-- Demand-Side Regulation: A bill introduced in the Vermont legislature (by Rep. Fred Maslack) in January would penalize any adult who chose not to own a gun, by requiring him to register with the state and pay a $500 fee for the privilege of being unarmed. A bill introduced in the Mississippi legislature (by Sen. Tom King) in January would seek to dampen the sexuality in strip clubs by making it illegal for a male customer to have an erection, even though he remains entirely clothed.

In Chicago in October, Bernard M. Kane, 56, pled guilty in a scheme to sell $135,000 worth of rancid seafood (labeled U.S. Grade A) to state and federal prison kitchens. And the next day in another Chicago courtroom, Richard Pergler, 41, was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for bilking nursing homes and the government out of $4.8 million in Medicare payments for ordinary adult diapers that were passed off as medically sophisticated "external urinary collection devices."

-- Last spring, Cambridge College (Middlesex, Mass.) told Carol Ann LeBlanc, 51, and her son Troy, 29, that they could no longer take classes together in their quest for graduate degrees in psychology. Since 1989, the two have taken their high school equivalency exam together, every class together at Lesley College (where they received bachelor's degrees), and every class together (to that point) at Cambridge College. The administration would not say why it broke up the LeBlancs, except that an instructor had remarked, "(T)here are some things that you wouldn't say with your mother present." In October, the LeBlancs filed a lawsuit against Cambridge.

-- Fifteen members of an alleged nationwide ring of pimps were indicted in July in Minneapolis, 12 of whom are related to each other and known as the Evans Family. According to the indictment, Johnnie Lee Evans, Monroe Evans, Kiowan Evans, Levorn Evans, Clem Evans and others procured at least 50 women (some of them juveniles) on the street over an 18-year period and inducted them into a life of prostitution in Minneapolis and St. Louis, among other cities. An unindicted Evans daughter defended her father but was unable to explain to reporters how family members lived so well even though they had no steady jobs.

-- In closing arguments in September in a Barrie, Ontario, murder case, the lawyer for Jack Heyden, 55, explained why the prosecutor's theory (that Heyden and his son conspired to kill a man) was ridiculous: because Heyden thought his son was "useless." "Mr. Heyden wouldn't hire his son to cut the grass. Why would he hire him to kill somebody?" (However, in October, the two were convicted.)

-- Diane Haunfelder, 29, was charged with theft in Waukesha, Wis., in January after her 7-year-old son ratted her out as having directed him to shoplift a CD player and a camera from a Wal-Mart. However, according to authorities, Haunfelder claimed she was actually performing a public service by setting the boy up to get caught so that he would learn the consequences of crime: "I picked out the most expensive (items) so he'd get in trouble."

-- Three researchers, analyzing 25 years of data from the famous Kinsey Institute, concluded in a 1999 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior that gay men's penises are longer than heterosexual men's (average 6.46 inches erect vs. 6.14 inches). And British inventor David Elliott, 20, announced in June that he was seeking financial backers for a pager ("Gaydar") to be marketed to shy gay men that would vibrate in the vicinity of someone with a similar device, thus making introductions easier.

-- Life Imitates Art: Rowan Atkinson, who plays the shy, bumbling Mr. Bean in the British TV series, fled on foot from onlookers in October after being involved in a car crash near Lancashire, England. According to a witness, Atkinson ran in the distinctively awkward Mr. Bean style ("His arms and legs were flapping") to a nearby factory, where he hid until reporters left.

-- Writing in a 1998 issue of the British Medical Journal, researchers concluded that physicians indeed have "unusually poor handwriting" -- worse than that of other health-care professionals. In October 1999, a jury in Odessa, Texas, ruled that a physician's sloppily written prescription caused a pharmacist to dispense the wrong drug, which contributed to the death of a 42-year-old man. (The family of the deceased said they were basically satisfied with their doctor's ability, except for his handwriting.)

A 36-year-old father was arrested in Norwalk, Conn., in January and charged with allowing his 2-year-old son to puff away on a cigarette in a restaurant. (According to an eyewitness, the kid handled the cigarette like it wasn't his first one.) And a 33-year-old mother was arrested in Euless, Texas, in December and charged with permitting her four children to drink alcohol at home, including a 16-month-old boy with a .126 blood-alcohol reading. (According to authorities, the woman said, "He wants what his mama wants. What am I supposed to do about it?")

When Peter "Commander Pedro" Langan made News of the Weird in 1997, he had not yet outed himself as a transsexual-in-progress, probably because he had just been convicted of assault and firearms charges as the leader of a white supremacist gang in Ohio and feared what his neo-Nazi buddies might do to him if they knew he suffered from "gender confusion." In November 1999, a Columbus Dispatch story on Ohio inmates applying for state-funded sex-change operations revealed that Commander Pedro is now out of the closet, having requested the surgery and having asked guards to treat him as a woman.

