-- British shock artist Damien Hirst, chronicled several times in News of the Weird (e.g., skinned dead cattle in copulating positions), told The Guardian newspaper in June that he had discovered a new refinement after giving up drinking. Said Hirst: "I can drink, I can take drugs, and I can produce art. But the art starts looking stupid." Once, he said, he wanted to cover a pig in vibrators to look like a hedgehog and call it Pork-u-Pine. His new installation, set for London in the fall, features Jesus and the apostles as 13 Ping-Pong balls bobbing on fountains of red wine, and another piece on the disciples features several pickled bull's heads.

-- On June 28, as Orange County (Calif.) sheriff's deputy Owen Hall was standing beside a car he had stopped, he was shot in the leg with an arrow. After Hall pulled the arrow out and reported to a hospital, deputies combed the neighborhood and finally located archer Tri Thanh Lam, who had apparently been practicing in his back yard when an arrow got away from him. Lam was arrested, but he went free two days later when authorities realized that he had committed no crime, since the state's negligent-shooting law applies only to guns.

-- Business is apparently good for "pet psychics" and "communicators" who not only claim to understand animals' emotions in human terms but work with a client base that has included spiders, an iguana, a snake, a skunk, a hawk, a camel and cockroaches, and can do most of their work remotely by having the pet stand close to the telephone (at about $25 for 15 minutes). The Animal Planet channel has a weekly program, "Pet Psychic," and newspapers recently profiled practitioners in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. (Revelations: Spiders mostly express interest in not being killed, and one French poodle's issue was supposedly the dog's having imaged everything in French instead of English.)

-- God's Been Busy: Christian Broadcasting Network reported in June that it was no coincidence that the Bush administration's April and May announcements to support a separate Palestinian state were followed by "the worst months of tornadoes in American history" (375 twisters in eight days) and other meteorological disasters; God is punishing the United States, CBN said, for supporting the biblically unthinkable division of Israel. And in May in Brunswick, Ga., after Mary Burgess inherited a cockapoo dog named Cindy and $10,000 to care for her, she told a probate court that God had recently told her she would actually need "$50,000" for Cindy; Burgess had figured expenses (e.g., $225 a month for haircuts) as even more, but said she'd accept the Lord's number.

-- According to a New York Times report, a 1985 New York law, passed to make sure medical-malpractice victims are adequately compensated from the date of their injury, requires judges to add mandatory interest payments to all awards, while other New York laws require the jury also to impose interest payments over the same period; that meant that in a 1990 case against New York-Presbyterian Hospital, finally approved by the state's highest court in April 2003, the jury's $40 million, interest-included judgment was automatically increased to $140 million.

-- D'Oh: When a pair of bald eagles at Kentucky's game farm in Frankfort produced an extremely rare (for in-captivity eagles) egg in April, officials destroyed it because to allow it to hatch would have violated their federal permit; a federal official said the Kentucky officials should have just shipped it to them. And in May, Laurie Hanniford, of Carlisle, Pa., was fined $352 for failure to file a state tax return in 2000, when she was 14, on total earnings of $316, for which no tax was due, anyway.

-- California's Got Issues: According to an April New York Times report, California has spent $13 million in education money since 2001 defending its deteriorating school facilities against a class-action lawsuit; the state argues that it is providing as best it can on a shrinking budget (which of course has shrunk by $13 million just on this lawsuit). And a California Senate committee revealed in May that misconduct investigations of prison employees proceed so slowly that an accused worker could be on paid leave for more than two years before ultimately being fired when the charges prove true.

Democracy in Action

-- Among the memorable recent local government meetings: In Shutesbury, Mass., seating at the town meeting was divided into those wearing perfume or aftershave, those who never do, and those who never do but forgot and wore some that day (May). In Chelmsford, Mass., the town council was split on whether to open the meeting with a Pledge of Allegiance and spent nearly an hour debating such issues as whether the meeting might already be "open" and thus could not "open" with the Pledge (April). And in Hutto, Texas, the council debated whether the mayor could use an economic development grant to buy a huge steel and fiberglass hippopotamus as a town business mascot (June).

