According to an August Washington Post profile, Maura Hall of Washington, D.C., has spent more than $25,000 (an amount which a United Nations food program says will feed 350 Third World children for a year) for a kidney transplant and post-operative care for "Lily," her longhaired gray cat. (Among the post-op procedures: weekly, $200 blood tests for the rest of her life.) Hall said she encounters hostility from not only those who disagree with her priorities, but also other pet owners who feel guilty that they can't afford such expensive care. (Also, an August BBC News dispatch from Brazil reported on the various cosmetic procedures available for dogs and other pets, such as wrinkle reduction, eyebrow correction and even full face-lifts, but which, fortunately, are less expensive than a kidney transplant, e.g., about US$75 to make drooping ears un-droop.)

Sales recently passed 1.8 million units for German inventor Alex Benkhardt's "WC Ghost," a toilet voice alarm, activated when the seat is lifted, which scolds a man who tries to urinate while standing up. It is a difficult sell for some Germans, though, in that a slang word for "wimp" (sitzpinkler) is, literally, a man who sits to urinate. The scolding German voice resembles Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's, and the planned British version might use a voice resembling the queen's. And in the Netherlands, artist Leonard van Munster outfitted toilets in an Amsterdam cafe with more versatile sensors, able not only to admonish stand-up urinators but to offer, for example, anti-smoking messages if it detects that the user is lighting up.

In August, The Washington Post profiled a staunch pillar of the community of Kalispell, Mont., Richard A. Dasen Sr., who is widely respected for the many good things he has done for the town and its citizens over the last 40 years. However, according to recent revelations, his beneficence is marred by one eccentricity (which has resulted in a criminal charge): In the course of counseling the many local women who have come to him for help, he has spent well over a million dollars (at $1,000 to $6,000 per episode) in gifts to some of the women in exchange for sex (including, allegedly, one who was underage).

In the village of Ceres, South Africa, in August, the family and friends of David Masenta staged a posthumous matrimonial ceremony so they could remember him forever as married to his beloved fiancee, Mgwanini Molomo. Actual marriage had become impossible because Masenta murdered the pregnant Molomo and then killed himself.

-- California's Budget Crisis, Explained: In August, the state legislature reached a compromise in a long-standing, intensely debated issue with the state's owners of pet ferrets. Though the animals are banned by the state as crop menaces, the legislation would grant legal status to all existing pet ferrets whose owners pay a $75-per-head fee. However, even though the state desperately needs the revenue, the money raised cannot be used for anything except a study to determine whether the state can tolerate more ferrets.

-- Heavy rains around Dunn, N.C., in mid-August pounded soap-based runoff from the H&H Products facility just off U.S. 301, creating an awesome wall of white bubbles at least 20 feet high that obscured not only Jonesboro Road but the telephone poles alongside. A few drivers tried to go through the mess, but most avoided it until firefighters cleared the foam to the side of the road with their hoses.

-- Three Michigan entrepreneurs, alarmed at continuing bad news about childhood obesity, have begun selling "My Kid's First Coach" on DVD, featuring exercise regimens for children, beginning at age 6 weeks. (The youngest work on "flexibility and muscle awareness," with the parent actually guiding the child through the movements yet familiarizing the child with the sensations, advancing in perhaps a year to batting a ball or walking to follow a piece of tape on the floor.)

-- In August, the International Paralympic Committee rejected quadriplegic British rugby player Mark Fosbrook for the upcoming Paralympics because he is too able-bodied. Fosbrook has no feet, and two fingers at the end of each arm, but he was rated 4.0 in functionality, with 3.5 the highest level allowed to compete.

(1) Michael J. Sterkins, 51, was arrested in Lockport, La., in July and charged as the man who, in five incidents, grabbed girls and women in cemeteries and cut off their ponytails. (One ponytail was recovered from his home, with the ends glued, placed underneath the Bible at his bedside.) (2) Among the evidence found in a search of Sung Koo Kim's home in Tigard, Ore., in June (Kim is a suspect in the disappearance of a female Brigham Young University student): 1,000 pairs of women's underwear, bagged, with some labeled as to which college dorm and woman it came from, and bags of clothes-dryer lint, labeled as to the campus laundry room of origin.

At an August hearing in Calgary, Alberta, in which four prostitutes testified against a 17-year-old male customer who had allegedly committed post-sex armed robbery against them, one of the four described the incident that eventually led to the youth's capture. While the boy held a dagger to the woman's chest and rummaged through her purse, he came upon her recent eviction notice, prompting him to ask her if she would like to rent the basement apartment in his home (and he gave her his phone number).

