In a May dispatch from Atlanta on Southerners' notoriously unnutritious, fat-laden cuisine, a Chicago Tribune reporter watered readers' mouths with descriptions of the "hamdog" and the "Luther" (prized dishes of Mulligan's restaurant in Decatur, Ga.), which are, respectively, "a half-pound of hamburger meat wrapped around a hot dog, which is deep-fried and served on a hoagie topped with chili, bacon and a fried egg," and "a half-pound burger served with bacon and cheese on a Krispy Kreme doughnut." The 11 states from Washington, D.C., to Florida, west to Texas, have the nation's highest mortality rate from strokes, but, said a University of Mississippi professor, "Food is a strong emblem of identity for Southerners," uniquely shared across racial lines.

-- Near Tampa, Fla., in May, Robin Key, 44, survived a .38-caliber gunshot through the windshield of her minivan when the bullet came to rest in her lap after being slowed by hitting her shoulder belt and bra strap. And in New York City in April, Glenda Clarke, 26, in a rest room of a nightclub when a gunfight erupted outside, survived a bullet that tore through a door, grazed her scalp, and came to rest in her thick hair weave.

-- A so-far-unnamed 15-year-old New York City girl (a student at the once-most-dangerous Hillcrest High School) was arrested in May and charged with attacking three classmates by biting them viciously on the face, necessitating plastic surgery for at least one, who had a chunk of flesh gnawed off before bystanders could restrain the girl (described by classmates as a "goth vampire"). "She was trying to get to my jugular," the victim said. "For some reason, she just likes to bite."

-- In May, a judge in Edmonton, Alberta, ordered Shee Theng, 30, to serve a nine-month community-control sentence for partially scalping his then-girlfriend by attempting to "style" her hair with a power drill, a technique he said he learned about on a TV infomercial. Theng admitted that he knew it was a bad idea because he had previously screwed up his own hair trying it out.

-- Michael Scanlon, 31, a chief associate of disgraced Washington, D.C., lobbyist Jack Abramoff, reportedly earned millions from his largely illegal deals with Abramoff and spent most of it buying real estate in Delaware beach communities during 2002-2005, paying at least $12 million in cash. However, according to a May report in the Wilmington News-Journal, Scanlon dutifully each summer during those years worked as a full-time lifeguard on Delaware beaches, at $11.35 an hour, and reportedly had tried to line up the job again this summer, but was turned down by Rehoboth Beach officials because of his pending federal sentence.

-- "Leigh" (who has shed his last name) was arrested at the courthouse in Machias, Maine, in April, charged with trespassing for the 24th time locally, a strategy he has employed unsuccessfully to try to convince a court to erase a 1993 conviction for reckless conduct with a firearm. Leigh's pattern appeared to be: trespass, then raise the 1993 case in court, then see it ignored as irrelevant, then get jailed for trespass, then get out, then trespass again, then repeat the process. In the latest conviction, he was sentenced to time served, since he had already been in jail for the previous year.

-- Jason Lyon, 28, a National Guardsman from Buffalo, N.Y., who hurt his ankle jumping from a Humvee in Baghdad in 2004, was cleared, after treatment, to return to combat. After his tour ended, he applied to the U.S. Postal Service to be a letter carrier but was turned down because of his ankle injury (though he is free to apply for less-strenuous positions). In March, after publicity about the case, the Postal Service said it would seek a second medical opinion on the ankle, and a decision was pending at press time.

-- Ronald Michalowicz, 54, a fire inspector for Bedford Park, Ill., was dismissed after 28 years on the job (about a year short of retirement) for violating town rules against soliciting charitable contributions. According to a Chicago Sun-Times report in May, the solicitation was initiated by others to pay for Michalowicz's treatment for tongue cancer, which was thought to be fairly quickly fatal, but which he has survived after chemotherapy. A town official, having noted Michalowicz's near-terminal condition earlier, approved the solicitation, but when Michalowicz returned to work, other officials insisted on enforcing the no-solicitation rule. He has sued for wrongful discharge.

