-- Some callers to Boston's major homeless shelters became angry that their requests to help out this year on Thanksgiving and Christmas day were rejected because the shelters have too many volunteers on those days (yet too few on the other 363 days a year). A Boston Globe reporter found that volunteers even try to cajole officials to bump them up the waiting list (170 on one shelter's list, which started accumulating names in August), but express disappointment at suggestions that they help at less "popular" (and less prestigious) suburban shelters.

Ian Jewell, an employee of the West Somerset (England) District Council, was rewarded by his bosses after his counting revealed that the toilet paper in the restrooms contained fewer than the 320 sheets per roll stated in the supplier's contract (September). And a popular pastime in Bismarck, N.D. (according to an October Associated Press report), is a game called "Slip," in which teenagers walk the city during summer nights trying to avoid cars' headlights. (If they get flashed, they're out.) Said one teenage girl, "It's better than sitting around on the couch on a Friday night watching a movie." And in many cities, the opening of a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop has been marked by fans queueing up several hours in advance, but Peter Bolland and his son, P.J. (both grown men), lined up 30 hours early for the store's debut in Kitchener, Ontario, in November. ("(This) sounds so ridiculous," said P.J.)

-- "It's sick, disgusting and perverted. I know all these things (but) I can't go to prison for the rest of my life ... without seeing (some)." (spoken by confessed murderer Cory Stayner, offering police a deal in which he'd describe his crimes in detail if they'd give him a "good-sized stack" of child pornography to look at) (San Jose, Calif., July) [San Jose Mercury News, 7-24-02]

-- "It was like a 'Blazing Saddles' routine, because every time these (management) guys would move on their seats, you could hear flatulence." (spoken by a participant at a September labor-management session in San Francisco, describing a union man's prank of having placed a small flatulence-sound-producing device under the table during a Pacific Maritime Association negotiating session with the dockworkers union, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle)

-- "(M)any top businessmen spend more of their time in hotels than in their own home. ... So when they get home, they like to re-create the hotel experience. ... Many of my clients (for example) have their own mini-bars in their bedrooms. ... They come to me (to make them) a hotel-style (closet)." (spoken by Arnold Chrysler, owner of Chrysler's World of Hotel Decor, on trial in London in October for stealing 40,000 hotel coat hangers (the bottom part, useful only if affixed to the closet's hanging bar))

-- Slow Crime Days: Two St. Petersburg, Fla., police officers were suspended in November after allegedly using their in-car terminals to send each other a total of 4,232 non-duty messages in a one-month period (about 10 messages each, per work hour).

-- James Sabatino, already serving time in a Putnam County (N.Y.) prison for attacking a federal officer and having recently served time in England for a telephone-based scam, had his telephone privileges removed because Putnam officials said he spent almost eight hours a day on prison phones, for five months, before they caught him in another scam. According to officials cited by the New York Post in November, Sabatino called phone companies and convinced them he was doing movie shoots and needed dozens of cell phones quickly (and was able to order about a thousand activated phones, delivered to places arranged by his girlfriend, without spending a penny).

Sadomasochism practitioner Steven H. Bailey, 54, was indicted in St. Paul, Minn., in November in the bondage death of a sexual partner (one of 5,000 he said he's had); Bailey calls himself "The True Master" of his craft but allegedly failed to render assistance when his partner stopped breathing through the chloroform-soaked bag over his face. And in November, The Washington Post disclosed that one of the members of the United Nations weapons inspection teams headed for Iraq was also an uncloseted S&M master: Harvey John "Jack" McGeorge, 53, of Woodbridge, Va., an instructor in "Dungeon 501," featuring activities involving knives, ropes and choking devices.

Capt. Van Fussell, a Florida Highway Patrol district commander in Venice, Fla., accidentally shot himself in the foot as he was holstering his Glock pistol while taking his annual firearms test in November. (He'll have to take it over.) And the previous week in Brooksville, Fla., homeowner Jimmy Batten walked in on Sean Todd Duval, 26, who had apparently broken in to steal Batten's guns. Batten was puzzled that Duval did not try to run away, but the reason was that minutes earlier, Duval had accidentally shot his left middle toe off with one of the guns and was so despondent that he told Batten: "Finish me off. Go ahead and blow my brains out."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was considering purchasing out-of-service cruise ships to alleviate the nightly overcrowding at the city's emergency shelters (November). And prominent, board-certified Independence, Mo., psychiatrist Donald Hinton, who seriously swears that he has been treating Elvis Presley for the last five years, was put on probation in November by the state for overprescribing a painkiller to a patient (not Elvis). And the Urbana, Ill., mother who was still breastfeeding her 8-year-old boy lost partial custody of him to the state (November).