-- The Speaker of the New Zealand House ruled in May that, though laptop computers are forbidden in the chamber, one member could bring in his carburetor and work on it, as long he didn't make noise. And the Green Party in Granada, Spain, for the country's May elections, offered a comprehensive platform that included issuing "sex vouchers" to give adults under age 25 local hotel-room discounts to encourage couples' intimacy (and safe sex and contraception) because most people that age still live with their parents.

In Easton, Pa., in June, Richard James Clader, 38, was sentenced to at least seven months in prison for a series of episodes on state roads 22 and 33 in which eventually 27 people contacted authorities to report that a motorist (identified as Clader) had driven nude, with the horn blasting, while vigorously masturbating. Clader told the judge that he believes his behavior stemmed from feeling neglected as a child and later by his wife, but said he is making substantial progress.

In Racine, Wis., in January, city and state officials knocked on Angie Anderson's door to inform her that they were about to capture a sickly owl in a tree in her yard, but she explained that the reason it appeared immobile was that it was a fake owl, purchased two years earlier from Wal-Mart for $14.99. And a consciousness-raising stunt by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals hit a snag in March at the Palm Springs Middle School in Hialeah, Fla., when PETA was informed that its sign in Spanish on its life-size cow prop, reading "Echar la Leche" (translation of their slogan, "Dump Dairy") was also slang for "ejaculate."

In 1996, U.S. Republican political strategist Roger Stone was forced to leave Bob Dole's presidential campaign when a magazine revealed that Stone and his wife had placed ads, with kinky photos of themselves, in swingers' magazines. In June 2003, British Conservative Party think tank executive Dougie Smith was revealed to be the founder and coordinator of the 5-year-old Fever Parties, which are upscale orgies held periodically in fashionable townhouses and country mansions, costing couples the equivalent of US$125 to attend. (However, Smith appears to be secure in his job.)

A 36-year-old woman drowned in a fast-moving river after jumping in to rescue her golden retriever, which paddled ashore with relative ease while rescue efforts for the woman were under way (Kyoto, Japan, June). A 26-year-old man was killed after he asked his uncle to stab him in the chest to see if a bulletproof vest would protect him (Lakewood, Colo., June). A veteran skydiver accidentally crashed into a veteran hangglider at about 4,000 feet, killing both men (Brackley, England, June).

A 67-year-old woman, outraged that Guinness recognized only an 831-gallstone-removal surgery as the world's record, said she would submit her 3,110 stones (from a 1981 surgery), which fortunately she has saved (Neustrelitz, Germany). In land-scarce Japan, the Tokyo city government started selling small cemetery plots for the first time since 1960, at prices ranging from US$30,000 to US$86,000. And career criminal Gary Cowan, whose latest sentence was up, confessed to three more crimes with the hope he would be allowed to stay in prison to finish a restaurant management course (Cambridge, England).

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

-- Motorist Catherine Donkers got a ticket in Portage County, Ohio, on May 8 for not having her baby strapped in, mainly because she was breastfeeding it while she drove. Rather than pay the $100 fine, Donkers' husband, Brad Barnhill, demanded a trial with himself as the defendant, in that his First Christian Fellowship for Eternal Sovereignty teaches that the husband must take responsibility for all of his wife's public actions. (That religion's principal focus, according to founder Christopher Hansen, is keeping "God-given rights" free of "encroachment of the Beast," which is defined as the government.) Barnhill said that at his next court appearance, he will make a citizen's arrest of the prosecutor.

-- Increasingly, chickens are being kept as pets in suburban homes, according to an Associated Press writer in June (though reporting with scant evidence). A Bala Cynwyd, Pa., family has nine chickens, which are "aesthetically pleasing," said the owner, even "cool." A Cedar Hill, Mo., woman recalled the 38 chickens she has had over the years and said "the best part" was "knowing them as individuals." Another Bala Cynwyd woman said her chickens are faithful in the way they follow her around the yard and are "very sweet. They give back."

