Seriously Bi-Cultural: Tariq Khan, 12, of New York City, bubbled with enthusiasm (to a New York Times reporter in August) about his love of the Grand Theft Auto video game and the hip-hop music of Fat Joe, T.I. and 50 Cent -- a month after becoming a prestigious hafiz by having memorized the entire Koran in Arabic (which he doesn't understand all that well). He finished the regimen in less than two years of 40-hour workweeks, and if he retains his knowledge, he and 10 people of his choosing eventually get express passage to paradise.

(1) University of Central Florida student Matthew Damsky was arrested in July and charged with starting a fire in his dormitory, just so that, he said, he could meet women during the evacuation. (2) During the Santa Ana, Calif., murder-conspiracy trial of Aryan Brotherhood prison leaders in July, the lawyer for defendant Barry "The Baron" Mills (who was convicted along with colleague Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham) made the point that the Aryan Brotherhood is more of a social club than a criminal gang and mostly enjoys just "playing cards, reading and crocheting," according to a New York Times report.

-- Longshots: (1) Los Angeles psychologist Michael Cohn filed a lawsuit in May against the Los Angeles Angels baseball team because he didn't get a red nylon bag that the team was giving to women for "Family Sunday" on Mothers' Day last year. (2) "Carlos the Jackal," who is perhaps the world's most notorious terrorist and who is serving life in prison in France, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the head of French intelligence for illegally capturing him while he was sedated in a liposuction clinic in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1994.

-- Garrett Sapp filed a lawsuit in July seeking compensation for injuries from a 2004 auto accident in West Des Moines, Iowa, in which Christopher Garton's car, turning, hit Sapp's because Garton's attention was diverted by (according to a police report) the oral sex he was receiving from his wife.

-- James Filson was fired as a Big Ten conference football referee in 2005, following a reporter's disclosure that, after a bad accident and the installment of a prosthetic, Filson had been officiating games with one eye. Filson filed a lawsuit in July, pointing out that he had been refereeing well enough for the previous four years that no one noticed his condition, but the conference said that, now that the word is out, he would be a magnet for criticism on close calls.

-- Pedophiles Fight Back: (1) Phillip Distasio, 34, told a judge in Cleveland in August (in preparation for his September trial on 74 charges) that he's been a pedophile for 20 years, that what he does can be therapeutic for the child, and that it's part of his Arcadian Fields Ministries religion, of which he is a friar. (2) Three men in the Netherlands announced in May that they have formed the Charity, Freedom and Diversity party and will field candidates for office, advocating freedom to be naked in public and a reduction in the age of consent for sex to 12. The new party, said one, will give them "a voice." "(P)oliticians only talk about us in a negative sense."

-- (1) Amarillo, Texas, officials, welcomed home eighth-place national spelling bee finisher Caitlin Campbell in June with a billboard, but misspelled her name as "Cambell." (2) ExxonMobil, the company that announced jaw-dropping profits of $18.7 billion for the first half of 2006, said in June that it would fight the U.S. Justice Department over $92 million that the government said the company owes in the still-uncompleted 1989 Exxon Valdez oil-spill cleanup.

-- I See Dead People: (1) A campaign worker for unsuccessful Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Dennis Michaud was charged in July with falsifying election records, in that he allegedly made a sworn statement that 57 voters had signed Michaud's nominating petition "in (his) presence," including two people who had long been dead. Said the worker, "I did nothing wrong." (2) The signers this summer of a nominating petition for James T. Finnell for an office in Smithtown, N.Y., were all living, but the problem there was that Finnell himself had died in 2004, and according to a July report in Newsday, no one knows who circulated the petition.

About 1,000 animals were scheduled to be dug up from Pet's Rest cemetery in Colma, Calif., after owners realized that their lease had run out (June). And the Green River Cemetery in Greenfield, Mass., began hurriedly moving and re-burying bodies, which had begun sliding down a muddy slope into the river (July). And about 100 skeletons were recently unearthed from an old graveyard beneath the St. Joseph's Church, which the Archdiocese of Boston demolished in 2004 and sold (July). And the city of London, England, began selling used burial sites (for the equivalent of about $5,600), offering to inter bodies on top of previous burials and to re-mark gravestones with new names (July).

The robber of a Bank of America branch in Tampa, Fla., in August is actually still at large, but according to witnesses, the bag of cash he took and stuffed down his pants as he fled had exploded, from the chemical dye pack inside, creating a temperature of about 425 degrees. Said a police spokesperson, "There's no way that he was not injured." (In his spirited post-ignition dash, the man jettisoned almost all the money.)

In 2001, News of the Weird mentioned William Lyttle, then age 71, of North London, England, who was notorious for obsessively digging tunnels underneath his 20-room home. That year, he had dug past the property line for the first time and created a 15-foot hole in the street. Earlier in 2006, Lyttle was temporarily evicted when his tunneling threatened the integrity of the entire street, and building inspectors feared that his accumulation of junk would cause the house itself to sink into the ground already weakened by 40 years' worth of burrowing. Engineers are considering cementing in all the tunnels.

