"Anal-wart researcher" (visual inspection being the only way to detect anal cancer from the human papillomavirus) heads Popular Science magazine's second annual November list of the worst jobs in science. However, "worm parasitologist" can be just as challenging, especially for anyone studying the Dracunculus medinensis (which can settle in humans to a length of 3 feet and then must be removed carefully after its thousands of offspring burst through the skin). Other contenders: "tampon squeezer" for the study of vaginal infections; a Lyme-disease "tick attractor" (who must sing, to keep bears away, while trolling in the woods); and "monitors" at warm-climate landfills (where garbage has been reduced to steamy, liquid condensates).

Perhaps the strangest election result this year was in Orange County, Calif., where a school board seat went not to the favored establishment candidate but to an unknown, Steve Rocco, who never campaigned or even appeared in public. (He did tell a friend after the election that he would appear at the board meeting on Dec. 9.) Among the little information known about him: His candidate registration included one page of (according to the Los Angeles Times) "densely typed text cut and pasted together, and filled with rambling prose," and several years ago, he hosted a 17-episode interview series on public-access TV while wearing dark glasses.

In November, four University of Memphis basketball players, who share an apartment on campus, reported a break-in, with items missing (according to the police report obtained by WPTY-TV) including $6,000 worth of shoes, $4,000 of custom-made shirts, $6,000 of trousers and $40,000 of mink coats.

(1) The September nomination of Michael Kostiw as executive director of the CIA was withdrawn almost immediately when The Washington Post revealed that he, while in a previous stint with the agency, had been caught shoplifting a $2.13 package of bacon from a Langley, Va., grocery store. (2) While demonstrations about Iraq usually either support the troops or criticize U.S. involvement, a group of porn-video actresses staged an idiosyncratic protest in August in Los Angeles, denouncing the U.S. military for offering breast implants to female soldiers (as a way to help keep combat surgeons sharp for battle-related plastic surgery). (One sign read, "Honk if you love natural breasts.")

-- Asking for Trouble From the Spirits: Kenneth Rabalais, 19, was charged with desecrating a grave in a suburb of New Orleans after he opened the crypt of a young relative, believing that other relatives had buried "tribute" money and drugs to help ease the deceased's transition to the afterworld. (Apparently, the deceased left un-tributed.) And in Hawaii, Wal-Mart opened a store in October despite warnings that it had been built on an ancient grave site (and, indeed, the remains of 44 bodies turned up during construction). (Wal-Mart said it is protecting the remains while it seeks state approval to re-bury them.)

-- Colin Hancock, a convicted drug dealer serving time in Perth Prison in Scotland, filed a lawsuit in October, asking the equivalent of about US$55,000 because of an improper rectal exam (responding to his symptom of urine blockage) given by a prison physician. Dr. Alexander MacFarlane said he was forced to use, as lubricant, milk from a bowl of porridge because that was all the prison had on hand.

-- In August, a pilot, cruising over Forest Grove, Ore., on assignment, reached out the window to scatter the cremated ashes of a man over the Mountain View Memorial Gardens, but the 4-pound bag slipped out of his hand, eventually crashing through the roof of Barbara Vreeland, who lives near the cemetery. The deceased's family paid for the damage, but Vreeland later told a reporter, "I think some of (him) is still in our attic."

-- The child pornography collections allegedly belonging to two men were inadvertently exposed in separate incidents in October. Robert Medvee was arrested in Frederick, Md., on 96 counts after workers spotted a stash as they were making repairs on his home following recent tornado damage. And part of the collection of the late Todd Darow was spotted by police, who had gone to his home in Livonia, Mich., to inform his widow that Darow's body had been found (at a church where he was a part-time custodian). (A search of the house turned up a more extensive holding, including videotapes of children being molested in the church restroom.)

In October, Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear research officials evicted Roy M. Moore, 56, who had been living for years, apparently undetected, in a hard-to-access cave on the grounds (though not in a high-security area of the property). Moore had equipped his cave with a wood-burning stove, solar panels, a bed, a glass door and satellite radio. And in Houston in October, police calling at the home of Ronnie Luhn, 37, regarding the theft of a newspaper vending box, arrested him after finding 181 of them crammed floor-to-ceiling in the one-bedroom house he shared with his wife and three children.

(1) Frances Lea Shaw, 41, was charged with arson of her home in Greensburg, Pa., in August after police and firefighters discovered that her most valuable household items (clothes, TV set, microwave oven) had already been placed in the yard under a heavy tarp by the time they arrived at her burning home. (2) John DeWitt, 18, fled from a security guard at the Orlando Ale House (Orlando, Fla.) in September after the guard suspected he was about to burglarize the building, but DeWitt's flight ended when he climbed into what he thought was a garbage can in order to hide but which turned out to be discarded restaurant grease.

