-- According to a January Boston Globe feature, Mr. Wai Y. Tye, 82, who retired a while back after 32 years' service with Raytheon Corp., has lived without complaint in the same 200-square-foot room in the downtown Boston YMCA continuously since 1949. "When you're busy working and playing tennis," he told a reporter, "when you come home, you don't have much time to take care of an apartment." The bathroom is down the hall to the left, and he said he does not mind the exposed pipes, the linoleum floor and having to use a hot plate.

-- Faced with many retirements and a precipitous drop in new blood, U.S. Catholic officials have stepped up priest-recruiting to include irreverent advertisements to appeal to "generation X" men, according to a December Washington Post report. The Providence, R.I., diocese, for example, recently ran an ad campaign on MTV. And in January, a group of British churches, led by the Church of England, began a campaign to draw young parishioners by displaying Jesus Christ as the late Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. Said one priest associated with the campaign, "We want to get away from the wimpy Nordic figure in a white nightie."

-- Radio Television Russia was flooded with protest letters and demonstrations in December when it was forced to drop the U.S. soap opera "Santa Barbara," which had built a large following. A batch of 65 episodes had been held up at the border because RTR had no money to pay the import fees. One suggestion for Russia's problems was advanced in the December-released book "ABCs of Sex" by nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who wrote that exporting virgin Russian women to men in other countries could somehow raise $750 million a year and that promoting sex for tourists (for example, having hotel mini-bars stocked with sex toys) would bring in much more.

-- A side effect of the international economic embargo of Iraq is the transfer of much of its supply of medical care from physicians to parapsychologists, who "heal" with electromagnetic therapy at half the price that doctors charge (even so, about 80 cents per visit, which is about one-fourth the monthly salary of a government clerk). According to one healer interviewed by the Associated Press, "extensive reading" was all the training he needed to find "gaps" in a patient's magnetic halo so that he could focus energy to that spot, a process that he said cured the gangrene of his first patient (his uncle).

-- Last year, the state historian of Florida kicked off a millennial project to name the 2,000 all-time greatest Floridians, with the deadline for nominations at Dec. 31, 1998. She recently announced a four-month extension, however, because nominators had been able to come up with only several hundred great Floridians.

-- In January, the Saguaro High School (Scottsdale, Ariz.) newspaper editor, Sam Claiborn, wrote an editorial critical of the culture of violence of football heroes, who he said often turn out to be drunks and spouse-abusers. An unnamed member of the school's football team took offense and beat Claiborn up, for which he was suspended.

-- Brad Davis, 25, of Milledgeville, Ga., was hospitalized in December after a hunting accident. He had chased a raccoon into a tree for his companion to shoot, but when hit, the 15-pound animal fell about 60 feet directly on top of Davis, knocking him out cold and breaking three vertebrae.

-- A 72-year-old man was killed in a robbery attempt in Jonesboro, Ga., in December, and after giving a false cover story, his 76-year-old wife finally admitted how it happened. The couple apparently had a habit of picking up men on the highway and bringing them home for sex with the wife so the husband could watch, but this particular guest wanted money more than he wanted sex. (A suspect is in custody.)

-- According to statistics published in November in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro, 53 percent of people in France don't bathe or shower daily, 50 percent of men don't use deodorant daily, and 40 percent of men don't change underwear daily (and 15 percent admit wearing the same pair three days straight). According to an expert on French culture, hygiene is considered merely "the hidden face of beauty" in France, and because it is invisible to others, it isn't a priority.

-- In rural Australia south of Brisbane, near the coastal resort of Byron Bay, reside wild white bushmen known locally as "ferals," who closely resemble the savages from the movie "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome," who reek of stale body odor and "bush herbs," and some of whom carry pet rats in their severely matted hair. While the ferals' occasional forays annoy residents and tourists, other locals are thankful for them for environmental reasons, according to a report in the Times of London in October. Said one local, "Americans come out here and go, 'Yuck, everyone's so dirty (so let's not even think of developing this place).' The ferals have saved a lot of forest."

-- Latest Punishments in Afghanistan: On Jan. 15, six Taliban government soldiers had their right hands and left feet amputated for robbery, and a 60-year-old man had a 15-foot wall knocked over on top of him by a tank, in a death sentence for sexually molesting a boy. (The man was knocked unconscious but came to, and since he survived, under Taliban law, he was set free.) In November, a man was allowed by a judge to lawfully slit the throat of the man who killed his son, even though Taliban officials had recommended mercy.

-- A December Associated Press dispatch reported on Seoul's Korean Air Service Academy, which teaches "international manners" to help make South Korean companies more competitive in the quest for foreign customers. A particular problem, according to the Academy's general manager, is that "Koreans have difficulty smiling. Our ancestors had the philosophy that the serious person is better than the smiling one." As smiling increases in large companies, he said, citizens have begun to demand it from their government servants, such as tax collectors.

Latest Storage News: In December, Erie County (Pa.) inmate Larry Eugene DeFoy, 52, was charged with possessing escape tools when a routine X-ray revealed nail clippers and a bolt stored in a sock inside his rectum. He had been chipping away at a concrete block for about three weeks but had made hardly any progress. And on the same day in Durham, N.C., Freddy Farrington, 23, was charged with drug possession and other crimes after a police doctor administered relaxants that encouraged Farrington to unclench his buttocks (which he had been tensing since his arrest) and pass a chunk of cocaine in a plastic bag from his rectum.

(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.)

-- 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.)