-- In January, a federal judge in Tampa locked up 1980s corporate raider Paul Bilzerian for contempt of court for allegedly hiding assets in a longstanding civil lawsuit in which the government is trying to collect a 1991 securities judgment that Bilzerian defrauded investors of $62 million. In a recent bankruptcy filing, Bilzerian claimed only $15,800 in assets, listing even a $5 Casio watch, but Florida law allows bankrupts to keep their homes, and Bilzerian has lived for years in an 11-bedroom, 37,000-square-foot lakefront residence with indoor basketball court, movie theater, nine-car garage and elevator (which he offered to rent out during the week of the Super Bowl for $600,000).

-- Excellence in Education: In a Nov. 16, 2000, letter published in its entirety (except for naming the recipient) in Washington (D.C.) City Paper in January, the human resources director for the District of Columbia Public Schools informs a female job applicant that an investigation into her criminal record has been resolved in her favor. According to the letter, DCPS accepted the applicant's documentation that the government had, for undisclosed reasons, declined to prosecute her cocaine distribution charge, her marijuana possession charge, her three dangerous-weapons charges, her shoplifting charge, her soliciting prostitution charge, and her destruction of government property charge (all during 1984-1992) and that the woman, thus with a clean record, is now "eligible for employment with DCPS."

In December, a couple in Tangxia, China, was considering a lawsuit against the Tangxia Central Hospital for its failure to spare their baby girl the misery of being born (since undisclosed ultrasound examinations had earlier shown that the girl, born in October, had two heads). And in France in October, a deaf, partly blind, mentally retarded 17-year-old boy won his wrongful-birth lawsuit against doctors who failed to counsel his parents that the mother's rubella during pregnancy almost certainly would cause birth defects that would make his life not worth living. However, in January a Texas Court of Appeals sided with doctors and reversed a trial court that had awarded a couple $42 million for their prematurely born daughter's dismal quality of life (blind, incontinent, brain-damaged, speechless, paralyzed in three limbs).

-- The New York Times reported in November that at least 23 small businesses (though one with 76 employees) are actually taking the far-fetched advice of a former agent and an accountant who give seminars showing how "Section 861" of the Internal Revenue Code actually exempts nearly all Americans from the duty to pay income taxes (and thus, that the firms need not withhold taxes from paychecks). The IRS director calls that interpretation "just plain nonsense," but the agency has for months allowed the companies to flout the law.

-- In November, prominent Vermont hunter Thomas N. Venezia, 41, was finally brought to justice after several shooting sprees, marauding through Canadian woods massively and maliciously violating game laws. An undercover agent quoted Venezia after one illegal shooting: "I have the 'K' chromosome. I love to kill. I have to kill." Once, Venezia spontaneously leaped from a truck and started firing at ducks, then later at pigeons because, he said, he needed action because he had gone an hour without killing anything. At a hearing in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Venezia, sobbing, admitted the incidents and was permanently barred from Canada (though he remains licensed to hunt in Vermont).

-- The University of Michigan has accepted 15,000 personal papers of Unabomber-murderer Ted Kaczynski (an alumnus) and is housing them with, according to a December San Francisco Chronicle report, "all the academic solemnity that, say, Churchill's papers received when they went to Cambridge." Said a Kaczynski biographer, "Ted is obsessed with his public image." The university's decision is ironic, said Kaczynski's former prosecutor Steven Lapham, who points out that the man's private journals, introduced in his trial, showed that contrary to his alleged social and environmental reasons for his serial bombings, he merely "enjoyed taking other people's lives because he could."

-- Apparently, the fragrance Oh My Dog, from the French company Dog Generation, is selling well in Paris (at about $30 a bottle, including complimentary shampoo), providing pooches (according to the label) "an emotional short-cut between dog and man." And in Baltimore (according to an October report in the Baltimore Sun), Susan Wagner continues to pursue her lawsuit against the maker of Paws and Effect (a cologne designed to be sprayed on cats to mask their natural odors, sold at a Nordstrom fragrance counter) for failing to put a clear-enough warning on the package that it was not for humans; Wagner claims serious, recurrent skin problems.

