-- Curt Storey, 62, who lives near Pittsburgh, Pa., filed a wrongful-discharge lawsuit in August against Burns International Security Services, claiming he was fired from his job because he refused supervisors' demands that he cleanse his lunchbox and pickup truck of Confederate flag decals, orders that he calls illegal national-origin discrimination. Storey claims he is a "Confederate Southern American," even though he is a lifelong Pennsylvanian and even though courts have not recognized CSA as a protected class under anti-discrimination law.

-- Paul Morgan of Biloxi, Miss., has been busy the last few weeks lining up Web site viewers, at $20 each, to watch him slice off both his feet on Oct. 31 with a homemade guillotine. Morgan's feet are nonfunctional because of an automobile accident, and he wants hydraulically operated prostheses to make him more mobile, but this is the only way he knows to raise the $200,000 to buy them. Although traffic on CutOffMyFeet.com is heavy, as of mid-August, Morgan had signed up only 10 viewers.

-- In August, Naples (Fla.) City Councilman Fred Tarrant demanded that local artist Ted Lay's "Famous Tongue Mona Al Monica" painting (side-by-side impressions of Mona Lisa, Albert Einstein, and Monica Lewinsky sticking their tongues out) be removed from its place at a Naples municipal art center because he thinks Lewinsky's "tongue" too much resembles a penis (which Lay denies). According to a Naples Daily News report, Tarrant is in fact blind but said various advisers have assured him that the tongue is a penis.

In May in Stroudsburg, Pa., Noah Berryman, 19, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter; hours after earning his driver's license, Berryman was trying to get his car airborne on a hill (he launched 63 feet on the fourth attempt) when he hit a tree, killing the two friends riding with him. And in February, a 52-year-old man shot a 21-year-old man to death on I-75 in Tennessee as the men hauled 30 fighting roosters to a cockfight in Kentucky; the older man was angry that the younger man kept kicking the back of his seat. And in June, as Knox County (Tenn.) sheriff's deputies surrounded an auto parts store looking for suspect Charles "Cracker" Dunn, his brother, Melvin "Squirt" Dunn Jr., jumped on cars, waved his arms and defiantly challenged them, before they stormed the store and arrested him (but not Cracker, who wasn't there).

-- In July, according to police, an unidentified man stole an ax from a Home Depot in Oklahoma City and used it menacingly to rob a clerk and shortly thereafter did the same at two other stores, including a Wal-Mart. On interviewing witnesses, police learned that a Wal-Mart door greeter had seen the man enter carrying the ax, but his only impulse was to make sure that he did his job and placed a sticker on the ax so that when the man later tried to exit the store, he wouldn't be charged for it.

-- In May, a court in Edmonton, Alberta, sentenced William Piggott, 55, to 18 months' house arrest for three 1999 offenses in which prostitutes had turned him in for talking too dirty. According to court records, Piggott had merely asked the women if they would have sex with dogs.

-- In May, several months after the Escondido, Calif., library's resident cat attacked Richard R. Espinosa's 50-pound Labrador-mix assistance dog, Espinosa filed a $1.5 million claim against the city, alleging that he was in bad shape because of the dog's injuries. According to the legal papers, Espinosa suffers "significant lasting, extreme and severe mental anguish and emotional distress including, but not limited to, terror, humiliation, shame, embarrassment, mortification, chagrin, depression, panic, anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, loss of sleep (and) loss of full enjoyment of life as well as other physical and mental afflictions of pain (and) suffering."

-- In June, Mary Lee Sowder filed a lawsuit in Roanoke, Va., against the local PetsMart store for $100,000 for injuries to her knee that she suffered when she slipped and fell on "dog slobber," which was allegedly drooled upon the floor by the manager's own huge dog (of unspecified breed).

-- Kevin Mackle died at age 21 in 1998 when a Coke machine he was rocking in a dorm at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, fell on him. In July 2001, Mr. Mackle's family filed a lawsuit for about $660,000 (U.S.) for wrongful death against the machine's manufacturer and distributor, and Coca-Cola, and the university. The lawsuit claims that each defendant was negligent in not posting signs on the machine that college students should resist the temptation to rock it. According to the coroner's report, the late Mr. Mackle was well-known by his friends for securing free sodas by rocking the machine and was once again engaged in his craft when the fatal accident occurred.

According to police reports in the Daily Independent (Ashland, Ky.) in June, Clark Schneeberger, 44, heard that his father-in-law, Richard J. Kouns, was angry that his daughter and Schneeberger had fought several days before and was on his way over to defend his daughter's honor. Schneeberger prepared for the interfamily visit by strapping on body armor and equipping himself with a bayonet and brass knuckles. Kouns arrived swinging, and the two battled until Schneeberger subdued Kouns by biting off part of his nose (an attack that earned Schneeberger a grand jury indictment several days later).