Trevor Brian Smith, 26, was arrested for bank robbery in Cary, N.C., in January after police alerted banks in the area. The day before, the manager of a Central Carolina Bank had noticed a man pacing outside his front window, getting up his nerve, while wearing a large false nose, a bad blond wig and gold-rimmed clown glasses, and who had covered the front license plate of his car before approaching the door. The manager called the police, but as the man was set to enter, a passing fire truck scared him away. A similarly dressed Smith was arrested at another bank the next day.

A murderer sentenced to 92 years in prison but paroled after 21 years won the $3.9 million Missouri Lottery. A kindergarten teacher was suspended after forcing a defiant blackboard-doodling pupil to lick off her graffiti (Oakland, Calif.). The man in charge of enforcing Falmouth, Mass., sexual harassment regulations for the last nine years was fired, for sexual harassment. A Hawaii state senator introduced a bill to permit government workers to go to sleep during their coffee breaks. A man charged with manslaughter by DUI and released on bail on condition that he not drive, arrived late to his first court hearing, absentmindedly explaining to the judge that he had trouble finding a parking space (Olathe, Kan.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

-- Warning to Dorks: Two British researchers told New Scientist magazine in December that they have developed prototype software to assist in crime-prevention by monitoring surveillance cameras and electronically identifying, by image pixels, people who are moving around in suspicious ways. As an example, said one of the developers, someone awkwardly approaching a car is probably up to no good. However, privacy advocates were alarmed at the news, fearing that police would target people who are merely gawky.

In January, two University of South Carolina professors released a study of high-speed police chases that concluded that pursuits are more dangerous the more cars that are involved, the higher the speed, the darker it is, and the more crowded the streets are; they came to these conclusions using a "pursuit decision calculus." And the research organization Statistics Canada concluded, in a study by R.O. Pihl and six others released in December, that the more alcohol that mothers drink, the more emotional and behavioral problems their kids tend to have.

-- Police in Upland, Calif., charged Darlene Bourk, 31, with the murder of her husband, Robert, and said she had covered up the crime for three years by stuffing his body in a wardrobe box in her rented storage locker. The scheme came to light in September when Bourk missed the third straight monthly payment, causing the landlord to auction off the locker's contents (for $20). Bourk realized the impending catastrophe just a few hours too late, and her frenzied attempts to buy back the wardrobe box aroused the suspicion of the buyer, who called police.

-- Bethel AME Church, owner of the Beech Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, paid Rosa Lee Bentley $27,500 in October to settle Bentley's lawsuit over her mother's missing body. The cemetery said it had lost track of the body and that after a long search above-ground and below, it could not find it.

-- Adventures in Poland: A 51-year-old seamstress in the town of Stawold Wola, Poland, reporting for a routine mammogram in October, was found to have four sewing needles inside her left breast, probably the result of their having migrated in over the years from her habit of sticking them on the front of her apron. And USA Today reported in November that a funeral in a cemetery in western Poland was disrupted when a cell phone started ringing from inside a grave because attendants had failed to notice it in the deceased's suit before burial.

-- In July, inexperienced sailor Richard Stewart and his family set out from Newport, R.I., on their 65-foot ketch, headed for Florida, where it had been scheduled for repairs. After a friend lost contact with the Stewarts, he called the Coast Guard, which tried unsuccessfully for 30 days, covering 85,000 square miles, to find the vessel. In August, the disabled boat limped into Ocean City, Md., with the Stewarts completely unaware of the massive, $75,000 rescue mission. Three months later, the Stewarts set out for Florida again, and again became disabled, and on Dec. 19, the Coast Guard found them (cost: $38,000) near Cape Fear, N.C.

-- Kendall Breaux, serving a life sentence for killing two bank tellers during a 1998 heist, filed a lawsuit in October in Thibodaux, La., against his getaway driver, James Dunn, for injuries Breaux suffered when their car crashed into a slow-moving train during the police chase.

-- Marlene Hoffman filed a $1 million lawsuit in Georgetown, Texas, in December against the Dr Pepper Co., which sponsored a college football halftime punt-catching promotion that she didn't win. Hoffman was selected to stand on the 50-yard line and receive punts from a kick-simulation machine (catch one, $50,000; two, $250,000; all three, $1 million) and was told that balls would come down in the general vicinity of the 50-yard line. She caught none because, she said, her three balls came down too far away: on the 44-, 45- and 42-yard lines.

