disable it.) Dave said he plans to get Britain’s Prince Philip, a winker, to suggest tiddlywinks as a demonstration “sport” at London’s 2012 Summer Olympics.

Illegal Tail More than 4,450 activities are federal crimes, and 300,000 federal regulations carry potential criminal penalties, according to an October feature by McClatchy Newspapers, and to illustrate its point that Congress has gone overboard in creating “crimes,” McClatchy pointed to a Miami seafood importer. Abner Schoenwetter, 64, just finished a six-year stretch in prison for the crime of contracting to purchase lobster tails from a Honduran seller whom federal authorities learned was violating lobster-harvest regulations.

It Takes Balls Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, the former union leader and coca farmer known for hard-nosed political combat, is also a fanatical soccer player and drew worldwide video attention in October for an incident during a supposedly friendly match between his pals and a team headed by the mayor of La Paz. After absorbing a vicious foul five minutes into the contest (resulting in a leg gash), President Morales confronted the offender and kneed him in his (as local media described it) “testicular zone,” leaving the player curled on the ground. Afterward, Morales’ bodyguards briefly threatened the gasher with arrest.

The Mother Of All Fathers In September, a judge in Kent County, MI, finally ordered Howard Veal, 44, to prison to serve at least two years for failure to pay child support. He is more than $500,000 behind in payments to 14 mothers for the 23 children he has fathered. Authorities suspect there are even more. In France, officials arrested a 54-year-old immigrant in September on suspicion of welfare fraud. They had recently begun to notice the man applying for government benefits for 55 children by 55 different mothers. (He may have fathered none at all.)

Pour Judgment Tommy Riser of Blaine, WA, had a rough September 13. After a bout of drinking, he crashed a truck into a utility pole, and a few minutes later, crashed his wife’s car into a guardrail trying to drive away. Later, he retrieved his personal tow truck and drove it back to the scene, intending to tow the two crashed vehicles home. However, a sheriff’s deputy was on hand and, noting that Riser was still tipsy, charged him with three separate DUIs.

The Big Easy After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, Congress underwrote $7.9 billion in tax-free bonds that Louisiana could sell in order to rehabilitate the area. According to an August status report in Newsweek, $5.9 billion in bonds have been sold by the state, but only $55 million of that (1 percent) is for projects inside New Orleans (and none in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward). By contrast, $1.7 billion (about 29 percent) is going to projects that benefit the state’s oil industry.

Copyright 2010 Chuck Shepard

The Lizard King Florida governor Charlie Crist, whose term is up and who got Tea-Partied on his way to a U.S. Senate seat and thus now presides over an empty plate, plans to go out with a bang by pardoning the late front man of The Doors, Jim Morrison, who was busted for waving his weenie on a Miami stage in 1969. Crusader Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel points out that Crist has for years rejected demands to help seriously innocent people who were convicted based on an “expert” dog-handler who swore in court that his excitable dog could match defendants to crime scenes. (Two independently challenged in court and prevailed; several other cases languish.) Only when one judge finally demanded a courtroom test of the excitable dog was the ridiculousness exposed (but the previously convicted remain convicted).

Fancy Lads Two lawyers filed small claims court lawsuits against the Seafood Peddler in San Rafael, CA, because they got squirted in the eye when they cut into their escargot. They wouldn’t have sued, they said, if the restaurant had shown some remorse. It wasn’t the meal, itself; that, they proceeded to finish promptly. “It was the indifference,” said one. “It was the friggin’ rudeness.”

Watch The Birdie Picture the teen girls’ frenzy over Justin Bieber or the snowboarder Shaun White or the teenage version of Andre Agassi. That’s happening in China right now to Lin Dan, the country’s foremost badminton player.

Upstanding Citizens Noah Smith, 31, Seneca, SC, who went nuts on the cops (maybe high on magic-grade mushrooms), was naked, Taser-proof, pepper-spray-proof — and with a “mouse” lodged in his you-know-where, with its “tail” hanging out (but cops explained only later that it was a computer mouse). John Gilliand in Gainesville, FL, filed for restraining orders against the three people who evidently annoy him the most — President Obama, Jesus Christ, and quarterback Tim Tebow. A man was hospitalized in Amherst, MA, after attempting to scratch his nose with his BB gun and firing a shot up his nostril. Caught in his car, stopped at a red light, having a good old time with his pants open: the supervisor of sex-offender treatment at a LaGrange, KY, prison. Caught with a humongous collection of 75,000 porn videos (including a few, unfortunately, of kids): Brainerd, MN’s 2010 civic association Citizen of the Year.

Teabaggery At Work The wisdom of having a self-governing republic is being tested in Scottsdale, AZ, where Tea Party folks are at war with the Fountain Hills Town Council over curbside trash pickup. The Teabaggers demand their own trash haulers, because, after all, any company with a “government” contract could be monitoring your rubbish.

Irony Intended? Thanks but no thanks, said one Idaho county treasurer to a local physician, who had suggested encouraging colonoscopies by sticking reminders in the annual mailings of tax notices.

Redneck Cavalcade In October in Seminole, FL, two men, ages 36 and 52, sitting on a porch, drew the attention of two passersby, who made derisive comments and eventually beat up the porch-sitters, who were in costumes as beer bottles. In Portage, IN, in July, Michael Perez, 36, and brother Eric, 28, got into a fistfight, then ran outside, jumped into their respective pickup trucks, and commenced to ram each other. Multiple charges were filed against both after Eric accidentally crashed into a mobile home. Lastly, a 55-year-old woman was seriously injured in October near Defuniak Springs, FL, when she fell from a motor home traveling on Interstate 10. She had walked to the back to use the rest room, discovered that the door was stuck, and pushed against it — to learn too late that it was the exit.

Inhumane The Pasadena, CA, Humane Society, using private funds, recently began construction of a $4.3 million dog-and-cat shelter, with towel-lined cages, skylights, “microclimate” air-conditioning, an aviary, sculptured bushes, “adoption counseling pavilions” in which people can meet with their prospective “companion animals,” and, according to the architect, “a very subdued classical painting scheme.” The Los Angeles Times (in March 1993), noting that there are four times as many shelters in the U.S. for animals as for battered women, quoted an outraged caseworker for a local homeless-person shelter: “It’s mind-boggling. I want to know (who) their (funders) are.”

Kickboxing Monkeys? Safari World, the well-known and controversial zoo on the outskirts of Bangkok, has previously stupefied the world by training orangutans to play basketball, ride motorbikes and kickbox (while outfitted in martial-arts trunks). In a photo essay in November, London’s Daily Mail showcased the park’s most recent success — training elephants to tightrope-walk (where they prance on a reinforced cable for 15 meters and then, displaying astonishing balance, turn around on the wire).

Gay, Gayer, Gayest… Gayerest? Three self-described bisexual men filed a federal lawsuit in April against the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance for disqualifying them from the Gay Softball World Series in Seattle in 2008 because they were not sufficiently gay. Teams were limited to two heterosexuals, and when the men’s team won second place, questions were raised about the three until organizers took them aside and asked “intrusive” questions about their sexual attractions and desires. Ultimately, they were disqualified as being too straight. (The alliance acknowledged that it has no standards for judging gayness level, but explained, as a private organization, that it is not subject to federal law.)

Trouble Brewing In July, the prominent BrewDog brewery in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, began producing the world’s strongest (and most expensive) beer, called The End of History, which is 55 percent alcohol and sells for 500 pounds ($780) a bottle. As if to enrage both anti-alcohol and animal-welfare activists, BrewDog released the first 12 bottles taxidermally inserted inside the carcasses of roadkill (seven ermines, four squirrels and a rabbit). Said company founder James Watt, BrewDog aims to “elevate the status of beer in our culture.”

Green Conspiracy The Republican candidate for governor of Colorado, Dan Maes, explained in August that he began the campaign supporting “green” programs, such as Denver’s innovative “bike-sharing” project, but that he has rethought his position. Now, he told reporters, environmental programs are, in reality, plots. “(I)f you do your homework and research, you realize that (encouraging people to park their cars and ride bikes in the city) is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty.”

Fanny and Zooey To most, the toilet is a functional appliance, but to thoughtful people, it can be an instrument upon which creativity blossoms. Thus, the price tags were high this summer when commodes belonging to two literary giants of the 20th century went on sale. In August, a gaudily designed toilet from John Lennon’s 1969-71 residence in Berkshire, England, fetched 9,500 pounds (about $14,740) at a Liverpool auction, and a North Carolina collectibles dealer opened bids on the toilet that long served reclusive author J.D. Salinger at his home in Cornish, NH. The dealer’s initial price was $1 million because, “Who knows how many of Salinger’s stories were thought up and written while (he) sat on this throne!”

The Idiot From Ipanema A 1997 election law in Brazil makes it illegal to “degrade or ridicule” political candidates or their parties, making that country’s election season not nearly as lively as the U.S.’s. However, in August, one week after a protest in Rio de Janeiro by Brazilian comedians, the vice president of the Supreme Court acquiesced and suspended the law as unconstitutional.

Giant Squid! After two Mexican fishermen were dragged from their boats and “chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified by their own families,” according to a Daily Express review of an August British TV documentary, warnings were issued along the Pacific coast about the northern migration of Humboldt squid. They grow to 8 feet long, weigh up to 100 pounds, travel up to 15 mph, have eight swim/hold tentacles — and two “attack” tentacles that are studded with 40,000 or more razor-sharp “teeth”-like nubs that help each devour almost seven tons of fish a year. Furthermore, female Humboldts are capable of laying 30 million eggs.

Carl “Yer Pal” Paladino New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, waging a particularly contentious battle, mailed out a flier in September suggesting that Democratic state politicians are corrupt, with photos of seven of that party’s current and recent office-holders and accompanied by a special odor-triggering paper that releases a “garbage-scented” smell when exposed to air (and which supposedly grows even more foul over time).

