-- The debut CD from the Thai Elephant Orchestra (Lampang, Thailand) was scheduled for December release, featuring six pachyderm prodigies playing crude versions of traditional instruments (drum, gong, bass, xylophone) and recorded intact, without overdubbing, to create music that (in the words of a New York Times writer) "strike(s) some Western listeners as haunting, others as monotonous." The CD's American producers, pointing to much academic research on elephants' natural musical abilities, said they plan a second album ("easy-listening," engineered, they said, to make it more accessible to a wider audience).

-- In November, federal drug officials busted what one agent called "the world's largest LSD lab," run from an abandoned missile site near Wamego, Kan. Indicted were two educated establishmentarians as the alleged principals: William L. Pickard Jr., 55, deputy director of a University of California Drug Policy Analysis program (and an expert on the illegal drug trade in Russia and a vegetarian, nonsmoking, marathon runner with a master's degree in public policy from Harvard) and Clyde Apperson, 45, a Silicon Valley computer consultant. Pickard obtained personal bail recommendations from the San Francisco district attorney and from a British lord.

The leader of the organized crime family that allegedly controls prostitution in part of southern California (nine of whose members were arrested in October in Los Angeles): Mr. Hung T. Dong. Two University of Nebraska dentistry professors profiled in an October Lincoln Journal Star report: Drs. Jeffrey Payne and Randy Toothaker. Arrested in September for threatening an insufficiently pious judge in Kenner, La.: Mr. Allah M. God Allah. The participants in a police chase in Jay, Okla., in July: Officer Tracy Sixkiller, arresting Russell Hogshooter and Belinda Chewey. A Clover, S.C., planning commissioner charged in October with lewd behavior toward a child: Mr. Rusty Cockman.

-- Federal investigators in November charged Lake Forest, Ill., physician Krishnaswami Sriram with Medicare fraud, based on records indicating that at least twice Sriram worked 70-hour days and once saw 187 patients in a single day, 131 of them in house calls. Records also showed, according to prosecutors, that he saw 32 patients subsequent to their dates of death and 49 patients one day in January 1999 while the city was virtually closed by a blizzard.

-- Engineer Masaaki Fukumoto, 36, of the Japanese firm NTT DoCoMo, announced in October that he had developed a prototype of a wireless telephone worn as a wristband and functioning via a device that converts audio signals into vibrations. Incoming calls cause the wrist to vibrate, and the wearer engages the phone by touching the thumb to the index finger. Speaking requires holding the wristband close to the mouth, and listening involves transferring the audio signal to the eardrum, which is done by the user's sticking his finger in his ear.

-- USA Today reported in September on New Zealander Geoff Marsland's new CD consisting of 64 minutes of lawn mower noise, designed for those wishing to retaliate against annoying neighbors. Previously, Marsland released 64 minutes' worth of a crying baby, for couples trying to talk themselves out of becoming parents.

-- Brazil's Catholic Church issued $650,000 worth of "shares" on the Rio de Janeiro stock exchange in September, aimed at institutional investors who want to contribute to the church's social programs and who receive, instead of dividends, detailed reports on how their money is being used. More capitalistic is the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., which in September registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to make a public offering of shares in an ancillary real estate venture, which will start by developing land adjacent to the church.

-- Massachusetts inmate Frederick Ford, serving eight years for paying a hit man $11,000 in 1999 to kill two former associates (and convicted after the "hit man" turned out to be an undercover federal agent), petitioned a court in Boston in September to have the money returned to him, since the killings were never carried out.

-- In October, Ohio inmate Donald Harmon filed a $500,000 lawsuit against his former attorney Martin Emrich, whom Harmon says was supposed to bribe a judge with $10,000 of Harmon's money to get a favorable sentence; Harmon, however, wound up with a sentence almost double what he expected and now complains that he didn't get his money's worth from the bribe.

In December, a man in Kazakhstan turned up alive at his own funeral after surviving a makeshift burial by friends in a shallow grave after he appeared to be electrocuted on power lines. And in October, Ben Holmes, 48, missing and declared dead in 1988, was shot by his ex-wife in Youngstown, Ohio, when he dropped in on her after a 20-year absence to claim half of her furniture.