The following people accidentally shot themselves recently: A 21-year-old man in Hoquiam, Wash., and a 20-year-old man in Chicago (fatally), both while trying "to holster" the weapon in their waistbands. And criminal suspects Fabian Patillo, 21, in a Chicago suburb (June), and a 23-year-old man in East Germantown, Pa. (July), shot themselves in the head when they too-hastily fired their guns behind them trying to shoot pursuers. (Mr. Patillo did not survive.)

Eighty such themes have occurred so frequently that they have been "retired from circulation" since News of the Weird began publishing in 1988, and here are more of them:

Sometimes, firefighters are the ones who start fires, often because of a need to prove how important they are when they put it out. And it's the law in some places that if a local election ends in a tie, it's decided by a coin flip or a cutting of cards. And most of us have heard of postal workers who fall behind in their work and stash mounds of undelivered mail. And remember when you were shocked that a high school teacher would actually have sex with a student? All those stories used to be weird, but no longer.

(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.)

Boutique wigmaker Ruth Regina of Miami is readying a line of hairpieces for "teacup" dogs and other over-pampered canines, at prices that range into the hundreds of dollars. Most promising include the "Yappy Hour" (a fluff of curls) and the "Peek a Bow Wow," which (according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in August) "fall(s) down over part of a dog's face, giving a glamorous look reminiscent of 1940s movie star Veronica Lake." (It's for dogs that feel sexy, said Regina. "There (are) some dogs that have the come-hither look.")

-- Inmate Donny Johnson, serving three life terms in solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, was the beneficiary of a showing of his acclaimed paintings at a gallery in the Mexican tourist village of San Miguel de Allende, according to a July New York Times report. Because of Johnson's isolation, his only "brush" is made from strands of his own hair; his "canvases" consist of blank postcards; and his medium is colors from decomposed M&M candies. Nonetheless, at least six of the paintings, which the Times reporter called "powerful," have sold for $500 each.

-- Martin Creed, a one-time winner of Britain's prestigious Turner Prize, told the Guardian in July that his latest work, titled "Sick Film," would open in London in October and that it includes 19 scenes of people vomiting on camera. Creed spoke to the Guardian from Los Angeles, where he is working on the next, similar project, entitled "Shit Film," and has already been able to line up 15 "performers," perhaps, he said, "because LA represents the extreme edge of the world."

-- Budget-Busting: (1) While New York state grapples with a serious budget shortfall, the speaker of the state assembly works at a law firm that trolls for "victims" of injuries at state parks, with a suggestive Internet-page list of accidents that might lead to lawsuits against the state. (In August, after the New York Post exposed the page, the law firm withdrew it.) (2) In July, just after New Jersey's governor and legislature resolved a government-closing stalemate over spending in that heavily taxed state, the government announced it would reinstate its discontinued policy of paying for "erectile dysfunction" drugs for Medicaid recipients.

-- Beijing News reported in July that the city intends to assign tracking numbers to every single cabbage, carrot and pea pod in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, to identify their origins to improve food safety. Five thousand tons of vegetables may be eaten during the Olympics, and Chinese farming has been criticized by Greenpeace for using banned pesticides and other soil pollutants.

-- From an Atlanta police report, summarized in a July issue of the weekly Creative Loafing: A man working on a house on Smith Street was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital with serious injuries to his posterior. He happened to be bending over next to a wall that, unknown to him, a worker on the other side was drilling into, and the drill bit entered his "anal cavity."

-- Least Competent Cops: Four New York City police were called to an apartment house in July in the Bronx concerning a landlord-tenant dispute, but were distracted by a teenager in the hallway smoking marijuana and started to chase him, when a pit bull attacked the officers. The toll, 26 bullets later: one dead dog, one bitten officer, three other officers wounded by each other's gunshots.

(1) Undercover investigators for the Government Accountability Office reported in July that they were able to purchase, on the open market from Pentagon contractors, surplus body armor, mounts for shoulder-fired missiles, and missile radar test devices. (Nearly 2,700 "sensitive" military items had been bought by 79 other buyers.) (2) An FBI computer consultant, who said he was frustrated by bureaucratic delays in obtaining legitimate access to certain bureau files, was able to hack into the files surreptitiously via the FBI director's secret password, which the consultant figured out using software found on the Internet. (3) Indiana state homeland security officials told Vermillion County officials in July to stop using the special emergency-only highway message boards to advertise their charity fish fries and spaghetti dinners.

