-- According to a December report in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, U.S. Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana brings his own utensils to a Capitol barber shop (scissors, comb, electric razor) to have his hair cut. Though no one would say for sure, reporters speculated that Burton does this for the same reason (fear of AIDS) that he has stopped ordering soup in restaurants and stopped going to the House gym around the time that colleague and gym regular Barney Frank revealed he is gay.

-- A December Newhouse News Service dispatch reported on the new fascination with tattooing among some younger evangelical Christians, who decorate themselves contrary to the teachings of the book of Leviticus, which in the last millennium was cited as the basis of calling tattooing "a form of deviltry." (On the other hand, supporters point out, the books of Exodus and Revelation describe holy symbols on the bodies of believers.) A religious female graduate student in California, interviewed for the article, said that among her tattoos was an angel, on her butt.

-- In 1997, four years after being convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl, inmate Graylon Bell won $200,000 from a jury against the Indiana Department of Correction for being raped by his cellmate at a Plainfield, Ind., youth facility. In December 1998, Bell and the girl's family reached a settlement in her lawsuit to get part of the money. (Only $31,500 remained, after lawyers' fees, of which she will receive $26,500.)

-- At a September meeting of the Republican Party in Lawrence, Kan., a conservative faction beat back a challenge from moderates and retained control of the party. At the start of the meeting, when attendees realized there was no U.S. flag to which they could offer the traditional pledge of allegiance, the chairman solved the dilemma by unfurling a roll of 32-cent flag stamps at the front of the room.

-- Tampa, Fla., nursing home resident John Yerger, 93, after realizing he had been duped into paying a $5,000 fee to collect his alleged $1 million winnings in a Canadian lottery and then cooperating with authorities in an attempt (unsuccessful) to sting the culprits: "It may have cost me $5,000, but this is the most excitement I've had in a long time."

-- Greensboro, N.C., city council member Keith Holliday, explaining in January why the city was forced to hire a public relations firm to deal with its current water-shortage crisis: "I'll bet you I've been asked 100 times ... why we just didn't make our lakes bigger."

-- An inadvertent glitch in the recent earthquake-proof construction at Barnstable (Mass.) High School: The building is so solidly soundproof that students could not hear ordinary fire alarms, and for the first month of this school year (until the problem was fixed), the school board was forced to hire firefighters on overtime to stand guard in the building to alert everyone in case of fire, at a total cost of about $1,000 a day.

-- Empowered by a November referendum in which 73 percent of the country voted against legalizing drugs, Swiss prosecutors announced they would file challenges to current law on marijuana, which bans its sale only as a "narcotic." Over the last three years, several hemp shops have opened, selling dried marijuana as an herbal room freshener (with names like "Juicy Fruit" and "Lemon Skunk") and labeled "not for consumption."

-- A December Wall Street Journal report described the problems of auto manufacturers forced to crash-test their cars using mannequins not only of government-dictated sizes and weight but wearing clothing prescribed in minute detail by regulation. Included are requirements that the dummies wear shoes of a precise weight and a black-leather style, that "adults" wear matched sets of cotton shirts and form-fitting shorts, that a "child" must wear "thermal knit, waffle-weave polyester and cotton underwear or equivalent," with size 7M sneakers, with "rubber toe caps, uppers of Dacron and cotton or nylon and a total mass of .453 kg." Only recently did the government drop its requirement that all adult clothes be of the color "tea rose" and that all shoes be gray suede.

-- Tale of Two Towns: According to a December New York Times report, residents of the unincorporated community called Brooksville, Ala., are gathering signatures to petition the state to create an official town based on the Bible and the Ten Commandments, bringing together church and state, which are supposedly constitutionally separate. Sinners would be welcome but expected to observe public behavior codes and might have to attend church services to have their votes counted because many of the town's decisions would be made there. At the other end of the spectrum, El Paso (Texas) County officials in November got a court order decertifying the town of Buford, calling it a sham set up solely to protect virtually its only "residents": a dozen adult bookstores and strip clubs that have, in the 36 years of Buford's existence, been exempt from county regulation.

