-- While two co-appellants chose to have lawyers represent them before the Supreme Court of Canada in their challenge of their marijuana convictions, David Malmo-Levine spoke for himself, addressing the justices for 40 minutes on May 6, arguing that his right of "substance orientation" was similar to someone's right of sexual orientation. After his session (which he began by waving hello to the justices), Malmo-Levine revealed that his entire courtroom wardrobe was made of hemp and that he had taken a few hits of hashish beforehand. Said he, "I was happy, hungry and relaxed, but I was not impaired."

-- The annual World Pole-Sitting Championships began May 1 in Berlin (and if the winner is decided after Nov. 17, he will have a new world record). Contestants sit on a 15-inch-by-23-inch platform, 24 hours a day, and electronic sensors detect if anyone leaves the platform for any reason except for the 10-minute break every two hours. The event's organizer said the Dutch are the sport's "purists," that in Dutch competitions, "you don't get to sit on a board, and you can't come down (for restroom breaks)."

A juror in the recent London trial in which five Irish car-bombers were convicted was let go by the judge for inattention because she carried out spiritual rituals in the jury box while clutching a witchcraft book in one hand and placing the other, as required by the ritual, on the floor. And in York, Pa., trial is nearing for Matthew Turner, 22, who was arrested last year after pursuing a man for his adrenal gland, which he thought would bring a week-long high if licked or eaten; allegedly, he had stabbed the man in the side, and when the man escaped, Turner chased him relentlessly through town, knife drawn, until police caught him.

-- In April, when the Republicans on the New York City Board of Elections killed a plan to repair voting machines that had underrecorded votes in the 2000 election (with most of the unlucky voters being Democrats), Republican Commissioner Stephen Weiner denied that his party's disinterest in properly functioning machines showed bias against Democrats: "There are some people who don't want (their vote) register(ed), but who report to the polls for civic reasons."

-- Maximizing the opportunity to avoid detection, some illegal immigrants from Mexico choose to enter the United States through a desolate mountain-desert area east of Yuma, Ariz., but in May 2001, 14 of them died of dehydration in a blistering sun. In April 2003, their families filed a $42 million lawsuit in Tucson against the U.S. Interior Department for having failed to install water stations in the area.

-- At a May court appearance in Melbourne, Australia, to answer charges of unsanitary food at his Rajah Sahib Tavern and Tandoori Grill, Larry Mendonca denied that the moldy items that inspectors found were part of his restaurant's fare. Moldy relish and 8-year-old pickles? Mendonca said they were his personal foods, not the restaurant's. A bowl of chilis topped with mold? His. A moldy jug of salad dressing? His. Besides, he said, "It was scum, not mold."

-- Responding to a February incident in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in which a girl performed oral sex on a boy during a middle-school class (both were suspended), the superintendent and the principal wrote to parents: "Just like our country was shocked into awareness when never-before acts of terrorism occurred in New York City, our district was shocked into awareness when middle-school students engaged in indecent acts in the classroom." (The boy's parents filed a lawsuit over the suspension, pointing out that their son was a "victim" in that, when the girl started, he had no "legal duty" to resist.)

-- Pennsylvania's attorney general and prosecutors in Arapahoe County, Colo., made similar interpretations of child pornography laws recently in defending their decisions not to reveal information. The attorney general said he could not publicly identify Web sites he had ordered suppressed by Internet service providers because, to identify those sites would be "disseminating" child pornography. And the Colorado prosecutors refused to show defendant Joseph Verbrugge the 200 photographs it would use against him (as is required in all criminal cases) because to do so would be to disseminate child pornography to him. (In January, a Colorado appeals court rebuked the prosecutors.)

Convicted killer Roderick Ferrell, 23, asked for a new trial in March, telling a judge in Tavares, Fla., that he had an inadequate defense at his 1996 murder trial. Ferrell had admitted then that he was the leader of a teenaged, goth-outfitted "vampire clan" that often cut their arms open to suck each other's blood and which murdered the parents of one of its members. Ferrell told the judge this time that he had been seeing a psychiatrist in 1996, whereupon the judge asked who had originally told him he needed help; Ferrell replied, "The school, the sheriff's office, my mom. Basically the whole city."