Capitalism’s Depressing Side Effects

Her Poor Mother A recent surge of neo-Nazism in several countries — including, improbably, Israel, and Mongolia (where some dark-skinned natives are rabidly anti-Chinese) — has generally been denounced, but Corinna Burt credited it with rescuing her from a life of acting in pornographic videos. According to a hate-group watchdog, the Portland, OR, woman is “the most prominent National Socialist Movement organizer in the Pacific Northwest.” In an August interview with Gawker.com, the white-supremacist Burt (a mother of two and a professional embalmer who is also into bodybuilding) said she terminated her porn career (as “Cori Lou,” doing mostly bondage and “torture” films) because, “If we (Caucasians) consider ourselves a master race then we have to act like a master race, not degenerates.”

Tit For Tat Every weekend for the last four years, parishioners from the New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, OH, have gathered in front of The Fox Hole strip club in nearby Newcastle and tried to shame customers by photographing them and posting their license plate numbers on the Internet, and brandishing hellfire-threatening signs. Recently, however, Fox Hole’s strippers joined the duel, congregating on Sundays in front of New Beginnings, wearing bikinis and “see-through” shorts, dancing scandalously, squirting each other with jumbo water guns, and wielding their own Bible-quoting signs to greet the day’s worshippers.

Cargo Cult The Yaohnanen tribe on the South Pacific island of Tanna believe their true ancestral god is Britain’s Prince Philip (based on photographs of him with the queen during a 1974 visit to Tanna’s mother nation of Vanuatu) and believe he promised he would return for good on his 89th birthday (June 10, 2010). Although the prince has kept in touch, he failed to show up for the grand celebration, but fortunately, Scottish university student Marc Rayner was on the island, working as a volunteer teacher, and stepped in for the prince, which meant that he and not the duke of Edinburgh got to wear the “formal” ceremonial penis sheath appropriate for such special events.

You Look Flabulous! Iconic female beauty in Mauritania (and in a few other African societies, as News of the Weird has reported) regards “rolling layers of fat” as the height of sexiness, according to a July dispatch by Marie Claire magazine, and professional force-feeders earn the equivalent of about $200 each from parents for bulking up their young daughters in boot camps that sometimes serve animal fat as drinks and apply the cattle-thickening drug Oradexon. “The stomach flab should cascade; the thighs should overlap; and the neck should have thick ripples,” said Aminetou Mint Elhacen, the feeding drill sergeant. Some girls rebel, but others embrace their new bodies. Said one, “When I realized the power I had over men, I started to enjoy being fat.”

It’s A Dog’s Life Gail Posner (the widow of legendary hostile-takeover executive Victor Posner) died in March in south Florida but left a will that endowed her beloved Chihuahua Conchita (and two other, less-loved dogs) a $3 million trust fund plus the run of her $8.3 million mansion for their remaining dog years. (After all, Conchita has a style to maintain, including a four-season wardrobe, diamond jewelry and full-time staff.) Mrs. Posner’s only living child, Bret Carr, who admits he had issues with his mother, is challenging her $26 million-plus will (that left him $1 million), mostly because, he said, Mrs. Posner’s staff and bodyguards suspiciously wound up with the bulk of the riches on the pretense that they would be caring for Conchita.

Flavor Crimes “News of the Weird” has been among those taunting the Scottish over the years for their culinary devotion to haggis (sheep’s stomach, boiled, with liver, heart or lung, accompanied by oatmeal, suet, onions and various “spices”), but the Edinburgh chocolatier Nadia Ellingham recently answered — with “haggis chocolates,” which are thankfully meat-free but contain the familiar haggis spices. In related news, Japanese ice-cream makers are famous for expanding the universe of conceivable flavors, but a gathering by the fashion/style website The Gloss in July found several more, suggesting that maybe the world is about to run out of ingredients that can go into ice cream: haggis ice cream (from Morelli’s in London), sardines and brandy ice cream (from Helader a de Lares in Venezuela), caviar ice cream (Petrossian in New York City) and foie gras ice cream (Philippe Faur in Toulouse, France, about $150).

Sangomas Black magic failed to secure the World Cup for Africa this year, but on the other hand, the weak host team, South Africa, managed an opening round draw with Mexico and an upset victory over France. “Sangomas” (traditional “healers”) spreading “muti” (powders, potions, animal bones, especially from speedsters like horses and ostriches) had been out in force. World Cup stadium security was tight, but in African league soccer games, it is not uncommon for sangomas, pre-game, to bury animal parts on the field, or to have players urinate on it to improve the karma.

… And Sangomericans In July, a fifth-grade teacher at Jacox Elementary School in Norfolk, VA, resigned under pressure after administrators discovered she was rubbing “holy oil” on students and their desks during school. And teachers Leslie Rainer and Djuna Robinson were removed from teaching duties at Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach, FL, in March after they were seen sprinkling “holy water” onto a colleague, a self-described atheist. Other witnesses disputed the details, but the two were charged under the school’s “anti-bullying” policy for aggressiveness toward the other teacher.

Doh! A team of anglers from Hatteras, NC, had first place wrapped up in the prestigious Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in June, salivating over their $1,231,575 prize money (including a bonus for single-largest catch), when judges discovered that one member of the Hatteras crew, Peter Wann, had not gotten a $30 North Carolina coastal recreational fishing license before their boat pushed off that day. Under the rules, the entire team was disqualified, and the runner-up, from Cape Carteret, NC, got the money.

Democratic People’s Republic Of Krazy North Korea’s World Cup adventure began auspiciously with a hard-fought 2-1 loss to a superior Brazil team, leading the government to release photographs of the North Korean coach supposedly receiving long-distance telepathic strategy signals during the game from Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. With the country’s hopes up, the team was embarrassed in two subsequent games and dispatched from the tournament. Back home in July, the players were paraded into the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang, where for six hours, they were publicly denounced and taunted. Coach Kim Jong-huh is said to fear an eventual violent end. Just before the World Cup matches, North Korea issued a public demand for compensation, blaming the United States for almost every single misfortune suffered by the country in the last 65 years. Its official news agency assigned the U.S. responsibility for 5 million people injured, kidnapped, missing or killed — as well as for economic damages resulting from U.S.-led trade sanctions. According to the news agency, America can atone for the losses by sending North Korea $65 trillion.

I Can’t Quit You, Baby Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of Banyuasin, Indonesia, has developed a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, according to several news organizations that splashed his story around the world in May, with video of Ardi casually puffing away as he frolics on his tricycle. Said Ardi’s mother, “If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall.” Ardi’s father, noting the kid’s pudginess, seems not to sense the problem: “He looks pretty healthy to me.” An additional concern is financial: Ardi will smoke only one particular premium brand, at a cost of the equivalent of about $5.50 a day.

They Put The “Ass” In “Class” A 24-year-old man was arrested in Crestview, FL, in April after he allegedly removed a window air-conditioner and crawled into a house in which his wife was staying. They had recently separated, and he told police that he had not “gotten any” in three weeks and was going to “get some.” In June in Okaloosa County, passenger Courtnea Bradley, 21, roughed up the driver while the car was moving, making it swerve wildly, thus allegedly endangering her baby in the back seat. At the subsequent traffic stop, a defiant Bradley allegedly told officers, “My (expletive) family is one of the richest around, and we will have y’all’s (expletive) jobs.” Also, Ranay Collins, 49, was arrested in Las Vegas in June and charged with beating her 16-year-old daughter with a cane. The arresting officer quoted Collins’ explanation: “That (expletive) owes me $50 for rent.” And police arrested Christina Muniz, 29, in Surprise, AZ, in June, after being summoned to the home by Muniz’s son, 11. Muniz had just informed the boy and his brother, 6, that she was abandoning them to move to California with her boyfriend to fulfill her dream of becoming a stripper. With police watching, the older boy approached Muniz for a hug, but Muniz slugged him in the stomach.

Shocking An intense lightning storm on June 14 around Monroe, OH, destroyed the iconic 62-foot-high statue of Jesus (the “King of Kings” structure of the Solid Rock Church) alongside Interstate 75. While townspeople mourned, it was also noteworthy what the lightning bolts completely missed: the large billboard, on the other side of the road, advertising the nearby Hustler Hollywood pornography store.

Tossers! In May, Britain’s Norfolk District Council banned the traditional barroom game of “dwile flonking” just as the inaugural “world championships” were to take place at the Dog Inn pub in Ludham, Great Yarmouth. The game, which some believe has been played since “medieval times,” calls on players to fling a beer-soaked rag from the end of a small stick toward the face of an opponent, and in the event the tosser misses the target two straight times, he must quickly down a half-pint of ale. The council called the game a “health and safety” problem.

Unfairian Virginia state inmate Kendall Gibson, who is serving 47 years for abduction and robbery committed at age 18, has spent the last 10 years in the prison’s “hole,” 23 hours a day in a cell “the size of a gas station restroom” (wrote an Associated Press reporter), not because he’s a danger to the prison population, but because he won’t cut his hair. Gibson is a Rastafarian and says his dreadlocks are devoutly authorized by the spiritual Lord, Jah. (A 1999 Virginia prison regulation requires administrative segregation for long-hairs.)

Great Expectorations People who live or work in New York City believe themselves to be among the world’s toughest and hardiest, but at least 51 of them are apparently legendarily soft: the 51 city bus drivers who between them took 3,200 days of paid leave last year to “heal” over the single workplace “injury” of being spit on by passengers. (Thirty-two other spit-upon drivers did not request leave.) An official with the Transport Workers Union called spitting “physically and psychologically traumatic” and requiring “recuperat(ion).” In related news, the prominent Howrah bridge in Calcutta, India, has become a serious safety risk, according to a May report for the Calcutta Port Trust, because the steel hoods protecting the pillars holding up the bridge have been thinned by 50 percent in recent years. Engineers believe the corrosion has been caused almost entirely by the chemicals in gutkha, the popular chewing tobacco/herb concoction, which produces expectorants routinely hocked onto the bridge by the 500,000 pedestrians who cross it every day.

¡Viva Las Ardillas! Arizona (viewed by some as hard-hearted for its April law stepping up its vigilance for illegal immigrants) showed a soft side recently, implementing a $1.25 million federal grant that it believes will save the lives of at least five squirrels a year. The state’s 250 endangered Mount Graham red squirrels risk becoming roadkill on Route 366 near Pima, and the state is building a rope bridge for them to add to several existing tunnels.