News of the Weird has kept track over the years of the peril faced by insufficiently dowried wives in India and Bangladesh, noting burgeoning murder rates in 1994 and 2000, and noting in 1999 the preference for sulfuric acid attacks as the way Bangladesh husbands (and their mothers) deal with such wives. A December 2000 New York Times dispatch from Bangalore, India, reported that the new weapon of choice in mother-in-law attacks on wives is kerosene and that hospital burn wards are filled with "thousands" of grotesquely disfigured wives whose primary sin was either to bring too paltry a net worth to the marriage or to underperform household chores.

In October, Dee Blyth reported a burglary of her home in Chadwell Heath, Essex, England, in which thieves had helped themselves to what they thought was her stash of cocaine ("charlie" in local slang), leaving behind the distinctive residue of cocaine "lines" on a table after lifting several electronic appliances and jewelry worth about $3,500. However, as Blyth told police and reporters, gleefully, the container of powder on her mantle (labeled "Newfoundland Charlie") was not a coke stash but was an urn containing the ashes of her late dog, whose name the label bore.

A 26-year-old soldier, going AWOL to have sex with a 15-year-old girl he had met on the Internet, lived in the girl's bedroom for nearly a month before her parents found out (Mount Vernon, Ohio). Among the for-credit curriculum now in Oberlin College's Experimental College is a course on the "life and times" of Drew Barrymore. A baby was "born" in the snowy debris of an auto collision, healthy except for a skinned knee, rescued by a paramedic who found it attached by its umbilical cord after the pregnant mother's abdomen was fatally sliced in half by the jagged windshield (Louisville, Ky.). Spain, which finished third overall in September's Paralympic Games in Sydney, returned some medals after an investigation revealed that 14 of its 200 participating athletes were not at all disabled. [Louisville Courier-Journal-AP, 12-16-00] [Cleveland Plain Dealer, 12-3-00]

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

-- In November, U.S. marshals in Detroit confiscated the belongings of Marie Antoinette Jackson-Randolph, a former high-society, day-care chain owner, who is now in prison for scamming the government out of $13.5 million in meal money for underprivileged children she allegedly fed at her centers. Among her "estate": 100 pieces of Baccarat, Waterford and Lalique crystal, 911 purses, 606 pairs of shoes, 165 pairs of boots, a roomful (floor to ceiling) of costume jewelry, and various fur and skin garments (leopard, coyote, mink, fox, sable, chinchilla, snake, lynx, rabbit, lamb, beaver, weasel and raccoon, in a variety of colors). (Said the owner of the company hired to sell the furs: "I don't know whether she hated animals or loved them. It's hard to tell.")

-- According to a December Wall Street Journal report, Commodity Futures Trading Commission judge Bruce Levine has heard nearly 180 cases of alleged broker fraud against investors (who bet on future prices of beef, soybeans, foreign currencies, etc.) in his eight years on the job, yet has ruled against the investor every single time that he was called on to render a decision. (Some cases were settled privately, but even then, according to some parties, Judge Levine often pressured the investor to accept a tiny percentage of his original claim.) The other CFTC judge decides for investors about half the time.

From Susan Smith, a professor of health and safety sciences, University of Tennessee (July): People who use sign language have up to five times greater risk of hand and wrist injuries than people who don't use sign language. From zoologists at the University of Kerala (India), writing in Current Science (July): After eight impotent gerbils had alcohol injected into their eyes to blind them, five of them began to copulate (possibly due to the release of melatonin).

-- An October New York Times dispatch from India highlighted the growing problem of intra-family frauds in which one member will claim a living relative's land or wealth by swearing to the government that the relative is dead. An advocacy group, the Association of Dead People, helps aggrieved citizens figure out just how to prove that they are indeed alive, which can be a difficult concept for India's bargelike bureaucracies to accept. The association's founder said he remained officially dead even after he ran for office, filed lawsuits and got arrested just to get his name on public records.