(1) Spokane, Wash., dentist Henry G. Kolsrud, 82, decided to give up his license in May rather than face punishment for having an unsanitary office; among the charges: that he kept cat food in the office refrigerator with dental supplies, and that he scooped up cat vomit around the office with dental spatulas. (2) Denmark's Prince Henrik (husband of the queen, Margrethe II) in an April magazine interview declared that dog meat is one of his favorite dishes (even though he is honorary president of the Danish Dachshund Club, owns several dachshunds and has published poems dedicated to dachshunds).

In St. Paul, Minn., in May, an unnamed man, working out a community-service sentence by cleaning up for the next day's "graduation" at the St. Paul Police Department's dog training school, was caught with drugs by the senior canine "instructor," Buster. According to a report in the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, the worker had brought six small bags of marijuana with him, even though assigned to the dog school. "I was going to smoke it when I was done working," he said.

(1) Defendant Justin Jacobson, 21, fighting an assault charge, had a mistrial declared during jury selection when, during a disagreement at the defense table, he slapped his lawyer (Olympia, Wash., May). (2) Defendant John Gomes, fighting a murder charge and apparently not liking that so many of his lawyer's motions were being denied by the judge, suddenly reached over and began strangling the lawyer, until court officers pulled him off (Boston, May).

(1) In April, authorities at El Salvador's La Esperanza prison near San Salvador arrested visitor Lidia Alvarado for allegedly trying to smuggle an M-67 grenade to inmates by stuffing it inside her vagina. (2) Also in April, according to a report in the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star, a 38-year-old man appeared at the ER at BryanLGH Medical Center West in Lincoln with a 20-ounce soft drink bottle lodged in his rectum. (3) Also in April, according to a report in The Capital (Annapolis, Md.), a former restaurant manager was acquitted of assaulting one of his then-employees, heightening the mystery behind the alleged assault (in which the employee had been found in June 2005 in an alley behind the restaurant with a garden hose's nozzle end stuck in his rectum).

In December, News of the Weird summarized local newspaper reports that "more than 50 witnesses" in 30 pending lawsuits had accused Seattle-area physicians (and brothers) Charles and Dennis Momah of sexually abusing patients and, in some cases, of Dennis' improperly impersonating Charles to patients. However, in May, according to the Seattle Times, the judge who presided over the first of the lawsuits concluded that the patient fabricated her story. Judge Katherine Stolz fined the patient's lawyer, Harish Bharti (who represents most of the complainants), $300,000 for being complicit in the tale and ordered the patient to pay Dennis Momah $2.8 million for defamation. (Charles Momah's earlier conviction for sexually abusing patients was not affected.)

(Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or www.NewsoftheWeird.com. Send your Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)

Wheelchair-confined Richard Paey committed almost exactly the same violations of Florida prescription drug laws that radio personality Rush Limbaugh did, with a different result: Limbaugh's sentence, in May, was addiction treatment, and Paey's, in 2004, was 25 years in prison. Both illegally possessed large quantities of painkillers for personal use, which Paey defiantly argued was (and will be) necessary to relieve nearly constant pain from unsuccessful spinal surgeries after an auto accident, but which Limbaugh admitted was simply the result of addiction. (In fact, if Limbaugh complies with his plea bargain, his conviction will be erased.) Paey's sentence now rests with a state Court of Appeal.

-- (1) China, sensitive about the impression it will make on visitors to the 2008 Olympics, has undertaken a major campaign against open spitting, monitored by volunteer scolders who wear shirts that spell out "mucus" in Chinese and who hand out bags to spit in. (2) India's Rural Development Minister vowed in March that the country will eliminate open defecation by 2012, despite reports of toilet use in some states as low as 15 percent. The government gives homeowners toilet-installation grants.

