-- A New York appeals court ruled in July that a 53-year-old, serial-plastic-surgery patient, who became dissatisfied with her tucked-and-tightened body after 12 operations over a seven-year-period, could sue her doctor for malpractice, despite her consent to all surgeries, because she might suffer from the disorder that causes a person to think his body is ugly. (Doctors contacted by the New York Observer wondered which, if any, of their patients are totally free of the disorder.) The complaining patient has had work done on her nose, eyelids, chin, eyebrows, flanks, thighs, knees, breasts and tummy.

-- Central Illinois farmer Dan Aeschleman recently converted his land to a more lucrative use: attracting foxes and then selling their urine in pump-spray containers ($11.95 for 16 oz.) to landowners to keep nuisance animals away with the "presence" of a predator. According to a September report in The Pantagraph newspaper of Bloomington, Ill., Aeschleman says the tricky part -- getting the non-domestic foxes to urinate in an orderly fashion and then collecting it all (10,000 gallons a year) -- is a "trade secret."

According to Martinsville, Ind., prosecutors, Judy Kirby, 31, mother of 10, intentionally killed four of them in March after she drove into oncoming traffic for more than two miles and struck a minivan (also killing three of its occupants); her doctors say they will testify at her upcoming trial that she suffered from postpartum depression and should not be punished. And Jeane Newmaker, 46, was charged in Golden, Colo., in September with child abuse for going along with a "therapy" in which four practitioners squashed her 10-year-old adopted daughter to death; the "therapists" were "rebirthing" the child (supposedly to compensate for an abusive biological mother) by getting her to simulate escaping the womb, but they accidentally suffocated her despite her more than 50 pleas for help over a 70-minute session.

-- A highlight of the East Finley Summer Festival in Claysville, Pa., in July was the return of the popular "chicken-flying contest" after a 10-year hiatus. As explained by the Observer-Reporter newspaper of Washington, Pa., chickens are placed in ordinary mailboxes, which are then abruptly opened with a toilet plunger, which somehow sends them flying hundreds of feet, with the longest flight winning first prize. During chicken-flying's hiatus, said Festival sponsors, cow-patty bingo was featured but was not nearly as exciting.

-- The Al Salam Mosque Foundation filed a $6.2 million federal lawsuit in August against Palos Heights, Ill., which had reneged on a promise to pay the Muslim group $200,000 to change its mind about buying a local building and converting it to a place of worship. The city council had made the cash offer, reportedly, because some council members preferred not to have such a prominent Muslim presence in the town. Then, when the Foundation accepted the cash offer, the Palos Heights mayor vetoed it, complaining that the offer was an "insult" to the Muslims.

-- Relieving the Doctor Shortage: According to an April Los Angeles Times report, imposter "Dr." Adam Litwin roamed UCLA Medical Center with impunity for six months last year, chatting it up with "colleagues" and keeping himself busy, being discovered only when a pharmacist reported an irregularity with a prescription. And "physician's assistant" imposter Gary Lee Stearley received excellent reviews from several doctors at Mercy Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pa., in June before being detected; he had previously "worked" hospitals in Seattle, Richmond and Washington, D.C.

-- No Substitute for a Loyal Dog: Sevier County (Tenn.) sheriff's dog Kysor was praised in a July Knoxville News-Sentinel report as so faithful that he withstood a stab wound to the head from a fleeing suspect, hard enough that the blade broke off, in order to maintain his grip. However, after the man plunged the knife in, he tried to sic his own dog on the weakened Kysor, but, according to a deputy, "He whistled for him, but his dog wouldn't come."

-- Forget About Asking Him to Consider a Trigger Lock for His Gun: In June, a federal grand jury in Springfield, Mo., indicted Todd Morman Murray, 27, on charges that he stole 45 pounds of explosives from a chemical plant and "hid" them in his children's playhouse.

A young man suffered a broken arm when he was walking so close to railroad tracks that a passing train violently knocked his surfboard out of his hands (San Clemente, Calif., June). And a 25-year-old woman lost the toes on her right foot when she crawled under a slow-moving train as a shortcut to the correct platform (Mount Prospect, Ill., July). And an inebriated man's life was saved by his wife, who pulled him just in time from the path of a speeding train after he had lingered on the tracks to make an obscene gesture at the conductor (Trevor, Wis., June).

According to news reports in July and August, Mack W. Metcalf, 42, of Florence, Ky., has led a dismal life that included frequent drinking binges, some DUI and other traffic charges, drug selling, eviction for failure to pay rent, and a debt of $31,000 in back child support. However, in July, he won a $34 million lump-sum jackpot in the Kentucky Lottery. (His haplessness continues: Shortly after he was paid, he handed a woman $500,000 as a gift, but later realized he was drunk and has now sued to get the money back.)

