Not only has professional fishing grown so spectacularly that last year's leading money winner earned $547,000, but popular "fantasy fishing" leagues, resembling fantasy baseball and football, employ elaborate statistical breakdowns of fishing tournaments to help players pick winners, according to a July Wall Street Journal report. "Average weight per fish (caught) over careers," "margin of victory (in pounds)," and other data points are plotted by players, along with weather reports, depth and temperature of tournament lakes, and intangibles such as "home-lake curse." The organization FLW Outdoors estimates 40,000 fantasy players, many of whom have never actually fished.

-- Despite education campaigns by women's groups, about one-fourth of girls in Cameroon still undergo ritual "breast-ironing" at puberty as their families attempt to squash their developing bosoms to make them sexually unattractive to boys and reduce their temptation to marry. The most popular "ironing" instrument is a heated wooden pestle, mashed painfully against the chest. Some girls are supportive, however, like the one who told BBC News in June that she just "wanted to (stay in) school like other girls who had no breasts."

-- The streets of the town of Yap (in the Federated States of Micronesia) feature large stone coins (up to 12 feet in diameter) that historically have served as money, even though they are rarely moved around. Yap is a former U.S. territory that, according to a June Los Angeles Times dispatch, has been very slow to modernize, retaining a caste system, various discriminations against women, and certain society-wide, no-shirt rules for men and women. U.S. currency is used for smaller transactions, but several thousand stationary coins (some worth thousands of dollars) are still in use.

-- In June, after the roof of the just-built Cedar Grove Methodist Church near Thorsby, Ala., collapsed (with no one inside), church officials revealed that they had never sought building permits, based on Pastor Jeff Carroll's assumption that "separation of church and state" meant that his church was none of the government's business. Carroll, whose day job is as a home builder, said volunteers designed and then built the church, but agreed to get a permit for the re-building.

-- In June, the leading Hindu cleric in the Kashmir area of Pakistan demanded a judicial investigation as to why the holy, phallus-shaped object (a "lingam") in the Amarnath shrine appeared not to be of naturally formed ice but of imported soft snow. The annual pilgrimage to worship it (the fertility deity Shiva) depends, the cleric said, on ice formations from inside Amarnath, and some leaders are upset that Shiva this year just doesn't look right.

-- God's Will: Clara Jean Brown, 65, praying for her absent family during a thunderstorm, had just said "Amen" when a lightning bolt hit across the street, ran through a water pipe and exploded into her kitchen, knocking her down (Daphne, Ala., May). And a 34-year-old woman, fasting to re-create Christ's 40-day, 40-night starvation in the wilderness, passed away of probable dehydration after 23 days (London, England, May). And Father Claudio Rossi, 61, a Jesuit priest praying for his mother's health, plunged to his death when the poorly supported floor of the chapel gave way (Palestrina, near Rome, June).

-- In June, the school board in Waterbury, Conn., responding to a crisis in student absenteeism, proposed to make almost all absences unexcused and subject to a $25 parental fine, even including medical absences unless a student is hospitalized or a physician attests that the illness was "serious and chronic." It wound up dropping the fine and settling on the wording to "serious or chronic." Nonetheless, in July, officials decided to promote 500 of the 685 students who had 19 or more absences during the year.

-- The tattoo-removal business is booming, according to a May Fox News report that highlights dissatisfaction with formerly trendy Chinese-language tats that were often either mistranslated as nonsense ("blood and guts" translated as "blood and intestines") or were actually jokes pulled on people too cool for their own good (such as Chinese words for "gullible white boy"). A removal service in Beverly Hills, Calif., said it takes off at least seven Asian tattoos a week.

