Autobiography of the Least Interesting Man in America: According to a 1996 Seattle Times feature, Robert Shields, 77, of Dayton, Wash., is the author of perhaps the longest personal diary in history, nearly 38 million words on paper stored in 81 cardboard boxes covering the previous 24 years, in five-minute segments. Example: July 25, 1993, 7 a.m.: "I cleaned out the tub and scraped my feet with my fingernails to remove layers of dead skin." 7:05 a.m.: "Passed a large, firm stool, and a pint of urine. Used 5 sheets of paper."

-- Joseph Kubic Sr., 93, was hospitalized in Stratford, Conn., in 1999 after he tried to punch an additional hole in his belt by hammering a pointy-nosed bullet through it. The bullet fired, ricocheted off a table and hit him in the neck. And four months after that, a 19-year-old man was hospitalized in Salt Lake City after undertaking a personal investigation into the question of whether it is possible to "fire" a .22-caliber bullet by placing it inside a straw and striking it with a hammer. Answer: sometimes (including this time; it went off and hit him in the stomach).

-- Tim Ekelman, 33, was hospitalized in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1998 with a collapsed lung, a sliced throat and voice-box damage after he, believing there was nothing to it, attempted to swallow a friend's 40-inch-long sword. (A professional sword swallower interviewed by the Hamilton Spectator said he would never stick a sword down his throat without first dulling the edges.) Said Ekelman's girlfriend, "I love him with all my heart, but what a jerk."

From time to time News of the Weird has reported on the fluctuating value of the late Italian artist Piero Manzoni's personal feces, which he canned in 1961, 30 grams at a time in 90 tins, as art objects (though, over the years, 45 have reportedly exploded). Their price to collectors has varied from about $28,000 for a tin in 1998 to $75,000 in 1993. In June 2002, the Tate Gallery in London excitedly announced it had purchased tin number 004 for about $38,000. (The price of 30 grams of gold at that time was a little over $300.)

-- In 1998, Charles Cornell, 31, won his lawsuit at the High Court in London, England, and was awarded the equivalent of about US$100,000 in damages. Cornell's insurance businesses failed when sales plummeted following his automobile accident. In the crash, he received a head injury that his doctors said left him with a gentler, more amiable personality that Cornell proved in court was unsuited for the insurance business.

-- According to a doctor's experience reported in the December 1997 issue of the journal Biological Therapies in Psychiatry, a 35-year-old female patient receiving a traditional anti-depressant was switched to bupropion, supposedly just as effective but without her regular drug's side effect of inhibiting orgasm. "Within one week, her ability to achieve orgasm and her enjoyment of sex had returned to normal," the doctor wrote. "After six weeks, however, she experienced (spontaneously, without physical stimulation) a three-hour orgasm while shopping."

-- Life Imitates a Rodney Dangerfield Joke: In 1996, Steven Hicks, 38, and his wife, Diana, 35, were sentenced to six months in jail in Cape May, N.J., for child abandonment. They had been having trouble with their unruly son, Christopher, 13, and while he was hospitalized, they had surreptitiously packed up and moved to Inglewood, Calif.

-- The Times of London reported in 1997 that when an employee of the James Beauchamp law firm in Edgbaston, England, recently killed himself, the firm billed his mother the equivalent of US$20,000 for the expense of finishing up his office work. Included in that amount was a bill for about US$2,300 to go to his home to find out why he didn't show up at work (thus finding his body), plus about US$250 to go to his mother's home, knock on her door, and tell her that her son was dead. (After unfavorable publicity, the firm withdrew the bill.)

-- No "Professional Courtesy": Marsha Watt, a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and formerly an associate at the prestigious Winston and Strawn law firm in Chicago, was disciplined in 1997 by the Illinois Bar over her then-recent conviction for prostitution (i.e., the kind involving sex, for which her published rate, according to a personals ad cited in her conviction, was roughly three times what the law firm was billing for her services).

Commissioners in Florida's Seminole County (near Orlando) and Manatee County (Bradenton) passed ordinances in 1999 prohibiting public nudity by requiring women to cover at least 25 percent of the area of their breasts and at least 33 percent of the buttocks, with highly detailed instructions as to the points from which each coverage must be measured. (News of the Weird includes this refresher for law enforcement personnel: The formula for the lateral area of a cone is pi times radius times slant height; for the surface area of a sphere, it's pi times radius-squared; and, alas, for a flat surface, it's length times width.)