-- For 30 years now, many residents of Frostburg, Md., have been puzzled, and annoyed, at the three-story-high, 400-foot-long metal- and-concrete frame that Pastor Richard Greene calls his modern Noah's Ark, at which he works off and on, awaiting Judgment Day. According to an April Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dispatch, Greene said the Arc came to him in visions during disturbing dreams in 1976. Some neighbors are patient, but others call the Ark an eyesore that depresses property values and wastes religious charity (since contributions to Greene have totaled $1 million).

-- Ewwwww! (1) Again this year, in April, Jim Werych of the Wednesday Night Classics car club in Brookfield, Wis., ritually dragged his tongue, in a deep lick, across Lisbon Road (with traffic stopped in both directions) to verify, and proclaim, that the streets are free of winter salt and thus safe for the club's delicate classics. (2) A March New York Times dispatch described recent successes in eradicating the grotesque "Nigerian worm," which afflicted 3 million Africans in 1986 but only 12,000 last year. The string-like worm, up to 3 feet in length, produces pools of acid in legs or feet (or eye sockets) and causes excruciating pain until expelled.

-- In April, William Bethel Jr. confessed to police during a traffic stop that the station wagon he was driving was mainly used for transporting corpses for his friend's mortuary service but that he was using it just then to deliver pizzas for Domino's of Feasterville, Pa. (Bethel quickly resigned.)

-- On the day after a federal jury in Virginia sentenced "20th (Sept. 11) hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison without possibility of parole, a Florida jury in Orlando gave Carl Moore, 37, exactly the same sentence. The Virginia jury had concluded that Moussaoui could have prevented the deaths of nearly 3,000 people; the Florida jury found that Moore had fondled a 12-year-old girl, briefly, underneath her clothes on an elevator at a resort (his second such conviction).

An Illinois Appellate Court in April upheld a lower court ruling reversing Mongo the steer's disqualification for steroids after he had been chosen junior grand champion at the 2003 Illinois State Fair. Mongo had tested positive for the anti-inflammatory Banamine, for his sore foot, but the court declared the test improperly administered. It was a victory for Mongo's owner, Whitney Gray, but of utterly no benefit to Mongo, who shortly after the fair was slaughtered for steak.

(1) In February, children's book author Frank Feldmann, 35, trespassed to the top of the St. Augustine (Fla.) Lighthouse in the middle of the night, wearing a tiger suit, to decry child pornography on the Internet. However, his point was not immediately understood by police on the ground below because of communication problems posed by his voice-muffling tiger mask. (2) The residents of Steuben County in upstate New York, who attended a community rally in January to protest a planned clean-energy windmill farm, mostly criticized its unsightliness, but one opponent objected because windmill blades make whirring noises that to him resemble sounds of Nazi holocaust torture.

New York City raw-food restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 43, was sentenced to two years' probation in April for a highly publicized 2005 incident in which he indecently exposed himself on a subway train in front of a 22-year-old woman, who reacted by photographing him with her cell phone and displaying the shot on the Internet. In an April interview with New York magazine, Hoyt shrugged off the incident, calling his habit just another facet of a "pretty cool," thrill-seeking person. "I've met women who enjoy (being flashed)." Except for the subway incident, even his victim would "probably want to go out with me."

-- Short Attention Spans: Brian M. Williams, 21, was arrested for allegedly robbing Houchens Market in Glasgow, Ky., in April; police had found him minutes afterward across the street filling his gas tank. And Nathan Myles, 25, was sentenced in March to three years in prison for a lengthy, destructive police chase in Thunder Bay, Ontario; it ended when Myles stopped for a haircut. And Mario Caracoza, 26, was arrested for allegedly robbing a Bank of America in Bristol Township, Pa., in May; police had found him minutes afterward eating breakfast at the Sunrise Diner next door.

-- Wrong Place, Wrong Time: (1) Konoshin Kawabata, 48, was arrested in Osaka, Japan, in March for burglarizing a temple; he wandered through an unmarked door and was surprised by 20 sumo wrestlers, who were staying at the temple and who easily detained him. (2) Police in Melbourne, Australia, arrested a 34-year-old man for robbery in January after the victim (renowned illustrator Bill "Weg" Green) provided police with an unusually helpful drawing of the perp's face.