By The Book In May, the chief media spokesman of the Nye County, NV, sheriff’s office, Det. David Boruchowitz, announced to the press the arrest of a man charged with burglary and assault. The suspect’s name, he reported, was Det. David Boruchowitz. The chief investigator on the case, Det. Boruchowitz told reporters, was Det. David Boruchowitz. (Three days later, the charges were dropped, but that announcement was made by someone else.) Also, in Rehoboth Beach, DE, it is illegal for men and women to publicly reveal their genitals and for women to reveal their breasts, but Police Chief Keith Banks, confronted in June with complaints about some beachgoers flouting their shapely breasts, said there was nothing he could do. Banks said the offenders were actually biological males in the midst of hormonal transgendering. As Banks explained, “(T)hey had male genitalia. Therefore, they were not guilty of a crime.” Lastly, in April, Prince Edward Island (Canada) judge John Douglas acquitted minor league hockey player Chris Doyle of assaulting his former girlfriend, though Doyle had arrived at her home uninvited, had annoyed and berated her, and would not leave. The girlfriend was injured when Doyle punched a door, causing it to smash against her face, but Judge Douglas accepted that Doyle honestly did not know she was behind the door. Said the judge, “If he was charged with being a colossal a**hole, I would find him guilty. Of ‘assault causing bodily harm,’ I find him not guilty.”

Flagrant Fragrancy Homeless New Jersey man Richard Kreimer said in February (2006) that he had settled, on undisclosed terms, part of his most recent lawsuit, against a transit company and two drivers, for having denied him rides because of his foul odor. Kreimer’s history includes a $150,000 settlement with the public library in Morris County, which had tried to keep him out because of his odor, and, by his count, $80,000 in additional lawsuit-related income (though some went for legal expenses). Kreimer filed another foul-odor lawsuit in February against a transit company and a train station in Summit.

Pesky Doctrines! Many jihadist recruiting pitches are dry and pious, but in May, the Somali activist Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, 26, who was born in Alabama, began streaming Internet rap “music” videos to encourage warrior sign-ups. (Sample verse: “It all started out in Afghanistan/When we wiped the oppressors off the land/The Union crumbled and tumbled/Humbled, left them mumbled/Made a power withdraw and cower.”) Actually, there was no music but merely al-Amriki singing, presumably because in the version of Islam favored by Somali jihadists, “music” is not permitted.

Zero Love Briton Robert Dee, feeling humiliated at being called the “world’s worst tennis pro” by London’s Daily Telegraph (and other news organizations) sued the newspaper for libel last year. After taking testimony in February 2010, the judge tossed out the lawsuit in April, persuaded by Dee’s having lost 54 consecutive international tour matches (all in straight sets). Fearful of an opposite result, 30 other news organizations had already apologized to Dee for disparaging him, and some even paid him money in repentance, but the Telegraph had stood its ground (and was, of course, humble in victory, titling its story on the outcome, “‘World’s Worst’ Tennis Player Loses Again”).

Make That One Star According to an April lawsuit filed by an employee of the five-star Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, FL, the hotel complied with a February request by a wealthy British traveler that, during their stay, his family not be served by “people of colour” or anyone who spoke with a “foreign accent.” The hotel has apologized to the employee, but denied that it had complied with the traveler’s request. (Lawyers for the employee told the Associated Press that nine witnesses and a copy of a computer entry prove their claim.)

Whistle Stop Betty Lou Lynn, 83, was mugged and had her wallet stolen in her new hometown of Mount Airy, NC, in April. Lynn is the actress who played Barney Fife’s best girl, Thelma Lou, in the “Andy Griffith” TV show and had lived in Los Angeles until she became alarmed at the city’s crime rate. She decided in 2007 to move to the quieter, peaceful Mount Airy, which was Griffith’s birthplace and the model for the TV town of Mayberry.

Magic Juice Donald Wolfe, 55, was charged with public drunkenness in March in Brookville, PA, after neighbors spotted him giving, as he described it, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a roadkill possum along Route 36. A 62-year-old man suffered second-degree burns after launching himself on a makeshift, rocket-powered sled in Independence Township, MI, in January. Witnesses said he put on a helmet, then strapped a contraption consisting of a motorcycle muffler, a pipe, gunpowder, match heads and gasoline on his back, and had someone light the wick to send him blasting through the snow. Also, last September, James Jones, 33, and a friend were issued disorderly conduct citations by police after witnesses reported that the pair, inebriated, had placed their genitals on a vegetables’ weighing scale in a supermarket in Edinburgh, Scotland. (They were acquitted in April 2010 when the only witness admitted that she only saw the men zipping up after claiming to have weighed themselves.) Lastly, warehouse workers at the Copenhagen, Denmark, brewery that makes Carlsberg beer went on strike last April after the company cut back on its allowance of providing up to three free beers per shift, which workers thought made their mundane jobs easier to take. As of April 1, only one beer per shift was provided, and only at lunch. (The previous “right” belonged also to delivery drivers, according to a Reuters report, but it was not clear how that right squared with drunk-driving laws.)

Vikings Gone Soft It’s clear, based on a May Time magazine dispatch, that Norway’s felons and miscreants are of a superior class than America’s. When Norway’s brand-new Halden prison opened in April, the country’s King Harald V headlined a glitzy gala that celebrated what has been called the world’s “most humane” lockup. Among the facilities: a sound studio, jogging trails, a guest house for inmates’ visitors, and a scrumptious-smelling “kitchen laboratory” where murderers and bandits can learn to cook. Guards are unarmed (half are women) and intermingle with the rapists, drug dealers and others, dining with them and joining them in intramural sports. The recidivist rate for Norwegian prisoners in general is only 20 percent (versus 50 percent to 60 percent in the United States), but it is still early to tell whether Halden’s prisoners will find life behind bars so pleasant that they don’t mind risking another stretch there by returning to crime.

Special Species Among the new species first reported this year are a “nose” leech, a “Dracula” fish, a “psychedelic” frogfish and a “bombardier” worm, according to scientists at the University of Arizona and medical school researchers in Lima, Peru. The Peru-based leech, which is fanged and probably has been around since the time of dinosaurs, prefers nasal mucus as a habitat. The “Dracula” fish of Myanmar, with “canine-like fangs,” has an extraordinarily flexible mouth. The multicolored frogfish has apparently adapted to live among the colorful, venomous coral off Bali, Indonesia. The “bombardier” worm, found in California’s Monterey Bay, releases glow-in-the-dark projectiles when threatened.

Just Say “Know” Jacob Collins, 28, was arrested in April and charged with burglary of Matlack’s Hometown Pharmacy in Landisville, NJ, despite the fact that the medicine he stole was probably by mistake. Police said they were almost certain Collins was after the painkiller “Oxycontin” but instead swiped a supply of “Oxybutynin,” which treats overactive bladder. On the other hand, Sean Almond, 43, was charged on the same day as Collins for allegedly robbing the Kangaroo Mart on Wilroy Road in Suffolk, VA, and could have used some Oxybutynin. Almond was caught immediately after the robbery because his getaway was delayed. He was spotted in a nearby alley, where he had been overcome by a sudden urge to relieve himself.

Le Jeu de la Mort A recent French documentary in the form of a TV show called “Game of Death” mimics the notorious 1950s human-torture experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, who would coax test subjects to administer increasingly painful jolts of electricity to strangers to assess their obedience to an “authority figure,” even if contrary to their own moral codes. As in Milgram’s experiments, the Game of Death “victims” were actors, unharmed but paid to scream louder with each successive “shock.” According to a BBC News report, 82 percent of the game’s players were willing torturers, a higher percentage than Milgram found, but the TV show’s subjects had greater encouragement, cheered on by a raucous studio audience and a glamorous hostess.

Nailed Former baseball star Lenny “Nails” Dykstra recently started accepting clients for his investment advice service, charging $999 a year, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. His Web site discloses that while Dykstra is “NOT” (his emphasis) a “registered” financial adviser, his “proven track record has caught the attention of many.” (Dykstra filed for bankruptcy in July 2009 to stave off more than 20 lawsuits against him for entrepreneurial ventures gone bad, and in November, the bankruptcy judge denied him the right to reorganize his debts, converting his case to a chapter 7 liquidation.)

Planned Barrenhood Virginia state legislator Bob Marshall, speaking in February in opposition to state funding for Planned Parenthood, said the organization is partly responsible for the number of disabled children in America. According to the Old Testament, he said, being forced to bear a disabled child is punishment for the mother’s having earlier aborted her first-born. “(W)hen you abort the first-born … nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

Boobquake In mid-April, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women’s loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Jennifer McCreight responded on Facebook by urging women worldwide to dress provocatively on April 26 to create “boobquake” and test the cleric’s theory, and at least 90,000 women promised they would reveal serious cleavage on that date. On April 26, following a several-day drought of earthquakes, a Richter-scale-measuring 6.5 quake hit just south of Taiwan. (Slight advantage to the ayatollah, since a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region.)

Only In Borneo Researchers from Royal Roads University in Canada reported last year that the large, carnivorous pitcher plants of Borneo prefer to eat insects and spiders, but where those are in short supply, as in the Philippines highlands, the pitchers have grown to a size accommodating an alternative source of the nitrogen they need. The pitchers have “learned” that if they produce copious amounts of nectar, it will attract the tiny-mouse-sized tree shrew to harvest it, and the shrews, trapped inside the plant, will leave droppings directly on the spot most advantageous for the pitcher to consume them. Said professor Charles Clarke, discovery of the arrangement “totally blew us away.”

Absolutely Fabulous! Blair Fowler, 16, delights her frenzied fans as a “haul queen,” inspirationally “shopping for glory” by smartly tearing through stores and then displaying and expertly describing her purchases on Internet videos. A March Times of London dispatch from Los Angeles noted Fowler’s acclaim “for her ability to deliver a high-pitched 10-minute lecture on the merits of skinny versus low-riding jeans, apparently without drawing breath.” According to The Times, at least 100,000 “haul” videos are available on YouTube, mostly from “amateurs.” Fowler’s videos, though, have been viewed 75 million times by “haul” wannabes (mostly teenage girls). Also, Swiss clockmaker Artya announced in March the creation of a wristwatch set in fossilized dinosaur feces (with a strap made with skin from an American cane toad). Designer Yvan Arpa told the Associated Press the watch would sell for about $12,000. And the spa Ten Thousand Waves near Santa Fe, NM, is only the latest U.S. facility to offer as a “signature” treatment the “Japanese Nightingale Facial,” supposedly used for centuries by Japanese geisha for skin rejuvenation. Nightingale droppings are dried and sanitized, then spiced with oils and used as a face scrubber.