(1) "Eyebrow Wax Herpes Lawsuit to Proceed" (a June Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., story of a lawsuit against a nail salon). (2) "Port to Get Nuclear Detectors That Won't Be Set Off by Cat Litter" (a July Press of Atlantic City story about technology to reduce false positives from cargo with slight naturally occurring radiation). (3) "Man Once Convicted for Child Molestation Could Go Free Because Judge Accepted a Doughnut" (a July story on Northwest Cable News, Seattle, about a new trial ordered for a sex offender because the judge was too chummy with one juror).

(1) On July 18 (five days after Israel began its retaliatory assault on Hezbollah), swimmer Hilary Bramwill, 30, was picked up by rescuers a mile off a New York beach, despite her insistence that she needed to get to Israel. (2) A veteran Scotland Yard anti-terror detective was arrested in Trafalgar Square in London in July, where he said he was videoing al-Qaida suspects, but according to police, he was merely shooting "upskirt" video of women.

People Who Believe Marijuana Is Odorless: Two men were arrested at the drive-thru window at a KFC restaurant in Buffalo, N.Y., in June by narcotics officers who were eating inside; one of the men had what an officer said was "the biggest marijuana cigar you ever saw," which was making so much smoke that it was wafting into the restaurant. And in Tucson, Ariz., in June, after police were called to one home, they noticed an overpowering marijuana smell coming from a neighbor's house; Jose Ortega Mendez, 35, was arrested when 220 bales of marijuana, totaling two tons, were found inside.

(1) A 17-year-old apprentice was fatally crushed in the bread-drying machine at Karl's Good Stuff Bakery in Australia's Queensland state (July). (2) A woman barely survived after being inadvertently pulled into spinning brush machinery at Soapy's Car Wash in Ocala, Fla. (July). (3) In separate incidents, men drowned when the vehicles they were driving fell into liquid pits and landed on top of them. (A man in Newburgh, N.Y., couldn't escape the lawnmower that pinned him down in June, and a dairy owner in Fresno County, Calif., was pinned by his tractor in a manure pit in July.)

Eighty such themes have occurred so frequently that they have been "retired from circulation" since News of the Weird began publishing in 1988, and for the next few weeks, they'll be reviewed here. Among the first group were stories of mix-ups between phone-sex hotlines and churches, charities, etc.; suspicious packages that bring an office or a city block to a standstill but turn out not to be bombs (and the more harmless the contents really are, like a buzzing personal vibrator, the better); robbers on getaway who hail the first passing car, which turns out to be an unmarked police car (or, in one case, a marked police car); and the political candidate who wins the election even though he died well before election day. They certainly used to be weird, but no longer.

CLARIFICATION: In a column three weeks ago, I noted that a Baptist church in Manchester, England, had staged a fund-raising car wash using water that a church spokesman had called "blessed" (according to a BBC News report, whose headline writer referred to the water as "holy"). However, the church, in its members' bulletin, and contrary to the BBC News report, had written that the runoff baptismal water was specifically not "blessed." Had I known of the church bulletin, I would not have regarded the story as worthy of News of the Weird.

(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.)

New York state Sen. Ada Smith, known to some as the "Wild Woman of Albany" for her temper, pleaded not guilty in April for yet another alleged outburst (accused of assaulting a staff member with hot coffee after a comment about Smith's weight). According to Senate officials cited by the New York Daily News, more than 200 of her staff members over the years have either quit or been fired. Besides Smith's previous run-ins with Albany police, New York City police and United Airlines, other former employees have claimed that she assaulted them (the latest being a woman who said Smith threw a phone at her). Smith has denied virtually every accusation, but her exasperated Senate party leader has stripped Smith of seniority privileges.

In July, Cory Neddermeyer, 42, was turned down for unemployment benefits in Iowa, after a judge ruled that he was fired for cause. His employer, the Amaizing Energy ethanol plant, suffered a massive spill that created a pond of fuel alcohol, and Neddermeyer (a recovering alcoholic), after resisting as long as he could, gave in and started drinking from the pool (causing him to pass out and later register an 0.72 blood-alcohol reading).

