The Official Shoe of Illegal Immigrants: Artist Judi Werthein's high-top sneaker "Brinco" went on sale recently ($215 a pair) at boutiques in San Diego and New York City, with tiny accessories (compass and flashlight on the shoelaces, secret pocket in the shoe's tongue), but she also gives away many pairs in Tijuana because she actually designed the shoe for Mexican migrants to wear when they sneak across the border into the United States. (The back of the shoe has a drawing of the country's patron saint of migrants, and a removable foot support has a crude map of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a November Associated Press report).

-- Until the policy was changed in October, cafeterias in the 18 schools of the North Penn School District (northwest of Philadelphia) had been supplying as eating utensils only plastic cutlery that was washed after each meal and reused, even though students had long expressed disgust at spoons and knives riddled with bite marks and had, defensively, taken to eating foods like yogurt and applesauce with their hands. (The district admitted that this recycling saved only $15,000 a year.)

-- Blond twins, Lamb and Lynx Gaede, age 13, of Bakersfield, Calif., sing professionally as Prussian Blue at white-supremacy concerts and rallies and on the white-nationalist Resistance Records label (with songs like "Sacrifice," which is a tribute to Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess), according to an October ABC News story. The girls' parents home-school them and are active in the Aryan movement (rancher-dad Ted Shaw's cattle brand is a swastika). Said Lynx, "We want our people to stay white. (W)e don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle."

-- According to more than 50 alleged witnesses in 30 pending lawsuits, former Seattle-area gynecologist Charles Momah, 48, not only sexually abused patients but also permitted his twin brother, Dennis (a doctor but not a gynecologist), to stand in for him during some patient appointments, during which he, too, sexually abused the women. Examples of suspicion-provoking behavior, according to witness statements: Sometimes their doctor was talkative, sometimes confused and nearly silent; sometimes he spoke English clearly, sometimes broken; sometimes he walked with a limp, sometimes not; sometimes there were scars on his face, sometimes not. The Momahs deny everything, but Charles was convicted in November of sexually abusing four of the patients.

-- In November, to calm down a growing number of apparently horrified Australians, the Food Authority of the state of New South Wales issued a statement assuring people that meat in their refrigerators that appears to glow in the dark is actually harmless. Said the authority's director, the light-emitting bacteria responsible for the glow "is not known to cause food poisoning" and, actually, is naturally present in most meats and fish.

-- In October in Evansville, Ind., Terrence L. Mackey, 63, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for a May 2005 bank robbery, but not before he tried to defend his behavior to Federal Judge Richard L. Young, blaming the robbery on federal corrections officials. He would have turned his life around before now, Mackey said, if officials had just sent him to a prison close to his mother's home in Florida when he was locked up for a 1982 crime. And as to the charge that he shot at police as he fled the bank robbery, he claimed self-defense: "The police were shooting at me."

-- David Duvall and his 2-year-old daughter were hospitalized with burns on the head suffered during the Maryland Renaissance Festival in Crownsville in October after a female acrobat mishandled a flaming wand. The woman, seeking a volunteer from the audience, asked Duvall, in front of his family, if she could set fire to his bald head, and Duvall said, "Sure." Said Duvall's wife, later, "We thought they knew what they were doing."

-- Cary, N.C., software developer Brian T. Schellenberger, 43, told FBI agents in December 2003 that he had been influenced by a workplace motivational poster, "Achieve Your Dreams," that energized him to fulfill his own dreams. His major life transformation, unfortunately, was that "I decided to get rid of the obsolete idea of morality." Specifically, he told the agents that he was inspired to move beyond his mere passive collecting of pornography and to begin creating his own child pornography to satisfy long-held fantasies about young girls. (He also later enlisted a man, unsuccessfully, to kill his wife in exchange for pornography from his collection.) In October 2005, Schellenberger, though subsequently remorseful, was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

-- Jim Porcellato endured about 30 seconds of excruciating pain in October in Sooke, British Columbia, when he attempted to shut off a Bobcat construction vehicle but accidentally stepped on the floor lever that raises and lowers the vehicle's bucket, at the same time that he was, unfortunately, straddling the bucket. Porcellato, with one foot and his body's weight on the lever, had no leverage to stop the bucket, which as it moved, trapped his head and other leg. A co-worker rescued him, but the result was "many" lost teeth and the need for "hundreds" of stitches in his face, according to the Sooke News Mirror.