A 26-year-old SWAT police officer in Dallas was accidentally shot to death by a colleague in June as the two men showed trainees how to react to a gunman in a public place. And a 14-year-old girl died when the all-terrain vehicle in which she was riding smashed into a tractor-trailer; she was in the vehicle because she was visiting her father's workplace as part of Take Our Kids to Work Day (Welland, Ontario, November 2000, and for which a lawsuit was filed in May 2001). And the Alcoholics Anonymous chapter in Milwaukee still does not know who the man was who collapsed and died during a meeting on May 23 (because those attending meetings usually do so anonymously).

In July, the University of South Florida agreed to pay $25,000 to a former art student to settle her 1999 lawsuit claiming that she felt sexually harassed by a class-discussion photograph of a naked white woman clinching a naked black man, despite the fact that that day's topic was controversial art and that all 250 students in the class had been warned of the nature of the class and advised they would not be penalized for missing it. (Shortly after the class, the woman's father complained, and the graduate assistant who supplied the photograph was transferred, which ignited a public protest by all the rest of the students in the class.)

Benjamin Sharpe, 47, charged with stabbing a friend, insisted he had to do it because his buddy had vowed to drive home, though inebriated (Aiken County, Ga.). A conference paper by British scientists concluded that female cockroaches lower their standards for a mate as their biological clock runs down (Manchester, England). Accused sex-assaulter Kevin Erwin was cleared by a jury, which found his torturing of his girlfriend consensual, that she for some reason had failed to use the "safe" words to get him to stop ("tomato" and "pepper") (Canton, Ohio). The Japanese firm Takara said it will soon market a "translator" that will interpret barking and other dog sounds, expressing them with a 200-word vocabulary (e.g., "happy," "annoyed," "frustrated").

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

-- A ruling last year by the Oregon Supreme Court is finally having a major negative impact on police, according to a July Los Angeles Times dispatch. The court had ruled that all lawyers, including prosecutors, must obey the state bar association's nearly absolute prohibitions against deceit, meaning that law enforcement cannot engage in "undercover" and "sting" operations (which involve tricking suspects). Already, one child-pornography investigation has been shut down because prosecutors could not administer a case in which police caught pedophiles by pretending online that they were underage.

-- Film turned up in July of tourist boat operations near Cape Jervis (near Adelaide), Australia, which ferried visitors so they could stand on a dead whale and watch great white sharks munch off the carcass; some tourists even posed for vacation photos petting the preoccupied sharks on the head (briefly). The local environmental minister said he was appalled and would ask for legislation "to protect people too stupid to protect themselves." (Obviously, News of the Weird is opposed to this type of legislation.)

-- The San Francisco Chronicle reported in July that the new dog catcher for San Mateo County will be paid $250,000 a year, more than twice what San Francisco's dog catcher receives and much more than Gov. Gray Davis or San Francisco mayor Willie Brown are paid. Said a county executive, "I hope we have the happiest and healthiest animals in the world because that's an awfully heavy price to pay."

In July, a man who has served time for fatal bombings was convicted of attempting to firebomb three Montreal coffee shops because the owner refused to give them French names. Protestors broke windows at the Tennessee capitol in Nashville in July, furious that legislators might adopt a state income tax. Three New Mexico regulators reported receiving death threats in May during the Public Regulation Commission's deliberations over whether to change the telephone area codes in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

-- The then-executive director of the Tampa, Fla., Make-a-Wish Foundation pleaded no contest in March to grand theft charges for misappropriating almost $20,000 that had been donated for dying children; she served three months in jail, and is now on house arrest, and with an order to repay $6,500. In June, she filed a lawsuit against the foundation demanding back pay and unused vacation and sick pay dating from the date of her firing in June 1999 and demanded a court order restoring her as the foundation's executive director. Her first name is Delores, and she uses the surname of her husband, the lawyer who filed her lawsuit, Jack W. Crooks.

-- Sherman P. Hawkins' impressive application for the vacant position of director of the Montana Department of Corrections was turned down in July by the governor, despite Hawkins' 28 years' experience in the department and his master's degree in administration. As the governor noted, however, Hawkins' 28 years were as "inmate," in that he is serving a life sentence for murdering his wife.

-- Virginia Green, a patient in the August (Maine) Mental Health Institute and who was convicted of bludgeoning her 75-year-old mother to death in 1996, had filed a lawsuit alleging that the facility's 8 a.m. wakeup policy violated her rights and ordering that the institute be instructed to permit her to sleep until 11 a.m. (In June, the Maine Supreme Court turned her down.)