Cat-hoarder Heidi Erickson, 42, had two Boston-area homes raided in April and May, at which authorities rescued a total of 112 sickly cats and found several cat carcasses. Erickson is one of the more aggressive hoarders on record, both for her proclivity for litigiousness (40 cases in seven years) and the circus-like atmosphere she created at a subsequent court hearing (during which she denied the accounts of numerous witnesses that the cats were ailing). She told one person her mission was to breed the "imperfections" out of Persians. Erickson said she was a victim of discrimination (epileptic disability, sexual lifestyle) and would challenge any eviction or any restrictions by authorities in Beacon Hill and Watertown, Mass.

A man escaped in February after robbing a Wienerschnitzel drive-thru in North Long Beach, Calif.; identifying him was difficult because he had smeared what appeared to be chocolate pudding over his face. And Edwin Lockhart, 48, had less success than that robbing a Sun Trust bank in Palatka, Fla., receiving a 10-year sentence in April; he was identified despite having stuck several sanitary napkins on his face.

In May, a second Indian mayor, Amarnath Yadav of Gorakhpur, was removed from office because "he," a eunuch, had run as a female but was declared by a court to be just an effeminate male and thus ineligible to seek a female-reserved electoral office. Also in May, the South African Rugby Football Union fined its Golden Lions about US$4,000 for momentarily having only two black players on the field, when league rules require a minimum of three at all times.

In May, a county human services procurement officer in Portland, Ore., mindful of the sometimes-quixotic needs of the agency's mental-health clients, included in a list of potential resource requirements a person fluent in the "Star Trek" language Klingon (but later said no actual job openings are envisioned). And in May, Microsoft's British division announced it was developing an Internet-ready portable outhouse with computer and plasma screen, to be unveiled this summer at various British festivals; Microsoft headquarters then told reporters the project was a hoax, but after consulting with the British division, headquarters conceded that it was a real project but said it was being discontinued.

Police chief Beverly Lennen instituted an advance-reservations system at the jail, to serve activists who wanted to be arrested protesting a visit by President Bush (Santa Fe, N.M.). The museum director who housed Marco Evaristti's installation, in which patrons were invited to turn on a live goldfish-containing blender, was acquitted of animal cruelty charges because the two unlucky fish died instantly (Copenhagen, Denmark). Five stowaways, having boarded a ship in Buenaventura, Colombia, bound for Miami, emerged joyously when it docked after five days at sea, but then learned that it wasn't Miami, that mechanical trouble had forced the vessel back to port at Cartagena, Colombia.

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

-- The prime minister of Latvia, Einars Repse, announced in January the formation of an anti-"absurdity" bureau to deal with the government's excessive "foolishness" and lack of order and the "laziness" of civil servants. The agency, according to a newspaper in the capital of Riga, now receives about 10 complaints a day and has made 460 responses, including referring seven to government prosecutors.

-- The Moral Authority of the United Nations: Dining-room workers at the U.N. staged a wildcat strike at lunchtime on May 2, causing the building's restaurants to be locked down, but what Time magazine called a "high-ranking U.N. official" ordered them unlocked so that staff members could eat (perhaps to pay for food on the honor system). What ensued, according to Time, was "Baghdad style (looting) chaos," in which staff members ran wild, stripping the cafeterias and snack bars bare not only of food, but also silverware and liquor, none of it paid for, including bar drinks taken by "some well-known diplomats."

-- Government at War With Itself: The San Francisco Chronicle reported in March that local priest and accused child-molester Austin Peter Keegan was able to avoid arrest for six months largely through government funding (i.e., the Social Security Administration, which continued to pay his benefits until he was arrested in Mexico on March 1). And prosecutors in Tampa urged a federal magistrate not to grant bail to accused terrorist supporter Sami al-Arian, on the grounds that if granted bail, he surely will flee the country; meanwhile, immigration authorities announced that they have begun the legal steps necessary, in the event al-Arian is granted bail, to deport him.

