Editor Frank Kelly Rich's bimonthly tribute to overdrinking -- the magazine Modern Drunkard -- is a 50,000-circulation glossy "about drinking and only about drinking, and not just drinking, but heavy drinking," he told the Los Angeles Times in January. Recent features included biographies of great drunks, a dictionary of bar slang, and a testimonial on how drinking cured one man's fear of flying. "The most accomplished people," Rich said, "have been drinkers," and he implied that people in the Middle East ought to drink more. Calling serious drinkers an "oppressed minority," Rich said he himself has about eight drinks a day, sometimes up to 30 (when he frequently blacks out). Said Rich's wife, of her husband's career, "When you find your calling, you have to go with it."

Austrian artist Muhammad Mueller started a project in November, as political commentary, in which two people at a time dig a tunnel from the city of Graz to Gradec, Slovenia, 42 miles away, using only shovels; he estimated the venture would take 5,600 years. And in July, a federal appeals court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency's leak-safety standards for the long-awaited nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain; EPA had found the proposed site safe until the year 12,000 A.D., but the court said that wasn't long enough (and noted that one National Academy of Sciences report recommended protection until the year 302,000 A.D.)

(1) In the fall of 2004, Ron Nunn Elementary school (Brentwood, Calif.) ended its "Golden Circle" program, which officials soured on because it honored only kids with good grades, and established in its place the "Eagle Society," which also celebrates personal, nonacademic achievements. The principal said he could not bear to see the sad faces of kids left out of the Golden Circle and wanted "all of our kids to be honored." (2) The city council of Ota (north of Tokyo) implemented a policy in January to require that male city workers take six separate weeks of paid leave sometime before their new child's first birthday so that (said one official) "men (get) involved in raising children." The men will also have to submit written reports on child-rearing.

Olga Abramovich, 49, was arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y., in October and charged as the person who, in a rage, had painted as many as 20 swastikas on buildings and cars in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods; police said Abramovich, a Christian, was upset that her ex-husband had re-married to a Jewish woman 14 years younger than she. And Julie Rose, 37, was convicted of assault in Yeovil, England, in October, for angrily slapping a new neighbor; the victim had apparently provoked Rose by declining her welcome-to-the-neighborhood suggestion that the Roses and the new couple engage in mate-swapping.

According to an October Los Angeles Times dispatch from Yemen, one government solution to "tam(e) the violent underside" of the nation's tribal culture is to fund itinerant poets to roam the country and channel lawlessness into constructive thoughts. Illustrative of most Yemenis' opposition to both American influence and their own government is this verse: "The Arab army is just to protect the leaders/They build their rule on the pain of the people/Democracy is for the rich/If the poor man tries it, they'll call him a thief." (And in October, National Liberty Fund published a book of poems by Sami Al-Arian, written from his cell while awaiting trial in Florida on federal charges of aiding the terrorist Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Sample: "(Was it) worth playing global police/even if it meant half-million Iraqis deceased.")

-- Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's November project to bring peace to strife-torn southern provinces fell short of its goal, as resistance by separatists hardened. Shinawatra had airdropped about 100 million origami paper peace doves (which, unfortunately, wound up more resembling cranes) from military aircraft, some with prize coupons attached, hoping to distract people from their grievances.

-- The renegade Mormon splinter group headed by Warren Jeffs and holed up mostly in a few small towns in Utah and Arizona was largely responsible for the collapse of the Bank of Ephraim, according to Utah regulators interviewed for a December Associated Press report. Church officials had taken a secret oath to borrow, furiously, as much money as they could, because according to Jeffs, the world was about to end anyway, and they wouldn't have to pay it back.

-- Antonio Hernandez, 29, pleaded guilty in Salt Lake City in December to hijacking a Greyhound bus that had just left Green River, Utah, intending to use it to smash into his estranged wife's trailer home. He was stopped at the hijack scene, but if he hadn't been captured, he would still have had to drive the bus all the way to the woman's home, in Lexington, Neb., 500 miles away.

-- Sylvain Didier (a mechanic by profession) was found guilty of sexual assault in Longueuil, Quebec, in December stemming from a self-invented procedure (the "Slimtronic") he was offering to female customers of his wife's weight-loss clinic. The Slimtronic supposedly took off pounds via electrical currents passed through rubber patches placed on the vulva, and one woman who agreed to the procedure filed charges against Didier after he kept moving the patches around with his probing fingers.

Howard Goldstein, 47, was charged with murdering his landlord and fellow Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Rahamin Sultan, in October in Brooklyn, N.Y., in a rent dispute, and police said that when they knocked on the door to investigate Sultan's disappearance, Goldstein answered dressed (according to the New York Post) in a gray blouse "with a plunging neckline," slacks, and pink high-heeled shoes, and wearing bright red lipstick and blue eye shadow "that clashed with his long beard." A search of his room turned up pre-beard snapshots of Goldstein in an array of fashions and wigs.