-- In Fargo, N.D., in September, Justin W. Fraase enthusiastically called the police to tell them that he had a videotape that would prove that the woman who had a judicial stay-away order against him actually wanted him back. The tape was of the two having sex, and when authorities viewed it, they realized that, for one thing, the sex itself violated the judicial order and, second, the woman appeared not to be enjoying herself at all. (Indeed, she later said that Fraase had coerced her, and he was charged with three felony counts relating to the assault and the violation of the stay-away order.)

From the newspaper The State (Columbia, S.C., 11-14-05), regarding fugitive Rodney Dane Higginbotham, wanted for criminal domestic violence: "Alleged Crime: Police said Higginbotham argued with his wife because she had not cooked anything. When she began cooking, he started making spaghetti while eating crackers and squeeze cheese. They argued, and he squeezed cheese on the kitchen floor. She squeezed the cheese on his truck, and he squeezed the cheese in her hair before fleeing in his truck. The wife said she washed her hair before the officer arrived to take her complaint."

In November, NASCAR announced it had contracted with the romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises to arrange for steamy women's novels with car-racing themes, beginning with Pamela Britton's forthcoming book "In the Groove." And according to an October Los Angeles Times report, the trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America contracted to pay two writers a "six-figure" fee to write a novel about a national panic resulting from a fear that drug lobbyists had actually been trying to spread in Congress, specifically, that terrorists might poison lower-priced drug imports from Canada. (The Times reported that the association recently killed the project and blamed the whole idea on an unsupervised lower-level executive.)

The body of a 36-year-old woman was found stuck halfway through a rear window in a house in St. Louis in October, the result (according to police) of an unsuccessful burglary attempt; she had asphyxiated, and in the course of her struggle to break free, her pants had somehow come off. And a 42-year-old woman in Frederica, Del., hanged herself from a tree on the Tuesday before Halloween, and though she was spotted at a distance soon afterward, neighbors did not call police for 10 hours, figuring at first that the body was just a Halloween decoration.

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

"Cow-tipping" (the legendary prank of sneaking up on a dozing cow and pushing her over) was exposed as a near-impossibility by researchers at the University of British Columbia, according to a November report in The Times of London. Calculating the newtons of force required to topple an average cow (estimating the angles between left hooves, right hooves and the point of push; and the resistance of the cow to downward pressure), Dr. Margo Lillie found that two people could exert the required force only if the cow made no reaction at all to the initial touch, but that more than likely, a successful tipping would require at least five people.

-- Prozac Nations: An official adviser to the Blair government warned in September that Britain urgently needed 250 special treatment centers, staffed by 10,000 therapists, to deal with what he called the country's "biggest social problem": a national epidemic of "unhappiness." And in October, German companies donated the equivalent of about $35 million for a media campaign to make their countrymen feel better about themselves. (Sample script: "(O)utdo yourself. Beat your wings and uproot trees. You are the wings. You are the tree. You are Germany.")

-- Prominent Spanish entertainer Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya ("Farruquito"), 23, was married in Seville in September to a teenage bride in a televised ceremony that included, for the cameras, the so-called Gypsy custom of the "test of the handkerchief," in which the bride's friends use the garment to ascertain whether the "three drops of blood" (said to be present in a virgin) will appear. (Mrs. Fernandez Montoya evidently passed, but women's organizations in Spain were outraged.)