Not Very Funny At All, Actually One of the world’s longest-running TV comedy shows (according to an April Reuters dispatch from South Korea) is the weekly North Korean production “It’s So Funny,” with its undynamic format of a man and a woman in military uniforms talking to each other (though they sometimes sing and dance). The latest episode “extolled the virtue of beans,” wrote the Reuters stringer, “while avoiding any flatulence humor.” “If we soldiers see beans, we become happy,” said the man, leading both hosts to laugh. According to Reuters, “The two talk about how bean-fed North Korean soldiers were able to fight off U.S. imperialist troops during the Korean War.”

Whither Bill Cosby? Delmer Doss, 19, and his girlfriend, Amber Burgess, 19, were arrested in Stanley, NC, in February on child abuse charges after police found a video made by the couple of their 11-month-old son. The toddler was blindfolded, and the parents were shown laughing at him, over and over, as he bumped into walls and fell down. And in March in Dallas, Krystal Gardner, 28, confronting a repo man driving off with her SUV, tossed her 1-year-old baby through an open window to stop the moving vehicle. (At that point, the repo man stopped and got out, but moments later, a teenager emerged from Gardner’s house and began firing a 12-gauge shotgun.

Knob Gathering In October 2003, West Point, KY, hosted 12,000 visitors for the weekend Knob Creek Gun Range Machine Gun Shoot, billed as the nation’s largest, with a separate competition for flame-throwers. Especially coveted is “The Line,” where 60 people (the waiting list is 10 years long to be admitted) get to fire their machine guns into a field of cars and boats, and during which a shooter might run through $10,000 in ammunition. Among the champions: Samantha Sawyer, 16, the top women’s submachine gunner for the previous four years. One man interviewed by the Louisville Courier-Journal said he met his future wife at a previous Shoot, impressed that “she could accept flame-throwing as a hobby.” Said another: “This is one of those times when you know (America) is the greatest place on Earth.”

Curd Your Enthusiasm It’s a simple recipe, said A-List New York City chef Daniel Angerer: a cheese derived from the breast milk of his wife, who is nursing the couple’s 3-month-old daughter. As a chef, he said, “you look out for something new and what you can do with it,” and what Angerer could do is make about two quarts of “flavor(ful)” cheese out of two gallons of mother’s milk. “(T)astes just like really sweet cow’s milk.” He posted the recipe, “My Spouse’s Mommy Milk Cheese,” on his blog and invited readers’ participation: “Our baby has plenty (of) back-up mother’s milk in the freezer, so whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as supply lasts (please consider cheese aging time).”

High On The Hog Among the items that celebrity farmer Cathy Gieseker bought with proceeds from the $12 million Ponzi scheme she was sentenced in February for perpetrating (prosecutors called her the “Midwest Madoff”) was a $900 tanning bed for her “show” pigs. In other porcine news, Farmer Chang Chung-tou, of Yunlin County, Taiwan, drew praise from environmentalists in December for having “toilet”-trained almost all of his 20,000 pigs to use his 600 specially rigged plots that collect and separate urine and feces. Chang’s farm conserves water and facilitates recycling.

Smelly Urine? You’re In! The entertainment manager at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England, announced in February a contest seeking foul-smelling urine. The park has introduced a live action horror maze based on scenes from the “Saw” movie series and decided that it was missing a “signature stench” to “really push the boundaries” of disgustingness. Manager Laura Sinclair suggested that submissions’ pungency would be enhanced after consumption of such foods as garlic and asparagus and offered a prize of the equivalent of about $750 for the winning urine.

BNDOVR! Papua New Guinea retains many of its historical tribal conflicts, and one flared up in January, according to a dispatch by an Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter. Two people were killed in skirmishes that were provoked in a quite contemporary way — when a member of one tribe sent a member of another a pornographic text message.

Molluscan Mucus Florida’s Agriculture Department, acting on a tip, confiscated Giant African snails believed to have been smuggled into the country by Charles Stewart of Hialeah, FL, for use in the religion Ifa Orisha, which encourages followers to drink the snails’ mucus for its supposed healing powers. Actually, said the department (joined in the investigation by two federal agencies), bacteria in the mucus causes frequent violent vomiting, among other symptoms. At press time, Stewart had not been charged with a crime.

Railroaded In January, Aretha Brown, 66, who has lived in the same house in Callahan, FL, (pop. 962) for 30 years, suddenly became unable to leave her yard unless she crawled between CSX railroad cars blocking her access to the road. Tracks had always been in place, but the railway only began storing train cars on them this year. CSX told The Florida Times-Union that it would soon build Brown an access road to the street.

Shang High A growing drug problem facing Shanghai, China, is stepped-up use of methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs at all-night parties, but not the “rave” parties favored by young fast-lane types in the U.S. These Shanghai druggies, according to a February dispatch in London’s Guardian, are often middle-aged and retired people, who use the drugs to give them strength for all-night games of mahjong played at out-of-the-way parlors around the city.

Singular Events In February, a one-armed man swiped a single cufflink from the CJ Vinten shop in Leigh-on-Sea, England, and in March, a one-legged man swiped a single Nike trainer shoe from a store in Barnsley, England. The one-armed man is still loose, but the one-legged man was arrested.

Click. Clack. Click. Clickclack… Travis Neeley, 19, was arrested in Lake City, FL, in March for burglarizing a car, caught red-handed by the owner, who used the remote control to lock Neeley inside. Neeley tried several times to unlock a door and exit, but each time, the owner relocked it before Neeley could get out, and he finally gave up and waited for police.

Keystone Cops In March, on duty on opening day of the jail at the new Adair County judicial center in Columbia, KY, sheriff’s deputy Charles Wright accidentally locked himself in a cell and was fired after he tried to shoot open the lock. And a Collier County, FL sheriff’s deputy suffered a broken ankle when he and a colleague accidentally locked wheels while patrolling in Naples on their Segways.

Please Wash Your Hands A Toronto restaurant, Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, announced that its Valentine’s Day promotion this year would not just be a romantic dinner but would also include an invitation for couples to have sex in the restrooms. Toronto Public Health officials appeared unconcerned, as long as there was no sex in food-preparation areas and as long as the restrooms were clean. “Bodily fluids” were not a concern, said one unruffled health official, because after all, that’s what restrooms are for.

The Power Of Words When Donald Williams was publicly sworn in as a judge in Ulster County, NY, on January 2, offices were closed, and no one could find a Bible. Since holy books are not legally required, Williams took the oath with his hand on a dictionary. Also, Merriam Webster’s 10th edition dictionary is so influential that the Menifee Union School District in Southern California removed all copies from its elementary schools’ shelves in January in response to a parent’s complaint that the book contains a reference to “oral sex.”

Ruff Justice In December, British Columbia’s District of Sechelt Council approved a bylaw making it illegal for licensed dogs to chase squirrels, seagulls and other wild animals. The councillors added a defense of “provocation” but left it undefined, which might be especially problematic in instances in which the dog is the only witness to the alleged provocation.

Below The Bible Belt Pastor John Renken’s Xtreme Ministries of Memphis, TN, is one of a supposedly growing number of churches that use “mixed martial arts” events to recruit wayward young men to the Christian gospel. Typically, after leading his flock in solemn prayer to a loving God, Pastor Renken adjourns the session to the back room, where a New York Times reporter found him in February shouting encouragement to his violent parishioners: “Hard punches!” Renken yelled. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!” One participant told the Times that fight nights bring a greater masculinity to religion, which he said had, in recent years, gone soft.

Better Late Than Never Ten days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down the Christmas Day airliner over Detroit, the State Department officially revoked his visa. And eight days after the Christmas Eve demolition of Minneapolis’ historic Fjelde House (as a fire hazard), the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission awarded the site “interim protection” for its historic value.

Crappy Valentine’s Day! First, farmer Dick Kleis of Zwingle in eastern Iowa, composing a birthday note to his wife, arranged more than 60 tons of manure in a pasture to spell out “Happy Birthday, Love You” in shorthand. Then, for Valentine’s Day, farmer Bruce Andersland created a half-mile-wide, arrow-pierced heart from plowed manure at his farm near the town of Albert Lea, MN. “Now I’ve got my valentine!” shouted wife Beth, when she first viewed the aerial image.

They Don’t Make Cops Like They Used To Sheriff’s deputy John Franklin of San Luis Obispo, CA, filed a lawsuit in December against the Catholic Church and former priest Geronimo Cuevas for the “emotional trauma” he suffered by being propositioned for sex while working undercover in 2007. Deputy Franklin was patrolling a public park near Avila Beach when Father Cuevas reached out and touched Franklin’s clothed genital area. Cuevas was arrested and convicted, but Deputy Franklin said he is not yet over the feelings of “anger, rage, disgust and embarrassment.”

Names Of Note Arrested in January in Memphis, TN, and charged with having carnal knowledge of an underage girl: Mr. Knowledge Clark, 29. Arrested in January in Hellertown, PA, and charged with cashing a stolen check: Richard Fluck, 47, and Bryan Flok, 47. Arrested in Denver in February and charged with using another person’s driver’s license as identification: Mr. Robin J. Hood, 34. Arrested in Kingston, PA, in January and charged with cocaine trafficking: Carlos Laurel, 30, and Andre Hardy, 39. Arrested in February in DeFuniak Springs, FL, and charged with possession of crystal meth: Crystal Beth Williams, 21.

Short Back and Sides In August 1994, Sanford, FL judge Newman Brock picked up hair clippers and went to the local Seminole County Jail for his regular biweekly haircut from his longtime hairstylist, Rick Thrower, who was serving 45 days for DUI violations. Said Thrower, “(The judge is) a very loyal customer.”

The Bread Of Heaven Just after Christmas, the Anglican Church of St. Peter in Great Limber, England, unveiled artist Adam Sheldon’s 6-foot-high representation of the crucifixion consisting of 153 pieces of toast. Sheldon browned the bread himself, then painstakingly either scraped (to lighten) or torched (to darken) each piece to fashion the tableau.