-- According to Kenya's largest newspaper, the Daily Nation, the government in October formed a committee to study potential problems with the country's computers' complying with the Jan. 1, 2000, date changeover. The final report and recommendations of the committee were ordered published within 18 months, which would be April 18, 2000.

-- Julian Cabrera, 18, and a 14-year-old companion were arrested in October in San Diego and charged with shoplifting items from an AM/PM Mini Mart. A clerk who said he witnessed the shoplifting chased them out of the store and returned to call 911. While the clerk was on the phone, the suspects returned to the store to ask another clerk for a bag to put their stuff in. Their return trip to the store delayed them enough that police spotted them as they were leaving.

-- The Classic Middle Name (continued): Challenging in September the competence of his lawyer in his conviction for murdering a preacher near Lebanon, Ind.: Gerald Wayne Bivins. Informing jurors at his sentencing hearing (after being convicted of murder in Torrance, Calif., in December) that he regretted not killing all of them, too: David Wayne Arisman. Executed in McAlester, Okla., in December for the murder of his wife: John Wayne Duvall. Captured after a brief jailbreak in Nashville, Tenn., in December: accused murderer Michael Wayne Perry. Named the prime suspect in the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl in Roseburg, Ore., in December: Dale Wayne Hill. Dead of a self-inflicted gunshot after critically wounding his ex-girlfriend in Brooklyn, N.Y., in July: Robert Wayne Jiles.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Tim Cridland, touring as Zamora the Torture King in an entertainment show in which he endures massive pain, told The Riverfront Times (St. Louis) in December that he broke from the similar but better known Jim Rose Circus over "artistic differences." Among Zamora's feats: the traditional skewers through the cheeks and neck; swallowing swords and fire; jumping up and down barefoot on broken bottles; and his occasional "piece de resistance": swallowing a length of twine, then removing it from his stomach through on-stage surgery with scalpel and forceps.

-- Men in Peril (continued): According to police in Lake City, Fla., in November, Felisha Ann Copeland, 31, on learning of her ex-husband's new girlfriend, dumped a pot of boiling grits in his lap while he was seated, naked, on the toilet of the home they still share. He suffered severe blistering. And in Middletown, Conn., in December, Raquel K. Husman, 41, was charged with assault for allegedly slashing her ex-boyfriend's scrotum with her fingernails when she discovered him with another woman. He needed 24 stitches.

-- Among the cargo spilled in tractor-trailer accidents in 1998: 25 tons of pudding (West Virginia, September); 2,000 cases of beer (Michigan, July); 4 tons of flour (Ontario, August); tons of noodles, which expanded in the rain (Maryland, July); 20 tons of cheese, which caught fire, producing fondue (Wales, October); $45,000 in quarters (Illinois, June); 50,000 $1 bills (Kansas, November); 500,000 honeybees (Washington, October, and another 4 million in Wisconsin in November); 12 tons of garbage (Rhode Island, March); 6,700 gallons of animal fat (Ohio, May, which was cleaned up with liquid detergent); and 20,000 gallons of liquid detergent (elsewhere in Ohio, 10 days later).

-- Among the really gross highway truck spills of 1998: a load of frozen dough that thawed and rotted before it could be scraped up (Massachusetts, September); 22 tons of mad-cow-tainted blood (England, September); a load of hog intestines and cow heads (Ohio, November), and sewage (Rhode Island, April; Texas, September; and a slow spill in New York in July that coated five miles of roadway just north of Albany).

In September, red harvester ants in the soil at the Hanford nuclear complex near Richland, Wash., were found to be radioactive, as were flies and gnats swarming around ordinary garbage at Hanford the next month, and Hanford managers feared that additional contamination might be spread by mice, insects and vegetation such as tumbleweeds. (An Associated Press report on Hanford in October reminded readers of the 1954 movie "Them!" starring James Arness, in which "huge, marauding ants are spawned by nuclear experiments.")

On Dec. 1, a 35-year-old man, who had been dining in an Albuquerque restaurant, climbed into the ceiling in a restroom, crawled around a bit, and fell through, into the kitchen. The police were not able to determine a motive. Six days later, another man robbed a Bank of Albuquerque branch on its first day of business by dropping down from ceiling panels, where he had been hiding for an undetermined period of time. Only a small amount of money was on hand, however, and witnesses said the man shook his head in frustration as he left.