(1) People hit by "flying" cows (that fall out of livestock trailers on highways and overpasses), with the latest occurring near Seguin, Texas, in March, when a cow flew out onto Interstate 10, causing collisions of two police cars that soon caught on fire. (2) Patient, by-the-book, but useless police standoffs (in which cops implore residents for hours to surrender, eventually to learn that no one is home), with the latest being a suspected drug house futilely surrounded for seven hours by SWAT officers in Oklahoma City in April.

People who accidentally shot themselves recently: Clayton Teman, 23, Springfield, Ore., January (badly misfired while being chased by police). A 25-year-old man, Wichita, Kan., February (driving with loaded gun between his legs). Sheriff's deputy Jeff Hamric, Parkersburg, W.Va., March (during firearms practice at a gun range). An undercover Lauderhill, Fla., police officer, January (when a car bumped him on the street). A 15-year-old boy, North Brunswick, N.J., March (another "waistband as holster" accident). William Tyree, 33, Dacula, Ga., April (badly misfired while being chased by police). An unidentified man, Nacogdoches, Texas, February (shooting at an opossum). And in April, two men, a 23-year-old in Hopkinton, N.J., and an unidentified man in Grass Valley, Calif., fatally shot themselves while playing alcohol-induced games with their guns in front of friends.

CORRECTION: In last week's News of the Weird, I misstated that a young girl's defective heart was removed, in favor of an artificial one, and then re-started recently, after 10 years. Actually, the heart had remained inside her all along, but dormant.

The National Health Service office in Dundee, Scotland, has recommended toilet techniques for the estimated one-third of the population that suffers from bowel and bladder dysfunction, according to an April report in The Times of London. The pamphlet, "Good Defecation Dynamics," lists preferred breathing habits and describes the proper, upright, seated posture for effective elimination ("Keep your mouth open as you bulge and widen"), and encourages support for the feet, perhaps "a small footstool."

-- Earlier this year in separate incidents, two physical education teachers at Ernest Ward Middle School in Pensacola, Fla., were arrested and charged with bribery for allowing students to avoid gym classes by paying the teachers money. Tamara B. Tootle, 39, charged in April, allegedly gave students credits at $1 per student per class, and Terence Braxton, 28, arrested in February, pleaded guilty in May to a similar scheme, admitting to making at least $230.

-- More Side Businesses: (1) A highly publicized attraction of the Isdaan restaurant in Gerona, Philippines (according to a March Reuters dispatch) is its "wall of fury," against which diners can vent frustrations by smashing things (with fees ranging from the equivalent of 30 U.S. cents for a plate up to $25 for an old TV set). (2) In July, according to BBC News, British farmer David Lucas will be forced by European Commission rules to give up his lucrative sideline of building gallows for Zimbabwe and other governments that still employ hangings. Lucas' single gallows sells for the equivalent of $22,000, and the Multi-Hanging Execution System, mounted on a trailer, goes for about $185,000.

In April, noted surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub and a team at Ormond Hospital in London re-started and re-inserted the original heart of a 12-year-old girl after it had been in storage for 10 years while she lived with a donated heart. Because the donated heart was finally showing signs of rejection, Dr. Yacoub decided that the original, which was removed because of acute inflammation, might have repaired itself enough to work again.

(1) In Miami, actress-dancer Alice Alyce, 29, sued the owners and managers of the musical "Movin' Out" for $100 million in March after they fired her, allegedly because they believed her breasts are too large for her role. (2) Schoolteacher Sue Storer, 48, filed a lawsuit against the government in Bristol, England, in March, asking the equivalent of $1.9 million for having fired her when she complained of, among other things, never getting a replacement for her classroom chair, which she said emitted a "farting" noise every time she sat down.