Diane Parker accompanied husband, Richard W. Parker (who had been accused of drug trafficking), to federal court in Los Angeles for a hearing in 1998. According to friends, Diane was such a believer in her husband's innocence that she had come prepared to put up her investment property and her mother's townhouse to make Richard's bail. However, when the prosecutor recited to the judge facts about Richard's double life that included a mistress and a safe house, Diane's expression changed dramatically within the space of a few minutes. According to a Los Angeles Times account, she removed her wedding ring with a flourish, walked out of court, quickly drove to an Orange County office where the mistress worked, and punched her several times before being restrained.

Portland State University library employee Mary Joan Byrd, 61, admitted in 1997 that she had taken more than $200,000 over the years from the school's copy machines. According to the student newspaper The Vanguard, she asked for leniency on the criminal charge against her (i.e., stealing from the state of Oregon) based on the theory that she was just temporarily using the money. That is, according to her, she spent almost the entire amount she took to feed her habit of playing Oregon's government-sponsored video poker machines, and since she never won, the state got all its money back.

In Dadeville, Ala., in 1999, Mr. Gabel Taylor, 38, who had just prevailed in an informal Bible-quoting contest, was shot to death by the angry loser. And in 1998, the Rev. John Wayne "Punkin" Brown Jr., 34, died of a rattlesnake bite while ministering at the Rock House Holiness Church in northeast Alabama near Scottsboro. In a landmark book on snake-handling preachers in the South ("Salvation on Sand Mountain" by Dennis Covington), the legendary Brown was called the "mad monk," the one most "mired in the ... blood lust of the patriarchs." His wife, Melinda, died in the same way three years earlier at a church in Middlesboro, Ky.

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

Walt and Kathy Viggiano of Wichita, Kan., convinced Judge James Burgess to return their four children from foster care in 1999, following their removal because of excessive unsanitariness of the family's mobile home. Unlike in many such cases, Judge Burgess realized, the Viggianos loved their kids, had not abused them and had no alcohol or drug problems. Also, according to police who made the initial investigation, Walt and the kids seemed to have warm conversations, even though entirely in Klingon (from "Star Trek").

In 1996, Cambridge (England) University researcher Fiona Hunter, who studied penguins' mating habits for five years, reported that some females apparently allow male strangers to mate with them in exchange for a few nest-building stones, thus providing what Hunter believes is the first observed animal prostitution. According to Dr. Hunter, all activity was done behind the backs of the females' regular mates, and in a few instances, after the sex act, johns gave the females additional stones as sort of a tip.

-- In 1999, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., rejected another in a series of lawsuits by Donald Drusky of East McKeesport, Pa., in his 30-year battle against USX Corp. for ruining his life by firing him in 1968. Furthermore, Drusky sued "God ... the sovereign ruler of the universe" for taking "no corrective action" against any of Drusky's enemies and demanded that God compensate him with professional guitar-playing skills and the resurrection of his mother.

-- The March 1998 trial in the lawsuit by Lesli Szabo (seeking the equivalent of almost US$2 million against a Hamilton, Ontario, hospital) started with her testimony that she deserved money because her childbirth had not been pain-free. Physicians said that painless childbirth could not be achieved without the anesthesia's endangering the child, but Szabo said she expected to be comfortable enough to be able to read or knit while the child was being delivered. She admitted to previous run-ins with physicians, explaining, "When I'm in pain, the (words) that come out of my mouth would curl your hair." (After five days of trial, the parties reached an undisclosed settlement.)

-- If the Dogs Don't Growl, the Neighbors Can't Howl: In West Hartford, Conn., three years after O.J. Simpson was acquitted, renowned lawyer Johnnie Cochran defended two rottweilers accused of barking too much, but he lost the case. Cochran represented his friend Flora Allen (mother of basketball player and actor Ray Allen), whose dogs were the subject of numerous barking complaints, but he failed to persuade a judge to lift a 9 p.m. outdoor curfew on the dogs.

-- A jury in Birmingham, Ala., ruled in favor of Barbara Carlisle and her parents in their 1999 lawsuit against two companies that had overcharged them by $1,224 to install two satellite dishes. The jury awarded the plaintiffs a total of $581 million in damages.