(1) Life Imitates the Three Stooges: Providence, R.I., high school teacher Michael Dame was charged with assault in June when, being taunted by a truant student who had stuck his head in Dame's classroom, Dame slammed the door, catching the student's head inside. (2) Life Imitates the Movie "Carrie": Dorothy VerValen filed a lawsuit against the city of Sultan, Wash., for a broken ankle suffered when she stepped onto her father's gravesite at the town cemetery to clear away moss, and the plot caved in beneath her. (In June, the judge ruled it wasn't the city's fault.)

In June, the St. Paul Pioneer Press profiled counselors Lynn Baskfield and Ann Romberg, who use the technique of "equine-assisted coaching" to help clients like Mari Harris, who wants to boost her singing career. In a typical session at a Stillwater, Minn., farm, Harris would ride and walk a horse until struck with some dramatic insight on how to achieve show-business success. Said Romberg, "It's much less difficult to accept feedback from a horse than a human." Another client said that when his usually passive horse suddenly sped up in a frenzy, "It got me thinking." "I (had) let (my) business lead me," he realized, apparently for the first time, and thus started drawing a better balance between work and family.

-- Tacky People's Rights: Among the more effortless budget cuts this year proposed by California (which is facing a near-catastrophic financial crisis) was $400,000 by ending the free stocking of trout in 10 Los Angeles County lakes, but local fishermen went nuts and got the county Board of Supervisors to denounce the cut. And when Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ended a longtime giveaway program this year, of free golf privileges for 15 local ministers, several black minister-golfers were incensed, like Rev. James Allen, who said, "I don't want to make it a racial thing, but it seemed like that's what it was."

-- New Frontiers in PC: Sal Santana II, 12, was suspended for three days from an El Paso, Texas, middle school for sexual harassment after sticking his tongue out at a girl who said she wouldn't be his girlfriend. And the Leander, Texas, school board voted in June to prohibit students from "teasing." And Britain's National Society for Epilepsy said in April it had received several inquiries from teachers in training who had been instructed to avoid the term "brainstorming," as offensive to epileptics (substitute: "thought shower") (but the society said brainstorming was OK).

-- Just Can't Stop Myself: Investigatory work by a scorned woman turned up more than 50 others who were victims of the same man, 29-year veteran U.S. Army Col. Kassem Saleh (most recently stationed in Afghanistan), who struck up e-mail romances with the women and wrote "the most intoxicating love letters" one woman had ever read while assuring her (while also assuring others) that they would soon marry. The 5-foot-10 Saleh created at least one skeptical woman, though: Saleh had claimed to be 6-foot-5, but when a first-meeting date with the woman neared, he wrote that he had shrunk about 5 inches due to repeated parachute jumps. Saleh issued a public apology to the women after The New York Times outed him.

-- In 1998, Barbara Downey killed her 7-year-old daughter with two execution-style shots to the back of the head, and she was committed to a state mental hospital; in March 2003, doctors concluded that she is no longer mentally ill, and she was released. And Johnnie Eugene Maxwell, 56, accused of killing his father in 2001, was freed in June after a judge in Hillsborough, N.C., concluded that a stroke had left Maxwell cognitively unable to defend himself at trial (in that he can only speak three words: yes, no and a certain cussword); Maxwell could not be sent to a mental hospital, either, because he is not currently insane or a threat to himself or others.

-- Anthony Perks, an endocrinologist and professor of gynecology at the University of British Columbia, reporting in the July issue of Discover magazine, set out his unique theory of the symbolic meaning of the prehistoric Stonehenge monument in England: The paired, capped stones (one smooth, one rough) represent the female's smooth skin as against the male's rough skin, and the smooth stones match the locations of the vulva's labia minora and labia majora, with an altar stone in the position of the clitoris. "Stonehenge," he said, "could represent the opening by which the earth mother gave birth to the plants and animals on which ancient people so depended."

America's most underrated highway safety problem appears to be senior drivers who mistakenly step on the accelerator instead of the brake: Henry Clax, 78, Jersey City, N.J. (hit three lampposts and then 13 people coming out of a Jehovah's Witnesses assembly, April); Marcella Stahly, 63, Albuquerque (tore through the front wall of a fruit market, March); Ms. Nahid Nainzadeh, 64, New Fairfield, Conn. (plowed halfway into a bank, April); Leonard Borok, 81, Coral Springs, Fla. (crashed through the front window of a post office, May); Waunona Reed, 85, Crescent City, Ore. (struck 26 people leaving an Assembly of God church, January).