News of the Weird reported in 2002 on a rooftop brawl in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre (under joint control of six Christian faiths, whose adherents sometimes get snippy with each other), when a cleric placed a chair in an area reserved for another faith. In September 2004, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox clerics had a fistfight (resulting in at least five injuries) after a Catholic left a door open during an Orthodox service. (Coincidentally, on almost the same day in Bedford, Ohio, police said that more than 100 Sikhs were involved in a brawl over proper clerical dress at the Guru Gobind Singh Sikh Temple.)

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A California Highway Patrol officer ticketed the operator of a Jeep off-road vehicle driving on Interstate 5 while tending to two hamburgers cooking on a portable grill. (b) A Texas state representative had his house and yard toilet-papered by a group of adult women who were supporting his opponent. (c) A Louisiana man arrested for indecent exposure confessed to police his longstanding hobby of photographing himself nude in unusual locations. (d) Police called to a Utah man's house to stop him from slitting his wrists also found the man's mother trying to commit suicide by automobile exhaust in the garage.

In October, with the homeowner away on vacation, Beverly Valentine, 54, broke into a house in Douglasville, Ga., and made herself totally at home, commandeering owner Beverly Mitchell's clothes, having the utilities changed to her name, ripping out carpeting, having a new washer and dryer installed, and painting a room, among other changes. When Mitchell returned after 17 days in Greece, she was of course dumbfounded that her key wouldn't work. Valentine has not yet explained, but a former neighbor said she has had some "problems."

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

New Scientist magazine reported in October that psychologists seem to be reclassifying people who are permanently uninterested in sex, from the old notion that such behavior was a disorder to the emerging position that it is merely a sexual preference of "none of the above." (Asexuals profess no sexual attraction at all, encompassing loners reluctant to associate with people and gregarious, caring people whose natural inclination is to relate to others nonsexually.) Recent research estimated that 1 percent of the population is asexual, and in previous research, 40 percent of asexuals described themselves as "extremely" or "very" happy. An asexuality support group (AVEN) touts its best-selling T-shirt, "Asexuality: It's not just for amoebas anymore."

Jackie Lee Shrader, 49, and his son, Harley Lee, 24, had a brief shootout with .22-caliber handguns, provoked when the pair confronted each other over how to cook skinless chicken for dinner (Bluewell, W.Va., September). And Niccolo Rossodivita, 62, shot Billy Cordova, 40, twice in the chest after Cordova followed him around their house prolonging their argument over Jesus Christ's correct name (Wasilla, Alaska, September). And Angela Morris, 19, was charged with assaulting her boyfriend by pouring boiling oil on him during an argument over a Bible verse the two had been reading together (Eugene, Ore., May).

(1) According to a September Washington Post dispatch from a Culpeper, Va., conference of people obsessed with spotting the alleged, 7-foot-tall Sasquatch, which is said to be roaming the woods of America, many attendees ("East Coast Bigfoot community") seem consumed by the West Coast Bigfoot community's supposed arrogance. That is, Western witnesses seem to regard Eastern witnesses as delusional, in that Sasquatch obviously lives west of the Rockies. (2) Thomas Patrick Remo, 50, was arrested in September in Dallas and charged with practicing medicine (gynecology) without a license; Remo had a stream of female customers who apparently did not think it odd that the exams were free and that he ran his office out of a self-storage locker.

-- Patricia Frankhouser filed a lawsuit in Jeannette, Pa., in November against the Norfolk Southern railway as a result of being hit by a train in January as she walked on railroad tracks. Frankhouser, who suffered various cuts and a broken finger, claimed in the lawsuit that Norfolk Southern should have posted signs alongside the tracks warning people not to walk on them, that trains might be coming.

-- In August, cardiologist Dr. Lawrence Poliner won $366 million in damages from a federal court jury in Dallas because his practice was virtually shut down through word of mouth for seven months in 1998, a verdict that (after subtracting 25 percent in attorney fees) would reward him with earnings during the shutdown of $39 million per month. The shutdown came after a hospital peer review panel had found errors in 29 of 44 patient-cases of Poliner (but he was reinstated after prominent cardiologists supported him, though the panel did not retract its initial finding).

-- Frederick Puglisi, 23, was awarded $850,000 by a jury in Ramsey, N.J., in September, for injuries, including a disfigured hand caused by frostbite, suffered when he got drunk at a party, set out on foot, and passed out in a snow bank. The jury determined that his injuries were worth $1 million in damages and that Puglisi was only 15 percent responsible. (Ramsey police and the Bergen county police bore greater fault because they had failed to respond quickly enough to a 911 call about a man passed out in a snow bank.)