-- Letter carrier Martha Cherry, 49, was fired by the Postal Service in White Plains, N.Y., in 1997 after 18 years of apparently walking her rounds too slowly. Wrote a supervisor, of the 5-foot-4 Cherry: "At each stop, the heal of your leading foot did not pass the toe of the trailing foot by more than one inch. As a result, you required 13 minutes longer than your demonstrated ability to deliver the mail to this section of your route."

-- Postal worker Douglas C. Yee, 50, was indicted in 1996 in San Mateo, Calif., for pulling off bulk-mail scams that grossed him $800,000. Found in Yee's garbage were notes he had written to God expressing gratitude for His continued help in evading police. Read one: "Lord, I am having a difficult time myself seeing you as a God who hides crime, yet your Word says that it's your privilege (or glory) to do just that."

Fort Smith, Ark., police arrested James Newsome, 37, in 1999 and charged him with taking money at gunpoint from the Gas Well convenience store. The robber's face was easily identified from the surveillance tape, and the coat worn by the robber was found in Newsome's car. Also, Newsome's wife said the family car had a radiator leak, and a puddle of antifreeze was found beside the store where the robber parked. And, also, the robber wore a hard hat with "James Newsome" on the front.

-- Electrical contractor Akira Hareruya, 36, whose company went bankrupt, had taken to working the streets of Tokyo in 1999, trying to earn back the money by inviting passersby to put on boxing gloves and take swings at him for the equivalent of about US$9 a minute. He promised not to hit back, but only to try to evade the punches, and suggested that his customers further relieve their stress by yelling at him as they swing. He told the Los Angeles Times that he averaged the equivalent of about US$200 a night.

-- Purdy, Mo., banker Glen Garrett, 66, got in trouble in the 1990s and by 1998, according to a Springfield (Mo.) Business Journal report, had spent about $1 million in legal fees to fight federal regulators who had fined him because he wouldn't stop doing business as his father had taught him, that is, by handshake, rather than by the required, formal paperwork. In one paperless deal, Garrett hired himself to construct a bank building, but that upset the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. because there were no competitive bids, even though an independent appraiser later said that Garrett built the bank for about $300,000 less than the market price.

In 1998, Josh Hempel, then 16, in Calgary, Alberta, became the then-latest person to be hit by lightning shortly after ending an argument by inviting God to strike him with lightning if he was wrong. (The subject of this argument was whether God exists.) He was hospitalized but recovered. And at the Bathgate Golf Club in West Lothian, Scotland, two months before that, Father Alex Davie was playing in the Clergy Golfing Society tournament when lightning struck the tip of his umbrella and then, when he sought refuge under a tree, struck that, too. He suffered a sore arm but continued his round.

On the morning of Nov. 11, 1997, two best friends, ages 27 and 41, residents of Whitney, Texas, about 25 miles north of Waco, did what they often enthusiastically did when they encountered each other on the empty farm roads: They drove their pickups directly at each other in a game of chicken. That morning, they collided at about 60 miles an hour. The younger man was saved by his seatbelt; the older man, unbelted, died at the scene.

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

Two child prodigies from India made the news in June. A boy named Bharanidharan, 13, backed by several adult disciples, declared himself a Hindu holy man and founded a monastery in Salem in Tamil Nadu state, until his parents had him abducted and brought back home. (A judge released the boy back to his ashram and will later conduct a hearing on his rights.) And Akrit Jaswal, 11, acclaimed as a genius by Indian and international organizations, recently spent two months at the Tata Cancer Institute in Mumbai, working with researchers on cancer and AIDS, and at the recommendation of doctors, Akrit's parents sold most of their belongings to finance a research lab for him in New Delhi.

Kenny Borger survived a one-car crash in upstate New York on May 1, but his passenger was killed, and Borger decided to surreptitiously bring the body home to Hamilton, N.J., in the damaged car and then figure out what to do next. What he decided on was to commandeer a backhoe one night from a previous employer, scoop up the body, drive it about five miles out of town, dig a 13-foot-deep hole with the backhoe, and bury the body. He was later arrested and charged with tampering with evidence. Said Mercer County prosecutor Joseph Bocchini Jr., describing Borger's plan, "I couldn't make this stuff up."

