-- In October, a California appeals court reinstated the 1997 jury verdict for Robert Cunningham against his Orange County homeowners' association for meddling. Over a two-year period, the association had ordered Cunningham to clean up not only an outside patio but also the inside of his unit, claiming that he had too many books and newspapers lying around, that his bed was too messy, and that piles of old clothing should be given to charity.

-- In November, Ten's World Class Cabaret (a strip joint) asked New York Supreme Court justice Stephen Crane to be exempt from New York City anti-nudity rules because it had begun to admit children to the premises and thus was no longer an "adult" establishment that the rules applied to. Shortly afterward, Crane ruled in favor of Ten's, which at press time at least twice had admitted children (accompanied by a parent, of course) for lunch, with dancers in the background.

According to a November New York Times report, Chinese soccer fans' new traditional yell to harass opposing teams is a word which is street slang for female genitals and which the press has dubbed the "Beijing curse." And in Lagos, Nigeria, in November, the star soccer player on the Cameroon female team, Gwimotoh Lilian, was disqualified from the championship series because, according to officials, "all" of her physical features are "male" (except for her female genitals).

A 12-year-old boy was let off with six months' probation in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., in October after he admitted urinating in his teacher's water bottle. Although she went to the hospital with nausea and stomach cramps, the boy's lawyer said, "The bottom line is, urine is not harmful to drink." And 10 days later in Tucson, Ariz., Caroline Gomez Maldonado, 42, was arrested and charged with chasing a reluctant 8-year-old stranger down the street in order to convince him to urinate into a cup so Maldonado could use it for an upcoming test as part of her probation on drug charges.

Jordan Locke, 5, was suspended from elementary school in Pittsburgh in October when he showed up in his Halloween firefighter costume that included a 5-inch plastic hatchet, which the school calls a "weapon" (though firefighters call it a "tool"). And in November, a Canoga Park, Calif., advertising agency was forced to pull ads for perfectly legal Alterna Hemp Shampoo from 106 bus-stop benches because an anti-drug group complained that "hemp" should not be portrayed favorably.

The Boston Globe reported in November on the upcoming trial in Richmond, Va., of Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Barry Black, who was arrested for burning a cross in violation of a state hate-crimes law. His lawyer is a black man, David Baugh, who took the case without fee to defend Black's right to symbolic free speech, even though Black said, "I am not going to invite (Baugh) to my home to break bread with me because my Bible tells me that mixing leads to the destruction of my race." Black also said he believes Africa is still today the home of naked cannibals who, when sick, "are going to some witch doctor with a bone in their nose."

In November in Austin, Texas, Henry Benedict, owner of the under-renovation adult theater Cinema West, announced that he will defray renovation costs at a public celebration of the new building by selling the 500 seats from the old theater as souvenirs for $25 each.

-- In India, according to a May New York Times report, parents in several rural states continue the tradition of forcing their children into arranged marriages, at ages as young as 4, in violation of national laws setting the minimum age at 18. By contrast, in August in Annapolis, Md., in a perfectly legal ceremony under state law, Phillip Compton, 29, married Tina Akers, 13. (It was legal because Akers' parents consented and Akers was pregnant. On the other hand, Compton appeared to have violated the state law on statutory rape.)

-- In September, a judge in Chilton, Wis., sentenced Michael and Angeline Rogers to a year in jail, 39 years less than they could have gotten, for physically abusing four of their five children and imprisoning one of them several times overnight in a dog cage in their basement. Judge Steven Weinke said he was trying to show "compassion," which the parents had requested so as to improve their chances to begin the process of retaking custody of their kids.

-- In October in Kitchener, Ontario, a man was sentenced to six months' probation living away from his 15-year-old stepson, as punishment for growing 20 marijuana plants; he said he planted them so the boy would not be exposed to the "dangers of street drugs." And in November in Milwaukee, a man was convicted for supplying his 13-year-old virgin son with a prostitute, saying it was about time he learned.

-- Quality Time With the Kids: Baltimore police dispatcher Harry Gilmore Watts, 32, was arrested in August and charged with chauffeuring his son and a friend, both 15, to rob a Peoples Bank. And on the same day, in Medford, Ore., Cynthia Alice Lockinger, 40, pleaded guilty to robbing two banks while her three daughters waited in the back seat of the getaway car.

Kevin Johnson of Chesapeake, Va., was convicted in November of attempting to defraud a Lowe's Home Center store in a 1993 incident. According to the prosecutor, Johnson and a friend dropped cans of paint in an aisle in an attempt to make it look like the cans had cascaded from a high shelf and knocked Johnson unconscious. Johnson was taken to a hospital and later filed a lawsuit for $250,000. After the judge saw evidence that the open, strewn paint cans were undented and had come from different parts of the shelf so that they were unlikely to have hit Johnson, he dismissed the lawsuit, and prosecutors took over.