-- In June, the Ontario Court of Appeal reinstated DUI charges against Christopher Dominski, finding that his right to be notified that he can have an attorney present under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was not violated. According to court records, when a police officer asked if he would like to call an attorney, Dominski responded, "Yeah, whatever," which a trial court thought indicated ambiguity but which the appeals court said was a sufficiently serious question and answer.

-- In June, the city education commissioner of Berlin, Germany, publicly suggested that the pro soccer league bar players from spitting on the field and especially their increasingly popular habit of clearing a nostril by pressing a finger against the opposite nostril and blowing, saying such behavior sends the wrong message to kids. Several players immediately defended the right to blow: Said one, "We can't carry a packet of hankies on the pitch."

Strongsville, Ohio, lawyer Daniel Todt killed his wife and two children in June as the government closed in on him for what prosecutors described as a series of outlandish attempted frauds. The Todts (both lawyers) were a traditional, middle-class, community-involved family except for one thing: Todt believed that in the 1940s, Mr. Thor De Allah Kahn from the planet Atlantis met top Earth officials and left with them securities (to improve the planet's welfare, in one instance for reconstruction in the Philippines) in staggering amounts (e.g., $33 billion, $13 billion), which Todt very earnestly and naively tried to present to many banks in several countries for payment, even after U.S. Treasury officials warned him they were worthless. Todt had also painstakingly explained his theory in various venues (e.g., local bar association, the Securities and Exchange Commission), usually to open-mouthed silence.

Detroit police arrested five suspects in connection with the robbery of a McDonald's restaurant in June, shortly after they made their alleged getaway; they appeared to have rehearsed the robbery, but inside the car, one of the men discarded his bandana by tossing it out the window, where it inadvertently snagged on the radio antenna and acted as an identifying flag for police chasing the car. And Elizabeth McDonald, 24, pleaded no contest in June to robbing the VFW hall in Medina County, Ohio, where she used to work; she was wearing a mask, but it did not disguise her waist-length red hair, which was instantly recognizable by at least one former co-worker.

News of the Weird loves stories about haggis, the Scottish meal that some people believe is the world's most disturbing formal dish (aesthetically, because of its gray color, and flavorfully, in that it typically is a pudding of sheep organs, suet and oatmeal, boiled in the animal's stomach). In May, police in Manchester, England, reported they were investigating an attack against the house of a Scottish woman, age 45 (and who has been living in England for 35 years), as a "hate crime," in that a haggis was thrown through her window. A police spokeswoman said the haggis had been "taken away for examination."

After an emergency airlift for treatment, a man survived his "attack" by an already-dead (but venom-retaining) timber rattlesnake that "bit" him while the clumsy man was mounting the carcass on a board (Quincy, Ill.). Iranian officials found a smuggler with 3.5 pounds of opium in his belly, said to beat the old world's record of 2.4 pounds (Kenarak, Iran). Nurses and doctors were among the 400 attending the unauthorized, drug-drenched, deafening rave party at Paris' Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital, whose patients were said to be oblivious of the commotion in that most had been heavily sedated for the night. A water heater at a shopping center video store exploded, rocketing itself through the roof, over a Taco Bell, and landing in a Pizza Hut parking lot in the next block (Burien, Wash.).

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

-- July marked the appearance of a glossy, 32-page publication, Mainline Lady, funded by the Health Ministry in the Netherlands and designed to resemble a newsstand fashion magazine, for the purpose of helping drug-addicted women feel better about their health and appearance. Included are articles on rejuvenating heroin-ravaged dry skin, putting on weight, and disguising needle marks with makeup, as well as an upbeat horoscope column tailored to the everyday problems of drug addicts.

-- In 1993, John and Narda Goff's 10-year-old daughter was sexually molested by a man using his finger for penetration, an attack which at the time was, under Ohio law, merely "assault" and not "rape." The Goffs campaigned and finally persuaded the Ohio legislature in 1996 to broaden the law to include any forced penetration. In July 2001, the Goffs were charged with violating that very law, having impregnated the same daughter in 1998 with stepfather John's sperm (using a syringe), allegedly because Narda is infertile and the couple wanted a baby "together." (Actually, according to the daughter, John Goff was sexually molesting her before that, even during the time the Goffs were crusading for a stronger rape law.)

-- Max & Mina's kosher ice cream parlor in Kew Gardens Hills, N.Y., was featured in a July Jewish Week piece, bringing readers up to date on the many offbeat flavors the store makes (all rich in butterfat but meeting various Jewish dietary standards): "lox," "corn on the cob," "horseradish," "peanut butter and jelly," "beer and nuts" and "campfire delight" (principal taste: baked beans). The store also once made (but has discontinued) a "broccoli" ice cream.