-- Protests: California environmental activist Dona Nieto ("La Tigresa") appeared topless at several logging sites in Humboldt and Mendocino counties in October in a demonstration ("Striptease for the Trees," featuring "nudist guerrilla poetry") to save giant redwood trees; loggers' reactions ranged from embarrassment to a defensive recital of Bible verses. And in October, when three neighborhood planning officials in the village of Barlestone, England, arrived at the house of Brian Statham to supervise the council-ordered clearing of his yard, Statham jumped in his forklift and systematically picked up the three men's cars and set them down on their sides.

-- In October, an appeals court in San Francisco became the first to test whether a relationship amounted to "dating" under California's new domestic-violence legislation that permits victims to collect judgments even if they aren't a cohabiting couple. The rejector, Joyce Oriola (who said she was stalked by Adam Thaler after she refused to go out with him), had to claim the couple were actually dating in order to qualify her for money damages. Thaler, the heartsick rejectee, logically had to claim that the two were just friends. (The court ruled they were not dating.)

-- After 100 employees took ill (dizziness and nausea) at the National Pen Corp. offices in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., in September (with 24 being sent to the hospital), white-suited hazardous-materials crews went over the building from top to bottom, looking for gas and chemical leaks, among other possibilities. The official cause, determined the next day by the San Diego Fire Department, was an excess of urinal cakes in a third-floor men's room.

-- In October, the prosecutor in a rape case in Lewis County, Wash., said he was thinking of subpoenaing Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit (via his Earthly channeler, spiritualist J.Z. Knight), who reportedly "heard" the defendants confess to the crime during a session at Knight's retreat in Yelm, Wash. However, Knight then told reporters that she had been "in a trance" during the session and therefore could not recall what the defendants and Ramtha had talked about.

-- In October, David B. Smith, the lawyer who formerly represented North Carolina death-row inmate Russell Tucker, admitted that he had sabotaged an earlier appeal because he had come to believe Tucker was guilty and deserved to die. (Tucker's execution date has been postponed, anyway, on other grounds.)

Wayne A. Louden was profiled in the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle in September for his history of at least 37 traffic collisions in the last 10 years (23 of them serious, though none of any kind this year); he admits to some problems (bad vision, diabetes, depression). And in July in Ponta, Texas, Charles and Jennifer Smith and their three preschoolers purchased a new Dodge Intrepid, which was totaled in a collision the next day; on Aug. 11, fire destroyed their trailer home; then Jennifer drove over the family dog, whose leg is now in a cast; and in September, after the community banded together to get the Smiths a new trailer home, a storm totaled that one, too.

News of the Weird has reported several times on husbands or wives who were victims of murder attempts by their spouses, yet who quickly forgave and asked the judge to forget the whole thing. In October 2000 in Denver, Tom Mason, 52, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for hiring a hit man in 1998 (really an undercover cop) to stage a fatal truck-crash murder of his wife (he had bought her a Hyundai Excel to reduce her chance of survival); the wife, who divorced Mason after that, remarried him in April 2000 and begged the judge not to send him to prison.

A 28-year-old man was shot to death by his first cousin during a dispute over how to paint the floor at a construction site (Banner, Ky., October). And one man was shot to death and his killer then beaten to death by relatives and in-laws at a Labor Day barbecue, all because of a request by one of the relatives that another man move his car (Marshall, Texas, September). And a 30-year-old man was shot to death at a bar by a fan of race car driver Dale Earnhart who was angry that the victim was wearing another driver's (Jeff Gordon) cap (Spencer, Ind., October).

Five police drug-squad members were reassigned pending allegations that they had searched a suspect's rectum, said a police spokeswoman, "manually and possibly with a pair of pliers" (New Orleans). A 9-year-old boy was charged with making more than 90 prank phone calls to 911 in one evening (Columbia, Tenn.). Mr. Derby Ray Herrick allegedly robbed a Firstar Bank, went home, found his apartment on fire (burning cigarette), and was identified that night by firefighters and bystanders after bank camera photos were released (Des Moines, Iowa). The first of a series of church-approved comic books on the life of Pope John Paul II was published, featuring little Karol Wojtyla skiing (yelling, "Outta my way!") and playing soccer (Rome).