The District of Calamity: The District of Columbia government's payroll for 2005, reported by the Washington Times in July, included 1,268 employees paid over $100,000 a year (including 43 over $150,000 a year). The figures for Baltimore (with a slightly larger population) were 55 and two, respectively, and Chicago, with five times the population of D.C., still had fewer employees in both categories. In fact, even though the D.C. workforce has shrunk by 2,000 workers since 2002, the annual payroll has increased by $180 million.

Not Cut Out for a Life of Crime: (1) Lawrence C. Lawson, 60, was charged with robbing the Lasalle Bank in Troy, Mich., in July, which was an easy collar because, as he emerged from the bank with his loot, he spotted a passing police car and promptly fainted. (2) Pierre Barton, 20, was arrested in Cleveland following the robbery of Georgio's Pizza, shortly after he had accidentally dropped his two "cheat sheet" cards containing his robbery speech (reading "Give me the money" and "Tell I'll kill your family (sic)"). (In fact, Barton apparently was a poor ad-libber: Although his makeshift "gun" had come apart and was lying on the floor, he still threatened to shoot the manager as he was fleeing.)

-- In June, when Cook County, Ill., elections supervisor David Orr questioned the ethics of the family of Cook County Board President John Stroger (whose illness forced him to resign but not until the family delayed long enough to discourage potential successors, so that Stroger's son would have a better chance of winning the vacated post), a Stroger ally called Orr a "little poop butt."

-- California Assembly candidate Bill Conrad admitted in May that he personally wrote the flier proclaiming that his party primary opponent, Tom Berryhill, "doesn't have the HEART (emphasis in the original) for State Assembly" because Berryhill had a heart transplant six years ago and that "the average lifespan of a heart transplant recipient is seven years." (Berryhill won easily.)

-- After All, They're Not Running for Husband of the Year: (1) David Spellman was sworn in as mayor of Black Hawk, Colo., on July 12, a week after pleading guilty to two charges for pistol-whipping his wife with a handgun in 2005 (and firing three shots). (2) Self-described "pro-traditional family" candidate Jim Galley lost a two-man June congressional primary in San Diego, with no help from the San Diego Union Tribune's discovery, a week before the voting, that he had had child-support payments garnisheed from his paycheck for four years and was once, for a 17-month period, simultaneously married to two women.

(1) Randall Roye, whom New York City government lawyers say entered the country illegally in the 1990s and assumed the identity of a dead man, nonetheless tried to sue the city for $20 million after he allegedly "fell" out of a first-floor window of a school building. (With his cover blown, he has dropped out of sight, according to a June New York Post story.) (2) The U.S. military has attempted to hand back 32 parcels of land and buildings to the South Korean government after restoring them to their pre-Korean War condition (except for capital improvements the U.S. has made, which stay with the buildings). However, South Korea is refusing 25 of them, according to a June Stars and Stripes story, until the U.S. provides further upgrades.

Texas farmers about 75 miles from the Mexican border near Falfurrias have taken to installing ladders on their property to allow illegal aliens to climb over their fences in the course of trespassing so they'll stop making holes in the fences (which allow the farmers' cattle to escape). According to a June Associated Press report, the ladders aren't used very much, apparently because the illegals assume there's some catch.

In 2004 News of the Weird reported research suggesting that herring routinely communicate among themselves via a high-pitched, "raspberry"-like sound emitted from the anus. In June 2006, a researcher at Greenland Institute of Natural Resources said that herring appear also to use anal bubbles as a defense to obscure themselves from killer whales. (Researchers are not agreed on whether it is digestive gases or some other mechanism that produces the bubbles.)

(1) "$5 Million Awarded to Couple for Loss of Vagina" (a May report on Chicago's WMAQ-TV Web site about a hysterectomy gone bad, leading to "scar tissue and foreshortening" of the vagina). (2) "Officers Honored for Finding Man's Penis" (a story on the Kansas City Star's Crime Scene KC weblog about departmental recognition for seven police officers who searched a field and a yard looking for a man's severed, discarded penis, and then rushed it to a hospital to be reattached).