-- From the July 23, 2004, Police Reports column of the New London, Wis., Press-Star: "1:15 p.m., a juvenile approached an officer at (Hortonville Police Department) complaining about having a lock stuck around his right testicle for three days and he didn't know how to get it off." (The officer found a master key.) "Having the master key in hand, the juvenile left the room for a moment and returned with the lock. The officer spoke to the juvenile about experimenting with sexuality and how he needs to be more careful in the future."

-- When the police chief in Springdale, Pa., allegedly used the N-word while detaining two black teenagers, the boys' parents charged racism, but the chief's brother, police officer Mike Naviglia, came to his rescue. Officer Naviglia suddenly grabbed one of the boys, in front of their mother, and kissed him flush on the mouth. Said Naviglia, "Does that taste like racism?" (According to the mother, Naviglia said, "I kissed him to show him that I wasn't prejudiced." The mother was undaunted and said she would proceed with her complaint.)

Australian sleep-disorder expert Dr. Peter Buchanan caused a stir in October when he told reporters that the odd behavior of "sleep sex" (leaving home at night in a deep sleep and seeking random sex with strangers) would soon be regarded as an official sleep disorder and be included in the next version of the sleep disorder manual. Said Buchanan, anticipating skepticism: "Incredulity is the first staging post for anyone involved in this (study)."

Paul Michael Callahan, 32, was arrested in Boston in August after, according to police, a short career as a bank robber, which started badly when Callahan tried to hold up the copy shop at Boston University, believing it was a bank. (The clerk asked, "Do you know you're in a copy store and all we can give you is copies?") Callahan fled but allegedly robbed a Fleet Bank branch a few minutes later (getting less than $200) and then a Citizen's Bank branch, clearing about $2,500. However, the red-dye pack from Citizen's exploded, distracting him, and then his getaway car got a flat tire, and police found him hiding in a gas station.

Among the recent idiosyncratic decrees by Turkmenistan's megalomaniacal president-for-life, Saparmurat Niyazov: No publicly chewing "nas" (the country's popular drug, partly tobacco, slacked lime and chicken droppings); television show hosts cannot wear makeup (because the president said he has difficulty distinguishing heavily made-up males from females); and an ice palace will be built in the heart of the country's extremely hot desert so that children can learn to ski.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) Municipal officials in Amsterdam tentatively approved a euthanasia-drug home delivery service, provided that all orders are screened by a physician before the driver is dispatched. (b) Boston police arrested a wheelchair-confined bank robber, who had become paralyzed when shot during a previous bank robbery. (c) Police in Lagos, Nigeria, organized groups of officers into street choirs to help disperse unruly mobs by singing. (d) A British Medical Association official warned that hospitals have recently become "inundated" with serious knife and broken-bottle injuries among barroom-brawling women.

Initially, Florida artist Maria Alquilar refused to correct a series of misspelled names in a $40,000 historical mural she did for the city of Livermore, Calif., claiming that "words" were not important to her art, comparing her errors to Michelangelo's "David" (imperfect in the sense that one of the testicles is lower than the other). After receiving much hate mail from Livermore taxpayers, suggesting that she must have a learning disability for not detecting "(Albert) Eistein," "(William) Shakespere," "(Paul) Gaugan," "(Vincent) Van Gough," and seven other misspellings, Alquilar agreed to fix her mural in early 2005 (but wants an additional $6,000 for her trouble).

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

Ultra-Orthodox California rabbi Nachum Shifren, 53, cuts a dashing figure on the beach at Malibu, where he is the legendary surfer "Shifty," easily spottable on 20-foot waves by his long beard, according to a September profile in the San Diego Union-Tribune. In his spare time (he says he is ready to ride 24/6, allowing for the Sabbath), he has conducted "Passover surfaris" and beach bar-mitzvahs, and his lectures on Deuteronomy include the observation that "surf punks" paddled out into the Red Sea during the Jews' exodus from Egypt. "(T)he whole religious experience," he told the reporter, "the outer body experience, is encompassed in the act of surfing."

(1) The sheriff in Tucson, Ariz., warned the public in August of a gang of women who lure horny men via newspaper ads into believing that they can buy a starring role in an adult video, citing the recent case of a man who was enticed to send $1,100 to set up a video shoot, then $7,000 more, then $8,000 more, and then another $8,000; he quit only when he learned that the women had persuaded his parents to pay $20,000 more for their son's "acting" career. (2) Lau Yat-fai, a 5-foot-9, 23-year-old basketball player in Hong Kong, paid the equivalent of about US$1,400 for electrical treatments from two "beauty centers" that had promised to make him tall. (After filing a lawsuit, he got a partial refund in October.)