Stephen Kauff, 33, was arrested in Westerville, Ohio, in December in a police Internet sex sting but told officers, when he arrived for a long-arranged meeting with an alleged "14-year-old girl" at an apartment complex, that he really wasn't interested in sex but was just curious whether police actually do set up sex stings over the Internet. (Answer: Yes) And Ian Finlay, 28, also caught in an Internet sex sting, had denied that he had sex on his mind when he showed up for a long-arranged meeting with a "15-year-old girl" at a McDonald's in Hempfield, Pa.; Finlay claimed that he knew "she" was a cop and wanted to outsmart the cop by pretending to be a sex predator and that he was angry at being arrested before he could reveal his "hoax." (He was convicted in January.)

Latest in Upscale Pet Care: Much plastic surgery on dogs, said Brookline, Mass., veterinarian Scott Groper, is done for medical reasons (e.g., Boston terriers' small noses interfere with breathing), but vanity (but not the dog's vanity) sometimes plays a role, as Los Angeles surgeon Alan Schulman told the Boston Herald in January. "Most of the time," he said, "it's women who have already done everything they possibly could to themselves and are starting to (make over) their dogs," with pooches' low-hanging lips and drooling problems being the primary reasons for dog face-lifts.

British garbage collector Tim Byrne is not only eager to get to work every day, according to a report in London's Sun newspaper, but for the past 11 years, he has voluntarily hauled trash alongside local collectors while on holiday in vacation spots such as Tenerife and Mallorca. Said Byrne, "(R)ubbish plays such a large role in my life that I simply don't need to (get away from it).

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

Is It Safe Yet? The head of security at Boston's Logan Airport revealed in December that travelers continue to appear so unfamiliar with restrictions that, three years after 9-11, his screeners still seize 12,000 prohibited items per month. Nationwide, the total since 2002 is nearly 17 million, including 2,200 guns, 79,000 box cutters and 5 million knives. And in December, a Republican congressman blasted the Department of Homeland Security for making "a joke" out of President Bush's 2003 order to compile a comprehensive list of potential domestic terror targets. The list so far (of 80,000 sites) is termed by critics both too large (unlikely targets inexplicably included) and too small (imaginable targets inexplicably left off).

In December, a California appeals court ordered a re-hearing on a zoning case because the petitioner, who was denied an extension of business hours, had not had a fair chance to argue to the Los Angeles City Council. A videotape of the hearing showed that, during petitioner's presentation, council members talked on the phone or among themselves, wandered around the room, and read their mail, and the appeals court ruled that "due process" requires them to pay attention. And Councilman Dennis Pate of Eagle Lake, Fla., said in January that a formal rule was needed to prohibit spitting at meetings, in that a former city manager allegedly tried to unload on at him at a December session (but she denied it).

(1) Following the Dec. 5 Newtown, England, charity Santa Claus race (in which 4,000 Saint Nicks in full costume competed), police had to use noxious spray and nightsticks to break up a brawl of about 30 Santas when the festive spirit got out of hand. (2) Researchers at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, England, told New Scientist magazine in December that they're studying why ostriches are able to run so fast (about 20 mph) even though they are heavy (over 200 pounds) and awkward-gaited. The team's work: They observe 15 ostriches running on treadmills.

In Durham, N.C., in December, gang member Robert D. Johnson was sentenced to 15 years in prison for shooting off the genitals of a fellow Blood who was trying to leave the group. The jury rejected an even harsher penalty, for "malicious castration," settling on "nonmalicious castration" because of evidence that Johnson actually shot the man in the leg but that the bullet just happened to exit his thigh and hit his penis.

-- Mr. Jerry Colaitis of Old Brookville, N.Y., died of complications from spinal surgery in 2001, and the next year, his family filed a $10 million lawsuit blaming everything on the Benihana Japanese restaurant chain. Benihana hibachi chefs engage in colorful hand acrobatics while skillfully slicing and grilling food at tableside, and on the night in question, Colaitis flinched at a shrimp the chef had tossed his way. The flinch jarred two vertebrae in his neck, which eventually required surgery and then a second surgery, after which complications developed, leading to Colaitis' death. In November 2004, a judge cleared the case for trial.

-- In February 2004, two 11-year-old boys cut classes at the Ronan Middle School in Ronan, Mont., found some alcoholic beverages, and hours later died of hypothermia in a snow-covered field. In November, the parents of the two filed a lawsuit, asking $4 million in damages from the local public schools for not preventing the truancy. School personnel should have known, according to the lawsuit, that the kids were of Native American heritage, with a high rate of alcoholism in the community, even though neither boy had any alcohol-related incident on his record.