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

What a strange year. It looked like any other until sometime around, oh, November, I guess, and then all of a sudden, for some reason, when I reported the latest incompetent criminal or imaginative fetishist, people would yawn. They said there were stories on the front page that were more bizarre than anything I was reporting. What do you suppose they meant? Well, whatever. Anyway, here is our annual compilation of the best disturbing yet underreported stories of the last 12 months.

Crisis in Medical Care

Interviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, local body piercer Nathan McKay, 24, lamented his failure to find proper medical care: He needs follow-up on his already-surgically forked tongue, and he wants all of his teeth removed (and replaced with platinum implants). "I want my tongue split even farther," he said, describing a split as far back as possible, to the uvula, so as to have two separate strands. McKay's original surgeon performed only because he was a family friend and has balked at a follow-up. (McKay also has 1-inch holes in his earlobes, to hold ebony disks.)

(Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nov. 20)

Encouraging News From the Academy

The University of Surrey (Guildford, England) added to its curriculum in service-sector management by beefing up its graduate course offerings in in-flight catering and appointing a professor of airline food.

(The Guardian, Oct. 3)

The Most Urban-Legend-Like True Story of the Year

Cheltenham, England, partyshop owner Samantha Munns punctured her thigh when she fell on the nozzle of a balloon-inflating canister, and within seconds, enough helium gas had entered the subcutaneous tissue in her leg and abdomen to cause them to swell painfully to twice their normal size. Munns was treated at Cheltenham General Hospital by physician Alison Moon, who prescribed rest to let the gas dissipate.

(The Times (London), Dec. 11, 1999)

Unclear on the Concept

The Netherlands legalized prostitution in October and began regulating it as any other business, including subjecting brothels to workplace safety rules, such as requirements for bright lighting and for separate showers and changing rooms for males and females.

(Sunday Telegraph (London), Nov. 5)

William Draheim was fired from his job in St. Louis Park, Minn., in May for sexual harassment (for talking allegedly too much at work about his pierced penis); Draheim's workplace was Video Age Inc., a distributor of hardcore pornographic movies and sex toys, large inventories of which fill the offices (and in fact, customers placing orders frequently talk dirty on the phone).

(City Pages (Minneapolis), May 31)

City of the Year

Among the news from Akron, Ohio, this year: A father was indicted for assault for a pattern of roughing up his teen-age daughters to spur them to high achievement (capped by threats to kill one after she misspelled "cappelletti," thus finishing second in the National Spelling Bee). A man was found living with his father's corpse 11 years after death, brought to light only when his mother died, and he failed to bury her, too. A 69-year-old man filed a lawsuit against a 61-year-old woman whom he said tricked him into marriage, when he actually had intended to marry the woman's 83-year-old mother. A woman serving a life sentence for brutalizing her then-7-year-old son for soiling his pants tried to get a new trial by claiming that the son actually had been molested by the family dog. A 10-year-old boy, trying to avoid leaf-raking chores by hiding out underneath a pile of them in a driveway, was hospitalized when his mother accidentally drove over him. A high-school coach got caught after he sneaked onto the track to run the second leg of his team's 4-by-100 relay at a meet.

(Akron Beacon Journal, Aug. 23; Akron Beacon Journal, July 11; Denver Rocky Mountain News-Associated Press, July 6; Akron Beacon Journal, July 26; Star Tribune (Minneapolis)-Associated Press, Oct. 23; Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 31)

Left Out of the Olympic Games

The annual national cricket-fight tournament was staged in Beijing in October after another stellar recruiting season among Shandong province cricket farmers, who attempt to breed for the physique and character to endure rough matches inside 8-inch-wide plastic containers.

(New York Times, Oct. 4)

The reigning college Milk Bowl dairy-sniffing champions, Mississippi State University, won the "ice cream" category (by coming the closest in agreement with professional judges as to sensory quality), finished second in "cheddar" and "yogurt," third in "cottage cheese" and "milk," and fifth in "butter."

(Wall Street Journal, Feb. 8)

Japan's Kazutoyo "The Rabbitt" Arai (who weighs 101 pounds) beat defending champ Steve Keiner (400 pounds) in the annual Nathan's international hot-dog-eating championship at New York's Coney Island on July 4, gobbling up 25 in 12 minutes, to Keiner's 16.