-- Unclear on the Concept: (1) Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate (and football hall-of-famer) Lynn Swann, who says state taxes are too high, was revealed by the Allentown Morning Call in March to have been neglecting to collect legally required state sales tax from the Pennsylvania customers of his football memorabilia Web site. (2) Arizona gubernatorial candidate Mike Harris donated $100,000 of his own money to his campaign in April, six months after successfully begging a judge to cut his $2,000-per-month child-support payments in half (and conceding that he had not disclosed that he owed his ex-wife $44,000 more from a property sale). Harris said even paying $1,000 a month was "pretty darn generous" of him.

-- (1) Pasco County, Fla., candidate John Ubele, 28, a proud member of the white separatist National Alliance, said he's more concerned with runaway government expenses than with race as he campaigns for a seat on the county's Mosquito Control Board. (2) New York state Sen. David Paterson, running for lieutenant governor, said in March that he now regrets introducing unsuccessful legislation for 14 straight years (until 2001) to make it legal for suspects to physically resist police.

Women's handbag designers, uncertain about the effect of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana's alligator habitats, spent the winter searching for new supplies of hides, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. The fall gator harvest saw prices rise 50 percent from two years earlier, forcing Ralph Lauren, for example, to raise the price of its most prestigious alligator purse to $14,000, and hide prices were expected to rise another 50 percent this summer. (Alligator shoes, shirts and coats have also soared in price, and the alligator-paneled piano sold by Giorgio's of Palm Beach now costs $950,000.)

In April, Michael Theleman, 45, finding true love hard to come by in the isolated town of Bray, Okla. (pop. 1,035), posted a yard sign offering to pay $1,000 for help in finding a "virgin" bride between the ages of 12 and 24. Offended neighbors convinced him to take it down, but he replaced it with another, stating that his future wife must not be "pig-worshipping, heathen (or) white supremacist." Theleman said he couldn't understand the neighbors' furor, recalling that his grandmother was married at 14 to "a much older man."

(1) Salt Lake City high school student Travis Williams was bitten by a baby rattlesnake in May, even though a companion had warned him to avoid it. Said Williams, "(E)ven though she told me not to ... I picked it up anyway. I'm not too bright that way." (2) Chesterton, Ind., high school student Michael Morris was hospitalized in May with a broken leg and broken arm after being run into by a friend driving an Acura at about 25 mph, but it was consensual. The friend described Morris as an adrenaline junkie who had had the friend run over him before, but Morris told the Times of Northwest Indiana, "I won't do this no more."

News of the Weird reported in 2001 that a bulimic woman in Toyoda, Japan, had been caught illegally dumping about 60 pounds a week of her own vomit in remote locations and, in 2003, that another bulimic woman had been caught discarding similar quantities near Madison, Wis. (perhaps, say health professionals, to assist their denial process by keeping their own homes untainted). In April 2006, sheriff's deputies reported a similar spree, ironically near an Iowa town called Mount Pleasant, that has now totaled about 50 bags' worth over a three-year period, but at press time, the vomiter was still at large.

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Bruce Wayne Potts, 34 (DeSoto, Texas, February); Oral Wayne Nobles, 71 (arrested in Kingman, Ariz., on a Massachusetts warrant, April); Ronald Wayne Spencer Jr., 19 (Richardson, Texas, April). Arrested and suspected of murder: Darrell Wayne Lewis, 32 (Tempe, Ariz., March). Sentenced for murder: David Wayne Hickman (Dallas, May); Anthony Wayne Welch, 27 (Viera, Fla., March). Committed suicide while serving life in prison for murder: John Wayne Glover, 72 (Sydney, Australia, September 2005).

More than 90 people were killed while observing their religion in three incidents in April. A stampede by thousands of women at a religious gathering in downtown Karachi, Pakistan, resulted in 29 deaths; a packed bus speeding home from a religious festival went out of control and plunged into a ravine near Orizaba, Mexico, killing 57; and a few days later in Santa Maria del Rio, Mexico, five were killed by lightning, which struck the large metal cross before which they were praying.

(Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at http://NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or www.NewsoftheWeird.com. Send your Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)