In March, at the latest trial of a former executive charged with looting his company during the 1990s, ex-employees of Adelphia Communications said that company founder John Rigas (1) was once taking out so many cash advances that his son (also an Adelphia executive) had to limit him to $1 million a month; (2) required extensive prodding to return 22 company-owned luxury cars after he resigned in 2002; and (3) in a familiar finding in cases like this, had Adelphia pay for a $700,000 golf club membership and the extravagant wedding of another son, Michael.

Junior-lightweight boxer Nate Campbell, a heavy favorite to beat Robbie Peden in Temecula, Calif., in March, controlled the fight and began to taunt Peden in the fifth round, even dropping his hands to his side, daring Peden to hit him; Peden then immediately knocked Campbell out with one punch. And in a December Boston Globe story about wild bears roaming Denville, N.J., animal control officer Meredith Petrillo reported solving the problem of one bear's nesting ("denning") underneath a homeowner's deck: Petrillo advised the resident to have her husband urinate under the deck (after which the respectful bear began denning elsewhere).

Catholic Cardinal Gustaaf Joos declared that only 5 to 10 percent of gays and lesbians are genuinely so and that the rest are "sexual perverts" (Brussels, Belgium, January). And the commissioners of Rhea County, Tenn. (site of the 1925 Scopes "evolution" trial), voted 8-0 to ask the state to help them keep gays and lesbians out of the county (but rescinded the vote two days later amidst heavy criticism) (March). And the Georgia House of Representatives voted 160-0 to prohibit piercing of female genitals, even of adult women eager for the procedure (March). (One sponsor, Rep. Bill Heath, when told that some women seek such adornment, was incredulous: "What? I've never seen such a thing.")

-- Four months after the universally followed gubernatorial recall election in California, Ken Blodgett, the president of the Ochoco West Sanitary District Board (Crook County, Ore.), was recalled by the voters (39 votes to 29), with the main issue Blodgett's having stopped payment on a $14.03 invoice for office supplies, which Blodgett said was not properly authorized.

-- In March, the Saunders County (Neb.) Board of Supervisors reaffirmed that it would not reimburse Register of Deeds Don Clark for the price of a sandwich he ate while out of town on business, even though Clark insisted there was money in his office's budget to cover it. The board said its own rules supersede Clark's budget and instructed the county attorney (who seemed to oppose the board) to hire an outside lawyer to deal with the matter.

-- And They Say Government Is Inefficient: When her 14-year-old son died in a farming accident last July in Beaumont, Texas (pronounced dead at 2:20 p.m. on the 31st), Melissa Devillier knew that the boy's Social Security survivor's benefits (from his dad's death in 1992) would be terminated, but government was startlingly swift to act. On Aug. 11, it told the mother that since the boy had not lived out the entire month of July, he didn't qualify for July benefits, and federal law required her to pay back the $1,025 July advance she had already received.

-- Toronto, Ontario, artist Jason Kronewald, 29, creates claylike portraits of celebrities, but using hundreds of pieces of used chewing gum instead of clay, according to a March profile by Reuters news service. He said he doesn't chew, himself, but buys gum and asks his friends to chew it. "I'm not into picking it off seats in the theater. I like the gum to be mine." His "Gum Blondes" series includes Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson.

-- Another Toronto artist, Istvan Kantor, won one of the country's most prestigious awards in March even though he (called "Canada's leading shock artist" by The New York Times) is best known for bloody performance art scenes, such as wearing the dripping carcasses of cats as a hat and posing himself in various positions to allow blood to drip from body apertures in a series that one critic said was a tribute to blood as "the spurting, contagious prima material of life." (Also, a February BBC News profile touted Madras, India, artist Shihan Hussaini's dedication to using blood to paint 50 portraits of his hero, a Tamil Nadu state official named Jayalalitha. At one point, Hussaini was drawing so much of his own blood that he had to hire a nurse.)

In Santa Fe, N.M., in March, after police recovered $46,000 worth of jewelry near an abandoned safe in a ravine, they concluded that burglars had stolen the 180-pound safe from a nearby home, taken it down the road and tried mightily to break it open, but failed, finally just pushing it down the ravine, at which point (unknown to them, because they had left) it finally burst open.