(New York Post, July 5)

In Finland, Japan's ultra-serious Seibotu Raiders easily beat a more relaxed European team in the finals of the Kemijarvi international snowball championship (seven players per side, 270 snowballs each, a field about the size of a tennis court with some barriers for cover, and the object of seizing your opponent's flag before being decimated by direct hits).

(National Post (Toronto), April 11)

Lesser of Evils in the Heartland

Eight farmers in the town of Nemaha, Iowa (population 112), have taught themselves to perform various square-dancing routines while seated on and precision-maneuvering their tractors, according to a June San Francisco Chronicle dispatch. However, since all are males, four of the dancers operate their tractors dressed in calico skirts in order to deflect the sight of all-male dancing.

(San Francisco Chronicle, June 26)

The Future of Warfare, One Hopes

The most encouraging aspect of Filipinos' newfound national mania for sending text messages by cell phones, according to a July New York Times report, is that Muslim guerrillas at war with government troops in the southern islands picked up army troops' phone numbers and now spend more and more valuable combat time merely pecking out insults.

(New York Times, July 5)

"Yo, Damien! You Talkin' to Me?"

Seven Brigham Young University students organized a Fight Club, inspired by the Brad Pitt movie and periodically drawing as many as 300 cheering spectators to watch men pound each other into submission. (Fighting is not against the BYU Honor Code, although watching the R-rated "Fight Club" movie is, and the brawls are held late enough at night so as not to violate the Mormon "family home evening" concept.)

(Salt Lake Tribune, April 24)

Criminal With the Worst Short-Term Memory

Federal grand juror Mark Vincent Hinckley, 37, part of the panel that had just voted secret indictments against an alleged Denver drug dealer, was arrested in August after he went to the dealer's office and attempted to sell him information about the indictments for $50,000. Hinckley had apparently forgotten the evidence that he had just heard: for example, that the government had planted bugs in the dealer's office. According to prosecutors, Hinckley's proposition was recorded in full.

(Denver Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 2)

Relentless American Ingenuity

Disabled Springfield, Mass., police officer Charles Peck, 55, asked the city council for higher benefits based on the 1982 squad car crash that ended his career. Peck was hurt so badly that he was declared dead at the scene (and resuscitated at the hospital), and in his latest petition requests benefits equal to his full salary, which is an amount usually available only to surviving spouses of deceased officers. Peck points out that, since he had been legally dead, he has actually survived himself and thus is in a position similar to that of such spouses.

(Associated Press, Feb. 11)

He Needs a Little More Seasoning

Highway Patrol officers in Spearfish, S.D., arrested a 17-year-old boy on Feb. 19 and charged him with stealing a car in his nearby hometown of Madison. According to the police report in the Madison Daily Leader, the troopers were casually finishing up a meal at a Perkins Restaurant when the boy, from an adjacent booth, walked up, spread-eagled himself on the floor, and shouted, "Please don't shoot me" and "The car is in the parking lot."

(Madison Daily Leader, Feb. 22)

Demand-Side Regulation

A bill introduced in the Vermont legislature 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. Also, a bill introduced in the Mississippi legislature would seek to dampen the rampant sexuality inside strip clubs by making it illegal for a male customer to have an erection, even though he remains fully clothed.

(Boston Globe, Feb. 1; National Post-Reuters, Jan. 25)

The End of Politics

In March, British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Glen Parrett overturned Mike Frazier's victory last year in the election for mayor of the village of McBride, ruling in a 28-page decision that Frazier did not deserve the office because he had made knowingly false statements about his opponent.

(Globe and Mail, March 9)

Where the Fox Network Gets Its Ideas

On April 27, a reporter for Russia's RTR television arrived in the town of Ivanovo to shoot a piece on a housewife merrily feeding her family while her soldier-husband was away serving as a peacekeeper in Kosovo. However, the reporter had received word minutes before that the husband had just been killed on duty. Thus, the reporter shot some "before" scenes, in which the carefree wife earnestly spoke of her husband's imminent return, and then the scene after he informed her of the death, featuring her crying uncontrollably.