-- Japan's Pro Baseball Owners' Association decided in August that, beginning next season, leaders of cheering sections at its games will be required to submit to background checks and be licensed. Permits will be required for anyone who plays drums or trumpets at the game, waves flags or banners, or leads organized chants. Owners say organized-crime gangs were moving into the cheering sections and shaking down fans for tips.

-- Strange Customs: (1) New Zealand's road safety manager acknowledged in October that the recently enacted Community Roadwatch program does indeed permit police to issue a traffic ticket solely on the say-so of another driver (if there is evidence that the reported vehicle was at the scene and provided the complainer is willing to go to court). (2) Reuters reported on the annual November ritual in Finland in which the income-tax agency makes public everyone's tax records for the previous year. (Personal disclosures of income are considered vulgar in Finland, but apparently the November ritual is welcomed.)

Adam Turgeon, 27, and Lisa Wagner, 26, were arrested in October for vandalizing the Annunciation of the Lord Catholic Church in Decatur, Ala., which they both said they were moved to do by Jesus Christ himself. Turgeon explained that the couple, independently, had experienced visions of Jesus, and when they found themselves in services on Oct. 2, they re-enacted the part of their dreams in which they wrecked the church's altar as a protest against "manmade religion" and idolatry. Turgeon said he was especially bothered by people who balance their checkbooks during church services and by religions that believe only parts of the Bible.

On Nov. 2, about 45 demonstrators lined up outside the Alliant Techsystems headquarters in Edina, Minn., to protest, for the 512th consecutive Wednesday, the company's work making military weapons that "indiscriminately" kill civilians. However, Alliant says it long ago stopped making those munitions (e.g., land mines, cluster bombs), although it still makes bullets. In fact, much of Alliant's work these days is on "alternative" military weapons that limit civilian casualties. According to a report in Minneapolis's Star Tribune, the demonstrations have taken on a life of their own as a regular gathering for the area's peace protesters, thus amusing and bemusing many Alliant employees.

(1) The Royal Meteorological Society, seeking evidence of global warming for a journal article, happened upon data collected by a fellow named David Grisenthwaite, 77, of Kirkcaldy, Scotland, who has logged detailed information about every single time he mowed his lawn since 1984; he has inadvertently documented that grass-growing season is longer lately. (Grisenthwaite said he also memorizes transit bus timetables.) (2) In England's Lincoln Crown Court, in October, municipal parking employee Julie Wall, 46, was sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling the equivalent of about $1 million over 10 years (spending nearly the entire amount on Elvis Presley records and memorabilia, most of which were found unopened at her home). (Said her lawyer, "She simply wanted to own (the items).")

(1) Barbara King, 35, was arrested in Largo, Fla., in October on a warrant for forgery and prescription fraud; when police knocked on her door, a man told them that she wasn't home, but a 4-year-old girl standing alongside said, "Mommy's in the closet!" (2) Police in Memphis, Tenn., reported in October that they had closed down a crack house on Rosamond Street, a task made easier because the resident usually announced the start of business hours by hanging out a sign reading, "Crack House." (3) Christina Goodenow, 38, of Medford, Ore., was arrested in October for using a stolen credit card, but a conviction would be especially disastrous for her since she just won $1 million in the lottery with a $1 ticket she bought with the credit card (thus voiding the ticket).

In November, a jury in Westmoreland County, Pa., awarded Ken Slaby $46,200 for genital injuries inflicted by his vengeful ex-girlfriend, Gail O'Toole, in 2000. While Slaby was napping (according to a report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review), O'Toole had glued Slaby's buttocks cheeks together, his penis to his abdomen, and his scrotum to his leg, all as payback for his having moved on with his life after their breakup. (O'Toole said it was all part of consensual sex between them, but she had earlier pleaded guilty to simple assault for the incident.)

-- In October, martial arts instructor Andrew Jacobs was arrested for allegedly assaulting two 10-year-old girls in their bedroom in Vienna, Va. (but being fended off by them based on skills they learned as students at Mountain Kim Martial Arts Center, where Jacobs was their teacher). Jacobs told police his plan was to tie the girls up so he could steal things from the home.