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (79) The man who falls victim to a random prank by sitting innocently on a public restroom toilet seat that has been coated with glue, as happened to a 20-year-old man at a North Salisbury, Md., Wal-Mart in May. (80) The drug dealer or buyer who dials a phone number and begins a specific drug-sales conversation immediately upon the recipient's answering, oblivious that he has accidentally dialed a police officer's phone, as when a Hesperia, Calif., sheriff's deputy answered in June (and used caller ID to make the arrest).

Eighty such themes have been "retired from circulation" since News of the Weird began publishing in 1988, and for the next few months, they'll be reviewed here. Two popular criminal slip-ups involve the thief who tries to pass a stolen check not knowing that the check belongs to the clerk who is handling his transaction, and the robber who accidentally drops some form of ID at the scene of the crime. (Even though they're both No Longer Weird, we still applaud Calvin Barfield's "two-fer" in July. According to police in Sylvester, Ga., Barfield not only cluelessly tried to cash Joyce Powell's stolen check at the bank where she works, but also got nervous and fled the scene, leaving his driver's license in the drive-thru drawer.)

(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.)

The parents of wannabe singer-actor-celebrity Marissa Leigh, 16, of Scottsdale, Ariz., employ 10 people for her career development, according to an April Arizona Republic story, including manager; publicist; voice coach; two acting coaches; people to do makeup, hair and wardrobe; musical composer; photographer; and webmaster (plus, of course, an entourage of confidence-boosting friends). "She's spoiled," said her mother, "but hopefully, it's a grounded spoiled." However, on her national TV debut, on MTV's "My Super Sweet 16" (a party which her parents spent $150,000 to stage), she was caught saying "I'm a princess" and "I'm such a rock star that I can do this" and "I always get exactly what I want." Even after MTV cut the two songs she sang, she was optimistic: "(This show)'ll still put my name out there and stuff."

In Yorktown, N.Y., in June, one spouse who was roughed up by the other during a domestic eruption tried (as sometimes happens) to talk police out of filing charges. However, the battering spouse this time was Emily Hanlon-Tarasov, a novelist, and the explanation of her husband (who was knocked unconscious when Hanlon-Tarasov angrily threw a book) was fittingly creative: "A few things began flying at the wall," he said, "and one of them was a telephone book. And unfortunately, my head moved into the space that the book was flying (into)." Hanlon-Tarasov was nevertheless charged with assault.

-- Max Foster, 18, complained to a London Daily Telegraph reporter in June that two police officers in Bath, England, had told him they were under instructions not to pursue a man who had been spotted on Foster's stolen moped, because the man was not wearing a helmet. According to Foster, the town's rules of engagement for officers discourage such chases because the suspect might fall off the moped, hit his head and sue the police.

-- Jay and Laura Flynn of Lilburn, Ga., filed a $111 million lawsuit in June against Home Depot and the maker of Tile Perfect Stand'N Seal Grout Cleaner, charging that a defect caused toxic fumes that permanently destroyed half of Jay's lung capacity, which, among other effects, according to Laura, ended the couple's "extremely active love life." She added, "I mean every day. But now that is over."

-- There Must Be Somebody We Can Sue: (1) Daughter Carriel Louah, 25, is suing her parents for at least $75,000 for the broken ankle she suffered in a fall on their property when she paid them an unexpected visit in Darlington, Wis., in 2005. The mother said she appreciated the surprise birthday visit, but denied any negligence. (A judge refused to toss out the lawsuit in July.) (2) Jaime Pinedo filed a lawsuit in Hackensack, N.J., in June against the estate of his late brother's late girlfriend. Daniel Pinedo and Xiomara Ortiz were murdered in May 2004, execution style, by Ortiz's jealous former boyfriend, and Jaime Pinedo alleges that that was Ortiz's fault.