Once again, housekeepers at a museum mistook part of an art installation for ordinary garbage and tossed it out (this time, a bag of newspapers that was part of Gustav Metzger's "Re-creation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art" at London's Tate Britain gallery, in August). And once again, a suicidal man leaped to his death off a building but landed on a pedestrian, killing him, too (this time, in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan, in August).

In August, Kenneth Davis, 42, saw a wild, 6-foot-long blacksnake in his neighborhood in Lawrence Township, N.J., and decided to coax it, probably as a joke, toward the residence of his friend Michael File. Michael's father saw the snake in his yard and stomped it to death, angering Davis, who knocked the father down. Michael File came to his dad's defense, but Davis picked up the snake, twirled it over his head, and began to beat Michael with it. Michael File then grabbed a baseball bat and hit Davis just as police and rescue workers arrived. (According to police, alcohol was involved.)

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story?

(a) A judge in California told juror-candidates that if they were embarrassed to admit that they couldn't be fair, just to make up another excuse, and he'd let them go.

(b) Australia's tax agency signed up as a sponsor of this year's awards pageant for the country's pornography and prostitution industry.

(c) The insurer Lloyd's of London wrote a policy on a male model that would pay off if accident or illness caused him to lose 85 percent of his chest hair.

(d) A court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, approved the forcible implanting of a radio frequency identification tag in the arms of a man's two wives so he can monitor their whereabouts.

Thanks This Week to Mike Mendenhall, Karen Donofrio, Corey Newton, Melanie Collison, Shankar Unni, Leslie Stewart, Chris Knisely, Gary Goldberg, Larry Alexander, Joy Sargent, and Bea Westrate, 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.)

To publicize the use of fat as an alternative method of harvesting stem cells to grow new human tissue, Austin, Texas, plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Ersek, who is overweight, called in reporters in August to watch as he liposuctioned 1-1/2 pounds of his own fat from the left side of his abdomen. As Ersek (under local anesthetic) moved the vacuuming wand inside his body, he urged people to save their fat for the time (maybe five years from now) in which stem-cell work will be routine. (Ersek said he would leave the right side of his abdomen as is, to show liposuction candidates a "before" and "after.")

Judging by sales figures for two recent products, Japanese men and women have either too much free time or not nearly enough because now selling briskly in pet shops are ants and shrimp. The Antquarium is a six-ant farm that uses a self-sustaining nutritional gel instead of sand, and the Holo Holo is basically a plastic box containing five deep-water scarlet shrimp packaged in nutritional algae-water. Each sells for the equivalent of about US$30. One satisfied customer told the Japan Times, "As I live on my own, I wanted to have pets that are easy to take care of."

With cameras from the "Cops" TV show rolling, an Evansville, Ind., police dog chasing a gunman in a retirement home suddenly leaped on innocent bystander John Terry and bit his right arm before he was pulled off (August). And a 10-year-old Komodo dragon in heat accidentally plunged to her death off a wall in the London Zoo trying to get to her mate (August).

(1) Jacob Hadad and his "witness," David Mullem, were charged with perjury in Long Beach, Calif., in July after they refused to budge from their testimony in Hadad's challenge to a camera-generated traffic ticket. Hadad said he was forced to run a red light because a maniacal driver was chasing him, and Mullem, his "passenger," backed him up. However, the camera revealed no car chasing Hadad and no passenger in his car. (2) Similarly, Shaun Woodhouse, caught on camera speeding in Northrop, Wales, admitted in June owning a car of the same model and color and license plate number as in the photo, but said nonetheless, "It was not my car, and it was not me driving." (He was convicted.)

In April, the St. Augustine (Fla.) Record announced the opening of artist Andrea Giovanni's exhibit on behalf of The Betty Griffin House, a local shelter for battered women; eight days later, the same newspaper carried news of Giovanni's arrest for allegedly beating up her boyfriend and trying to run him over with her car. And in a feature in the July 2004 Smithsonian magazine on the work of ecology-minded architect Paolo Soleri, who advocates that people form smaller, efficient, high-density residential communities to help conserve the environment, it was revealed that Soleri himself lives on a five-acre ranch near Scottsdale, Ariz., housing a bell foundry and several buildings.

-- Searching for ways to convey law enforcement professionalism to the Iraqi police, Marine MP Company C in Camp Al Asad, Iraq, developed a costumed mascot, "Farid the Crime-Fighting Falcon" (patterned after the famous "take a bite out of crime" dog, McGruff, but using an animal they believe the Iraqis better respect). Cpl. Justin Weber has the easy job, putting on the falcon suit; his comrades have the more difficult task of explaining to their classes just how Farid fits into effective law enforcement.

-- Police in Niles, Ohio, were called to the house of a 50-year-old man in July, having received complaints that the home might be one of those increasingly common ones that the resident loses control of, littered with garbage and vermin and reeking of urine and feces. Zoning inspector Anthony Vigorito did declare the home unfit for human habitation, but gave the resident credit for trying to improve things: The man had gone to the trouble of installing a porta-john in the middle of his living room.