-- A December Newsweek story reported that some female entrepreneurs can't change their underwear fast enough to fill all their customers' orders (at $10 to $30 per pair, used, a price presumably kept down by supply and demand, in that there were at least 400 such sellers on the eBay Web site before restrictions were placed). For example, "Michele," a 28-year-old Floridian, buys brand-new panties by the case, gives them free to her girlfriends, and retrieves them daily from their dirty-clothes piles for resale.

-- In November, the company 911 Computer of Korea introduced a $60 hand-held lie detector that reveals deceptions by sensing voice tremors caused by stress-restricted blood flow (a technology developed for the Israeli military). The Handy Truster Emotion Reader can allegedly point out lies with 80 percent accuracy after being calibrated with truthful statements, but a company spokesman said it might not work against politicians because it can be defeated by "compulsive" liars.

Frank Buble, 71, pled guilty in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, in December to attempted murder for smashing his son Philip, 44, with a crowbar several times, mostly because he was tired of the son's sexual relationship with his dog. Philip was relieved at the guilty plea, pointing out that he is "the first out-of-the-closet 'zoo' (zoophile) to be attacked because of my sexual orientation, so (lawyers) have no precedent to gauge how a jury would react."

-- In 1999, News of the Weird reported on the 82-year-old retired chemist who had been living quite happily in a 200-square-foot room in the downtown Boston YMCA since 1949. In November 2000, former Navy man Orlan Lattimer, 81, finally moved out of his room at the Arlington Hotel in San Francisco, where he says he has lived since 1937. After a while on a waiting list, the city Housing Authority assigned Lattimer a studio apartment (with his first-ever private refrigerator and private bath) about a block from the Arlington.

Bob Talley passed away in London in December during his 100th birthday party, just after receiving a congratulatory telegram from the Queen and uttering, "Yes, I made it (to 100)." At a New Year's Eve performance of the Trenton (N.J.) Symphony Orchestra, first trumpeter James M. Tuozzolo, 57, passed away of a heart attack moments after rendering (according to the conductor) a "flawless" solo. In July, Percy McRae, 65, passed away of a heart attack moments after singing the national anthem for Chicago Cubs fans at Wrigley Field.

Fairfax County (Va.) supervisors banned residential sleeping except in bedrooms as a way of curbing situations in which dozens of immigrants occupy the same house. A human skeleton was found in a chimney, judged by a wallet and clothing to have been there for 15 years, and police speculated a burglar got stuck (Natchez, Miss.). Italy's highest court ruled that a man's "isolated, impulsive" grab of a woman's derriere is not enough to constitute sexual harassment. An arrest warrant for failure to appear in court, for a 91-year-old shoplifter, was dropped when authorities concluded she would have shown up if it weren't for her failing memory (St. Pete Beach, Fla.).

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

-- Former pro football player Rae Carruth's elaborate defense to the charge of ordering his pregnant girlfriend's murder (semi-successful, in that he was convicted in January only of conspiracy) was financed by the state of North Carolina because the well-paid Carruth convinced Judge Charles Lamm that he was "indigent," according to court documents that Lamm had kept sealed for six months but which were discovered in January by the Charlotte Observer. Carruth earned about $38,000 a week during the 1999 season, and when the prosecutor suggested the motive for the killing was to spare Carruth child-support payments, Carruth countered by pointing out that he made enough money (net worth: $360,000) to easily support a child.

-- In January, Nicholas Griffin, owner of video stores in York and Grimsby, England, was fined about $9,900 by a magistrates' court under the Trade Descriptions Act for marketing ordinary feature films (such as the 1973 Jack Palance comedy "Secrets of a Sensuous Nurse") as "hard-core" sex videos. Said Griffin, "I am amazed people have the audacity to complain about things like that."