-- A suspected burglar in Albany, Ore., apparently escaped in June after failing in his quest to break into a warehouse, but he left behind his bolt cutters, some burned clothing and part of his scalp. Police said the man had attempted to cut through a 480-volt line and probably had "severe" burns.

-- The burglar who is captured because his tracks lead away from a crime scene in the mud or snow is a story category previously identified as No Longer Weird. However, in May, Albert Jackson Dowdy, 22, in Grants Pass, Ore., took incompetence to a new level. According to police, he tried to smash a glass door with a paint can, but the can broke open. Dowdy eventually got into the home, said police (total take: a can of tuna fish and a box of oatmeal), but on his way out stepped in the spilled paint and created tracks to a nearby motel, where police eventually arrested him.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress released in June revealed that Washington, D.C., students score the lowest in the country in reading, even though the system spends more money per pupil than 49 states do, and even though teacher salaries are among the highest in the nation. And Washington, D.C.'s, Options Public Charter School replaced its principal, Clarence Edward Dixon, in May after learning that he is a felon with a long arrest record and in fact had been reporting to work daily wearing an ankle monitor as a condition of probation for credit-card fraud.

A couple said the reason why their 18-month-old son survived a five-story fall out of an unscreened window, with only a broken leg, was because he landed on his loaded diaper (Ottawa, Ontario). A Roman Catholic priest blessed his town's beauty pageant, a preliminary to Miss Italy, saying, "Beauty is never embarrassing, for it is a gift from the Lord" (Civita Castellana, Italy). Taxpayers in Manchester, England, learned they were paying for an Urdu-speaking translator because a newly elected city councilman from a Pakistani neighborhood barely speaks English.

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

-- Retailers in Los Angeles, New York and Miami say more and more young, urban, heterosexual men are choosing to dress in women's tight, low-slung jeans and to use stylish lotions, fragrances and hair-care colors and products, according to June reports in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Some marketers call men who are eager to embrace their feminine sides "Metrosexuals" and point to English soccer star David Beckham (who braids his hair and paints his fingernails) as an icon. On July 15, the Bravo cable channel will air a makeover show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

-- A man who was hit by lightning at a Cincinnati amusement park two years ago (who survived, but with brain damage) filed a lawsuit in June against the park. According to the man's lawyer, Drake Ebner, the man somehow did not already know enough about how serious lightning storms are and the park management was negligent in not warning him against heading for his car, where he was struck.

(1) To publicize an April 1 town festival near Cedar City, Utah, the mayor dreamed up a fanciful narrative: that a 10th-century, Viking-discovered island had been carried ashore by a Pacific Ocean volcano, to a point near what is now Cedar City, and by a 19th-century treaty, the U.S. had swindled the Vikings out of ownership of the island's artifacts, allowing Vikings only the privilege of the April festival. Everyone took the story in good spirit until several residents of nearby St. George grimly wrote the mayor claiming to be Viking descendants and demanding "their" artifacts back. When the mayor told them it was a joke, the claimants accused the mayor of a coverup. (2) And elected as sheriff of Aiken County, S.C., in May was a fellow named Mike Hunt, whose campaign slogan was "Mike Hunt / Accessible for You."

Anthony Scott Ward, 40, and Melissa Coleman, 27, were arrested in Prestonburg, Ky., following a Memorial Day incident at a playground (with kids nearby), in which Coleman was bound face down on a picnic table, being paddled by Ward with a boat oar, in what authorities described as consensual "foreplay." Police recovered a cache of bondage items from the couple, including ceremonial hoods, handcuffs, prosthetic sexual tools, ropes, chains, collars, clamps, vibrating devices, lubricants and a cattle prod.

-- In May, battered wife Elizabeth Rudavsky stabbed to death her severely abusive husband of seven months, Angelo Heddington, in Thedford, Ont., but to Rudavsky's shock, Heddington was soon identified as a woman (who had long ago adopted male mannerisms and dress). A former Heddington girlfriend, who had discovered the secret earlier, told a reporter, "(Heddington) had soft hands, but she spit like a guy. The whole time you were talking to her, she'd have her hands in her pockets playing with herself like she was a guy."