-- In a September road-rage incident in Salt Lake City, a woman sped by in a blocked-off lane to get around a 25-year-old motorist on Interstate 15, then rolled down her window and screamed at him. The man, according to a report in the Deseret Morning News, made an "obscene hand gesture." The woman then pulled out a .357-caliber revolver, shot off the tip of his middle finger, and sped away, outdistancing the man but later crashing into a barricade.

(1) Car salesman Philip Vandergraff, 35, was arrested in September on a battery charge after an incident at a Ford dealership in Atascadero, Calif. According to customer Jeff Walston, the two were haggling over a car purchase, and when Walston offered $5,000 less than Vandergraff's price, Vandergraff punched him in the face. (2) According to police in New York City, after Joe Daniels complained to neighbor Paul Kim in September that Kim's dogs had bitten Daniels' cat, Kim allegedly attacked Daniels and in the course of the fight, bit him.

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

Among the "10 Worst Jobs in Science" in Popular Science's annual November listing: Harvard researchers in Borneo who catch orangutan urine (in plastic sheets, the way firefighters catch jumpers) for studying reproduction-hormone levels; gear-packing monitors who run toward (not away from) the gases and molten rock of erupting volcanoes (dozens have been killed or wounded); U.S. Geological Survey workers at two picturesque California lakes monitoring "extremophile" microbes that thrive in the most putrid environments (work that one says resembles being surrounded by 100 "extremely flatulent people"); and "human lab rats" such as students employed in an industry-funded University of California at San Diego study for $15 an hour to have pesticides sprayed into their eyes.

-- Chief executive officers at 367 top U.S. corporations were paid, on average, $431 last year for every $1 paid to their companies' average production worker, according to publicly available information jointly compiled in September by Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. In 1990, the ratio was about $100-to-$1. (If the federal minimum wage had increased since 1990 by the same rate as the multiple for CEOs' pay, it would have risen from $5.15 an hour to $23.03, but, of course, it's still $5.15.)

-- Cutting-Edge Products: (1) In September, China's Guangzhou Haojian Bio-science Co. introduced new condoms whose names read phonetically as the "kelintun" and the "laiwensiji," which of course resemble the names of a former U.S. president and his acquaintance. (2) Women's Wear Daily reported in October that rock star Marilyn Manson said he was finalizing a personal perfume deal with a "major" company, as a precursor to his own full cosmetics line.

-- Parents pf McGovern Elementary School students in Medway, Mass., complained to the Boston Herald in October because Paul Trufant's septic-sewage service, located across from the school, boasts the identifying slogan on all its trucks: "Shit Happens." Trufant said he would advertise however he wants to: "This is America, not Iraq."

-- More Weird Mating Habits: (1) In October, researchers said they had tagged a great white shark and tracked him 12,400 miles over nine months, from Africa to Australia and back again, ostensibly seeking to mate; according to the report in the journal Science, sex was the best explanation because food was so plentiful around Africa. (2) The male nursery web spider uses a cheap trick to get sex, according to an October report in the journal Biology Letters; the male gives the larger female a dead insect, then collapses, feigning death, distracting the female, which turns to the insect, at which point the male springs back to life and mounts her. (On the other hand, the female sometimes just eats the male, after or instead of copulating.)

-- Those Versatile Goats: (1) David Valentine, 12, often bounces on a trampoline with his pet goats, D.J. and Blessing, but officials in Miami Township, Ohio, threatened to crack down this fall since goats are not permitted within the town limits; David's parents say the goats are necessary to help with David's Attention Deficit Disorder. (2) The economy of the section of Morocco around Tiout is dependent on a renowned cooking oil made from nuts of the argan tree, but only nuts that have been eaten and excreted by goats (that actually climb into the trees and stand on branches to eat the nut-bearing fruit). According to an October New York Times dispatch, locals are trying to shift gradually from predigested nuts without spoiling the oil's taste.