Duff Puddings The recent Christmas bonus season was rough at the RF Brookes pizza-ingredient factory in Wigston, England. Workers received only gift containers of pudding (“plum duffs”) with a use-by date of March 2009, but accompanied by a letter from management assuring them that food technicians had certified the product as safe to eat in January 2010. (After numerous employee complaints, the company apologized and offered fresh plum duffs.)

We Prefer Mimes The French performance artist Orlan made News of the Weird in 1993 when she underwent surgery in a New York City art gallery as part of a multiple-surgery transformation of her face according to five icons of Renaissance and post-Renaissance beauty (at that time, implanting small horns to simulate the bumpy forehead of Mona Lisa). During a Chicago show in December 1998, Orlan raised money for further operations by selling posters and videos of her surgeries and digitally enhanced portraits of her face incorporating features that ancient Mayans had found attractive but which are ugly in this society (huge noses, crossed-eyes). She also sold souvenir tubes of her liposuctioned fat.

The Sparrows And The Bees A team of researchers led by a University of Connecticut professor, writing recently in the ornithology journal The Auk, declared the local saltmarsh sparrow to be America’s most promiscuous bird, in that 95 percent of the females hook up with more than one male during a mating season. The likelihood that any two chicks in a nest had the same father was only 23 percent, and in one-third of the nests, all chicks had different fathers. The researchers hypothesized that the frequent flooding of Connecticut’s marshes destroys so many nests that non-choosy females have gained evolutionary advantage. (A wren in Australia and a parrot in Madagascar are said to be comparably promiscuous.)

Pandaphants In Thailand, the endangered status of crocodiles and elephants is largely ignored by the public, who are instead enthralled with the giant pandas and their cub on loan from China. (There is even a 24-hour cable TV “panda channel.”) At several of the country’s zoos, officials now regularly paint their crocodiles and elephants in panda colors (with harmlessly washable paint) to call attention to their plight. Even though the paint must be reapplied daily, “It’s impossible not to do it now,” said one croc handler for a December Wall Street Journal dispatch. “People expect it.”

The Old Bearded Dragon Lizard Barter Ploy In Morehead, KY, in December, two men, ages 44 and 18, were charged with theft for allegedly swiping an 18-inch-long bearded dragon lizard from the Eagles Landing Pet Hospital and trying, in two beverage stores, to exchange it for liquor. In other dumb criminal news, Daniel Gable, 61, was arrested for breaking and entering a neighbor’s apartment in Fargo, ND, in December. He had triggered the resident’s “burglar alarm,” which consisted of the stack of empty beer cans the resident places just inside his front door every night. Lastly, lawyer Christopher Carroll was charged with misdemeanor battery in December for forcefully belly-bumping lawyer Jonathan Carbary during a courthouse hallway argument in St. Charles Township, IL. Carroll said it was an accident: “We’re both obese, middle-aged men.”

White People In Turmoil April Gaede, who four years ago guided her teenage daughters, Lynx and Lamb (performing as “Prussian Blue”), to a brief music career singing neo-Nazi songs, announced a new project recently on the white nationalist Web site Stormfront.org. She offers a no-fee matchmaking service to fertile Aryans, hoping to encourage marriage and baby-making — to help white people keep up with rapidly procreating minorities. Also, Don “Moose” Lewis announced plans in January for a 12-city pro basketball league composed only of white players (natural-born U.S. citizens, whose parents are both Caucasian). Lewis denied any “racism,” explaining to the Augusta Chronicle that whites simply like “fundamental” basketball and not “street ball” (“flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch”).

Port Of Gall Only four days after the January earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, two Royal Caribbean cruise ships made a port call at a private enclave about 60 miles up Haiti’s coastline from ground zero, turning loose hundreds of frolickers for “jet ski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails delivered to their hammocks,” according to a report in London’s The Guardian. Haitian guards employed by the cruise line manned the resort’s 12-foot-high fences, but about a third of the passengers still declined to leave the ships, too upset by the unfolding disaster nearby to enjoy themselves. Royal Caribbean said it had made a large donation to the rescue effort and promised, also, to send proceeds from the port’s thriving craft stores.

Eating Crow Natives of the Erromango section of the Pacific island Vanuatu recently held a formal “conciliation” with the great-great-grandson of the British missionary whom the islanders’ ancestors ate when he came ashore in 1839. Charles Milner-Williams’ forebear, Rev. John Williams, was regarded as the most famous Christian missionary of the era. Vanuatan legislator Ralph Regenvanu told BBC News that cannibalism was traditionally a sacred warrior practice for “vanquishing a threat (and) absorbing the power of the enemy.” Nonetheless, he said, the island has long felt “guilt,” and even a “complex,” from killing and eating Rev. Williams. In penitence, Vanuatu symbolically gave the Williams family a 7-year-old girl, who will not be eaten but whose education Milner-Williams promised to underwrite.

Simple As That! Psychology professor Russell Carney of Southwest Missouri State University told the Associated Press in August 1992 that he had developed a technique for improving memory and told the reporter how he could facilitate the recall, say, that a particular painting was done by Degas in 1865. First, think of an object that sounds like “Degas” (day-GAH), for example, “dagger,” and then memorize the last two digits of the year by learning the sentence “Twin new moons rose low, just clearing four pine saplings,” in which the first word begins with a T and stands for “1,” the second, N, stands for “2,” and so on. Thus, 1865 becomes “65,” which becomes “just” “low,” which could translate to J-L, which could be “jelly,” which would produce a “jelly dagger,” to which the subject tries to find a resemblance, somewhere, in the Degas painting.

Um, Not Quite… Being the first licensed male prostitute in Nevada (and thus the U.S.), explained “Markus” in a January interview for Details magazine, is to him “a civil rights thing.” “It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front (of the bus) instead of the back.”

Where There’s Smoke… In November, a Chicago judge ruled that former firefighter Jeffrey Boyle is entitled to his $50,000 annual pension even though he had pleaded guilty in 2006 to eight counts of arson (and allegedly confessed to 12 more). Boyle is known locally as “Matches” Boyle to distinguish him from his brother, John “Quarters” Boyle, who is now in federal prison for bribery following the theft of millions of dollars in state toll-gate coins. Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. concluded that Matches’ arsons were wholly separate from his firefighting.

Cheesy Idea The Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to designate a “state bacterium” (the Lactococcus lactis, which is crucial to turning milk into the state’s famous cheese). If approved, the bacterium would join two dozen other state symbols (according to the Wisconsin Blue Book): coat of arms, seal, motto, flag, song, flower, bird, tree, fish, state animal, wildlife animal, domestic animal, mineral, rock, symbol of peace, insect, soil, fossil, dog, beverage, grain, dance, ballad, waltz, fruit and tartan.
We Could Have Saved Him The Trouble… Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, the male Swedish student who vowed in September to pump milk from his nipples every three hours for 90 days, drop by drop, to show that it could be done, quit in November, concluding that it can’t. Said a TV producer following Bengtsson around, “All he got was sore breasts.”

High Art The huge, $27 million statue (“African Renaissance”) being built in Dakar, Senegal, was conceived to boost tourism and be a point of African pride, acting as a magnet for visitors and museum-goers. Problems have arisen (the statue was built by North Korean labor, has no distinct African theme, and features a female who reveals perhaps too much thigh). However, according to a November BBC News dispatch, Senegal’s president Abdoulaye Wade remains optimistic and has declared that, though the concept was his idea, he personally will magnanimously take only 35 percent of the revenue streams generated from visitors.

Hare In The Air The town of Waiau, New Zealand, had once again planned an annual rabbit-carcass-tossing contest, to a chorus of complaints from animal rights activists concerned that children not associate dead animals with fun. (In New Zealand, rabbits are crop-destroying pests, doing an estimated NZ$22 million (US$16 million) damage annually, but nonetheless, the town canceled the contest.)

How Do I Love Thee? “Bonnet books” are a “booming new subcategory of the romance genre,” reported The Wall Street Journal in September, describing “G-rated” Amish love stories that sell well among outside readers but have found an even more avid audience among Amish women themselves. The typical bestseller is by a non-Amish writer, perhaps involving a woman inside the community who falls in love with an outsider. In one book described by the Journal, the lovers “actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages.”

A Question Of Taste For its Halloween gala, the Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati had set up an exhibit featuring skeletons dressed to resemble, among other deceased celebrities, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, Ed McMahon, TV salesman Billy Mays, Sonny Bono (his skeleton in front of a tree) and Ted Williams (his skeleton in front of a freezer). Alongside was a marker board labeled “agenda,” with those names crossed off but others still listed, including Bernard Madoff and the comedian Carrot Top. (Following a WLWT-TV preview of the exhibit in September, the park quickly canceled it, with a spokesman declaring, “We were not intending to be distasteful.”)

Honey Baked Bastards In April, Richard Huether, the manager of the HoneyBaked Ham outlet in Cary, NC, was shot in the stomach during a robbery of the store and hospitalized, with medical bills paid through worker compensation and his employee health benefits. In September, when his worker compensation expired (and though still at least three months away from returning to work), HoneyBaked fired him (forcing him to begin paying 100 percent of his insurance premiums and making subsequent insurance prohibitively expensive because of his new “pre-existing condition”). However, HoneyBaked human resources executive Maggie DeCan told WRAL-TV that the firing was for Huether’s own good, in that it would clear the way for him to receive Social Security disability payments. Said DeCan, “We couldn’t feel any worse for Rich, and we would do anything we could for him (except keep him on the payroll).”

Hey, Baby… In Ogden, Utah, in October, Adam Manning, 30, accompanied his pregnant girlfriend to the McKay-Dee Hospital emergency room as she was going into labor. According to witnesses, as a nurse attended to the woman, Manning began flirting with her, complimenting the nurse’s looks and giving her neck rubs. When Manning then allegedly groped the nurse’s breast, she called for security, and Manning was eventually arrested and taken to jail, thus missing the birth of his child.