British Antarctic Survey personnel (and helicopters) are now in the Falkland Islands specifically to learn whether penguins do, indeed, topple over when following the path of an aircraft overhead. Also, a team of researchers from the at-Bristol center, using "arousal monitors," found that 20 of the 25 surveyed members of Parliament appear more emotionally aroused by the sight of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher than by the sight of local glamour personality Denise Van Outen in a skimpy dress. And, commenting on a Bremen University (Germany) study on gambling as an addiction, British psychologist Mark Griffiths and British gardening expert Alan Titchmarsh said in November that the findings should apply, as well, to the addictive activity of gardening; said Titchmarsh, "Once you've discovered the thrill of making things grow, you can't stop."

-- Former police officer Edward Ludaescher and a partner were charged in November after allegedly attempting to rob an Oxnard, Calif., bank, but Ludaescher said it was all a misunderstanding, that he really was only studying up on the mind of the bank robber for a police training video he and the partner were planning to make. (However, prosecutors said that the two men badly needed money, having recently defaulted on a $200,000 loan for developing a pepper spray gun.)

-- John Bradley Park's defense at his drunk-driving trial in Llano, Texas, in October was that he was perfectly sober while driving on the night of July 4, 1999, even though his car might have been swerving on the road, but that while sitting in the driver's seat after police officer Jody Deatherage pulled him over, he quickly began drinking, and that by the time he reached the medical facility to test his blood-alcohol content, he was drunk. (He was nevertheless convicted.)

-- Twenty-six years after Mel Lastman (who is now mayor of Toronto) paid off a former long-time, married girlfriend, with whom he had had two sons, in a private settlement, the sons (now age 41 and 38) filed a lawsuit against Lastman, complaining of low self-esteem, anxiety, humiliation and delay in their personal development, for which they want Lastman to pay them $4 million (U.S.) more. Nevertheless, said the 19-year-old son of one of the plaintiffs, the lawsuit is "not about the money."

-- According to his campaign manager Jose A. Riesco, U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida did not retain illegal campaign contributions in the bank for eight months rather than issue immediate refunds as legally required and as he promised to do. Rather, Riesco told the Miami Business Review in December, all 45 refund checks (totaling nearly $30,000) were mailed out on time in February 2000. The reason none of the 45 recipients ever cashed their checks over the next eight months, said Riesco, was that somehow every single one of the 45 checks was lost in the mail, "poorly addressed, things like that," thus allowing Diaz-Balart full use of the illegal money for the recent campaign. Riesco denied any wrongdoing.

-- In Edwardsville, Ill., in November, Kwayera "Q" Jackson, 18, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in the death of his 5-month-old son, whom authorities determined was killed by a blow to his intestines. Jackson (a recent high school football standout) said he might have gently thumped the boy's stomach, but only because he was trying to build up his abs so that he would be a better athlete when he grew up.

-- In November, a jury in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., awarded Harvard undergraduate student Patricia Ryan, 36, $363,000 from the Cabaret nightclub for a 1994 injury in her previous occupation as a stripper. In her act, Ryan was a fire-breather, but after accidentally dribbling out some of the 151-proof stage booze, her chest caught fire, causing second-degree burns. The Cabaret's attorney said, "We didn't cause the fire," but Ryan argued that the club's employees declined to help her during the emergency.

In January, Gainesville (Fla.) police charged James Anthony Harmon, 39, with fraud after finding his house cluttered from floor to ceiling with as much as $200,000 worth of unopened cartons of merchandise ordered under various credit-card names from Home Shopping Network. It appeared that very few HSN-ordered items were actually in use in the home. Said Harmon, "I just shop a lot." According to the Gainesville Sun, Harmon's neighbors said he is "a loner who often kept to himself."