A 46-year-old non-swimmer drowned in his apartment house pool during an attempt to overcome his fear of the water (Galesburg, Ill., October). A 73-year-old man died from the extreme heat caused when a thermostat broke and would not shut off (creating such heat that, for example, all of the water evaporated from a toilet) (Great Falls, Mont., November). A 21-year-old student accidentally strangled himself with his belt, which he had looped around a door handle in a contraption to keep his head from nodding off during a marathon study session (Bangkok, Thailand, July).

Two customers and an employee were trapped inside Sam's Mini Market for two hours on Thanksgiving Day by successive swarms of bees that coated the front door, until firefighters foamed them off (Chatsworth, Calif.). Panda bear experts announced that "dating" software had been developed to match males' and females' personality characteristics so as to improve mating opportunities (Beijing). An aboriginal Manitoba (Canada) woman alleged racial profiling when she was not allowed to buy hairspray at an Extra Foods store, probably because owners feared she only wanted to drink it (Winnipeg). Britain's Office of Fair Trading charged the toy company Hasbro (maker of Monopoly) with retail price-fixing.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

-- British Army officers examining highly motivated potential recruits in the Commonwealth's Pacific island of Fiji reported in November encountering an alarming number of the men with marbles sewn under the skin of their penises, apparently to heighten pleasure during sex. According to an Agence France-Presse report, Capt. Sarah East said that the marbles were not an automatic disqualifier.

-- Several news outlets in Johannesburg, South Africa, reported in November that, in front of several witnesses, a 20-foot-long African rock python swallowed a 10-year-old boy in the brush near Lamontville (which is near Durban). Some experts, including snake park owner Craig Smith, said the evidence and the witnesses' accounts were credible, especially since the snake had probably recently awakened from hibernation and was famished. According to the boy's terrified playmates, it took about three hours for him to completely disappear.

Humming Rage: Sheila Raven Lord, 49, stabbed a companion with a steak knife because he was humming a Megadeth song louder than the Celine Dion song she was listening to (Glenview, Ill., November). Mailbox Door Rage: George Krushinski was charged with planting small bombs in a mailbox and a letter carrier's vehicle because a weekend carrier had been leaving Krushinski's mailbox door down (Lexington, Ky., November) ("I've warned you bastards many times about leaving my mailbox open," Krushinski wrote, "(and) now you will pay.") Wrong Socks Rage: High school student-musician Trevor LeBlanc won $25,000 in a lawsuit against his band director, Tom Cole, who, at the 2001 Tournament of Roses Parade chewed out LeBlanc for wearing the wrong-color socks (San Diego, November) ("I ought to wring your (expletive deleted in original story) neck," Cole reportedly said as he grabbed LeBlanc by the throat.)

Police in Fulton, Ky., investigating a marijuana-smoking complaint by William Hainline's neighbors in September, found dope burning on a backyard grill with a large fan on the other side of the house sucking the smoke through the home (in effect, said Police Chief Terry Powell, "turn(ing) the house into a large marijuana bong"). Hainline said he was merely having a 52nd birthday party, but police seized four pounds of marijuana.

-- In October, the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, Fla., became the latest to debut a version of the church's 22-year-old "Theology on Tap" series, introducing young adults to the church by holding lecture and discussion sessions about contemporary issues, mostly sexuality, in local bars, with parishioners and potentials free to eat, drink and smoke. (In November, the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio, began the second year of its program.)

-- According to the police report on Farhad Qaumi, 19, who was arrested in Parramatta, Australia (near Sydney), in October and charged with raping a 16-year-old girl, Qaumi said he removed his Islamic pendant before the assault, telling the girl, "I have to take it off, as it is disrespectful."

-- In Bridgeport, Conn., in October, Roger Chimney, 34, pleaded guilty to two convenience store robberies; the police got him because he had accidentally dropped his name-inscribed Bible at one of the crime scenes. And in Augusta, Maine, in August, Craig Golden, 18, pleaded guilty to criminal mischief for vandalizing a farmer's field; the police got him because his name-inscribed Bible had fallen out of his truck during the incident.

-- The Lord as Micromanager: (1) "It isn't easy, but God said to (beat them)," testified former nun Lucille Poulin, before being convicted in October of assault in the harsh disciplining of children at her commune (Charlottetown, P.E.I., Canada). (2) "(G)od became my art agent. He basically gave me ideas," said Thomas Kincade, the pop artist who has sold $450 million worth of machine-produced paintings in 13 years, to the chagrin of art purists (Morgan Hill, Calif., March). (3) "God brought me down here," said Angel DeGroff, auditioning in November to be one of the competitors in the next round of the TV show "The Bachelor" (Hales Corners, Wis.).