All Aboard! Thousands of airline passengers continue to attempt to bring prohibited carry-on items on board. The New York Post reported in September that the Transportation Security Administration had confiscated 123,000 items so far this year from just the three main airports serving New York City. Included were 43 explosives, 1,600 knives, a 10-point deer antler, several fire extinguishers, a tree branch, nunchucks, a grill, a baby alligator, “unwashed adult toys,” a gassed-up chain saw and a kitchen sink.

Nessie’s Balls In November, researchers roaming the depths of Scotland’s Loch Ness in a submarine, looking for the legendary monster, reported finding mainly “hundreds of thousands” of golf balls at the bottom, from popular use of the lake as a driving range. A recent Danish Golf Association report lamented the slow decomposition of golf balls (taking 100 to 1,000 years), and one UK legislator has called golf balls “humanity’s signature litter.”

Say No To B.O. In August, the Thorpe Park amusement facility in Chertsey, England, posted signs on its roller coaster admonishing riders not to wave their arms during the ride. According to director Mike Vallis: “We’ve found that when the temperature tops 77 degrees (F), the level of unpleasant (underarm) smells can become unacceptable, and we do receive complaints.”

‘Artless Bastards New Zealand’s Waikato National Contemporary Art Award in September (worth the equivalent of $11,000) went to Dane Mitchell, whose entry consisted merely of discarded packaging materials from all the other exhibits vying for the prize. Mitchell called his pile “Collateral.” (Announcement of the winner was poorly received by the other contestants.) And at a Christie’s auction in September in New York City, London artist Gavin Turk’s empty, nondescript cardboard box (the size of an ordinary moving-company box) sold for $16,000. (Actually, it was a sculpture designed to look exactly like an empty, nondescript cardboard box.)

Mess With Texas In the tiny east Texas town of Tenaha, police allegedly extorted traveling motorists by subjecting them to bogus traffic stops, perhaps finding small amounts of drugs, and then offering to forgo prosecution if the motorists would forfeit their cars and other property. The forfeited items were then sold to fund a special police recreation account. Last year, the ACLU of Texas filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against both the police and local prosecutor Lynda Russell, and in September 2009, Russell asked the state attorney general if she could pay her legal expenses from the alleged extorted recreation account.

Caught At Their Own Game A nine-hour, 16-officer search of the home of alleged drug kingpin Michael Difalco, near Lakeland, FL, in March, apparently was not exciting enough. Surveillance video (from Difalco’s security system) released by police in September showed that the easily distracted officers also took time out to play spirited frames of bowling on Difalco’s Wii game. Since the detectives were unaware of the camera, they uninhibitedly pumped their fists and shouted gleefully with every strike. Police supervisors acknowledged the unprofessional behavior but said the search nonetheless was productive.

I’ll Have What Darwin’s Having During a three-week period in September and October, three couples in the Darwin, Australia, area aroused police attention for having uninhibited sex in public. On September 13, a 29-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were fully engaged in their vehicle (stolen, said police) at a gas station in full view of passers-by. They persisted, ignoring a police officer’s order to stop. Two weeks later, an intoxicated couple taken into custody by police were seen having sex by the motorist following directly behind the police paddy wagon. On October 6, 25 miles south of Darwin, a 33-year-old man was charged with reckless driving after he crashed his car into a concrete drain while having sex with a 34-year-old woman in the front seat. (The woman later denied the charge, in earthy language, to a reporter from the Northern Territory News.)

Speaking Of Darwin… Among the species discovered recently in Papua New Guinea were tiny bear-like creatures, frogs with fangs, fish that grunt, kangaroos that live in trees, and what is probably the world’s largest rat (with no fear of humans). Scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea announced the findings in September, among more than 40 new species from a jungle habitat a half-mile deep inside the centuries-dormant Mount Bosavi volcano crater.

Sean Hannity Doesn’t Want You To Read This: The births of two chicks on the same day at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in April was unusual enough but especially noteworthy because of the birds’ lineage. Their fathers were a gay vulture couple about 10 years ago, according to a report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, and zoo caretakers provided them an artificial egg to “incubate” until they could replace the egg with a just-hatched vulture, as if the male-male couple had birthed it. In “an insane coincidence,” said a zoo official, the two males eventually separated and paired with females, and those females hatched eggs on the same day last April. Two weeks ago, according to Haaretz, the two chicks achieved independence on the same day and were moved to the zoo’s aviary.

Plastic People Mattel is accepting pre-orders for the April 2010 release of the newest doll in the Barbie/Ken line, the spiffily dressed Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken (apparently to be showcased with a much younger, trophy-type Barbie). Even more troubling (but so far only a prototype) is Alex Green’s “Placenta Teddy Bear,” exhibited in London in September and Newcastle, England, in October at the “(re)design” showcase of “sustainable toys” with children’s themes. After the placenta is cured and dried, it is treated with an emulsifier to render it pliable and cut into strips with which to stitch Teddy together, thus “unify(ing)” mother and baby.

Unfortunate Alibis Police in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, decided in August not to press charges against three boys whom they had previously believed had harassed a young moose so badly that it had to be put down. A final piece of evidence against prosecution came from the father of one of the boys, who vouched that the three could not have committed such a crime since they had been busy at the time, vandalizing a nearby church. Also, a 60-year-old highway worker was injured when struck by motorist Catherine Stotts, 62, who was speeding down a blocked-off road construction lane near Willits, CA, in July. The worker required hospitalization, but Stotts complained about receiving a traffic citation, telling officers that the man could have jumped out of the way faster. Lastly, Alexander Kabelis, 31, was arrested for slashing tires on almost 50 vehicles in Boulder, CO, in May, but offered several explanations, including being overwhelmed by radiation from the nearby Rocky Flats nuclear facility and having been forced by his mother to wear braces on his teeth as a child.

Calling Mr. Zimmern! An August 2000 Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro, Sardinia (Italy), described locals’ love for “casu marzu” (rotten cheese), brown lumps of sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a “viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue” and whose “wiggling worms (often) jump straight toward the (diner’s) eyes with ballistic precision.” Though the cheese is banned by the government, a black market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary cheese. Some locals believe the live maggots provide authentication, in that only when the maggots die does the cheese become inedible.

Marketing 101 The cheap-drink Tuesday night special at the Attic bar in Newcastle, England, in early September was a money-back guarantee at the end of the night to anyone who could still legally drive (measured by the bar’s breathalyzer), with the evening’s most-alcohol-saturated customer drinking free the following week. The Newcastle City Council soon convinced the bar it was a bad idea. And what is believed to be the world’s only commercial lounge openly serving cocaine operates in La Paz, Bolivia, though the owners of “Route 36″ have to change locations from time to time, depending on the moods of the bribed authorities. An August dispatch in London’s The Guardian reported that a nearly pure gram costs the equivalent of about $14 ($22 for “premium”), served by waiters in an empty CD case, with straws, but bar drinks are also available. Route 36 is well-known to backpacking tourists. Recalled one waiter, “We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. (T)he only time they left was to go to the ATM.”

Mysterious Ways A 45-year-old devout Catholic was killed recently in Vienna, Austria, shortly after a harrowing experience on a stuck elevator. The man had been so traumatized that, following his rescue, he went straight to the Weinhaus Church to give thanks. However, as he approached the altar, an 850-pound stone pillar fell and crushed him.

Graffiti In Paradise In April, the Arizona State Parks Board unanimously chose Renee Bahl, thought to be a dynamic, experienced professional, to be director of state parks. However, her employment record while an assistant parks director in California in 2001 included an incident in which she was disciplined for etching “Renee 99″ into the wall of one of the parks’ historic adobe barns.

Health Care Woes Blue Shield California twice refused to pay $2,700 emergency room claims by Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez, concluding that it was not a “reasonable” decision for her to go to the ER that morning when she awoke to a shirt saturated with blood from what turned out to be a breast tumor. Only after a KPIX-TV reporter intervened in September did Blue Shield pay the claim. Also, the National Women’s Law Center found that the laws of eight states permit insurance companies to deny health coverage to a battered spouse (as a “pre-existing condition,” since batterers tend to be recidivists), according to a September report by Kaiser Health News.

Trumped When the tenant failed to pay $87,000 in rent in April and May on two townhouses and a retail property at Trump Plaza in New York City, the landlord did what Donald Trump would surely do: It began eviction proceedings. However, the tenant in this case is Donald Trump’s Trump Corp., which leases the space from the current landlord, the Trump Plaza Owners co-op. Said the co-op president: “If you don’t pay the rent when Donald Trump is your landlord, he comes down on you like a hammer. Well, lo and behold….”

World-Class Adolescent Endeavors Japanese engineer Takuo Toda’s paper airplane was certified in May as the Guinness Book record-holder for the longest flight from a single folded sheet of paper: 27.9 seconds. And in Witcham, England, in July, Jim Collins won the World Peashooting Championship, using a “traditional” instrument blowing at a target 12 yards away, but noncompeting ex-champion George Hollis once again drew the most attention with his homemade, gyroscopic-balancing, laser-guided peashooter, with which he won three previous championships.

Nickle-Dimed With no help from Verizon Wireless, law enforcement agencies managed to hunt down a disturbed, 62-year-old man sought in an 11-hour manhunt following a domestic violence call in Carrollton, Ohio, in May. Deputies had wanted to use the man’s cell phone signal to locate him, but the company had shut off his service over an unpaid $20 bill and refused to turn it on, even for a few minutes, unless deputies paid the $20. The sheriff was reluctantly about to pay when deputies found the man.

Time For a Change A woman offering child-care services in Melbourne, FL, was dismayed to learn in August that a scam pulled on her by a diaper-wearing man in his 40s was not illegal. A man called her, on behalf of his disabled adult “brother,” who has a mental age of 5 and poor bladder control, and she began assisting him in her home during the day for $600 a week. She was later outraged to learn that the “brother” was really the caller and was actually normal (except for his perversion). However, as Brevard County Sheriff’s officials told Florida Today, since the woman consented to changing diapers and was fully paid for her services, they were unable to charge the man with a crime.