Accidentally shooting yourself in the head with a nail gun is rarely fatal, as readers of News of the Weird know from several stories in which construction workers have inadvertently plugged themselves and earned little more than a terrific souvenir x-ray. In January 2001, a 25-year-old construction worker in Bethlehem, Pa., tempted fate by firing a dozen shots into his skull with his nail gun, but with a purpose in mind: He was in agony from having just accidentally severed his hand in a mitre saw mishap and thought somehow that he could divert some of the pain (which doctors said is quite possible to do). At press time, he was hospitalized in stable condition after surgery to reattach the hand (and to remove the nails).

In November, Mr. Auburn Mason, 62, was sentenced to four years in prison in England for a 1999 British Airways hijacking. He had grabbed a flight attendant, held scissors to her neck, and threatened additionally to blow up the plane, yelling, "Take me to Gatwick (airport, London)!" At that point, the flight was 15 minutes away from its scheduled destination, which was Gatwick airport. Mason was disarmed after observers realized the "bomb" was a pocket dictating machine.

A 33-year-old mother was charged with felonious failure to prevent child sex abuse, by giving her 13-year-old son condoms to facilitate sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend (the "abuser") (Milwaukee). Vietnam vet Harry Hunt got his waist-length hair cut, ending his eight-year boycott of the clippers in protest of draft-dodging Bill Clinton's presidency (Mexico, Mo.). A 34-year-old man was charged with forcing a woman to have sex by wielding a live hand grenade (York, Maine). A circus-performing archer missed the apple on his wife/assistant's head for the first time in 14 years, sending her to the hospital with a catastrophic wound below the eye (Paris).

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

-- Twenty-two-year-old Devin Grant survived virtual target practice by three Atlanta police officers on Dec. 14, catching 16 bullets in the neck, back, arms and leg, with 24 separate wounds, but was out of the hospital seven days later. One bullet severed an artery, but Grant's muscularity slowed the release of blood, allowing him to remain alive until he could be treated. (He went immediately from hospital to jail, however; the shots were fired after Grant allegedly pointed a gun at officers following a 20-mile automobile chase, which started, police said, when Grant attempted to evade an arrest warrant for a traffic violation.)

-- Daily Variety reported in January that Britain's Pathe Pictures had scheduled an April shooting date for the $7 million comedy "Thunderpants," which it described as the story of "an 11-year-old boy whose amazing ability (to break wind) leads him first to fame and then to death row, before it helps him to fulfill his ambition of becoming an astronaut."

Welsh entrepreneur Ben Holst formed a company recently to distribute pillows shaped like breasts (the TitPillow Co.), following a grant from the Prince's Trust (headed, on paper, by Prince Charles). And at the stage show "Puppetry of the Penis," which ran for three months recently in London's 600-seat Whitehall Theater, nude actors artistically twisted their private parts into shapes resembling, for example, the Olympic torch and a hamburger. And a November feminist conference at Penn State University featured workshops and exhibits organized on a theme of regaining control of a word the organizers regard as empowering but which is now a despised vulgarity (calling their event "Cuntfest").

-- In November, off-duty Chicago police officer John Sebeck (240 pounds, with a master's degree in social work, which helps him on the job in counseling elderly abuse victims) was suspended for punching a 72-year-old man (115 pounds) in the face following a minor traffic accident. And in Springfield, Vt., in October, Brian Dodge, 44, owner of two Christian radio stations (including LOVE radio in Madbury, N.H.), was charged with punching his wife and choking her with a towel (and was subsequently arrested for violating a stay-away order).

-- Their Life's Work: In November in Plainfield, Ind., a space-heater fire wiped out George Marchiando's two-story dream house that he had spent all his spare time over the last 10 years building and which was three-fourths finished. And in August at the airport in Lakeland, Fla., David Eachon, 32, finally took off in the scaled-down replica of a British World War II Spitfire fighter plane that he had spent the last nine years building, but crashed shortly after takeoff and was killed.