In October in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Mr. Rosaire Roy was sentenced to a year in jail for hiring someone to rob his store so Roy could fulfill a sexual fantasy; he had arranged for the robber to force him to undress, along with an unsuspecting female acquaintance who was in the store at the time, because Roy wanted to be tied up naked with her. And in November, sheriff's deputies in Fayette County, Ga., acting on a tip, arrested Sandy Creek High School teacher Damian Belvedere, 44, who (using his webcam) was in the middle of a live Internet performance of fondling himself, nude, in his otherwise empty classroom.

-- News of the Weird has reported several times on men either killed or injured falling down embankments at night after stopping their vehicles on the side of the road to seek a secluded place to urinate. In September, Rick Schultz, 34, and James Esposti, 21, were taken to Punxsutawney (Pa.) Hospital after being knocked down when their Ford Ranger truck coasted backward into them while they were urinating at the side of a road.

-- The art of protest by sewing one's lips together is apparently becoming more popular. A 34-year-old man in Estonia, facing a charge of setting a Mercedes-Benz on fire, showed up in court with stitched lips in May. And in June, 50 refugees, held at the Woomera detention center in Australia, sewed their lips shut to emphasize their hunger strike as they lobbied for asylum. And a 39-year-old man from Iraq with bright red stitching on his lips was picked up by police from a city square in Zurich, Switzerland, in September (but he was unable to tell police what he was protesting, if anything).

-- A 1999 New England Journal of Medicine article warned that even putting a dead rattlesnake's head in your mouth can be fatal, and News of the Weird has run stories of men cuddling their pet rattlesnakes, particularly in conjunction with alcohol use. In November, Matthew George, 21, of Yacolt, Wash., was hospitalized in serious condition after the rattlesnake he was kissing bit him on the lip. Apparently, George was proudly showing to a friend the snake that he had found in the Arizona desert in October. Snake expert Richard Ritchey, asked by a reporter for The Oregonian whose fault the incident was (George's or the snake's), answered, "The one with the bigger brain," but he did not say which one he thought that was.

-- A leading British plastic surgeon said that human face transplants will be possible within a year (although the recipient would not necessarily look like the donor). And a woman named Kristina, 21, won the beauty pageant (talent, swimsuit, gown) at a woman's prison in Panevezys, Lithuania, but declined to reveal to reporters why she's in the slammer. A community redevelopment agency announced it was evicting 40 Hispanic migrant workers the week after Christmas, with no relocation assistance, so that Habitat for Humanity could build low-income housing on the site (Palmetto, Fla.). An inmate returning to jail from his day job at a recycling center tested higher than 0.20 blood-alcohol, gained by mustering last drops from all the empty liquor bottles he sorted (Charleston, W.Va.).

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

-- Inga Kosak won the first World Extreme Ironing Championship in Munich in September, beating 80 contestants (from 10 countries), who are judged on the degree of difficulty they can create for themselves in order to iron. One ironed while bouncing on a trampoline, another while surfboarding on a river, and another hanging upside down from a tree. Enthusiasts have photos of themselves ironing in remote mountain locations, where power for the steam iron must come from a generator (or a very long extension cord). The activity's founder, Phil Shaw, says he does it because ironing itself is particularly boring.

-- Two teams of Canadian engineers are completing their low-budget rockets and have begun seeking volunteer astronauts for a 2003 launch date to go 62 miles into space to win the St. Louis-based X Prize competition (which pays (U.S.) $10 million). The rockets (and those of about 20 other international contestants) are the "Cessnas" of the space industry, costing around (U.S.) $3 million to $5 million each to build. The astronauts will receive some training, but the engineers admit the adventure is hardly for the risk-averse.

Mike Rucker, running for county commissioner in Tallahassee, Fla., apologized for urinating in a voter's yard in October, attributing it to a prostate problem and not anger that the voter had moments earlier refused to post Rucker's campaign sign. And Republican Lamar Alexander, running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee, reportedly turned a hand-shaking opportunity into a hand-squeezing contest with an opposition voter who had mischievously slipped Alexander a Democratic brochure in Dickson, Tenn., in October. And Makinka Moye, running for city supervisor in San Francisco, was revealed by the Bay Area Reporter in September to have been arrested earlier this year for bludgeoning and butchering a goat on a vacant lot near a city recreation center. (Alexander won; Rucker and Moye lost.)

-- Clothing Trends (from an October Wall Street Journal dispatch from Seoul): an aloe vera bra and underwear set to continually lubricate the skin for up to 40 washings (from Triumph International in the UK); menstrual-pain-reducing pants (from the B.L. Korea Co.); Ki business suits, with charcoal and jade powder sewn into the armpits and crotch, to block computer-screen radiation and boost energy (from Cheil Industries Inc.); and "yellow earth" boxer shorts, with a sewn-in special soil that supposedly emits infrared rays that cut odor and improve circulation (from Kolon Corp.).