Corinth, Vt., farmer Chris Weathersbee's house was raided by state police in February and the 44 most-sickly of his goats were seized, leaving him 70 still residing in the house, which is outfitted for them with hay covering the floors to a height of about 2 feet (and, of course, including manure). Weathersbee, 63, told the Valley News (Lebanon, N.H.) that he personally only started sleeping in the house in January (because of the weather); before that, he had slept in the barn with the goats that couldn't fit in the house. An educated man with a nimble mind, he denied that he is a hoarder and asked authorities for more time to find a home for his goats, since he believes that any confiscated by the state would surely be killed (or neutered, which he said violates animals' "right" to procreate).

After a bout of heavy drinking, a landscape worker, riding home with his buddies, fell to his death while trying to urinate out of the open door of their car at about 25 mph (Croesgoch, Wales, November). And a 46-year-old man became the most recent to fall to his death on the side of a highway after stopping his car in the dark and searching for a place to urinate (but falling 300 feet off a cliff) (Columbia, Calif., March).

An Optimist Club (affiliated with Optimist International in St. Louis) opened in Baghdad, reported The New York Times. And Brazilian legislator Antonio Jose de Moraes Souza was removed from office for allowing a physician-supporter to hand out free Viagra at his campaign rallies. And from March 29 to April 6, there were no reported gunshot injuries in the New York City borough of The Bronx, the first such week in at least a decade and probably much longer, in that during the equivalent week 10 years ago, there were 30 shootings and 12 murders.

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

A 2003 British documentary, "Fat Girls and Feeders," debuting on Australian TV in April 2004, profiled an Arizona couple, "Gina" (once one of the world's largest women) and her husband, "Mark" (who has a sensual or psychological desire that she be ever-larger). Because Gina is apparently comfortable with her role, Mark is merely an "enabler" in the "fat administration" subculture, but more dominant men are called "feeders," who may even "grow" their partners by pouring liquid fat down their throats. Gina once weighed 825 pounds (with a 92-inch waist), but had settled down at around 400. The filmmaker's point is said to be that objectifying fat women is only somewhat more offensive than objectifying thin ones.

In March, a 62-year-old man was ejected from the Spring Haven Retirement Community (Winter Haven, Fla.) after he punched one resident (age 86) and bit another (age 78) in a brawl over his apparent habit of foraging at the communal salad bar for his favorite kind of lettuce. (His 80-year-old mother, also a resident, conceded that "it did appear that he was playing with the food.") And in February in Tamarac, Fla., the family of a 74-year-old man who died in 2002 after being sucker-punched by a 69-year-old man in a theater-line fight, filed a lawsuit against the movie house for not providing security, claiming there had been several other theater-line altercations between seniors.

Saudi businessman Saleh al-Saiairi, 64, who has been married to 58 women (but not more than four at one time), announced he would soon take two more brides and was preparing to randomly select the two current wives he would have to divorce (March). And David Boyd announced as a candidate for the Canadian Parliament, from Halifax, on a platform of marriage reform, specifically to permit same-sex, group and human-android marriages (March).

-- A 73-year-old retired electronics specialist sat for a long interview in December in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, patiently explaining that the $300,000 nest egg he had just lost on a familiar Nigerian scam was really the fault of "corrupt governments" and not the dishonesty of his Nigerian "friends" who had no choice but to ask him to pay ever-escalating investment amounts. The man repeatedly insisted that his "friends" couldn't possibly be scammers, but toward the end of the two-hour interview, finally remembered that they "never did really explain how they got my name."

-- Former Harvard professor Weldong Xu, who was arrested in March for his alleged scheme to bilk colleagues out of $600,000 to fund a bogus SARS research institute in China, admitted to Boston police that he spent part of the money on what the detectives recognized as a traditional Nigerian money-laundering scam, although Xu aggressively insisted that it was a legitimate deal. Said Detective Steve Blair, "(The Harvard professor) never caught on."

-- Todd Lorin Nelson, a 13-year employee of the Miami-Dade (Fla.) county clerk's office, was summoned for jury duty in April 2003, reported to the courtroom, and was quickly dismissed. However, according to police, he repeatedly called his boss over the next few months to say that he had been selected as a juror for a big case but couldn't talk about it (all the while drawing his $35,000 government salary), and it was not until October that the boss finally investigated, resulting in Nelson's arrest.