-- New York state Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, co-sponsor of anti-stalking legislation, pled guilty in January to harassing her ex-boyfriend in 1999, including, the man said, making dozens of hang-up phone calls; bursting into his home in the middle of the night; tailgating him in a car; and posing as a cosmetics saleswoman in order to get the phone number of the man's new girlfriend.

-- In November, Chicago divorce court judge Edmund Ponce de Leon ruled that a pregnant wife must give her estranged husband visitation rights to the baby she was about to give birth to and that, for the baby's well-being, it should be given breast milk during the visitation; thus, the judge ruled, the mother would have to pump extra breast milk in advance for the husband to feed to the baby. (Shortly afterward, an appeals court suggested he rethink the order, and at a December hearing, he changed his mind.)

-- In October, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that, just because a man had been convicted and imprisoned for sexually abusing his 8-year-old stepdaughter, he did not necessarily pose a threat to molest his own children, aged 3 and 5, and thus could retain custody of them. And the same month in Chicago, juvenile court judge Michael Brown ruled that a father could have an unsupervised visit with his three adopted sons even though recently accused of sexually abusing other foster children under his care.

In November, the Russian Orthodox Church named the apostle Matthew as the patron saint of the country's tax police, who the church felt needed an image boost because they resemble SWAT teams, dressing in black masks as they barge into businesses to audit them. And in October, the Vatican announced a patron saint for politicians (St. Thomas More of England, who was beheaded in 1535), the latest of nearly 300 named by Pope John Paul II, and Vatican observers believe St. Isidore of Seville will soon be named patron saint of the Internet.

In December, Yokohama, Japan, shopkeeper Akira Ishiguro, annoyed at shoppers who are "teasers," allegedly made a woman get on her knees and apologize to him because she did not want to buy the coat she had just been handling. Ishiguro had once locked a woman inside the store until she agreed to buy something, and in fact pressured the coat-handling woman into changing her mind and handing over about $25 as a down payment.

Super-messy homes have been a News of the Weird theme since its first year in 1988 (reporting on a San Jose, Calif., couple and their adult son, who collected garbage from dumps to store at home and in a growing number of storage lockers). In December 2000, a married couple (both well-paid U.S. Department of Labor employees) in Fairfax County, Va., were ordered out of their three-story home by authorities because of the mess. Trash was so heavy that walls had separated from ceilings; cleanup crews had to crawl on their stomachs to get to some of the garbage; and feral cats, rabid raccoons and rats (a nest in the oven and one rodent weighing nearly 3 pounds) ran wild. As she witnessed the county's cleanup, the wife moaned that she was losing "everything that was precious to me."

A 45-year-old woman who was killed as she walked onto I-55 near Sherman, Ill., in October was revealed to have been a member of a Jehovah's Witnesses breakaway group that believes they should test their faith (much like snake handlers do) by standing in the middle of traffic. A few days before her fatal demonstration of faith, she had been pulled to safety from the same highway as she attempted to proselytize to drivers zooming by.

New Hampshire state Rep. Tom Alciere resigned after constituents discovered longstanding statements on his Web site praising people who murder police officers (though he wrote that he himself was "too chicken" to partake). In official papers filed with Georgia's Department of Education, school districts inexplicably reported that 112 students were murdered last year (the actual total was zero). A man who identified himself only as Obi-Wan Kenobi was arrested for stealing a car, which he said was on orders from "The Force" (Bismarck, N.D.). A 43-year-old man was charged with three recent bank robberies after walking up on stage at a comedy club and offering a conscience-clearing confession (Macon, Ga.)

Thanks This Time to Gary Abbott, Paul Hirschfield, Joel O'Brien, John Cieciel, Martha Swift, Arthur Fields, Juliana Abbott, Mike Lewyn, Chris Nalty, Rob Borosak, David Lips and Gary Goldberg, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisers and Chief Correspondents.

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