-- Michael Carroll, 19, of Norfolk County, England, won that country's national lottery (equivalent: (U.S.) $41 million) in November and said he hopes the money will be an incentive to overcome the life of petty crime he has led for the last several years (examples: drunk and disorderly, vandalizing a school bus, car theft, other theft, driving without a license). He cannot now celebrate his win at a pub, nor drive his new car, because judicial restrictions are still in force from his last sentence.

-- In October, Australian serial killer Ivan Milat complained to a state commission, asking the equivalent of (U.S.) $22,000, for a violation of his human rights. Milat, serving seven life sentences for seven murders, had swallowed some razor blades in a 2001 incident and now complains that prison officials' releasing his X-rays to the media was an invasion of his privacy. (Milat had complained previously about the air quality in his cell.)

-- In November, coroner Nigel Meadows of Plymouth, England, ruled that the 18-years-dead corpse of Edwin MacKenzie (known to locals as Diogenes) was actually the personal property of the recently deceased artist Robert Lenkiewicz and thus should go to Lenkiewicz's estate. MacKenzie was Lenkiewicz's helper for many years, and when he died without heirs, Lenkiewicz took possession of the body, had it embalmed, and used it in various art projects, and Lenkiewicz's executor is said to be considering using it in a memorial display of the artist's work.

-- In October, Virgin Atlantic Airways agreed to pay passenger Barbara Hewson the equivalent of (U.S.) $20,000 for injuries she suffered on an 11-hour flight when an obese woman sat in the seat next to her and apparently crushed part of her body. Hewson said the squashing caused a blood clot in her chest, torn leg muscles and acute sciatica, requiring her to be bedridden for a month.

Masters of Technology: Burglars hit the K Bros. Service Station in Everson, Pa., in November and lugged away the lottery-ticket machine, perhaps hoping to print themselves some winning tickets; a lottery spokesman said the machine only works when it's hooked up to lottery headquarters. And Baptist minister James Andrew Smith, 42, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in November for a September graphics presentation (to a logistic company) that he was making with his computer; he had clicked the wrong line and inadvertently called up a photograph of a nude boy, which led to a search that police said yielded much child pornography.

News of the Weird reported in March that jail officials in Arapahoe County, Colo. (near Denver), had inadvertently placed a 16-year-old girl in a holding cell with a man suspected of several sexual assaults (and, indeed, she said, he fondled her). In August, officials at the same Arapahoe jail inadvertently placed accused killer Edward Brown, 21, in the same cell with a witness against him, Martin Brewer, 21, whereupon Brown allegedly beat Brewer up, breaking his nose. (Also, in September, officials in Albuquerque inadvertently locked four men in a cell with what they thought was a sleeping man (but it was a woman); by the time they realized their error 30 minutes later, the woman had allegedly been raped.)

In September, Peru congressman Eittel Ramos, feeling insulted, challenged Vice President David Waisman to a duel using pistols (which would be the country's first political duel since a 1957 presidential candidates' fight with swords). And British motorcyclist Leon Humphreys, angered at a vehicle registration problem, challenged an unidentified bureaucrat to a duel with unspecified weapons (Suffolk County, November). And Omaha, Neb., contractor Art Dore Sr., challenged business rival Virgil Anderson to a boxing match to finally settle their ongoing disputes over municipal demolition contracts (although Anderson, in his 60s, is unlikely to accept, in that Dore is a founder of the Original Toughman Contest).

At dawn on Sept. 29 in Hood River County, Ore., a 58-year-old hunter was accidentally shot to death by another hunter (who mistook him for a black bear), perhaps made easier by the victim's all-black clothing. And a 28-year-old man stopped his truck on a road in the Mojave Desert near Needles, Calif., in September, grabbed some beer, and went hiking in the midday sun (and died of dehydration). And a 32-year-old man was killed in October in Santa Cruz, Calif., when he fell from a hotel balcony, from which he had been hanging while shouting to his friends, "Look at this."

Robert and Theresa Dolin pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of their teenage kids based on having given them Christmas gifts last year of marijuana bongs (Crystal Lake, Ill.). Ojibwe Indian Albert LaFontaine declared that his newly purchased strippers' club would be a sovereign nation and said there "ain't no way" the government can stop him (Elko, Minn.). Yenline Neil, 59, was convicted of smuggling about $110,000 worth of cocaine into Britain in his prosthetic leg, despite insisting that he didn't know the cocaine was there (Croydon, England). Evangelical Environmental Network (Wynnewood, Pa.) announced a national campaign to discourage gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles, calling its project "What Would Jesus Drive?"

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