-- Ladell Alexander, serving a 16-year sentence for molesting a child in a public library in South Bend, Ind., filed a lawsuit in 2004, asking for $4 million in damages, charging that his predicament is actually the fault of the library's security company because officers should have seen him with the boy in a staff-only area of the building and kicked him out before he could do anything bad. (A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in December.)

-- In February 2004, a 20-year-old woman stole OxyContin and Xanax from The Medicine Shoppe pharmacy in Wood River, Ill., and gave some to her boyfriend, Justin Stalcup, 21, who died of an overdose the next day. In December, Mr. Stalcup's family filed a lawsuit against The Medicine Shoppe, claiming that the reason for their son's death was that the pharmacy didn't safeguard the drugs from the thief.

Victoria Pettigrew started VIP Fibers three years ago in Morgan Hill, Calif., and according to a December 2004 report by the Knight Ridder News Service, has an enthusiastic clientele of pet owners who pay her to make specialty items (blankets, pillows, scarves) from their animals' hair ("Better yarn from your pet than a sheep you never met"). For example, client Bob Miller of Carmel, Calif., brought in enough collected sheddings of his golden retriever for a blanket, two couch pillows, a small teddy bear, a scarf and a picture frame. Pettigrew has also created items from the hair of cats, sheep, alpaca, bison, rabbits, hamsters, cows and horses.

Floyd Elliot, 22, was charged in December in Independence, Mo., with filing a false police report by claiming an assailant carved the vulgar slur "fag" on his forehead. Police were immediately suspicious because the letters were backward (as if made by someone looking in a mirror). Also in December, when Nicholas J. Valeri, 19, was arrested for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a Wendy's restaurant in Hempfield Township, Pa., he claimed innocence, saying that he inadvertently acquired the bill shortly before, while selling $240 worth of marijuana.

Several times over the years in News of the Weird, bad things (including death) have happened to drivers who make the poor decision (usually while inebriated) to stop along the side of a highway at night to urinate but then fail to deal properly with the various dangers. Usually the dangers involve wandering out into traffic or falling over an embankment, but in November, Henry Turley, 77, started to exit his pickup truck to urinate near Kingsbury, Ind., and when rescue workers arrived 20 minutes later, Turley's truck was in a ditch, and Turley was lying on his back with his left foot caught between the wheel well and the left front tire and his right foot caught between the driver's side door and the front seat. (A nearly empty bottle of whiskey was on the passenger side.)

In December, a wheel from a tractor-trailer on Interstate 84 in Idaho (glowing hot from an overheated bearing) came off, rolled across a frontage road, and started several fires after it crashed into the home of Charisse Stevenson. According to a report in the Times-News (Twin Falls, Id.), Stevenson, seeing her 10-year-old son trapped by flames on the second floor of their home and separated by the red-hot wheel, moved it out of the way (though it weighs 250 pounds), scooped up her son (135 pounds), and carried him to safety. Afterward, of course, Stevenson was found to be unable to lift either the wheel or her son.

Dr. Mary Holley, an obstetrician who heads Mothers Against Methamphetamine in Albertville, Ala., offered this assessment of meth at a December task force meeting in Chattanooga, Tenn. (presumably intending to discourage use of the drug): "The effect of an (intravenous) hit of methamphetamine is the equivalent of 10 orgasms all on top of each other lasting for 30 minutes to an hour, with a feeling of arousal that lasts for another day and a half." (But after about six months' use, the effects turn negative, she said.)

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

Those Hardy Floridians: Rudolph Jessie Hicks Jr., 30, was arrested in Brooksville, Fla., for trespass, but not before he had gotten up from a police dog takedown, five Taser shots, and an entire can of pepper spray (December). And police in Port St. Lucie, Fla., were considering whether to charge Ms. Robin Bush, who strangled a 130-pound Rottweiler after it would not let go of her tiny Yorkie (December). And a 20-year-old man suffered only minor injuries after driving his car through a fifth-floor wall of a parking garage and landing inside the second floor of a store at the Shoppes of Sunset Place in South Miami (December).

(1) Police in Denton, Texas, arrested two teenagers in October and charged them with robbing two visitors who were passing through town from Montana; the victims said they were on their way to Baton Rouge, La., because they needed money and had read on the Internet that a medical school would pay $100,000 for testicles. (2) The Dutch retirement home Seniorenpand, in Rotterdam, bills itself as the world's only old-age community for incorrigible heroin addicts and has a long waiting list for its few rooms, according to a December dispatch in The Scotsman. (One satisfied resident bragged that he had some "pretty good stuff" the night before.)

A 59-year-old veteran NASCAR driver from Scottsdale, Ariz., was killed in November when he fell off of a Segway scooter (going 5 mph) at a Las Vegas go-cart race and hit his head. And in China's Guangxi Zhuang region in September, five people asphyxiated while conducting a ceremony in a dangerous lead mine (frequently shut down by the government), including a prominent feng shui expert there to advise on improving harmonic energy flow. And in Aliquippa, Pa., in October, a 28-year-old man was electrocuted on his first day at work as an electrician.