-- London's Daily Mirror revealed in May that "Dr. Death" Harold Shipman, serving a life sentence for killing 15 older patients (and perhaps as many as 200 more), had somehow been allowed to assist sick prisoners in the hospital wing of England's Frankland jail in Durham County. Said one prison source, "This man has spent his career secretly killing (people). Just imagine some poor guy's face when he looks up from his wheelchair and sees Dr. Death is pushing it."

-- In May the U.S. Supreme Court let stand an Iowa Supreme Court order that the Interstate Power Co. should pay a family $700,000 because stray voltage had been juicing up their farm's cows. Daniel and Coleen Martins said that, because of a nearby power substation, their cows had been kicking off their milkers, swinging from side to side, and "dancing," to the detriment of their milk production.

-- One beneficiary of Oregon's budget woes, according to an April report in the Salem Statesman Journal, is Jose Leonidas Selva Jr., who had just been arrested behind the wheel of a stolen car, his third arrest in two months. As in the previous arrests, Selva was summarily released two days later because Oregon had no money to pay a public defender to represent him. The limited defense funds were to be used for suspects in violent crimes, and by his third arrest, Selva knew that: "I figured, they're just going to release me. They're not going to hold me. I'm just going to keep doing it." Selva was ordered to return after July 1, when new budget money is supposedly available.

-- According to a May lawsuit filed against the all-girls Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, Conn., Catholic Sister Linda Cusano repeatedly wrestled a student to the floor in a secluded office in incidents in 1991 and 1992, for sexual purposes and to impress upon the student that she needed to join the convent upon graduation and submit herself to God. Cusano was known by students as "the recruiter" because of her aggressive (but more mainstream) encouragement toward sisterhood.

Police in Scotia, N.Y., arrested Malinda Kelly in March on several charges but only after they had scurried around for several hours trying to find her "stolen" car and her 3-month-old son, who was inside. The next day, Kelly's story fell apart. Actually, said police, she had forgotten where she had left the car, which was idling, with the child inside, while she ran down the street to burglarize her uncle's home. (She came away with some money, but meanwhile lost her own money when a stranger took her purse from the idling car.)

Illinois became the latest state to propose a ban on having one's tongue aesthetically split, reptile-like (unless done by a doctor or dentist). But the move is unpopular among devotees. "When I first saw it, I thought tongue-splitting was the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life," said satisfied splittee James Keen, who spoke to an Associated Press reporter, who observed that Keen "now speaks with a slight lisp." Said another splitee, who said he could now do party tricks like picking up a pencil with the two halves, "It's done to better yourself."

Jessica Parks graduated from high school in Oakland County, Mich., in May, with high grades, a varsity letter in cheerleading, and other entirely typical achievements of high-performing teens, all done without benefit of arms, which she has been without since birth. Among her special skills: putting her contact lenses in with her toes, and driving her car with no special equipment, just one foot on the gas and one on the steering wheel. And in June, NewsChannel 4 in Oklahoma City featured Laura Stringfellow's dog Faith, whose front legs failed to develop and so now, at age seven months, has learned to walk and chase cats while on her hind legs.

(1) CBS News reported in May that while 90 percent of gun purchasers go through instant criminal background checks on an FBI database, the State Department's list of known foreign terrorists is not yet on the database. (2) At Pittsburgh International Airport in May, a 21-year-old mental patient almost effortlessly penetrated several security barriers until he was able to board an empty passenger jet on the runway. (3) A June General Accounting Office report found that as many as 30 suspected terrorists whose visas have been revoked may still be in the United States because of the State Department's laxness in notifying Justice Department agencies.

A Southport, England, driver showed a judge a note from his doctor certifying that a blood clot had erased his short-term memory and thus that his 30 parking tickets should be dismissed because he can never remember where he parked. The Texas Legislature passed a bill to ban doctors' performing surgery while intoxicated, except in an emergency. Officials in Lagos, Nigeria, announced that people ticketed for driving recklessly to avoid the city's notorious gridlock will not be able to drive again until certified "mentally sound" by a psychiatric clinic.

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