The Classic Middle Name (all-new): Arrested for killing his roommate (San Diego, Calif., August): Aryan Wayne Duntley. Arrested for killing a young neighbor girl (Oilton, Okla., August): Robert Wayne Rotramel. Sentenced for murdering and beheading a 20-year-old woman (Orange, Texas, July): Christopher Wayne Gregory. Application for DNA testing rejected in a murder case against him (Illinois, August): Randall Wayne Stevens. Convicted in the murders of five people at a car wash (Irving, Texas, September): Robert Wayne Harris.

Killed over Access to Mating: Edward William Heckman, 58, was charged in July near Jonesboro, Ga., with killing his wife after she refused to have sex with him. Baby sitter Robert Cooper, 22, was convicted in June in Calgary, Alberta, of killing two young boys because they hindered his attempted seduction of their mother. A man in his 20s allegedly killed 11 people with an Uzi at a Bogota, Colombia, nightclub in June after rejection by a woman.

An off-duty police officer reporting for an MRI while armed had the superpowerful magnet suck his gun away and slam it against the machine, causing one round to fire into a wall (Rochester, N.Y.). Singapore's leading newspaper published a how-to guide to having sex in cars, in support of the government's campaign to raise the birth rate. The mayor of a French resort town, which has no cemetery vacancies and a restrictive land-use law, prohibited dying except by people with burial space (Le Levandou). The Supreme Court of New Hampshire ruled that a candidate for office had the right to parade on the street dressed as a penis, because he was commenting on the political system.

(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 Wishes of the Fetus: On Sept. 6, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit by a 7-year-old girl with spina bifida, who had sued her parents' doctors because she wanted to have been aborted (since the doctors knew she would have birth defects). On the same day, in Attleboro, Mass., Judge Kenneth Nasif ordered a pregnant woman held in custody until she gives birth because he feared that she, because of her religion, might decline medical attention if she experienced complications; Nasif said he could "sense" the unborn child saying to him, "I want to live. I don't want to die like my brother (a previous victim of the woman's religion-based medical neglect) did."

-- In August, Elsie Holdren, 68, a security officer working on contract at a courthouse in Viera, Fla., was transferred by her company to a courthouse in nearby Melbourne because her superiors thought she was too courteous. "Due to your caring and giving nature," wrote Holdren's supervisor (with Weiser Security Services in Orlando), "you are compromising your position as a security officer. (Being caring and giving) is not a job requirement, nor is it what you are paid to do."

The mentally retarded Felipe Rodriguez spent 13 months in jail in Swisher County, Texas (near Amarillo), after being accused of a minor theft, largely because his court-appointed defense attorney forgot about him until a Dallas Morning News reporter pestered her about the status of the case. (Rodriguez was released in August.) And a June New York Times report on veteran court-appointed defense lawyer Ronald G. Mock chronicled his career-long, mediocre representation of a series of now-executed men, including June executee Gary Graham, who was convicted based on one fleeting, nighttime eyewitness identification, which Mock neither challenged nor seriously investigated.

-- Robert Jones of Adel, Ga., filed a lawsuit in Atlanta in June against the maker of Liquid Fire drain cleaner after the stuff oozed out of Jones' homemade container all over his legs, causing "extensive, excruciating burns and destruction of flesh." Actually, Liquid Fire comes in a spill-proof container, but Jones was skeptical of its sturdiness and thus poured the contents into his own, "safer" container (from which it eventually spilled). Thus, Jones' legal theory is that Liquid Fire's original package somehow created the impression of flimsiness, which therefore forced Jones to pour the contents into his own container.

-- Two years ago, Javier Polo, 25, filed a lawsuit in Aviles, Spain, demanding that his mother, Maria Delores Ray, 54, be ordered to support him financially while he is out of work. Recently, according to a May London Observer story, a judge ruled for Polo, ordering Ray to pay him 15 percent of her salary (about $192 a month) despite the fact that he does not even live with her. (The parents are divorced; he lives with his father; but she has to pay because she earns more than the father.)

-- In July, Tang Weijiang, 29, filed a lawsuit in Shanghai, China, against Canon Inc. because one of the Japanese company's advertising CD-ROMs left him in mental distress, which he said was deliberate, just one more act in a centuries-long campaign of disrespect by Japanese people and companies against the Chinese. The specific act that caused Tang such anguish was a passage on the CD-ROM text implying that China, Taiwan and Hong Kong were separate countries.

-- Parents in Benicia, Calif., were complaining, according to a June San Francisco Chronicle report, of the public library's policy of denying them access to the names of books their children (regardless of age) have checked out. California law generally provides for confidentiality of government records, but some libraries enforce that more strictly than others. The Benicia library makes an exception only if a book is overdue, so that parents can look for it at home.