-- A 30-year-old patient was awarded $2.1 million by a jury in Spokane, Wash., in January after evidence that neuropsychiatrist Donald Dudley (who died before trial) tried to chemically erase part of the man's brain and turn him into a trained killer. And in June, a medical board in Ontario found psychiatrist Raymond Danny Leibl guilty of "disgraceful" conduct in treating a 53-year-old woman by disciplining her like a baby, giving her sodium amytal with vodka to improve her memory, and having her call him "Mommydaddy Ray." And in May, a medical board in Oklahoma removed plastic surgeon Scott Gilbert's license after evidence of several lapses of care, including the use of wood screws and Superglue on patients.

-- According to a June report in Britain's The Guardian, at least two schools in Belgium's Limburg province will begin serving a kind of very-low-alcohol beer in public school cafeterias beginning in September, in an effort to wean kids aged 3 to 15 from sugary sodas and fruit juice.

-- The Washington state board charged with evaluating college-degree programs last year approved a bachelor's and master's degree curriculum in "astrological studies" for the Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences in Seattle. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 20 of the 31 initial enrollees made it through the first year. Said Kepler president Enid D. Newburg, "Most people weren't used to a college level of study." Said one student, who said she is a veteran of an honors program at the University of Texas, "(T)he faculty at Kepler just blows away any of the professors I had (in Texas)."

-- At the Innovate 2001 expo in London in July, British inventor David Morrow introduced "Consent Condoms," designed to protect men from charges of date rape in that each condom comes with a fingerprint-sensitive tab of paper on which the man's partner can acknowledge that the act is consensual. Morrow says the fingerprint is more reliable than oral assent and that, unlike a signature, is deliverable while the partner is in the throes of ecstasy. (Among Innovate 2001's other exhibits was the "Ice Baton," billed as a "natural way" to relieve hemorrhoids.)

-- Singapore's Straits Times reported in July that the health office in Muar, Malaysia, had shut down a food stall and arrested its proprietor because he was boiling dirty underwear in pots with food, which he said, according to legend, improved the taste of the food. Said a health official, "(T)his is an untrue belief and must be stopped."

-- In July, Greg Daniels, 51, said he will challenge the Austin, Texas, police department's towing of his cars, arguing that just because he happens to own about a dozen cars, which he parks in the street in front of his house and uses in rotation, doesn't mean that any of them is junk (which is what he has been cited for as police tow the cars away). Daniels, who told the Austin American-Statesman that his cars are always legally parked, was forced to buy some of them back once after the city confiscated them. He says he's just not ready to settle down with just two or three of his favorites.

-- Richard S. Markey, 44, convicted in Hartford, Conn., of defrauding investors of $4.8 million, wrote U.S. marshals in April that he thought he had presented a strong case for his innocence and that therefore he wouldn't be reporting to prison as scheduled on May 2, but rather was going to a relative's place near Syracuse, N.Y., and that if he didn't hear anything more from the marshals, he would consider the case closed. (He did hear from them; they looked him up and re-arrested him. During his trial, Markey had described himself not as a "person" subject to the laws of the U.S., but as a "sovereign," and besides, he claimed the charges had to be dismissed because the prosecutor had spelled his name in all-capitals on the indictment.)

-- In 1997 News of the Weird reported on two mid-career professionals (a nurse and a lawyer) who had made new beginnings as "pet psychics," who charged $40 a half-hour to help on relationship problems between owners and pets by conversing directly with the animals about their problems (even though some pet-clients are handled only by phone). In a June 2001 story, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel profiled pet "intuitive" Carol Schultz, 35, who does paw-readings and counsels pets that suffer trauma, such as the three-legged cat feeling guilty because he was inadequate at litter-box-burying, and the dog that felt trapped inside a cat's body (who "had some issues," Schultz said, because his name was Duke).

-- A 22-year-old man was killed when he stopped his car in traffic and walked back to the driver behind him to express his road rage, and was fatally hit by a driver in the next lane (Columbus, Ohio, May). A 19-year-old student at the University of Texas at Austin, notorious for playing fire-related pranks on his friends, was killed after apparently starting a prank fire that destroyed his apartment (May). An 18-year-old man was killed when three sticks of dynamite that the man habitually carried around (for no apparent reason) in a backpack exploded (Winnemucca, Nev., June).

-- Three men and a woman hoisted a homeowner's entire metal, two-car garage onto their pickup truck and attempted to drive off with it before abandoning it in the street when the structure broke (Detroit). An Oklahoma State University research team said its sliced peanut butter (wrapped in plastic sleeves like single-slice cheese) would be on grocery shelves in U.S. test markets soon. Political correctness hit India when authorities in Jammu and Kashmir banned the word "widow" for fear it would further upset women whose husbands have died in recent separatist battles (approved: "wife of late (name)"). A barroom gunfight was averted when an inebriated man, waving a pellet gun in his prosthetic arm, watched as the arm came off and fell to the floor (El Paso, Texas).

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