-- From a January "Parenting" column by John Rosemond in the Providence (R.I.) Journal: Reader: "I can't keep my 20-month-old daughter out of the dog's food. I've tried scolding, distracting, time-out, nothing has worked." Rosemond: "(F)rom a strictly nutritional standpoint (a nutritionist told me), most dog food is superior to the diets of many Americans." "(A pediatrician said) he has yet to see a child who suffered ill effects from eating dog food," except for chunk-type that might get stuck in the throat.

-- From a February "Ask Dr. (Peter) Gott" column in the Herald News of suburban Chicago: Reader: "(M)y grandson ... told me that his fifth-grade teacher (a female) instructed the class that hand-washing (following urination in a public restroom) is unnecessary; urine is sterile." Dr. Gott: "Bless your grandson's teacher." "As a general rule, the urogenital area is cleaner than most other body parts are, and it need not be washed nor should hands be washed after urinating." "You and I, reader, are the products of our upbringing. It's time to make a change."

Troy D. Nunes, 37, became the latest ordinary burglar to die at his crime scene. He broke into a Hollywood Video store in Quincy, Mass., in March by tossing a brick through a window, but a shard of glass remained protruding, and as Nunes was leaving, he accidentally slashed his right femoral artery and died of blood loss just down the street. However, another clumsy burglar is still alive (and was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, in March), despite apparently habitually cutting himself at crime scenes. Columbus police said they had found what they believe is his DNA in seven different burglarized stores in Columbus and Cleveland.

News of the Weird has reported twice on incredibly long daily commutes to work (a 25-year U.S. Navy Department employee, 342 miles round trip from Trenton, N.J., to Washington, D.C., reported in 1992, and a 39-year veteran rural West Virginia newspaper carrier, 200 miles round trip, reported in 1996). A January 2004 Boston Globe profile of retirement-fund analyst Stephen Jordan described his 340-mile daily round trip from his farm in Augusta, Maine, to his downtown Boston office, but unlike the other two, who drove all the way, Jordan drives only to Portland and takes a train to Boston (on which he "get(s) a ton of work done," he said).

Raymond Rodriguez, 25, was found not guilty in the murder of a 77-year-old drinking buddy after he testified to having, at the crime scene, hallucinations of bologna and cheese dancing around in the refrigerator and, in the freezer, a green man who told Rodriguez, "Catch me if you can." (San Antonio, December) And Patrick Hutchinson was sent for a mental exam in February after police in Lexington, Ky., accused him of murdering his wife. Hutchinson explained that she had been taken over by aliens and that he (as one of only 735 "true humans" left in Lexington, out of 260,000 population) had to stop her, using a weapon supplied by a cobra that was speaking on behalf of God.

An American Airlines flight was canceled after the local Transportation Security Administration official ordered a bomb search (which proved fruitless) based only on information that he said came from a psychic (Fort Myers, Fla.). And a Chicago attorney was permitted to withdraw from representing a 75-year-old alleged serial bad-check-writer after he sheepishly admitted that he had taken a check from her for his retainer, but that it had bounced.

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

As the Romanian government hurries to improve law-enforcement sophistication in its campaign for European Union membership, villagers in the Transylvania region are resisting police crackdowns on their traditional practice of vampire killings, according to a March Knight Ridder News Service report. Vampires (unlike Hollywood conventions using crosses and garlic) are just people who go bad upon death and cause continuing grief to family members unless they are re-killed. The body is dug up; the heart is removed with a curved sickle and burned (but it will likely squeak like a mouse and try to escape unless held down); and the ashes are mixed with water and drunk. Villagers are outraged that some may face criminal charges for disturbing the dead, which carries a three-year prison sentence.

Former judge Bob Sam Castleman and his son pleaded guilty to mailing a poisonous copperhead snake to a neighbor with whom they were feuding (Pocahontas, Ark., January). And an Absa Bank Ltd. customer, upset about a car loan, was charged with setting five poisonous puff adder snakes free in the bank's lobby (resulting in one worker being bitten) (Johannesburg, South Africa, January). (In October, a small, nonpoisonous snake was found slithering around a courtroom, in Danbury, Conn.; it was believed unrelated to the dispute being heard, even though that was a divorce case.)

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (69) Drunk-driving arrests of people who were leading public campaigns against alcohol abuse, such as Dr. James Billow, who resigned as director of a county alcoholism prevention program after being charged with DUI in February in Newark, Ohio. And (70) the jewel thief who ingeniously swallows gems at the scene but who is then caught by police, who must wait patiently for nature to take its course so they can recover the evidence, such as Kevin Lynch's swallowing a 2-carat diamond ring from a Salem, N.H., jewelry store in February (which he passed two days later).

