While Canadian "global warming" protesters express alarm at the dwindling outdoor hockey season (fewer months with ice, fewer days cold enough for hard ice), a growing number of "hockey" players are taking the game underwater, according to a November Associated Press story. With six breath-holding players per team, passing a puck with sticks at the bottom of a pool, and players surfacing for air as seldom as possible, dozens of club teams worldwide play (nearly 50 in the U.S.), with a championship tournament scheduled next year for Sheffield, England. Said a Cincinnati high school player of the respiratory challenge, "(W)hen you're close to the goal, you're like, 'Do I want to score a goal or breathe?' Most of the time I say, 'Score.'"

Performance artist Tomoko Takahashi, 39, working on a British government grant of the equivalent of about $8,600, gave an exhibition of inebriation in October at the Chapter arts center in Cardiff, Wales. Dressed in business suit and high heels, Takahashi drank a large amount of beer over a three-hour period, periodically checking to see how far she could walk across a narrow beam about two feet off the floor without falling. A Chapter spokesman called the demonstration a "powerful piece of art."

-- Albania's Gen. Pellumb Qazimi told Reuters in October that the military is scrapping its fleet of obsolete Chinese-made MiG fighter jets, which the country never used in battle but in which 35 Albanian pilots died over the years in operational mishaps. And the Hindustan Times revealed in September that the local New Delhi government's 97 paid rat-catchers have not caught a single rodent since 1994. (And residents complain that rats are not difficult to find in New Delhi.)

-- Are We Safe? In October, the federal Department of Homeland Security announced a $36,300 grant to the state of Kentucky, earmarked to prevent terrorists from using charity bingo and other games of chance to raise money. (One astonished bingo worker in Frankfort told the Associated Press that the need to protect bingo parlors from terrorists "would never even enter my mind.") Also in October, the Tampa Tribune reported that two lower-tier Florida tourist attractions (the Weeki Wachee Springs mermaid show and Dinosaur World in Plant City) were on Homeland Security's list of sites that the state had to "harden" against terrorist attacks, even though officials complained that major sports venues and more popular entertainment sites were not on the list.

-- The Democratic Process: Randy Logan Hale won election to the school board in Homeland, Calif., in November, despite having been incarcerated since September for a parole violation. (He gets out in February.) And James Skwarok campaigned for mayor in Victoria, British Columbia, as a one-issue candidate opposed to pumping raw sewage into open waters, appearing always in costume as a chunk of that sewage, named "Mr. Floatie." (Skwarok dropped out of the race in October.)

-- (1) Police in Fairfax County, Va., discovered, as one of their only clues in an October rape, a hockey puck from a junior league team in Wichita Falls, Texas, apparently accidentally dropped by the assailant. Said an officer, "It's the first time I'm aware of that a hockey puck has ever been left at a crime scene." (2) Also in October, a surveillance camera at Sonny's Pizza & Pasta in San Clemente, Calif., showed a burglar entering, pocketing cash, and then stopping to make himself a large pepperoni pizza from scratch (before being surprised by an early-shift worker and fleeing).

-- The bane of all fair-minded office sports teams is the "ringer," the super-athlete from outside who is imported to help the office team win. Former minor league baseball player Mark Guerra, 33, was accused by Florida authorities of being such a ringer, imported for the Apalachee Correctional Institution's team, which he led to victory in a Department of Corrections softball tournament. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested Guerra in October and charged him with fraudulently accepting a $1,247 "salary" as a temporary Apalachee "employee" (but never actually doing any work).

(1) Michael Plentyhorse, 18, was charged with indecent exposure in Sioux Falls, S.D., in November, when he was discovered partially undressed, in a store, fooling around with a semi-nude female mannequin. (Said a police officer, "There was inappropriate activity between him and the mannequin. That's the only way I know how to put it.") (2) Registered sex-offender Sean Cobin, 20, was arrested in Milwaukee in November on suspicion of reckless endangerment for his role in pressuring a woman to drink concentrated drain cleaner, allegedly because he gets excited by making women vomit. (He was convicted in 2004 in a similar incident.)

(1) A new land speed record for a blind driver was set in September (Mr. Hein Wagner, 33, reached 160 mph in a Maserati V8 GranSport on an airstrip in Mafikeng, South Africa, with help of a navigator). (2) Harvard's libraries contain at least four books bound in human skin, including a treatise on Spanish law with an inscription calling the binding "all that remains" of a fellow named Jonas Wright (according to research by student Dan Alban, writing in the Harvard Law Record in November).

In accord with Thailand's cultural traditions and accompanied by much pomp and circumstance, officials married off Chuang Chuang and his gal Lin Lui, the country's only giant pandas (at the Chaing Mai Zoo in November), and Thong Kham and his gal Thong Khaow, a pair of dwarf Brahman cattle in Sa Kaew province in July (both ceremonies before thousands of spectators). And in Roseville, Mich., in November, Susan Laurer spent $1,200 to marry off a pair of pug dogs, Bobby and Gracie, dressed in formal wedding wear before 70 guests at the Evangel Christian Church. (The maid of honor was a Chihuahua.)

Bryan Perley, who apparently held a grudge against a child-support caseworker, was charged in Orlando, Fla., with several felony counts when he tried to arrest her by impersonating a military officer and holding a fake, handwritten arrest warrant. When the woman's colleagues would not cooperate with him, Perley actually called for police backup, according to a report by WFTV-TV. He told the dispatcher, "(The colleagues) don't understand the chain of command in government. I've warned them."

In October, the Tennessee Supreme Court finally dashed Knoxville prosecutors' hopes of convicting Thomas "Zoo Man" Huskey as a serial killer in a case News of the Weird first mentioned in 1992. Courts had tossed out Huskey's confession (the centerpiece of the case), finding that the incriminating statements were made not by Huskey but by "Kyle," his alter ego, and although Huskey himself had been given a Miranda warning, "Kyle" had not. ("Kyle" supposedly had a grudge against Huskey.) "Zoo Man" (named because a zoo was the venue for some of the crimes) is nonetheless serving 66 years in prison on other charges.

A 43-year-old motorcyclist was killed on Interstate 35 near Osceola, Iowa, when he tried to stand on his bike with his arms folded (and smashed into a guardrail) (October). A 19-year-old driver, performing for two pals who were videotaping, was killed in West Rutland, Vt., when he attempted a "Jackass"-like stunt by leaping from the car at about 30 mph (September). A 39-year-old bicyclist was killed when he raced, unsuccessfully, to beat an oncoming train through a railroad crossing in Oakland Park, Fla., and was knocked more than 100 feet (November).

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

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.)