Palestinian Authority legislators disclosed in July that some local businessmen, aided by Palestinian officials, made huge profits by selling low-priced cement (provided at discount by Egypt to support its Muslim brothers) to Israelis at huge markups, even though they knew the cement was destined to be used in the controversial "security wall" Israel is erecting in the West Bank.

Bobbie Lynne Warren, 44, was charged in Nevada City, Calif., with several gun violations, and according to sheriff's deputies interviewed by The Union newspaper, it was a lively arrest. Warren allegedly admitted shooting at her boyfriend, Kevin Denson, because after 18 years, he still refuses to marry her (although she denied firing a handgun, insisting it was a rifle, in that she is an ex-felon barred from holding handguns). One deputy said Warren insisted that he tell her why no one had ever proposed to her, and on the way to jail asked him directly if he would propose to her.

Accused bank robber Stephen C. Jackson, 35, was arrested after violating the rule that a criminal on the lam should try to keep a low profile. He was spotted standing calmly at the Ultimate Car Wash in Lakewood, Ohio, on Aug. 18 feeding one red-dye-stained dollar bill after another into the coin changer, which bystanders found suspicious in that his pockets were bulging with quarters (about 1,800 in his trousers). Police tied him to the robbery earlier in the day of a Charter One bank in Cleveland.

Once again, a kid survived with minimal aftereffects after being impaled by a stake that completely penetrated his chest. (Jason Curtis, 9, was bouncing on a trampoline in Camanche, Iowa, in August and came down on the stake, which entered through his left armpit and barely missed vital organs, but he lifted himself off the stake and walked for help.) And once again a clerk (this time at the Fashion Bug store in Greensburg, Pa.) not only accepted an obviously bogus piece of currency (a "$200" bill featuring a likeness of President Bush), but also gave the customer back change (on a $99 purchase) (August). (Note: Yes, Greensburg is the same town featured in News of the Weird last week as the home of the accused toe-kisser and the middle-aged man who dresses as a cheerleader.)

In August, a sightseeing boat taking some society-type guests of the Chicago Architecture Foundation down the Chicago River crossed under the Kinzie Street bridge just as a bus passed over and apparently released its sewage container through the bridge's grating, directly onto the boat's passengers. Police subsequently charged a driver for a bus belonging to the Dave Matthews Band, but the band claimed its buses were not in the area at the time.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A Texas school board refused to allow a boys' hair-growing campaign to donate for wigs to support hair-losing cancer patients, citing school rules against long hair for boys. (b) A misbehaving monkey in India was sentenced to life in an official government monkey prison, joining a dozen other simians declared incorrigible. (c) A man in Seville, Spain, filed a domestic-abuse complaint against his wife for turning him down for sex for five consecutive days. (d) Its budget depleted until the new fiscal year in October, the District of Columbia government said the public could copy official documents in September only if they lugged their own copy machines and paper into a government reading room.

(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 unassuming town of Greensburg, Pa. (pop. 16,000, just east of Pittsburgh), was the site of two high-profile arrests recently. In July, James Kilpatrick, 21, was suspected as the man responsible for several toe-kissing incidents, including one underneath a public library table, when he allegedly kissed the feet of a 12-year-old girl and asked if he could kiss her liver. In September, Robert Domasky, 48, who cross-dresses as "Kelly," was charged with trespassing (and suspected of identity theft) after "Kelly" was found outside the girls' locker room at Greensburg Salem High School looking for the cheerleading coach. The 200-pound Domasky said he merely wanted her to teach him some cheers. In Domasky's apartment, police found cheerleader magazines and uniforms, pompoms, and photos of "Kelly" in cheerleader garb.

Self-described conservative Republican Larry Schwarz, formerly a legislator and parole board member in Colorado, was profiled in the Rocky Mountain News in August for his successful new career as warehouse manager and bookkeeper for his stepdaughter's pornography business. The stepdaughter had retired as a porn actress (name: "Jewel DeNyle") and formed Platinum X Pictures, Canoga Park, Calif., also employing her mother. Schwarz said he still believes in the Republican ideals of self-reliance, lower taxes and individual freedom, and believes also that he is perfectly well demonstrating "family values."

Under Manitoba courts' interpretation of Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, no part of a youth's sentence can be for the purpose of "deterrence." Consequently, Judge Ronald Meyers in August sentenced two teenagers (with 22 prior convictions between them) for three armed robberies, sending them away for eight and six months, respectively, plus some community service. Judge Meyers made the news in 2003 when he sentenced a 15-year-old who had admitted repeatedly, fatally beating a boy in the head with a sock containing a billiards ball to one day in jail (plus probation).