(Reuters, April 28)

Real Names, Straight From Central Casting

The 19-year-old patient who walked away from the Montana State Hospital for the mentally ill in Warm Springs in May, but who was captured 12 hours later: Mr. Terry Crazy. Among the four people arrested in the May murder of a waitress in Washington, D.C.: Mr. Gene Satan Downing. The reputed leader of a Southern California prostitution syndicate, nine associates of which were arrested in October: Mr. Hung T. Dong.

(Associated Press, May 26; Washington Post, Nov. 18; Inland Valley Daily Bulletin-Associated Press, Oct. 29)

I Dance on Your Grave

Entrepreneur Adam Bilski received a license in May from the city of Oswiecim, Poland (a.k.a. Auschwitz), to open a disco on the spot of a World War II-era tannery that "employed" concentration-camp workers and became a gravesite for many of them. And "Stalin's World," a tourist attraction devoted to themes of the World War II-era Soviet police state, was scheduled to open late this year near Gruta, Lithuania, which was a gateway through which 200,000 people passed en route to Siberian labor camps. (The developer plans for visitors eventually to enter the park on cattle cars and eat oat gruel and fish broth, just as the prisoners did.)

(Washington Post-Associated Press, Aug. 18; The Scotsman (Edinburgh), July 25)

The Year's Most Hapless Criminal

T'Chacka Mshinda Thorpe, 25, was arrested in Lynchburg, Va., and charged with possession of cocaine after a brief chase, which ended abruptly when Thorpe tripped on his low-hanging baggy pants, fell, and broke his leg.

(Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 14)

A Man Not Like Other Men

John Murphy, 64, was arrested in Toms River, N.J., after a May 10 spree in which he vandalized 12 urologists' offices because they had refused his requests to gratuitously give him prostate exams.

(Associated Press, May 18)

Florida's Real Problem With Numbers

Within a four-day period in May, a judge in Tampa sentenced a girl to 18 years in prison for the brutal murder of her mother, while two other Florida judges sentenced statutory-rape defendants (whose teen-age victims only reluctantly testified against them) to 71 years and 105 years, respectively.

(Tampa Tribune, May 28, 31; St. Petersburg Times, May 27)

The Classic Middle Name (our all-new yearly update)

Arrested for murder in 2000: Louis Wayne Watters, Jr. (Texas), Aryan Wayne Duntley (California), Robert Wayne Rotramel (Oklahoma), Steven Wayne Bowman (South Carolina), Bryan Wayne Padd (Arizona), Jeffrey Wayne Leaf (Oklahoma), Donald Wayne Rainey (Mexico), Michael Wayne Henry (Texas).

Committed suicide in custody after being charged with murder: Kenny Wayne Lockwood (Texas).

Convicted of murder: Robert Wayne Harris (Texas), Christopher Wayne Gregory (Texas).

Appeal of murder conviction denied: Randall Wayne Stevens (Illinois).

Embroiled in marital estate fight: murderer Scott Wayne Blystone (contesting from death row at the State Correctional Institution, Waynesburg, Pa.).

(Watters: Austin American-Statesman, April 28; Duntley: San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 31; Rotramel: Daily Oklahoman, Aug. 22; Bowman: Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, Oct. 31; Padd: Associated Press, Nov. 16; Leaf: Daily Oklahoman, Nov. 1; Rainey: Arizona Daily Star, Dec. 17, 1999; Lockwood: Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 16; Harris: Associated Press, April 25; Gregory: Austin American-Statesman, July 27; Stevens: Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Aug. 8; Blystone: Associated Press, Oct. 15)

Kids Tougher Than Dracula

Nathan King, 12, of Helena, Mont., and Destiny Lopez, 6, of Houston, survived accidents in which they fell and impaled themselves on pencils, which penetrated their hearts. In both cases, clear-thinking adults calmed the kids until they got to hospitals; attempts to remove the pencils prematurely would probably have caused instant death.

(New York Times-Associated Press, March 7; Houston Chronicle, Oct. 27)

The Americanization of China

China's government-sanctioned UFO research organization reached the 50,000-member mark (and is now processing 500 alleged sightings a year), which is not surprising, said the director, because extraterrestrials are as interested in the country's developing markets as are Western nations. And The Wall Street Journal reported in April on a recent "explosion" of successful litigation in China by elderly parents suing their children for failing to take care of them.