-- Clermont, Fla., police 911 dispatcher Lorraine Stanton was fired in May as the result of bad performance reviews, not even counting an incident on her last weekend. A woman called to report a street gathering that included a man wanted by police, but according to the 911 tape, Stanton was not helpful: "OK, that person would have to come to the police station, and we would have to check. When they come in, they'd have to bring ID." When the caller asked why a wanted man might voluntarily turn himself in, Stanton replied, "Ma'am, that's the only way we can check."

-- The mother of accused serial killer Maury Travis filed a lawsuit against the prison in May for her son's alleged suicide, claiming among other things that the architects who designed the cellblock made it unusually difficult for guards to peek in on inmates on a "suicide watch," such as her son. However, Travis' "suicide" actually revealed a remarkably focused man: According to news reports, Travis is said to have hanged himself with a bedsheet, but with a pillowcase over his head, toilet paper in his nostrils, a washcloth in his mouth, and his hands tied behind him.

-- Officials investigating an explosion inside Villa Hermosa prison in Cali, Colombia, in May (which killed three inmates and wounded 15) concluded, using the process of elimination, that the only way the grenade could have gotten into the facility was to have been smuggled in by a certain, unnamed female visitor earlier that day. According to a Reuters News Service dispatch, authorities concluded that she must have hidden the grenade in a body cavity because that's the only place guards are not allowed to search.

-- In May, the Columbus (Ohio) City Council approved a building permit for the Faith Christian Center ("On Fire for God") to construct a 52,000-square-foot commercial complex centered on an indoor skateboard park, and including a restaurant, arcade and pro shop, named Godz Xtreme Power Park.

-- A March Wall Street Journal story reported on the growing number of churches that have introduced services aimed at improving the lives, and chances for salvation, of parishioners' pets (at least in part under the belief that some former worshipers would return to church if it were more "relevant," such as by offering prayers for protection from fleas). In some places, clergy accompany parishioners to pet euthanizations, or hold "bark mitzvahs," or dispense Holy Communion to dogs.

-- In April, Rocky Sanchez, 36, a former civic award-winner in El Monte, Calif., was sentenced to 1,002 years in prison on 41 felony counts, including the rape and torture of his wife, with the long sentence reflecting the fact that any one of the counts was Sanchez's sentence-enhancing "third strike." Under California law, however, if his wife had died during the attack, Sanchez might have received only about 50 years. (That's because he would be subject instead to the capital murder statute and might have gotten life without parole, but then again, he might have gotten the death penalty.)

-- In Denver in May, a 13-year-old girl, who was sometimes taunted by classmates because she has a small right arm and leg from cerebral palsy, was threatened with a knife and had her hair set on fire by a seventh-grade boy, but after the incident was reported, officials at Martin Luther King Middle School sent her home for the rest of the school year (for her protection, they said) while the boy remained in class. (The school's interim principal admitted several days later that her staff had botched the investigation.)

China Daily reported in May that businessman Hu Xilm, who claims that a housefly in the food 10 years ago ruined a big business deal for him, has since spent thousands of dollars on an obsession to eliminate as many flies as he can; with help from a team of volunteers he recruited, he claims to have killed 8 million. And in May, white supremacist Ms. Karleana Zuber was arrested in Kootenai County, Idaho, and charged with spitting in a state trooper's face; Zuber was isolated from the other inmates for her protection because in her not-too-distant past, before surgery, she was a male white supremacist.

Serena Prasad, 22, got into a fight with her boyfriend in Turlock, Calif., on May 2 and allegedly stabbed him several times in the chest, but seeing that he was injured, put him into her car and headed for the hospital. According to a police account, while she was stopped en route at a traffic light, she realized that her boyfriend had not had enough yet, and she walked around to the passenger side, stabbed him again in the shoulder with a steak knife, and kicked him in the head, but police happened by, and she was arrested on a charge of attempted murder.

In June, the Oklahoma attorney general petitioned the state Supreme Court to remove District Judge Donald D. Thompson of Sapulpa based on recurring complaints that he used, during trials and other proceedings, under his robe, a pump device for enhancing masturbation, in view of court personnel, who complained of the "whooshing" noise the gadget made. And in St. Paul, Minn., a 43-year-old woman was arrested for an incident in which she bit her new boyfriend's tongue too hard during a kiss, slicing off a portion and, police believe, inadvertently swallowing it. (She told police she has had issues with men in the past and might have panicked.)

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