Tyrone V. Henry, 26, was arrested in September in Tucson, Ariz., and charged with possession of child pornography. Police said they were led to Henry's home after six female University of Arizona students complained of a man supposedly conducting a test of facial cream, using a substance that (according to the women) tasted like semen. However, police said they do not have enough evidence to charge Henry on the facial-cream tests.

-- In September, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi broadcast a video that he said caught a 1996 assassination attempt against him by British agents. However, on frame-by-frame inspection, according to an Associated Press report, the grenade on the video appeared merely to be painted onto the tape in a man's hand and then onto other frames as an airborne object headed toward Gadhafi. Not surprisingly, the "grenade" did not explode, and Gadhafi was spared, but he said a British agent was arrested and has confessed.

-- Ms. Fareena Jabbar, 37, was arrested in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in October and charged with trying to pass a U.S. $1 million bill (a denomination that does not exist). To assist her scheme, Jabbar supplied a "certificate of authenticity" signed by officials of the "International Association of Millionaires."

-- Canadian author Robert Lannon was arrested in October in Acton, Ontario, and charged with making death threats against his estranged brother, Art, in the form of several unvarnished references to Art's being murdered in Robert's new novel, "The Return of the Family Idiot." Robert's lawyer, however, said in December that he expects the case to be dropped as soon as the authorities focus on the standard disclaimer near the title page: that any resemblance between a character and a real person is "strictly coincidental."

-- At an Annapolis, Md., City Council meeting in October, 23 people spoke against a proposed ordinance restricting ownership of pit bulls (to those age 25 and older and with at least $500,000 in liability insurance), including a representative of the United Kennel Club in Michigan, who said the bill "has no place in America" because it is "no less than racial prejudice."

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (29) The customer dismissed at a bar or restaurant or store who decides to express his anger by driving his car right through the front door, as done by Joe Stephens, 48, at a Lima, Ohio, tavern in December. And (30) the careless error made by home heating oil delivery drivers who see a formerly used fuel spout on a house next door to the one they are supposed to deliver to and thus mistakenly pump a couple hundred gallons of oil into the basement, such as happened to Steve and Christy Barrie of Tacoma, Wash., in December.

A 78-year-old woman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, froze to death on her apartment's balcony in December when she stepped out for a cigarette and accidentally locked the door behind her, exposing her overnight to below-freezing temperatures and winds around 40 mph. And a Livermore, Calif., high school junior was killed in December in a fight with a man who became annoyed with him after the student gave him one cigarette but refused to give him a second.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Life Imitates "The Truman Show": In November, a Japanese TV show assigned a contestant (an aspiring comedian nicknamed Nasubi) to a small apartment equipped with little else besides a video camera, where he agreed to remain until he entered enough giveaway contests to win about $8,500 worth of prizes, and a further catch was that he had to subsist only on his winnings (so that, although he won lots of rice as a prize, he had to use ingenuity to cook it in the sparsely equipped apartment). Furthermore, unknown to Nasubi, the video surveillance was not simply to make a record of his ordeal but was broadcast live every Sunday night, even though he was usually nude in his apartment (in that he has not yet won any clothing).

-- In November, South African inventor Charl Fourie introduced a $1,000, Batmobile-like flame-throwing apparatus for automobiles, designed so that drivers could thwart carjackers. A liquefied gas canister in the trunk of the car feeds tubes that run under the forward doors, and a spark ignites a flame that shoots out about seven feet. Such a device might not be legal in many countries but is in South Africa, which has one of the world's highest crime rates.

-- Sentenced to two life terms for murder in Forsyth, Wyo., in November: Mr. Vernon Kills On Top (whose brother, Mr. Lester Kills On Top, received the same sentence in August). Seriously wounded by police in Denver in September after allegedly stabbing an officer with a knife: Mr. Keith F. Firstintrouble.