Classy Guy Juvenile disruptions by “Girls Gone Wild” video producer Joe Francis in two recent federal lawsuit depositions have apparently backfired on him. Under questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers, Francis had persistently and solemnly claimed not to understand common words and, during one session, repeatedly passed gas. At another deposition, he appeared indignant when asked if he had paid two teenage girls to fondle him (“disgusting allegations (against) a man of my integrity”). One judge summarily ruled against him on a $3 million Las Vegas gambling debt, and the other judge was considering a similar course in a class-action lawsuit by some of Francis’ allegedly underage “models.”

Awful Unlawfulness The Supreme Court of Spain tossed out assault charges against Henry Osagiede in August because of unfairness by Madrid police. Osagiede, a black man, was convicted after the victim identified him as her attacker, in a lineup in which he was the only black man. And six Ormond Beach, FL, motorcycle officers, detailed to chaperone the body of prominent Harley-Davidson dealer Bruce Rossmeyer from the funeral home to the cemetery, accidentally collided with each other en route, sending all six riders and their bikes sprawling. A 22-year-old man was arrested in Kitsap, WA, in August after tossing a barrage of rocks at people, leading some to chase him until police intervened. The man explained that he is preparing to enter Ultimate Fighting Championship contests but had never actually been in a fight and wanted experience at getting beaten up. And finally, admitted gang member Alex Fowler, 26, of Jasper, Texas, was arrested in July and charged with an attempted home-invasion robbery that went bad. Tough-guy Fowler, who has the words “Crip for Life” tattooed on his neck, was chased from the house by the 87-year-old female “victim” pointing a can of Raid insect repellant at him, threatening to spray.

More Madness From Japan Lonely Japanese men (and a few women) with rich imaginations have created a thriving subculture (“otaku”) in which they have all-consuming relationships with figurines that are based on popular anime characters. “The less extreme,” reported a New York Times writer in July, obsessively collect the dolls. The hardcore otaku “actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a (teenage character) is his girlfriend,” and takes her out in public on romantic dates. “She has really changed my life,” said “Nisan,” 37, referring to his gal, Nemutan. (The otaku dolls are not to be confused with the life-size, anatomically-correct dolls that other lonely men use for sex.) One forlorn “2-D” (so named for preferring relationships with two-dimensionals) said he would like to marry a real, 3-D woman, “(b)ut look at me. How can someone who carries this (doll) around get married?”

Always Check Your Itinerary For at least the third time in eight years, geography-challenged vacationers bought airline tickets for an Australian holiday but failed to notice (until they landed in “Sydney”) that their tickets took them to Sydney, Nova Scotia. Dutch man Joannes Rutten and his grandson appeared shocked when they de-planed in Canada, even though they had boarded an earlier connecting flight in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In December 2008, an Argentine woman made a similar mistake, and in August 2002, a young British couple, after realizing their error, decided to spend their holiday in Nova Scotia, after all.

F@*K Yeah! A study by psychology researchers at Britain’s Keele University in July showed that people who swear in response to a danger are better able to endure pain than those who use milder language. Also, the Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica this summer began encouraging people to urinate in the shower to save the Atlantic Rainforest (one avoided flush per day saving 1,100 gallons of water a year).

Idol Worship Apparently believing that religious competition in the Middle East is not exciting enough already, the television station Kanal T in Istanbul, Turkey, is preparing a reality game show for September release in which 10 certified atheists try to resist conversion by a priest, a rabbi, a Muslim imam and a Buddhist monk. The exact rules have not been disclosed, but the “winning” convert will receive an expense-paid trip to the holy land of the most persuasive religion (the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca or Tibet). According to a July Reuters report, Turkey’s Islamic Religious Affairs Directorate, not surprisingly, had vowed never to co-operate.

Why Not? By early July, Jonathan Baltesz and his wife and kids were desperate to find their 10-year-old black Labrador mix, Simon, who had run away. They had one more plan, however. The family members urinated into containers and sprinkled the contents at various locales around their town (Bristol, England), laid out so that Simon could follow a trail home. (Results were unavailable at press time.)

Unwelcome Intervention A certain bridge in Ghangzhou, China, has become popular for suicide (12 attempts in a 45-day period in April and May), and with each incident, traffic is slowed or halted for hours while crews attempt to talk the distraught person down or perform rescues. Mr. “Chen” was on the ledge in May, according to an Agence France-Presse dispatch, but he couldn’t make up his mind about jumping. One frustrated motorist, Lai Jiansheng, ended the suspense by walking up to Chen and pushing him off. Chen survived, and Lai was arrested.

On A Wing And A Prayer The British charter airline Thomas Cook announced at the gate in the resort island of Mallorca in June that, regardless of seat assignments on a departing flight, passengers should sit toward the rear of the aircraft in order to balance the load (since it was already front-heavy with cargo and therefore harder on the pilot). Not surprisingly, 71 apprehensive passengers refused to board. (Also, some incoming passengers on that same aircraft, which experienced a similar balance problem, had dramatically dropped to their knees in the terminal, kissing the ground, calling the flight their worst ever.)

The Glass Is Half-Full Farah Ahmed Omar was appointed recently as chief of Somalia’s navy, which ordinarily would be on the front lines against the throng of pirates operating off the country’s coast. Omar’s job is difficult, though, because the Somalian navy has not a single boat nor a single sailor, and Omar himself has not been to sea in 23 years. However, he told a reporter he was optimistic that the piracy could be stopped.

For Once, It’s Not Florida Rarely has a city experienced a “better” year of weird news than Akron, Ohio, in 2000. A father was indicted for constantly roughing up his gifted teenage daughters to encourage even higher achievement (including threatening to kill one for misspelling “cappelletti” in the National Spelling Bee). A man was found living with his father’s corpse for 11 years, discovered only when his mother died, and he failed to bury her, also. A 69-year-old man sued a woman for tricking him into marrying her when he had intended to marry her mother. A woman defended a charge of sexually molesting her 7-year-old son, by claiming that the family dog had raped him. A 10-year-old boy, trying to avoid leaf-raking chores by hiding underneath them, was hospitalized when his mother accidentally drove over the leaves. A high school coach got caught cheating when he sneaked in to run the second leg of his school’s 4×100 relay at a track meet.

Small Town Management After haggling for a while at its June 16 meeting, the county board in Lincoln, NE, finally voted, 2-1, to reimburse Shum Darwin for his pants, which went missing at the jail after Darwin was arrested. The city’s liability was clear; the debate was about whether the pants were worth $12 or $10. And the city council of Brooksville, FL, by 4-1, adopted an appearance policy in June that requires all municipal employees to wear underwear while on the clock and to make sure it is not visible.

Genius! In early 1995, Chesapeake, VA, inmate Robert Lee Brock filed a $5 million lawsuit against Robert Lee Brock — accusing himself of violating his own religious beliefs and his own civil rights by getting himself drunk enough to engage in the various crimes that put him behind bars. He wrote: “I want to pay myself five million dollars (for being made to suffer from this breach of rights) but ask the state to pay it in my behalf since I can’t work and am a ward of the state.” (The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.)

Kings (Queens) Of Weirdness David Shayler, 43, used to be a British MI5 intelligence officer, but apparently went downhill after a controversy with superiors and today lives as Delores Kent, in full female dress, and believes “in (his) heart” that he is the Messiah who will save mankind from its upcoming 2012 doomsday by turning billions of people on to the virtues of hemp, which is “perfectly balanced … full of omega-3, -6, and -9 to help muscles grow and repair.” Shayler/Kent also believes that Americans staged September 11 and that Jesus Christ was, like him, a transvestite. And transsexual Tammy Lynn Felbaum (formerly Tommy Wyda), 43, was found guilty in December 2001 of manslaughter in the February death of her sixth husband, James Felbaum, from a botched castration. Tammy initially said James castrated himself, then admitted she did it but only at James’ written request. The Butler County, PA, judge reached his decision based on evidence that Tammy had pressured James into the removal as punishment for James’ recent affair, and on testimony from one of Tammy’s earlier spouses, Lynn (formerly Tim) Barner, who let Tammy castrate her (formerly him) because she was an “expert.” Said Barner, “(Tammy) could castrate a dog in less than five minutes.” Tammy was also known in the community for her career as a stripper, specializing in crushing soda cans between her breasts.

Green With Guilt London’s celebrated high-end restaurant Nobu still serves a bluefin tuna entree for the equivalent of about $51 but is apparently ashamed that it has a fresh inventory ready to carve, according to a May report in the Daily Telegraph. Printed on the menu is this advisory: “Bluefin tuna is an environmentally threatened species — please ask your server for an alternative.”

Dubious Studies Doctors and specialists from the New York Psychiatric Institute are in the middle of a two-year investigation, on a $400,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on why gay men have risky sex in Argentina. Researchers visit gay bars nightly in Buenos Aires and question men about their behavior and substance abuse. And Wayne State University (Detroit) researchers, operating on a $2.6 million NIH grant, are now “training” prostitutes to drink alcohol responsibly, to reduce the women’s willingness to engage in risky sex. However, the training is taking place in Guangxi province, China. Also, researchers from Cleveland State University, for a recent journal article, assessed the physical traits of 195 female characters from the first 20 James Bond films, revealing that more were brunette than blond and that at least 90 percent were young, slim and of above-average looks. Two scientists from Britain’s University of Oxford, on a three-year study costing the equivalent of nearly $500,000, found that ducks may be even more comfortable standing under a sprinkler than paddling around in a pond. Lead researcher Marian Stamp Dawkins concluded that ducks basically just like water. According to research announced in May by pediatrics professor Jennie Noll of the University of Cincinnati, the more often that teenage girls tart themselves up in online presentations, the greater the sexual interest they provoke. And lastly, in June, a branch of the National Institutes of Health awarded a $423,000 grant to the Kinsey Institute to find out why men seem to prefer not to use condoms during sex. (ABC News, reporting the announcement, contacted a sex-advice blogger, who revealed, free of charge, that it’s because the condom reduces sexual sensation.)

More “Research” Kerry Fenton’s pub, The Cutting Edge, in Worsbrough, England, initially complied with the 2007 Smoking Act, which prohibits lighting up inside. However, since smoking research is generally carried on indoors, “research” was exempt from the law. Fenton ultimately renamed part of the bar the Smoking Research Centre and allows patrons to smoke provided they fill out questionnaires about their habit. So far, according to a May BBC News report, neither Britain’s Home Office nor the local Barnsley council has intervened. In related news, even though life and health insurance companies now routinely penalize smokers with higher premiums (or by refusing their business), the companies themselves own tobacco company stock worth at least $4.4 billion, according to a recent New England Journal of Medicine report. Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than 400,000 Americans die prematurely each year due in part to smoking (burdening life insurance companies but perhaps sparing health insurers from having to pay out over longer lifetimes).