-- A March investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that it is the policy of the Social Security Administration (even in times of terrorist alerts) that when someone presents what is obviously a phony ID in order to receive a Social Security card, the ID is merely returned to the person and he is asked to leave the building. No document is retained; no report is made; and law-enforcement is not called.

-- Public Officials Gone Tacky: Detroit City Council member Kay Everett outdid colleagues who use the city's printing plant for mere personal fliers and business cards; she had the plant publish for her a 12-month calendar of herself, "Hat's on Me in 2003," featuring a different, fashionable photograph of herself for each month. And Rhode Island state Rep. Joseph S. Almeida was convicted in February of assaulting a repo man who was lawfully confiscating Almeida's girlfriend's car; Almeida's version was that the repo man voluntarily banged his own head into his truck's door three times, smashing his own eyeglasses and mangling his own face.

-- In February, municipal inspectors in Boston threatened sculptor Konstantin Simun, 68, with fines of $50 per day if he didn't soon clean up the eyesore that is his yard, even though he has repeatedly pointed out that he just happens to work in the medium of "junk." "It's my life's work," Simun said at a hearing, referring to the old tires, traffic cones, plastic milk and water bottles, painted buckets, old golf bags, a broken trampoline and other choice items. (For instance, he made a version of Michelangelo's "La Pieta" entirely from cut-up plastic milk bottles.) Simun's work was once housed at the prestigious DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park near Boston, as a "curator's choice" exhibit. (Noted Philadelphia sculptor Leo Sewell also works in this medium.)

-- In early March, as an edgy Washington, D.C., prepared for possible terrorist reactions to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Reena Patel, 22, and Olabayo Olaniyi, 32, were arrested at the Capitol as they sang and danced, with Olaniyi wearing a ceramic mask, and both with objects duct-taped to their bodies resembling the appearance of suicide bombers, but they maintained they were just artists. Said Patel, "We like to make things beautiful, to uplift, to make people happy." Said Olaniyi, "Duct tape is a hot item in D.C. I wanted my art to reflect what was hot here."

-- Prominent Columbia, S.C., surgeon Harry J. Metropol, appearing before a state legislative committee in April to argue that doctors shouldn't have to pay so much money in malpractice awards and insurance premiums, minimized the harm suffered by a woman (not Metropol's patient) who lost both breasts because of an error in cancer diagnosis. "She did not lose her life," Metropol said, sunnily, "and with plastic surgery, she'll have breast reconstruction better than she did before. It won't be National Geographic, hanging to her knees. It'll be nice, firm breasts."

-- The Cadbury company launched a major promotion campaign throughout Britain to fight childhood obesity by donating sports equipment to schools in exchange for candy bar purchases. For example (according to an April report in The Guardian), the company will donate a volleyball net and poles to a school if it hands in labels from 5,400 Cadbury chocolate bars. (In fact, a 10-year-old child getting a basketball for his school would have to play basketball for 90 hours just to burn off the calories in the candy he'd have to eat to get enough labels for the ball.)

Gerard Lancop, 58, was sentenced to nearly two years in prison for stalking a woman in connection with his psychiatrist-described fetish for women's coats (police found 236 in his home) (Windsor, Ontario, January). And Thomas William Hodgson pleaded guilty to harassing schoolgirls by either repeatedly stopping them on the street or leaving notes for them, offering to buy their cardigan sweaters, which he admitted he had a thing for (Christchurch, New Zealand, March).

News of the Weird reported in 2001 on the staffing problem of British circus knife-thrower Jayde Hanson, after his assistant walked off the job after being nearly hit in the foot, which would have been her third injury that season (which was the number of injuries an ex-girlfriend had suffered as Hanson's assistant before she walked off in 2000). In April 2003, Hanson was performing with his new girlfriend, Yana Rodianova, 22, on Britain's ITV program "This Morning," showing off his world-record form as a speed knife-thrower, but one of the knives hit Rodianova on the head, drawing blood before the live cameras.