(1) Britain's Office of Communications, which rules on viewers' complaints about TV programs, decided in November that the on-air, manual collecting of hog semen on the "reality" show "The Farm" did not violate standards in that, in the office's opinion, the pig did not feel "degrad(ed)" by the experience. (2) Because a British Broadcasting Corp. employee got a toe trapped in a revolving door at company offices in Birmingham (cracking a toenail), executives in December sent a memo to the workforce of 800, using stick-figure drawings, with instructions on how to walk through the doors.

In October, as part of the government's vigorous "social order" anti-drug campaign, dozens of police officers in Bangkok, Thailand, raided the trendy Q Bar late on Saturday night and locked it down, detained the nearly 400 customers, and passed out plastic cups so that each one could submit to an on-the-spot urinalysis. Said the bar's manager, "(The raid is) pretty much an annual event. It's a little bit like Christmas."

-- In Salt Lake City in November, federal judge Paul G. Cassell, remarking that mandatory-minimum sentencing laws gave him no choice, sent a 25-year-old, small-quantity marijuana dealer to prison for 55 years (because he had a gun on him during two of the transactions). Two hours before that, in a crime Cassell described as far more serious but not subject to the same mandatory minimums, he sentenced a man to 22 years in prison for beating an elderly woman to death with a log.

-- In November, Jens Orback, Sweden's minister for integration and gender equality, who had been under fire for not being aggressive on the job, denied on the radio program "Ekot" that he was intolerant of sexual minorities. Said Orback: "I had a wonderful aunt who lived in Canada with a horse. I thought it was wonderful. Let people live as they wish." Later, attempting to explain himself, Orback insisted that the aunt's relationship with the horse was platonic.

-- A St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter, interviewing neighbors of the people who shared a St. Croix Falls, Wis., home that was condemned after being overrun with 450 cats, found that most neighbors had failed to notice the house's putrid smell. Several said that the awful odor from the neighborhood's fish hatchery and the awful odor of the neighborhood's sewage treatment plant probably overrode the awful odor of the house.

-- Brigham Young University's Newsnet reported in November on Marilyn and Elton Pierce of Provo, Utah, who because their telephone number is easily confused with a BYU information line, estimate they have received 25,000 wrong-number calls in 14 years (averaging to five per day). Marilyn, in her 70s, said she didn't have the couple's number changed because she doesn't mind the calls and in fact rather enjoys talking to people.

A 39-year-old man in Chillicothe, Ohio, was hospitalized in December after an unsuccessful suicide attempt that accidentally blew his own house to pieces and did heavy damage to neighboring homes. The man had turned on the natural gas to kill himself, but then realized that other houses might be in danger, and just as he dashed to the basement to turn off the electricity, the house exploded (probably from an electrical spark) and was leveled. A month before, the man had tried to kill himself with automobile exhaust and a garden hose, but his car ran out of gas before he could die, and he then hooked up a propane tank for the same purpose, but once again, he outlived his fuel supply.

In 2002 News of the Weird reported that H. Beatty Chadwick had served 6 1/2 years in jail in suburban Philadelphia for civil contempt of court for not producing $2.5 million in marital assets that he was supposed to split with his ex-wife, with the U.S. jail record for contempt believed to be 10 years. As of October 2004, he is still in jail, closing in on the record, and the amount owed is up to $4.2 million, with Chadwick sticking to his defense that the money had long since been spent. Said Chadwick's lawyer, "This (nonexistent) money is like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We are the Saddam Hussein of the marital world." [Washington Post, 11-11-04]

News of the Weird reported as far back as 1998 on optimistic pet owners preparing to pay large sums for a cloned model of a deceased dog or cat, mentioning a lab at Texas A&M University planning to clone a collie-husky named Missy (who was, of course, according to her owners, "perfect"). The lab's Dr. Mark Westhusin and his team managed to clone its first dog, "cc," in 2001, and has subsequently cloned cattle, goats, pigs and a cat. In December 2004, another outfit, Genetic Savings and Clone (of Sausalito, Calif., and Madison, Wis.), announced that it had delivered a kitten to a woman for $50,000 that is a DNA replica of Nicky, a cat that died last year at age 17.

Paul Eugene Levengood, owner of the Tasty Flavors Sno Biz dessert shop in the Chattanooga, Tenn., suburb of Red Bank, was charged with two counts of sexual battery in November when two 19-year-old female employees said he had occasionally spanked them for workplace errors (for example, once for forgetting to put a banana into a smoothie drink). A defensive Levengood pointed out that the women had each signed a form, "I give Gene permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit." Police found at the store many photographs of women's posteriors, even though a Sno Biz executive called Levengood a "very Christian person."

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