In 1996, News of the Weird reported on a new breeding of sheep that produces muscular flanks (in fact, it is named the "beautiful buttocks" strain) and 30 percent more meat. In November 1998, a scientist with England's Meat and Livestock Commission said the scheme has been abandoned because the resultant meat was invariably "tough as old boots," and the best food technologists have not been able to find a way to tenderize it.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- Calgary, Alberta, construction worker Michael Pearse, 22, an admitted hothead, pleaded guilty to making threats in 1996 while trying to find a friend's ex-girlfriend, but at his sentencing hearing in November 1998 said he is now a gentle man and had the report of a government neuropsychologist as evidence. The cause of his change: In February 1998, Pearse was hit in the head and knocked out by a crowbar that bounced off a wall after he swung it, and when he came to, he had an amnesia that had turned him into what the doctor said is a "considerate, caring, benign guy," with no aggression at all. The judge postponed sentencing so he could think things over.

-- In November, after French surgeons transplanted an arm and a hand on a man, prominent Italian plastic surgeon Nicolo Scuderi announced that he was ready to perform the world's first penis transplant and in fact had three potential patients. Scuderi said the operation would be less complicated than a reattachment although he was not sure all penile functions would be effective. He said his initial operations would be on transsexual women seeking to become men and not merely on men who seek larger genitals. And the next day, China's Xinhua news agency reported that army surgeons had constructed a new penis, out of abdominal tissue, for a 6-year-old boy who had had an accident.

-- Diane Ellis, Clearwater, Fla., candidate for a state House seat, got 27 percent of the vote despite her persistent, inexplicable claims that her opponent, the son of locally well-known U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, was an imposter from out of state, hired to impersonate the younger Bilirakis.

-- As in every election, several candidates who died during the campaign remained on the ballot, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, who took eventual winner Lee Baca down to the wire even though he died four days before the election. In the Yakima, Wash., race for county coroner, incumbent Leonard Birkinbine was re-elected, although he died two days before; he was running unopposed because his only challenger, John Reynolds, had died on Sept. 14, the day before the primary (which he won).

-- In an upset proportional to Jesse (The Body) Ventura's becoming governor of Minnesota, a challenger to the Mendocino County, Calif., district attorney won, despite the incumbent's stature as president of the state association of district attorneys. The new DA is ex-con Norman Vroman, who served time for tax evasion and still owes $1.3 million in back taxes, but is very popular because he favors decriminalization of marijuana. (Vroman says he will prosecute anyone the sheriff arrests, but the newly elected sheriff favors decriminalization of marijuana, also.)

-- A ballot question in the District of Columbia, allowing the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medical purposes, was voted on, and the yes's and no's were counted by computer, but so far the outcome is not known. After the ballots were printed, but before election day, a federal law authored by U.S. Rep. Robert Barr of Georgia passed, forbidding D.C. from spending any money on the medical-marijuana initiative, which includes the money required to type up the computer-generated results and release them to the public.

-- The Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Arkansas, surgeon Fay Boozman, said during the campaign that a "rape exception" for abortion is not necessary because the stress of rape produces hormonal changes in the woman that prevent conception. He did not produce research but said his statement was based on general knowledge in the medical community.

-- In an effort to upgrade her long-shot campaign against incumbent U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Republican Crystal Young, 57 (who beat 8 challengers in the primary), said late in the campaign that the reason she qualifies for Social Security disability payments is the pain she experiences from once having had electromagnetic needles implanted in her body by actress Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine denied ever meeting Young.

-- In an era when Hollywood stars support causes such as Farm Aid, human rights campaigns, and ending child labor, actor Wilford Brimley became the celebrity spokesperson this fall opposing Arizona's Proposition 201, which sought to ban cockfighting (and which ultimately passed). Brimley lives in Utah, but he drove regularly across the border to attend cockfights. "They're magnificent," he said of the roosters. "It's always thrilling to watch."

-- As reported earlier in "News of the Weird," Tennessee state Senate challenger Byron (Low-Tax) Looper was charged with shooting to death the incumbent, Tommy Burks, 14 days before the election. The deceased Burks was one of eight Tennessee state senators to receive the highest-rated endorsement of the National Rifle Association. Burks' widow won the race, and Looper, in jail, still received 571 votes.

-- Voters in Newport, Maine, voted almost 3-1 against a proposed ordinance that would make female public toplessness illegal. The issue had been forced by the propensity of Desiree Davis, 34, to mow her mother's lawn without a shirt, which provoked complaints despite the fact that current law only forbids exposing the genitals and buttocks.

Police in Winston-Salem, N.C., arrested Sidney Reuben Smith, 48, in November after he applied for a checking account at a BB&T bank branch, claiming to be Jerry Cain and possessing Cain's ID. A bank officer called the police. The real Jerry Cain had passed away three weeks earlier after a long illness, a fact known to all at the bank since his widow, Melinda Cain, is a teller there.