(1) Statues at the Vietnamese Catholic Community Church in Brisbane, Australia, mysteriously began to "bleed" on May 21, bringing pilgrims from around the world to see the "miracle." Even after the Brisbane Archdiocese declared the bleeding a hoax, worshippers defiantly continued to arrive. (2) And in July, a group of 52 breast cancer patients filed a lawsuit against the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago for the school's having discontinued an experimental vaccine program. Even though the school cut the program because it had shown no clinical benefit, patients continue to demand their "vaccine."

-- Acting on a drug informant's tip in 2003, detectives in Waterloo, Iowa, had a police dog "search" a car. The dog started to sniff, and then abandoned his post, but police took the car to the station anyway, where another dog sniffed it and signaled drugs. A search warrant was obtained, and owner Kirk Sallis was arrested for cocaine possession. However, in June 2004, a judge dismissed the charge, ruling that the impound was illegal, in that the first dog never "completed" the initial search, since the dog, part-way through the search, had run off to chase a cat.

-- From the police column of The Union (Grass Valley, Calif.), June 25, 2004: "A (caller) reported that he heard someone screaming and went outside to find a woman lying in the street. When he asked her if she was all right, the man reported, she started yelling at him, ran inside a residence and appeared to be smashing things inside. Police contacted the woman, who said she was just having an argument with herself."

-- LaTonya Finney and her boyfriend, Adrian Howard, somehow managed to become intimate while they were jailed, separately, in 2002 on robbery charges in Crawford County, Ga., with the result being the birth of a daughter, Adrianna. Raising the child has fallen to LaTonya's parents, Ronnie and Patricia Finney, who petitioned the county in July 2004 for financial support for Adrianna because they say the sheriff should have kept Finney and Howard far enough apart to prevent their mating.

-- In July 2003, Russell Weller, 88, made national news when he froze, with his foot on the accelerator, in Santa Monica, Calif., and plowed through a farmer's market, killing 10 people and injuring 63, in the worst of a recent spate of incidents in which senior citizens momentarily confuse the gas and brake pedals. In July 2004, families of two of the dead and nine of the injured beat the statute of limitations by filing lawsuits. Weller is named, but the main targets are the farmer's market, a local farmers' association, the Los Angeles County agriculture commissioner, the city of Santa Monica, and the state of California, all of whom were supposedly careless in allowing Weller to crash into the victims.

Neil Middlehurst, 49, who is blind, was ordered in June by the Kingston (England) Crown Court to refrain from behavior that had provoked numerous complaints from females who had recently helped him cross streets. Middlehurst's apparent modus operandi is to touch women affectionately as they walk, while involved in a short conversation he initiates about sore throats and "phlegm" (and the judge specifically forbade him from using that word).

During the recent trial in Brooklyn, N.Y., at which mob boss Joseph Massino was convicted of various charges, several tales emerged in testimony showing a less-than-efficient crime family. "Good Looking Sal" Vitale, who turned on Massino in the trial (perhaps balancing out "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, who remained loyal), admitted that Massino once got angry just before a hit when a nervous Vitale accidentally fired his submachine gun in their closet hiding place while waiting for the victims. Vitale sheepishly acknowledged that Massino immediately took the gun away from him and told him to go just monitor the door.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A South Carolina man robbed a bank armed only with a long pitchfork. (b) Thailand, attempting to acquire fighter jets from Russia, offered to pay for them with chickens. (c) Former weapons inspector Hans Blix, in an interview, said he accepted high-profile, dangerous U.N. missions primarily so he could meet women. (d) A Navy recruiter signed up a rural Alabama woman but then, on a visit to her home, also talked her brother, father and mother into the Reserves. (Answers at end of column.)

In New York City in July, Albert Salcedo became the most recent person to shake a stubborn vending machine, have it fall over on top of him, and then file a claim blaming the machine's owner. (Salcedo had received $30,000 in a previous lawsuit after he fell through a broken fence; both the vending machine and the fence are located at public schools.) And the parents of a 15-year-old boy who died after falling into the Crooked River Gorge in Oregon (because, said rescuers, he was jumping daringly from rock to rock when one broke loose) became the most recent plaintiffs to file a lawsuit blaming the death on those who attempted a rescue.

Emergency medical technicians summoned to the home of a grossly overweight woman in Stuart, Fla., in August had the usual problems removing her (inadequate stretcher, doorways too small), but there was a more serious concern for the 480-pound woman: She had not budged from her couch in several years, and its covering had become grafted onto her skin, requiring her to be transported while on the couch (and the couch surgically removed at Martin Memorial Hospital). (She died in the hospital, of breathing complications.)

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