Simply Shocking The head of Florida’s Department of Corrections admitted in May that at least 43 children (including a 5-year-old), who observed their parents’ prison jobs as part of “Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day” in April, were playfully zapped by 50,000-volt stun guns. DOC Secretary Walt McNeil said the demonstrations (in three of the state’s 55 prisons) even included one warden’s kid, but that only 14 children were individually shot (with the rest part of hand-holding circles feeling a passing current). Twenty-one employees were disciplined.

Sign Of The Times On a hot July 2005 day in Stamford, CT, firefighters not only had to break a car window but overcome the car’s owner, who couldn’t bear to see her Audi A4 damaged. The 23-month-old son of Susan Guita Silverstein, 42, had been accidentally locked inside, along with the key, for at least 20 minutes on a sweltering, 88-degree day. Silverstein (who was later charged with reckless endangerment) begged firefighters to wait so she could go home and retrieve her spare key, to save her window.

Idiocy Does Not Pay In Fort Lauderdale, FL, in February 1994, accused murderer Donald Leroy Evans, 38, filed a pre-trial motion asking permission to wear a Ku Klux Klan robe in the courtroom and to be referred to in legal documents by “the honorable and respected name of Hi Hitler.” According to courthouse employees interviewed by the Associated Press, Evans thought Adolf Hitler’s followers were saying “Hi Hitler” rather than “Heil, Hitler.” And Steven Gilmore Jr., 21, was arrested in Gainesville, FL, after an aborted convenience store robbery in which he shot a clerk with a BB gun. Police said Gilmore confessed to the crime, explaining that he is an aspiring rap singer and felt he needed to commit a violent crime to gain “street cred” as a thug.

Man vs. Beast A portion of downtown Rotterdam, Netherlands, was blanketed in gluey white “silk” in May, from a six-week-long invasion of caterpillars that strip trees and cover them with gooey larvae. In Stoke-on-Trent, England, Nicola Bruce and her two toddlers, who live in government-assisted housing, have awakened nearly every morning for two years to a fresh invasion of about 50 slugs, despite 30 attempts by contractors to find their source (in addition to the remodeling of the kitchen and bath and the bleaching of floors).

Americans Fantasize, Germans Act Two formerly well-off retired couples in Speyer, Germany, whose nest egg was largely wiped out by investments in sub-prime Florida mortgages, vented their anger by kidnapping their investment adviser, James Amburn, in June. They took him to the vacation home of one of the couples near the Austrian border, bound him like a mummy and beat and tortured him over several days, fracturing two ribs, in repeated attempts to punish him and extort his own property as partial compensation for their losses. Police rescued him after he managed to send a coded message by fax.

Safety First In Britain

Oops! For 15 years, police in southern Germany have been futilely tracking a female “serial killer” whose DNA (but little other matching physical evidence) was found at 40 crime scenes, including six murders. Only in 2007 did they begin to consider alternative theories, and in March 2009, a state justice minister announced that the case had been solved: The DNA matched up in the tests because the cotton swabs used to collect it had been contaminated at the factory (but authorities still have not determined which female factory worker inadvertently supplied the DNA).

Mixed Signs From The Middle East In March, at a soccer match in Hilla, Iraq, between two local teams, as a player with the ball approached the goal to attempt a tying kick late in the game, an overenthusiastic spectator drew his gun and shot him dead. In more hopeful news, authorities in Ramallah said that the March 24 bank robbery by armed gunmen who snatched the equivalent of $30,000 was pulled off by five Palestinians and an Israeli Jew, working together.

Lousy Bums In April, the City Council of Vero Beach, FL, grappling with the question of how much skin can legally be exposed in public, adopted the definitions that at least two other Florida jurisdictions use (and which were reported in News of the Weird). “Buttocks,” for example, is “the area of the rear of the body which lies between two imaginary lines running parallel to the ground when a person is standing, the first or top such line drawn at the top of the nates (i.e., the prominence of the muscles running from the back of the hip to the back of the leg) and the second or bottom line drawn at the lowest visible (sic) of this cleavage or the lowest point of the curvature of the fleshy protuberance, whichever is lower.”

Poor Dears Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, now serving a life sentence in the Florence, CO, “Supermax” prison, filed a 39-page federal lawsuit in March alleging unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment” because the refined-food, low-fiber meals give him “chronic constipation (and) bleeding hemorrhoids.” He demanded fresh raw vegetables and other high-fiber foods, necessary to “keep one’s body (i.e., God’s holy temple) in good health.” Nichols was joined in the lawsuit by fellow Supermax resident Eric Rudolph (the convicted abortion-clinic and Atlanta Olympics bomber), who claimed “gas and stomach cramps” and observed that “our bodies” are “sacred and should be treated as such.”

Where Money Flows Like Water Recently the Washington Supreme Court ruled that Seattle had for two years improperly charged water customers for servicing hydrants when the city should have covered the service from general tax funds, and it ordered customer refunds averaging $45. However, Seattle then discovered it had insufficient general funds to pay for hydrant service and thus imposed a water surcharge of $59 per customer, according to a February KOMO-TV report. The most likely reason the surcharge was higher is that the city had to pay $4.2 million to the attorneys who filed the account-shuffling lawsuit.

Gee, Thanks… East St. Louis, IL, policeman Kristopher Weston apprehended a murder suspect about 20 minutes after the crime in April, which was such a nice piece of police work that the mayor called Weston before the city council to commend him. Five minutes after Weston left the room, the council got down to regular business, the first order of which was to approve a list of police and firefighter layoffs due to budget shortfalls, and on the list because of low seniority was Officer Kristopher Weston.

Cha-Ching! Shreepriya Gopalan filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Diego in April against Microsoft, Google, Apple, Saks Fifth Avenue, McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Chase Bank, Verizon, AT&T and 47 other U.S. corporations, claiming that he actually owns the companies based on the Chinese divination system I Ching, which he said he invented when he was “15 or 16″ years old. “These companies were I Chinged in through a metaphysical layer created and owned by me,” he wrote, but he added that, “unfortunately,” he lacks paperwork to document his claims and asks the court’s help.

Up Yours!

Another Fetish Exposed Once again, a man was found to have climbed into the waste tank of an outdoor toilet, but according to a March report in the Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, the emergency crew seemed to accept his story that it was all a mistake and not a manifestation of perversion. Rescuers from the town of Filer, Idaho, said the man told them he was just looking for his keys that he had accidentally dropped and had been in the tank for 15 minutes before help arrived. The man declined to identify himself, and no official report was required, but after the man was hosed off by a fire truck, he “discovered” that his keys had been in his pocket all along, and he drove away.

The Gnomes Know When Alcoa Inc. prepared to build an aluminum smelting plant in Iceland in 2004, the government forced it to hire an expert to assure that none of the country’s legendary “hidden people” lived underneath the property. The elf-like goblins provoke genuine apprehensiveness in many of the country’s 300,000 natives (who are all, reputedly, related by blood). An Alcoa spokesman told Vanity Fair writer Michael Lewis (for an April 2009 report) that the inspection (which delayed construction for six months) was costly but necessary: “(W)e couldn’t be in the position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.” (Lewis offered several explanations for the country’s spectacular financial implosion in 2008, including Icelanders’ incomprehensible superiority complex that convinced many lifelong fishermen that they were gifted investment bankers.)

Only in Japan/Sweden Sega Toys Co. reported in January that, in just three months, it had sold 50,000 units of the Pekoppa, a “plant” consisting of leaves and branches that flutter when “spoken to,” the success of which the company attributes to the epic loneliness of many Japanese. Advocates for children complained in April that Sweden’s national library, acting on a standing order to archive copies of all domestic publications, has been gathering books and magazines of child pornography from the years 1971-1980, when it was legal, and, as libraries do, lending them out.

Your End Is Nigh The Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace commenced campaigns in February critical of the peculiar preference of Americans for ultra-soft or quilted toilet paper. In less-picky Europe and Latin America, 40 percent of toilet paper is produced by recycling, but Americans’ demand for multi-ply tissue requires virgin wood for 98 percent of the product. The activists claim that U.S. toilet paper imposes more costs on the planet than do gas-guzzling cars.

The Future Is Now The CMT cable channel has scheduled an August start-up for “Runnin’ Wild … From Ted Nugent,” in which the rock singer, hunter and uninhibited gun advocate will spend five episodes training three novices on how to survive in the woods, and then, in the final episodes, Nugent and his 18-year-old son will go hunt them down, with the last one to avoid capture declared the winner.

Don’t Take Me To Your Leaders During an April Texas House committee hearing (according to a Houston Chronicle report), state Rep. Betty Brown suggested a solution to the voter-registration confusion caused by Chinese-Americans’ Anglicizing their names (which yields nonstandard spellings): “Do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens,” she asked a Chinese-American activist, “to adopt (names) that we (lawmakers) could deal with more readily here?” And during a March Florida Senate debate on whether to exempt “animal husbandry” from the law against bestiality, Sen. Larcenia Bullard asked (seriously, according to a Miami Herald reporter), “People are taking these animals as husbands?”

Dim Bulbs In April, sex offender Barry Whaley was under suspicion for failing to register his new address but made things much worse. Being questioned at a police station in Fairbanks, Alaska, he asked an officer to retrieve a laptop computer from his car so that it would not get stolen, and when the officer brought it to him, Whaley mentioned an “amazing” flight simulator program he had been using, which the officer asked to see. As Whaley powered up the computer, a video of child pornography appeared, and Whaley was arrested. In April, police in Copley Township, Ohio, were called to a restaurant where Erik Salmons, 39, was allegedly intoxicated and annoying customers. Officers declined to arrest him but did insist that he call someone for a ride home, and Salmons complied. However, at home, Salmons decided that he was insulted at being thought of as intoxicated and so drove himself to the police station and demanded a breathalyzer test, which of course he failed, and he was arrested.