-- Australian masseuse Carol Vanderpoel, 52, believing that all she knew how to cure were physical aches and pains, sued her former employer, the Blue Mountains Women's Health Centre in Katoomba, which had required her also to listen to her clients' psychological problems during massages and to counsel them, which she said left her severely depressed. In June, a judge in New South Wales District Court awarded her about $17,000 in damages. (Among the problems that grossed her out were a client's confession of performing euthanasia on her husband and another woman's having been assaulted with a chain saw).

The following people apparently get really set off by the following things: Mark Adam Yazzie, 26 (got into an argument with his brother-in-law about the merits of rap music vs. rock and ran him over with a truck; Santa Rosa, Calif., June). Jane Graham, 77 (pointed a butcher knife at a neighbor man's groin and threatened to "cut it off" because he was playing his stereo too loud; Winnipeg, Manitoba, July). Gerard Corbo, 56 (at his son's wedding, started a fistfight when a guest referred to the groom by the wrong first name; Westlake, Ohio, June).

Grandmother Karren Kinsel, head of the office that regulates content on vanity license plates in Illinois ("WORKSUX" rejected; "BI DAD E" OK), explaining to a Chicago Tribune reporter in July what qualifies her to rule on whether certain applications are in poor taste: "You take some people, they just don't have a dirty mind. Some of my staff doesn't. But I do, kind of."

When News of the Weird first mentioned Summum (in 1988), the Salt Lake City religious organization had just introduced its mummification alternative to burials and cremations, charging $7,000 to preserve a body and an additional $18,000 to create a bronze statue, according to founder Corky Ra. As of June 2000, according to an Associated Press story, Summum is still looking to make its first human mummy (it has done several pets), although 137 people have made deposits toward the current prices of $12,000 to preserve and $36,000 (and up) for statues (plus transportation costs and mausoleum space). Corky Ra's preservation process includes soaking the body in secret fluids, applying lanolin, polyurethane rubber and fiberglass bandages.

A 17-year-old boy was arrested in Loomis, Calif., in July after he was unsuccessful in what might have been an attempt to emulate the notorious "Rooftop Robber," who had burglarized more than 40 businesses in California and other states by entering through roofs (and who was captured in May). Unlike the original, the 17-year-old crashed through a false ceiling in his first job, broke a sink standing on it trying to climb out, then made it to a false ceiling and crawled to an adjacent store, but fell through that ceiling, too, injuring his ankle, and then finally, on his way out, tripped the burglar alarm and had police waiting for him.

An IRS advisory opinion declared that the parents of a still-kidnapped child must stop taking the dependent's exemption while the child is missing. Scientists in India discovered a new chili, whose burn worsens with water and which is 50 percent hotter than the previous world's-hottest chili. A deceased's family sued Forest Lawn cemetery over a bad embalming, though the family admitted that park employees did work diligently to swat flies off of the open casket during the memorial service (Los Angeles). A robber pistol-whipped a pizza deliverer, causing the gun to discharge and fire a fatal shot at the robber's 17-year-old partner (Nashville).

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

-- Campaign 2000: In September, Robert Salzberg finished a strong second (26 percent) in the Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat from Sarasota, Fla., despite revealing that he would soon plead insanity (that a robot was attacking him) to a charge that he beat up a police lieutenant inside a station house in March. In Maryland, the estranged wife of U.S. Rep. Albert Wynn (husband and wife are black) is contributing a political telephone ad for his opponent, charging that Wynn "does not respect black women (because) he left me for a white woman." And Lanett, Ala., city councilman Barry Waites was defeated in August, largely through the effort of candidate Rod Spraggins, who finished fourth but whose only issue was to accuse Waites of murdering his own wife two years earlier (but Waites was never charged).

-- Among recent news reports of stupefyingly high real estate prices in the San Francisco area: a plain three-bedroom house in a nice Palo Alto neighborhood, offered for $3.5 million (renting for $12,000 a month), and a 1,000-square-foot house in San Francisco that "needs everything done to it," according to an agent, offered at $279,000 but which will sell for much more because as of the first of September, 48 people had bid on it.

Newsstand clerk Mike Redina, 44, who is blind, was fired in July because an underage boy illegally bought cigarettes from him (Hauppauge, N.Y.). Chevron lost an employment discrimination case in May because its doctor recommended rejecting an application from a man with a liver disorder because the work site was a highly toxic part of a refinery, and the company would almost certainly have been liable if the man had gotten sicker (El Segundo, Calif.). Parents Michael and Jill Carroll were forced by a court to give their son, 7, his prescribed Ritalin to regulate his school behavior despite the boy's loss of sleep and appetite (Albany, N.Y.).