Gary Lee Owens, 42, was arrested on drug charges in Stilwell, Kan., in April, even though police weren't looking for drugs when they knocked on his door. The police had received a tip that two fugitives were hiding at that address, and since Owens knew nothing about that, he matter-of-factly gave them permission to search the house but then added the restriction "everywhere but the garage." The police naturally decided that that comment was worth a search warrant, and later found the remains of a suspected methamphetamine lab.

Plymouth (England) University, with a small Arts Council grant, did not test whether an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters could produce the works of Shakespeare, but did test what six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys would do on a computer over a four-week period at Paignton Zoo in Devon. The Guardian newspaper reported in May that the monkeys produced about five pages of text between them, mostly consisting of the letter S. Said Professor Geoff Cox, they actually spent a lot of the time sitting on the keyboard.

An international organization of gay men who raise money for charities through drag shows came to the rescue of straight high school girls by providing loaners for those who could not afford gowns for prom night (Houston). Police blamed a traffic accident on truck driver Brian Anderson, who they said lost control on Interstate 75 while making himself a bologna sandwich (Burt Township, Mich.). A motorcyclist was killed on Interstate 95 when he crashed into a cow that had wandered out through a hole in a fence made by trespassers looking to get high from the mushrooms that grow on cow patties (Hobe Sound, Fla.).

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

-- In April, students at the all-women's Smith College (Northampton, Mass.) voted to replace all of the female pronouns in the student constitution with gender-neutral pronouns. Although males are not admitted to Smith, many students apparently believe that using "she" and "her" is inappropriate for students who were admitted as females but who later identify themselves as "transgendered." According to Dean Maureen Mahoney, a student admitted as a female but who later comes out as a male would still be welcomed at Smith.

-- Dr. Yogendra Shah of Granite City, Ill., was accused by a state regulatory board of performing an abortion on a woman who was not pregnant. In a complaint filed in March and reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in May, a woman said she thought she was pregnant, but wasn't (based on an absence of fetal tissue), and Dr. Shah failed to test for pregnancy before performing the procedure. (A newspaper database search revealed that anti-abortion advocates have been slow to take a position on this story.)

-- Criminals Thinking Small: An alleged February multi-crime spree by Victor M. Cardoze, 23, all started when he prepaid $3 for gas at Joe's Pond Country Store, then pumped $3.50 worth and pointed a gun at the manager before driving off (West Danville, Vt., February). Robert Boyer, 45, was charged with robbery after asking if he could buy lettuce by the leaf rather than the head, being told no, and walking out with lettuce leaves anyway, in front of a police officer (Little Rock, Ark., December). William W. Bresler, Jr., 56, was taken for psychiatric evaluation after he tried to rob a National City Bank of exactly one cent (Westerville, Ohio, March).

-- Giving Up on Their Own Terms: Stephen Ray Carson, 29, in a standoff with police, said he wasn't giving up until he finished the crack cocaine he had just bought with the proceeds of a robbery. (Police got him anyway.) (Panama City, Fla., January) Motorist Christina L. Willis, 36, who was finally caught by police following a 30-minute chase after she hit an officer with her car, still refused to get out until she had finished her beer (Fairfield, Ohio, January). Motorist Troy C. Stephani, 32, trying to elude a police chase so that, he later said, he could finish his crack cocaine, took a wrong turn and accidentally drove into the police station parking lot (Medford, N.Y., April).

(1) (Washington Post, April 11) "Mount Olivet Road NE, 1200 block, March 30. An animal control officer responding to a call about a snake in a bathroom reported that the snake was actually a hair band." (2) (Vancouver (Wash.) Columbian, Jan. 7) "A Vancouver police officer was sent to a home in the 3100 block of S Street ... when a woman called 911 to say a group of 30 cannibals from Yacolt were trying to break into her house. (O)fficers were unable to locate any cannibals." (3) (Grass Valley (Calif.) Union, March 30) "A Dorsey Drive convalescent facility reported that one Alzheimer's patient struck another Alzheimer's patient, but neither of them remembered the incident or wanted medical attention."