-- In September in Chicago, Lauryn K. Valentine, 21, was granted a legal name change by Cook County Judge Michael B. Getty. Valentine is now known as Carol Moseley-Braun, which is also the name of the Illinois U. S. senator who was defeated for re-election in November. Valentine said she wanted the new name as a tribute to Moseley-Braun, who once successfully encouraged Valentine to remain in school when she was considering dropping out. In December, the new Moseley-Braun filed official papers to run for city alderman, which provoked legal challenges from one opponent and the ex-senator. More to the story: Judge Getty temporarily changed his own name to a more Irish-sounding one to win election as a judge in 1988.

-- According to police in Boca Raton, Fla., pedestrian Kenneth DeLeon was accidentally hit by a curb-jumping car in August, driven by Adam Blumhof, 22, and fell through the windshield, landing headfirst in the passenger seat. According to the police report, Blumhof drove on for about a mile, alternately punching DeLeon and screaming at him to get out of his car. He eventually stopped, opened the passenger door, and rolled DeLeon out, even though DeLeon was suffering from two broken legs and a broken arm. (Blumhof pleaded no-contest in January.)

-- Former Philippines' first lady Imelda Marcos told reporters in December that she would soon file lawsuits to reclaim about $25 billion in assets once held by her late husband Ferdinand (but which his critics claim he stole), which he had given to some now-wealthy cronies but which she says was only for safekeeping. Imelda said that if all assets were returned to her, she would own about 150 of the country's major corporations and control about half the Philippines' economy. Since her return from exile in 1991, Imelda actually ran for office twice as an impoverished champion of the downtrodden.

In November, police in Twin Valley, Minn., reported the latest in a five-year-long spree of thefts of expensive brassieres from the Schep's Clothing store. All of the bras taken were size 44-D.

-- Over the last few months of 1998, artist Amy Greving created a life-size Virgin and Child sculpture for Christmas display at the First Reformed Church in Grandville, Mich., using the medium of lint from clothes dryers. Fellow parishioners supplied her the materials after Greving's husband accidentally tossed out two large bags of lint that she had been saving. The lint was treated with a liquid solution, wrapped around chicken wire and painted.

-- In November, Northwestern University ordered sophomore music major Ryan Du Val to whitewash his dorm-room ceiling after he had painstakingly painted on it three of Michelangelo's best-known works from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. After the press reported the incident, several people came to Du Val's aid, and the university said the ceiling can stay until the end of the school year. A local businessman offered to pay for the removal of the ceiling intact so that it can be exhibited.

-- Among recent performance art in the news: Lisa Levy's July show at Webster Hall in New York City, which consisted of items she had recently shoplifted (and in one case, half of a liverwurst sandwich she snatched from an elderly man at a deli). Also shown was videotape actually capturing some of the acquisitions. And the Nottingham "NOW ninety8" art festival in England in October featured a seven-hour-long video, "Filthy Words and Phrases," in which a woman merely writes 2,000 sexual and slang terms on a blackboard. The video project was made with a government grant of about $12,000.

-- A November Times of London report identified at least 50 fine artists in Iraq whose principal work is painting huge portraits (one is 30 feet high) of Saddam Hussein, which are in heavy demand by merchants and community leaders who display them by the hundreds around Baghdad to demonstrate their support for the nation's president. A leading painter, Muhammad Ali Karim, says that the work is not monotonous but challenging, in that there are so many facets of Saddam that can be captured, and that he and others work quickly because they are so inspired by such a great leader. A similar market exists for the nation's sculptors and ceramic artists, for huge statues and busts of Saddam.

In December, police in Loudon County, Va., acting on telephone records, finally caught up to the man they believe committed a string of burglaries dating back to 1996, arresting Michael Anthony Silver, 34. According to police, during one of the first burglaries, Silver paused to call a psychic hot line and ran up a $250 bill on the homeowner's phone, and for some reason gave his own name to the psychic.

Beginning an occasional reader-advisory series of recent stories that were reported elsewhere as real news but which were probably just made up: Time magazine in its December 28, 1998, issue characterized as real a story that ran in March 1998 on one of the wire services of a guy in Japan whose inflatable underwear (he was worried about drowning in a tidal wave) was accidentally triggered on a subway car, creating a huge balloon around him, battering riders against the inside of the car. Weird, but not true.