In July, British climber Alan Hinkes succeeded in scaling the 26,000-foot-high Nanga Parbot in Pakistan, a year after he had to retire from a previous attempt. As reported in "News of the Weird" last year, Hinkes, after great expense and preparation, was about halfway up when he was eating a Pakistani bread called chapati, which is topped with flour. The wind blew the flour in his face, causing him to sneeze, which resulted in a pulled back muscle that made further climbing impossible.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- Rev. John Wayne "Punkin" Brown Jr., 34, died on Oct. 3 of a rattlesnake bite while ministering at the Rock House Holiness Church in northeast Alabama near Scottsboro. In a landmark book on snake-handling preachers in the South ("Salvation on Sand Mountain" by Dennis Covington), Brown was called the "mad monk," the one most "mired in the ... blood lust of the patriarchs." His wife, Melinda, died in the same way three years ago at a church in Middlesboro, Ky.

-- In September, Norway's prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, took three weeks' paid sick leave for depression, reportedly caused by then-imminent budget negotiations he would have to conduct from a minority position, controlling just 42 of the 165-seat Parliament. He pronounced himself well late in the month and returned to work. And in August, Finland's prime minister, Paavo Lipponen, took six days' partly compensated paternity leave after his wife gave birth to a baby girl. The law allows up to 12 days for fathers.

In Toronto in August, a circus performer was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting his estranged wife, and also charged was a circus dwarf who allegedly helped the man and took pictures of the attack. And in Edwardsville, Ill., in September, former circus performer ("bearded lady") Vivian Wheeler filed a lawsuit against a former colleague, a dwarf named Steven Carter, accusing him of attacking her after a night of drinking.

The German television network ARD reported in July that for the last 15 years, the KEG waste disposal company has been turning the remains of incinerated miscarried fetuses, along with other hospital waste, into granules for use in road construction. When informed of the practice, the regional health minister said she thought that was "morally incorrect."

Seattle, July: After a night of drinking, Donald R. Wood III, 27, fell six floors down an elevator shaft and was not discovered for five days. (He survived.) Breezewood, Pa., August: Michael Giovanetti went over an embankment in a one-car accident and was not able to crawl out of his mangled car for four days, but then finally made it up a 75-foot slope where a passing motorist stopped to help him. Tokyo, August: A 23-year-old Chinese stowaway survived a three-hour airline flight by clinging to the landing gear in sub-zero temperatures at an altitude of up to six miles. (Upon landing, he was immediately deported.)

In West Hartford, Conn., in August, renowned lawyer Johnnie Cochran, defending two Rottweilers accused of barking too much, lost the case. Cochran represented his friend Flora Allen (mother of basketball player and actor Ray Allen), whose dogs were the subject of numerous barking complaints, but he failed to persuade a judge to lift a 9 p.m. outdoor curfew on the dogs. Final disposition of the case was set for March.

-- At a London trade show in September, NCR Corp. unveiled the MicroWeb, a combination microwave oven/TV/computer with Internet access, which it hopes to consumer-test soon and offer for sale at about $700. Said a spokesman, "(A)s the pizza is happily spinning around, you can ... check your bank balance, send an e-mail, or even watch the last five minutes of 'Friends.'"

-- In May, the president of Create Corp., a Japanese "alibi" telephone answering service, said he had started acquiring as clients people who were so ashamed of having been laid off from work that they pay the answering service to create an illusory job and title for them so that callers will think they are still working. (Most of the firm's previous clients were prostitutes who needed to convince their friends and parents that they work for a fictitious but respectable company.)

-- In August, the British biotech company Kiotech began test-marketing a disposable wipe containing human sexual pheromones that would, as a company executive said, "boost the wearer's sexual-smell signature." Xcite! packets are now being sold in men's room vending machines in nightclubs in three cities in England. (The substance itself smells awful so the wipes also contain cologne.)

-- In May, Avon Silversmiths of London introduced a $280 crucifix containing a built-in screeching alarm, designed for clergy who are apprehensive about violence at work. A recent survey revealed one in three British clergy have at some point been attacked on church grounds.

William Lee Beck, 41, was arrested in August and charged with robbing Starvin' Steve's market in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. According to police, Beck entered the store with a large rock in his hand, grabbed a 12-pack of beer, and said he'd pay for it the next day. When the clerk objected, Beck raised the rock, said, "How about I crush your skull with this rock?" and left. A half-hour later, a woman went to the store and timidly handed the clerk a check to pay for the beer. Sheriff's deputies went to the woman's home, and after considerable difficulty succeeded in waking Beck up and taking him away.

Two men were convicted of murder in Seattle in September based on DNA markers in the blood of the victim's dog (which also was killed at the scene). News accounts said this was the first use of animal DNA in a U.S. criminal trial, which may be true, but News of the Weird reported that calf DNA was used in 1994 in cattle-rustling charges against two Florida men. Authorities matched the calf's DNA with that in an uncooked slab of pot roast (i.e., the mother) sold by the rustlers. A database search revealed an even earlier cattle-rustling DNA case, in Brownstown, Ill., in 1993. (A cat's DNA was used at a 1996 trial to help convict a man of murder in Canada.)

A 22-year-old man in Newark, N.J. (August), and a 58-year-old woman in Apopka, Fla. (October), were killed in disputes over what to watch on television. It was not reported in either case which programs were being contested, but according to Apopka police, the suspect (the woman's 17-year-old son) generally objected to soap operas.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)