A man's body was found by divers in the Pend Oreille River near Newport, Wash., on Sept. 25; sheriff's deputies estimate that he was carrying about 40 pounds of beer (a satchel full around his body, plus cans in his pocket) but said they would wait for an autopsy before commenting. And a 25-year-old driver was killed in St-Joachim, Quebec, on Sept. 24 when another car veered into his lane and hit him; police said the deceased was within his own lane but was distracted, in that he was apparently at the time engaged in sexual intercourse with a female passenger. (Having intercourse while driving, said a police spokesman, "makes driving that much more dangerous.")

-- The Muscular Dystrophy Association, a Tempe, Ariz., real estate firm, and two charity promoters were sued in September by Keith Schott, a golfer who had apparently legitimately made a fully witnessed hole-in-one during a charity round but who was allegedly turned down for the widely advertised $1 million prize when the sponsors imposed a rule that the money shots had to be videotaped. "Remarkably," said Schott's lawyer, "the defendants changed the rules on the spot."

-- North Carolina state Sen. Sam Ellis' bill to change a section of state law that actually gives an enormous right to rapists failed in committee this year, with the result that some rapists may inevitably go free. If a rape victim chooses to carry her baby, and then place it for adoption, state law requires that both parents agree to the adoption in writing, with no exception for babies conceived by rape. Thus, rapists might withhold their consent, thwarting the mother's wishes, unless she agrees not to press charges for the rape. According to a September Raleigh News and Observer story, at least three women have recently been in that situation.

-- The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Spain's El Pais newspaper, in a now-discontinued ad for a 90-day subscription, had run photos of the New York City skyline, before 9/11 and after, with the tag line, "You can do a lot in one day. Just imagine what can happen in three months."

-- Laurie David is the social-activist wife of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" TV star Larry David, well known for speaking out on, and rallying other activists on, environmental issues, such as the need for energy conservation. According to a report in the September Atlantic Monthly, David shuns commercial airliners to get to her speeches (even though the increase in fuel usage to carry a person of her size would be negligible), preferring to make special trips each time by private jet, which a New Republic columnist calculated uses as much fuel in one cross-country round-trip as a Hummer uses in a year.

-- In September, a Roanoke (Va.) Times story documented the righteous complaint of Melissa Williamson, 35, that street construction noise outside her home in southeast Roanoke, especially by jackhammers, would have a harmful effect on her unborn child, then two months from term. The published Times story ignited a firestorm of reader mail because it was accompanied by a candid photo of Williamson in her front yard, looking annoyed at the construction mess, but puffing away on a cigarette.

David Roy Truscott, 35, pleaded guilty in Cornwall, England, in September to three arsons and a burglary of a farmhouse near Redruth, but the burglary was less significant than what he did when he got onto the property. Police said Truscott had submerged himself in a manure pit in order to masturbate. (Also, containers of liquid sludge were found at his home.) At the crime scene, two items of Truscott's were picked up, but of questionable usefulness given the severity of his alleged behavior: tissues and rubber gloves.

Police in Edwardsville, Ill., charged David Wroten, 20, with fraud in September after, they say, he took out membership in an online dating service by paying with a check drawn on the county jail, where he had been held earlier this year for theft. Wroten, like all inmates, had been issued a check for the cash he had on him when he was booked, and he allegedly copied the check form. Police were confident Wroten was their man because, naturally, he had posted a photograph of himself on the dating service site.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) The government of Vietnam is said to be moving to lethal injection for capital punishment because its firing squads, populated with volunteers, too often nervously miss. (b) An airplane hangar in a Los Angeles suburb was found filled with bags of empty soda cans, to a height of 10 feet, with police believing a gang has been stealing cans from homeless people. (c) A California county is systematically ticketing drivers who appear to be high only on kava herbal tea. (d) A Missouri man fled a court hearing on an animal abuse charge but was captured a few minutes later hiding in a doghouse.

In September, Floyd Edwards, 78, set out to drive his friend Ruth Stancil, 62, and Edwards' son Clifford from their home near Erwin, Tenn., to nearby North Carolina towns for shopping, as they routinely do once a month. The round trip is usually about 100 miles, but once again, a senior driver became confused, lost track of time and distance, and was fearful of stopping. By the time the three returned, 60 hours later, they had traveled 1,600 miles, as far as an Atlanta suburb, where Edwards accidentally fell at a gas station and hit his head, necessitating a call to police, who were able to help the group turn around.

In September, according to a report in Tehran's daily Mardomsalari newspaper, a local court ordered a husband to stop beating his wife. However, the Iranian woman, identified only as Maryam J, said she would have accepted an order that just limited the beatings to once a week. "Beating is part of his nature," she said, "and he cannot stop it." The disconsolate husband said, "If I do not beat her, she will not be scared enough to obey me."

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