-- Thinking Small: Mayor Herman Lee Edwards of China, Texas, was indicted in December for mowing the lawn outside city hall and then pocketing the fee that had been set aside for the yard work contractor. And police in Tokyo announced in January that they had charged two men recently with illegally hooking up to stores' electricity at night in order to power their mobile phone and portable stereo, respectively, cheating the stores out of the equivalent of about 1 cent (U.S.) each.

-- Police Reports: From The Recorder, Greenfield, Mass., Nov. 13, 2003: "A man reported buying a car and when he went to get into it with the intention of sleeping in it, there were three people, including the prior owner (a)lready sleeping inside the car." From The Leaf-Chronicle, Clarksville, Tenn., Nov. 6, 2003, reporting the aborted robbery of a convenience store by a man who pulled a knife and demanded money after he had already given the clerk his credit card to pay for a purchase: "The complainant (clerk) looked at the suspect like he was crazy ... the suspect quickly signed the sales receipt and left."

-- At a special Friday evening session of the New Mexico House of Representatives in February (on health insurance taxes), Democratic leaders needed Rep. Bengie Regensberg for a vote and sent state police to retrieve him at the motel where he was staying temporarily. Troopers reported having to subdue and handcuff Regensberg, who was naked, combative and "likely intoxicated." (Regensberg said the troopers were too rough with him.)

-- The Japanese navy created a TV ad in February to encourage enlistments and public support for its mission of sending security troops to Iraq. In the spot, according to a Reuters reporter, seven actors dressed, Village People-like, as sailors dancing on the deck of a ship, singing (roughly translated), "Nippon Seaman Ship, Seaman Shipo, For Love ... For Peace" and "I Love Japan, I Love Peace, The Maritime Self-Defense Force." (The ad is needed, said a senior officer, because "there are a lot of young people and women who don't seem interested (in the navy).")

-- In a December profile, The Washington Post examined the breezy American history curriculum being sold to schools by presidential brother Neil Bush (more in the news lately for his messy divorce). The course's premise is that future "hunter-gatherers" (i.e., rambunctious boys) don't have the patience to read and should be taught by music, graphics and other techniques. For instance, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is taught in a rap song, "It was 55 delegates from 12 states/Took one hot Philadelphia summer to create/A perfect document for their imperfect times/Franklin, Madison, Washington, a lot of the cats/Who used to be in the Continental Congress way back."

A pickup truck driver was arrested by an Indiana state trooper because its cargo was blocking sight of the license plate in the back window; on closer inspection, the cargo was revealed to be 900 pounds of marijuana (Indianapolis, March). And in Lafayette, Ind., Joshua K. Kochell, 27, was charged with robbing two gas stations; his probation officer was able to track his whereabouts precisely that evening because Kochell was still wearing an electronic monitor from a 2001 sentence for theft (March).

-- More third-world visitors arrived at Western airports illegally carrying in their luggage indigenous meats destined for family festivals. A 48-year-old woman from Gambia was arrested at Gatwick airport in England with 13 pounds of goat and snail meat and 172 pounds of catfish (March), and at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport, a whole smoked monkey was confiscated from a woman arriving from Cameroon for a wedding reception. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official said these airport seizures are "only the tip of the iceberg" of the illegal importing of traditional meats.

-- (1) The Trufresh company (Suffield, Conn.) said in March that its method of freezing lobsters for restaurants has resulted in a few lobsters, frozen stiff for hours at a time, reviving on their own. (The company ships all frozen lobsters with claws banded, just in case.) (2) A photo technician at a CVS drugstore in Advance, N.C., notified police in March when someone dropped off film showing two male employees of a local Wendy's, in bathing suits, frolicking in the restaurant's pots-and-pans dishwashing sink.

A 37-year-old man, angry that a car splashed mud on him, was charged with slashing the tires on 548 cars (Bournemouth, England). And a jury assessed a girls' high school basketball coach $1.5 million for aggressively hounding a player to lose 10 pounds, which ultimately traumatized her into an eating disorder (West Windsor-Plainsboro, N.J.). And the bad-boy artist who once put goldfish into blenders at a gallery, almost defying visitors to turn them on (and one did), used 780 gallons of red paint to cover a 1,000-square-yard iceberg off the coast of Greenland.

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