-- In November, a jury awarded Andrea Karlen of Milford, Conn., $500,000 for injuries incurred in what all parties acknowledge was a mere "fender bender" in 1991. Karlen's medical witnesses said the accident triggered post-traumatic stress disorder (from her memories of childhood physical abuse), sending her into a major depression and panic attacks, and resulting in at least 400 psychiatric sessions. The unlucky auto-accident defendant was a state judge who has now been nominated to a federal court.

From a pamphlet distributed by the new Russian anti-materialist group, Union of Revolutionary Writers (according to a September New York Times report): "The half-eaten hamburger left by the dead man on the streets is now a revolutionary hamburger."

The Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law filed papers at a court hearing in Toronto in December, intervening on the side of a 23-year-old man who had been charged with, among other offenses, sodomy on a 14-year-old girl. According to Sheena Scott, the foundation's director, the anti-sodomy law should be nullified because it does not except consensual sodomy and thus discriminates against teens over the age of consent (14), who are thus being denied their right to engage in anal intercourse. Said Scott, "We (are) intervening with respect to the interests of children in general."

On Nov. 23, a 42-year-old auto body shop worker was killed when the ambulance he was working under fell on him. Three days later, a 35-year-old worker at the Chartiers Cemetery was killed when a backhoe slipped and its front bucket struck the man in the head, knocking him into the newly dug grave.

New York City finally removed "telephone psychic" from the list of jobs it subsidizes for its welfare-to-work program. A woman filed a lawsuit against a flamboyant obstetrician who carved his 3-inch initials into her abdomen after a particularly pleasing Caesarean section (New York City). Miracles were attributed to apparitions in Port Sulphur, La., and Houston (dried ice-cream splotches, resembling the Virgin of Guadalupe, on a basement floor). The University of Florida introduced the U.S.'s first Doctor of Plant Medicine degree program, to rival those for veterinarians and physicians. Federal drug agents busted a 2,000-customer cocaine-home-delivery business ($25 "small" order; $150 "large"; Domino's-like, 30-minute delivery) (New York City).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

-- The Futile (and Dangerous) Getaway

If the cops are coming, you look for the most efficient escape route. But being intense about avoiding arrest on a relatively minor charge (here, possession of a stolen credit card) put Christopher Bobby, 25, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in even more peril. He estimated that his best escape route at 1:30 a.m. was the Red River. He leaped from the squad car, tore his clothes off and jumped in. The water was quite cold (October), and he was somewhat inebriated to begin with, and after a few minutes, reached the admirable conclusion that his safest bet was to swim back to the cops waiting on the shore.

[National Post-CP, 10-18- 99]

-- Taking Your Wallet with You

It could be the cardinal notion of robbery: You won't have occasion for your wallet while you're robbing the bank or the convenience store, so why take it? (What -- you think you'll need to buy something during the heist?) But hardly a month goes by without one such report. Abdullah Yuzon, 29, was arrested in New Britain, Pa., in August after leaving his wallet (with photo ID, no less) in the Wawa store he had just robbed.

[McDonald County (Mo.) Press-AP, 8-25-99]

-- When "Breaking and Entering" Becomes "Breaking and Staying There"

In 2000, many burglars will go to some trouble to get into buildings they don't belong in by coming through an outside vent, certain that it will be easy enough to traverse the length of the vent and plop down inside. Almost as many will get stuck in the vent and still be there when the cops arrive. Just one of the many recent ones was the guy who was discovered in an overhead vent at Ruby's Pizzeria in Deerfield Beach, Fla., in September. Furthermore, when the cops arrived, he thought he'd beat the rap by just refusing to come down, but cops went to the roof and poured grease down the vent until he slid down enough that they could pull him out.

[National Post, 9-9-99]

-- The Bank Robber With Bad Handwriting

In the movie "Take the Money and Run," Woody Allen got great mileage out of the robber embroiled in a dispute with the teller over whether his note read "I have a gun" or "I have a gub." Life imitates art. A robber walked into a National Bank of Canada in Pickering, Ontario, in September and presented his note, and a teller responded by giving him a single $50 bill, whereupon our guy said that wasn't what the note demanded, so he walked out. He did the same thing two more times that day and as far as we know, his bank-robbery income is still zero. We still don't know what the note actually said.

[Toronto Sun, 9-15-99]

-- The Lost Art of Checking Out Your Target

Two teen-age boys, ages 17 and 18, were arrested in Farmington Hills, Mich., in October after trying to open a nondescript car parked along Nine Mile-Haggerty Road, allegedly looking for easy ones to break into. They failed to notice there was a man inside. (How could they miss that? He happened to be an undercover officer so he wasn't in uniform, but they didn't even see the guy at all.) I imagine cops fantasize about just sitting around and having criminals walk right up to them, all fresh and ready to arrest.

[Detroit News, 10-21-99]

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)