(Los Angeles Times, April 9; Wall Street Journal, April 3)

Not Exactly Legal Eagles

Robert Jones' legal theory in his current lawsuit in Atlanta against Liquid Fire drain cleaner (which burned him badly when it spilled out onto his legs) is not that its container was unsafe but that the container somehow looked unsafe to Jones, and thus, before dispensing it, Jones transferred the Liquid Fire into his own container, which turned out to be flimsy.

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 15)

Florida lawyer Philip G. Beitler, who had defended himself at his bribery trial (unsuccessfully), argued to the state Court of Appeals that his conviction should be overturned because, as a client, he had been inadequately informed by his lawyer that representing himself at trial was foolish. (He lost the appeal, also.)

(Miami Daily Business Review, Sept. 8)

No More Command-and-Control Regulation

"Holistic herding," or "low-stress livestock handling," is "changing the whole face of the West," according to a U.S. conservation official quoted in Canada's National Post. Cattle are happier, healthier and more obedient, he said, if they are not shouted at or subjected to stress but, as one rancher put it, allowed "to make up their own minds (where to go)." Also on the new-age frontier, in January, nearly 8,000 cowpokes attended the 16th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada; before submitting their verses, entrants had to prove to a screening committee that they are real cowboys.

(National Post (Toronto), Dec. 28, 1999; New York Times, Jan. 30)

Real Men Eat Cheese

An August Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro, Sardinia (Italy), described locals' love for casu marzu ("rotten cheese"), brown lumps of sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a "viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue" and whose "wiggling worms (often) jump straight toward the eyes with ballistic precision." Though the cheese is banned by the government, a black market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary cheese, and local gourmets disdainfully dismiss any portions that are so stale that the maggots on them have died.

(Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23)

The Second Most-Hoax-Like True Story of the Year

Dutch researchers writing in an April British Medical Journal advocated via cost-benefit analysis that Viagra be dispensed for free in the Netherlands because, even though costly, it enhances the quality of its users' lives even more, for example, than kidney transplants. In fact, according to the researchers' Quality-Adjusted Life Year measure, a dollar spent on Viagra brings twice as much benefit as a dollar spent on breast cancer screening.

(British Medical Journal, April 29)

The Laws of Irony Are Strictly Enforced

Just after publication of his book "Disciplined Minds" in May, Jeff Schmidt was fired as a staff writer for the magazine Physics Today, after 19 years' service. In his book, Schmidt argued that a hierarchical organization's structure almost guarantees that its workers cannot devote their full energy to the job, and in fact, Schmidt was terminated after a supervisor came across an interview in which Schmidt admitted playfully that he had worked on his book during office hours.

(Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2)

The French textile company Francital began to market a fabric specially treated to absorb perspiration, for people who can't bathe for days at a time.

(New York Times, Feb.3)

Lt. Frank Drebin, Call Your Office

In August, Davidson, N.C., police officer Scott Searcy (backed by his assistant chief) asked to search a woman's car for drugs, giving as his legally required "reasonable suspicion" the fact that on the front seat was a copy of the local alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing, whose cover story on drug enforcement was illustrated by a photo of a marijuana plant. (The woman decided to consent to the search, anyway, and nothing illegal was found.)

(Charlotte Observer, Aug. 25)

How to Tell If You Have Too Much Money

In March, New York City art patrons bought up Christie's Auction House's entire collection of 60 paintings created by artists that happen also to be elephants, including Sao (a former log-hauler in Thailand's timber industry), whose work was likened by Yale art historian Mia Fineman to the work of Paul Gauguin for its "broad, gentle, curvy brush strokes" and "a depth and maturity." Fineman says there are three distinct regional styles of Thai elephant art: northern ("lyrical and expressive"), central ("dark, cooler" colors in "broad, vigorous strokes"), and southern ("saturated tertiary colors").

(Boston Globe, March 19)

What Chaos? What Constitutional Crisis?

Professional psychic Jacqueline Stallone (mother of Sly), in a pre-Election Day interview, said her dogs had told her telepathically that George W. Bush would win the presidency by "200 votes."

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 7)

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