-- Some patrons of the Minneapolis Public Library have so freely taken advantage of the lack of restrictions on Internet usage that they have for years been openly viewing pornography, but also subjecting female employees to sexual comments and in some cases have masturbated at the library's computer stations. (These allegations appeared in a March lawsuit by a dozen female library employees, accusing the library of long maintaining a "(sexually) hostile work environment.")

-- Surgeon David C. Arndt, who made News of the Weird last year when he left a patient in the operating room while he ducked out to the bank to cash a check, and who later was arrested for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy, filed an application in February to tap into a state legal assistance fund for $15,000 to contest the latter charge, because he said he couldn't afford to pay his lawyer and he didn't want a public defender.

-- Convicted own-home arsonist Merle Crossman, 49, in an Ellsworth, Maine, prison, filed a lawsuit against Middlesex Mutual Insurance Co. demanding payment of $75,000 on the house he burned down, claiming that since he pleaded "no contest," and not "guilty," he is still entitled to insurance payments.

-- In February in Chichester, N.H., Thomas A. Barrett was fined $240 and given a six-month suspended sentence for his no-contest plea to creating a false fire alarm. Barrett told the judge that he was celebrating his 21st birthday at Jillian's Bar & Grill, and as he staggered down a hallway to the men's room, he mistakenly urinated on the floor and pulled the fire alarm, which he thought was a toilet's flushing mechanism.

-- A 35-year-old man was uninjured but his Jaguar mangled after he momentarily lost control at 70 mph on Interstate 15 near Pala, Calif., in January and drove underneath an 18-wheeler, with the car getting stuck under the axle and being dragged for a half-mile before another motorist signaled to the driver of the rig.

-- My Bad: St. Louis, Mo., judge Julian Bush admitted in March that a burglary suspect had been locked up for three months because Bush mistakenly signed a conviction order instead of an order for a hearing. And in February, Pratap Nayak was released from prison by India's High Court, nine years after he had officially been freed; Pratap and his five co-defendants had been found not guilty of assault in 1994, but since the other five were already out by that time for other reasons, court officials had assumed all were out.

In the midst of the national debate over fire codes in the wake of the February Warwick, R.I., nightclub disaster, fire safety consultant Philip R. Sherman told a Providence Journal reporter that toughening the codes was not an automatic cure because the codes will still be ignored due to variations in people's intelligence: "Clearly we have to account for dumb things (when we write the codes). Is wrapping the room in foam plastic the level of dumbness we want to account for? Or will somebody do something (even) dumber?"

Tobacco Kills: A 72-year-old woman accidentally, fatally set herself on fire while filling her cigarette lighter (Somerville, Mass., February). A trucking company was ordered to pay a $2.7 million legal judgment because its only employee smoking area was across a 100-yard, poorly lighted parking lot, where a 55-year-old smoker was accidentally run over returning from a break (Pittsburgh, Pa., February). A 42-year-old man died of head injuries caused when he opened the door of a moving car to spit tobacco juice and fell out (Mineral Wells, W.Va., March).

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was ordered to pay $165,000 and reinstate a former staff member whom it fired in retaliation for her having filed a work-related complaint. And authorities in Jersey City, N.J., declared an emergency upon finding 150 tons of rotting fish, lobster and squid in Max's Natural Foods Warehouse (abandoned, they believe, four months earlier). And Thailand's prisons department announced a contest in which inmates would vie to see which one had the most contagious laugh, and one official said that especially tense inmates would be urged to compete.

Thanks this week to Frank Roach, Michael Snider, Joe Donohue, Alexandra Shazo, Ted Lind, Kathryn Wood, Tom Doheny, Mark Seibel, Tom Preston, Aaron Shafter, Mark Terry, Christine Saum, Jana Hollingsworth, Bob deStafano, Jason Santa, Tom Teegan, William Carter, Andrew Smith, Paul Hirschfield, Thea Pratt, and Sonali Rijhsinghani-Sharma, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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