-- (1) In July, former peace activist Christiaan Briggs, 30 (who had gone to Iraq in 2003 to protest the impending U.S. attack), was arrested in Islington, England, and charged with knocking a man out (leaving him in a coma) in a fight after he allegedly hit on the man's girlfriend. (2) The British watchdog Environmental Agency, which prosecutes pollution violators, was fined the equivalent of nearly $14,000 in May for allowing toxic waste to flow from its monitoring station along the River Exe in Somerset. (3) In July, municipal officials in Provincetown, Mass., held a community meeting to air numerous complaints by heterosexuals that they are targets of hate speech by the town's large gay and lesbian population.

-- What Goes Around, Comes Around: Colin Watson, 63, one of Britain's most notorious illegal collectors of rare bird eggs (having been convicted six times and having had nearly his entire collection confiscated by the government), fell to his death in May from a tree he had climbed in south Yorkshire to check out a nest.

-- In June, the Ministry of Higher Education of Saudi Arabia (home of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers), along with the country's civil aviation authority, jointly announced scholarships for Saudi men and women for bachelor's and graduate-school study in the United States in such fields as "air traffic control," "flight safety" and "other majors related to the airline transport industry."

(1) In June, Betty Jean Barachie was sentenced to 27 months in prison for embezzling $1.5 million from her employer so that she could indulge a mindless compulsive-shopping habit; among her inexplicable, 1,500-item haul were 58 coats, 16 chain saws, more than 3,000 books, and a John Deere tractor. (2) Nurse Christopher Irvin, 32, was charged in April with molesting a comatose 4-year-old girl under his care at Children's Hospital in San Diego; he told police he had touched the girl's genitals only "to see if I liked it." (He said he didn't and that, because he wasn't sexually aroused, he must not be attracted to children.)

A federal appeals court in June affirmed the conviction of Aaron Fraser (aka Asante Kahari) for defrauding a Michigan woman he had met in an Internet chat room and had eventually taken for $38,000 in a counterfeit check scam. (Kahari had sent the woman bogus checks for deposit into her account, and then met her to collect the cash, and was gone by the time the bank realized the checks were counterfeit.) Kahari had denied the charges, but the prosecutor introduced portions of a book, "The Birth of a Criminal" by Asante Kahari, which describes in precise detail the very scheme Kahari was accused of pulling on the Michigan woman. "I would get online," he wrote, "meet a broad and be mailing her the (computer-generated counterfeit) check the next day."

-- A July poll of American attitudes on lying, conducted by the Associated Press and the market research firm Ipsos, revealed that many of the respondents could not bear to give poll-takers straight answers from one question to the next. For example, 40 percent said they "never" lied, but in the next question, about 10 percent of that 40 percent said they might even have lied just within the previous week. More than half said lying was "never" justified, but two-thirds then said lying is OK sometimes.

-- British fitness trainer Liz Stuart conducts "powerpramming" classes for new mothers, the centerpiece of which is the women's use of their own infants as weights for such exercises as bicep curls and chest presses (adding a kiss to each rep), as well as resistance in "power walks," according to a May Reuters dispatch from London. Said one mother, of her newfound quality time with her babies, "If I had to go to the gym and put the twins into a (nursery), it would cost me a fortune."

(1) A 47-year-old man was arrested in Milwaukee in June and charged with stabbing a 54-year-old man in (according to the police report) an argument about not having an argument. (2) Marine veteran Christopher Marlowe, 25, was arrested in New Orleans in June and charged with shooting Army veteran Erik Beelman after an argument over which branch of service is tougher. (3) Pamela Majdan, 23, was charged with domestic battery in Wood Dale, Ill., on Memorial Day after allegedly repeatedly beating her sister, Joyce, 31, in a dispute over who had caught the most pieces of candy tossed during the town's holiday parade.

(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.)