-- Never Laid a Hand on Him: Otto Benjamin II, 39, was arrested in May in Fayetteville, Ark., and charged with second-degree battery after police found that he had been disciplining his 15-year-old son by biting him, including several recent incidents that had left permanent scars (on the ear, upper nose area, lip, finger, left thigh, shoulder and right forearm).

-- Teachers as Role Models: Columbia University literature professor Edward Said, 65, visiting Lebanon on July 3, was photographed throwing stones at Israeli soldiers at the border. (He later explained, "The spirit of the place infected everyone with the same impulse, to make a symbolic gesture of joy that the occupation had ended.") And two weeks later, New York City high school teacher Ryan Ward, 30, was charged with grand larceny after he allegedly rode his bike past a woman on East 26th Street in Manhattan and swiped her purse.

-- Des Moines, Iowa, anesthesiologist Eric Meek filed a lawsuit in July against surgeon Scott Neff over a February incident that Meek felt took their ongoing professional feud too far. Meek said that when he walked into the operating room to work with Neff on a routine hip replacement at Mercy Medical Center, Neff grabbed the hose attached to a fluid-draining machine and banished Meek from the room by spraying him with a "blood-laden" liquid.

-- Jeff Schmidt was fired in May after 19 years as a staff writer for the magazine Physics Today just after the publication of his book "Disciplined Minds," which argues that a hierarchical organization's structure almost guarantees that its workers cannot devote their full energy to the job. He was canned after a supervisor came across a publicity interview by Schmidt, admitting playfully that he had sometimes worked on the book during office hours at Physics Today.

-- In July, Genevieve Simenon, a great niece of the late French mystery writer Georges Simenon, confessed to killing her husband and expressed dismay that, but for one detail, she would have gotten away with it, just as the perpetrators in Georges Simenon's stories believe they will. Genevieve had injected her husband with Valium, then beat him to death, scrubbed the crime scene, and convinced the family physician that her husband had merely suffered a heart attack and that the bruises on his face came when he hit his head on a table. However, the funeral director looked under the husband's long hair and noticed that his ear had been beaten off in the attack.

-- Additional Recent Ironies: An arsonist burned down the Heart of Fire Church (Fern Creek, Ky., June). The founder of an alcoholics' self-help group that advocated allowing recovery through moderate drinking pled guilty to DUI that caused the deaths of two people (Ellensburg, Wash., June). A very abled executive with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind was fined $100 for issuing himself a handicapped parking card (Boston, August).

In July, the Law Society of Alberta, Canada, announced it had begun an inquiry into whether lawyer John M. Grindley should lose his license to practice because he had harmed the reputation of the profession. Grindley had been convicted in June of drunk driving, but the Law Society filed charges against him only later, after a residential eviction order had been upheld against him based on an inspector's having declared Grindley's home so grungy and putrid-smelling that it was a hazard to public health. Grindley admitted that his apartment is "messy" but said he would fight the charge.

One of the most widely circulated offbeat stories of 1999 was the Michigan conviction of canoeist Timothy Boomer under a seldom-used state law banning public cussing. (He used the F word at least 25 times, in an area occupied by recreational boaters, including many kids.) In May 2000, Sioux Falls (S.D.) high school senior Oakly Haines, who had just won the gold medal in the 400-meter dash at the state track tournament, was disqualified when two volunteer officials overheard him cuss at himself ("damn it" and "son of a bitch") that he had failed to beat the record time of his older brother. Said one of the tattling officials, "When you have children, you want them to be exposed (only) to wonderful, good things."

In June, a 16-year-old boy accidentally fatally shot himself in the head while fleeing a sheriff's deputy who had tried to question him; according to the deputy, the boy had clumsily attempted to shoot back by firing over his shoulder on the run. And in August, during a workplace scuffle in Irvine, Calif., one man grabbed another in a headlock, pulled his gun, and shot him in the face, but the bullet passed through the target's cheek and into the shooter's own chest, killing him.

Federal prison officials, angered at a recent bribery convict's boast that he planned a lot of golf at a minimum-security facility, shipped him instead to the same New York lockup as John Gotti's son (Lake Placid, N.Y.). A veteran skydiver got his foot caught outside the airplane door two miles up and dangled for 30 minutes, and was still hanging during the landing, but was not seriously hurt (Pittsburgh). An ex-Marine gunrunner and minor figure in the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair was arrested for masturbating in a Kmart parking lot (Brookfield, Wis.). A 36-year-old driver was shot in the abdomen during a one-vehicle collision when a handgun in the glove compartment fired as it was jarred by the impact (Eastford, Conn.).

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