-- Python Mania: In a 10-day period in October in and near Miami-Dade County, Fla., non-native but super-predatory Burmese pythons killed and swallowed a turkey, a 15-pound cat, and (most famously, unsuccessfully) a 6-foot-long alligator. (The alligator ultimately burst the snake open, and the turkey's bulge prevented the python from slithering out of the bird's pen.) Officials have captured 150 pythons in recent years and estimate 250 more are in the area, the result of people discarding pet snakes once they reach adult length.)

-- Erica Salmon, originally a fantasy-football-league "widow" because of her husband's seasonal mania, has now become mogul of her own fantasy league: of famous fashion designers. According to an October report by the Des Moines Register, managers draft teams consisting of three clothing designers, plus one each designer of shoes, handbags, jewelry and celebrity clothing, and then three celebrities, and they get points daily for the number and quality of name-mentions in Women's Wear Daily and other fashion and style magazines. As with football leagues, trades are permitted once a week.

-- More Signs: (1) Judge Norene Redmond, facing the necessity to release prisoners from overcrowded Macomb County (Mich.) Jail, asked the public (via an October online poll) which types should be freed first; drug-possession and DUI defendants were deemed the most worthy, but Redmond said the final decision was hers. (2) An October Business Week report labeled mothers who are obsessed with buying their toddlers only upscale merchandise as "Yoga Mamas" who extend their own lifestyle to their babies; the report suggests that the toddler who receives a $129 pair of shoes would probably "have more fun with the box they came in."

-- Shortly after Hurricane Wilma struck Florida in October, officials said 911 operators in Palm Beach County were flooded not only with storm-related calls but with self-imposed injuries. Some of the problems (according to an October Palm Beach Post story): brush-clearing chain-saw accidents; the old "cigarette-lighter-to-check-fuel-level-of-a-generator"; people falling off roofs while making repairs; setting up a generator too close to a window; cooking inside on a charcoal grill; pouring gasoline into a generator while it's running; failing to respect downed power lines; and stacking items atop a previously "on" electric stove so that, when power resumes, they catch fire.

-- Police in Twin Falls, Idaho, confiscated almost $1 billion in counterfeit money in October in a doomed scheme in which the loot consisted only of bills of the denomination of $1 million (which does not legally exist); a man from Buhl, Idaho, had tried to give a bank that amount as collateral for a loan. And according to police in Lafayette, Ind., in September, Earl Devine's counterfeit money was not much better: Though a popular name for $100 bills is "Benjamins" (for the face of Benjamin Franklin), Devine's $100 bills still had the face of Abraham Lincoln from the $5 bill he allegedly used as a model.

In October, a 33-year-old pastor at the University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, standing in a baptismal pool preparing to immerse a parishioner in front of hundreds of congregants, mishandled a microphone and was electrocuted. On the same day in Johannesburg, South Africa, a pastor at the Jerusalem Apostolic Church drowned during a river baptism ceremony when he and the parishioner (who also drowned) lost their footing on rocks in the river bed.

Accidents by elderly drivers whom police suspect momentarily confused the gas pedal for the brake (or accelerated in the wrong gear): Age 90, crashed into another car in a funeral procession, injuring nine, Birdsboro, Pa. (May). Age 89, crashed into a Winn-Dixie, injuring seven, Lakeland, Fla. (November). Age 87, crashed into a hospital's lobby, injuring five, Bismarck, N.D. (October). Age 83, crashed into a garage and house, killing the driver, Chicago (September). Age 82, crashed through four walls and a steel door of a security company, injuring one, Anderson, S.C. (November). Age 80, crashed into four parked cars, no injuries, Rockford, Ill. (November). Age 78, crashed into several cars and a large crowd at an auto auction, injuring 20, Yaphank, N.Y. (July). Age 77, crashed into the operating room of an eye clinic, just missing a sedated patient, no injuries, Newark, N.J. (August).

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