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: John Wayne Lewis, 59 (McAlester, Okla., June); Kenneth Wayne Beck, 34 (Warren County, Mo., June); Timothy Wayne Coalson, 44 (Senoia, Ga., July); Charles Wayne Thomas Jr., 22 (Dallas, July); Ira Wayne Cloniger (Washington, Va., July); John Wayne Thomson, 46 (arrested in Victorville, Calif., on a Washington warrant, August). Pleaded guilty to murder: Michael Wayne Nelson, 23 (Palatka, Fla., August). Executed for murder: Darrell Wayne "Gator" Ferguson, 28 (Dayton, Ohio, August). Committed suicide after escaping from a halfway house: convicted murderer David Wayne Nelson, 42 (Anchorage, Alaska, June).

Huang Chunyi, 94, of Taiwan, told a reporter from China Daily in May that the secret to his longevity is that he likes to look at photographs of pretty women every day, and he showed off his collection of 100,000 that he has amassed from newspapers and magazines over the last 20 years. His favorites are Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Chinese model Chiling Lin. "I hope these scrapbooks will become family heirlooms," he said, "so that my grandchildren can get a look at them."

Least Competent Bail Bondsman: That would be the unidentified bondsman who bailed out identity-thief suspect Thomas Samuel in Santa Cruz, Calif., last year on Samuel's bogus check for $9,800 (after rejecting as bogus an earlier Samuel check for $3,200). Least Competent Lawyer: Ms. Knovack Jones pleaded guilty in Miami in July to ripping off a client for $300,000, though admitting that she lost most of that money in a Nigerian e-mail scam. (Said Jones, "He had a contract with the government (for) $38.6 million, and he needed my (help).")

(1) Eduardo Gonzalez, 18, was arrested and charged as the one who shot an Orlando, Fla., man to death in March for spilling beer on him in a bar. In August, the price of life went down even further when, according to police, Gonzalez put out hit contracts on five witnesses to the original shooting, which would have brought the total to six dead over one spilled beer, except (as is often the case) the "hit man" was an undercover cop. (2) A 34-year-old man was killed in Hollywood, Fla., in June after refusing to pay $80 for a $78 towing bill (he demanded $2 change, which the driver did not have), then jumping on the truck to challenge the driver and eventually falling underneath it to his death.

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 months, they'll be reviewed here.

Too many pranksters nowadays kidnap school or business mascots (like inflatable Ronald McDonalds) and vandalize them or hold them for ransom. Some libraries do have policies to have patrons arrested for long-overdue library books. The incidence of fires increases as smokers hooked up to an oxygen supply simply must feed their habit. And gasoline thieves who work at night need to check the tank somehow to see how full it is, and all they brought with them are matches or a lighter. These stories used to be weird, but let's face it: no longer.

(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.)

A former police official and current aggressive, respected Wellington, New Zealand, litigator, Rob Moodie, 67, said in July that he is tired of the old-boy network of male lawyers and judges, and that henceforth he will show his disdain by dressing in women's clothes in court. The worse the "corruption" he senses, the frillier will be his outfits, said the married father of three, who also said he happens to like women's clothes, but that it took the pervasive male courthouse culture to bring that into the open. Moodie said already he has enjoyed giving "a flash of lace at the urinal" but said he would keep his trademark moustache.

-- Steven Buelow, whose Vermont prison sentence is up for a rape-murder he committed at age 15, still cannot be released until he proves that he has a place to live, and according to an August report on Burlington's WCAX-TV, the keenest idea he had was to pick women at random from the Burlington phone book, write them letters describing himself and his prison status, and asking them to take him in (with a total of 15 letters going out). Not surprisingly, at least one woman contacted by the station said she was terrified by the letter and considered moving away, and Buelow said he wouldn't send out any more.

-- An analysis of government records by The Washington Post revealed in July that a federal agriculture subsidy program to compensate farmers for market-losing crops has evolved, through regulatory interpretation and lax enforcement, into a program that since 2000 has paid $1.3 billion to people who don't even farm at all. (Although pre-tax income of all farming was a near-record $72 billion in 2005, federal subsidies actually grew to $25 billion, a sum considerably more than that paid to families receiving welfare.)

-- More than 70 children got separated from their parents during the Taste of Chicago festival on June 30, but one 6-year-old boy was still unclaimed as of July 7, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, citing a police spokesperson. The boy was eventually turned over to the state Department of Children and Family Services, which found that his family had a spotty record of supporting him even before the festival.

-- (1) Researchers at the Russian Plant Institute in St. Petersburg told Russia's Interfax news agency in June that they had invented a strain of cannabis free of mind-altering properties. (2) And 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams, speaking in Australia in July, said she "would love to kill George Bush" because of the invasion of Iraq.

-- Officials in Springfield, Vt., denied the liquor-license application of Paul Murphy in July for a paperwork problem without specifying any other disqualifying reason. The officials thus ignored the fact that Murphy is an inmate in the state correctional facility in Springfield and that the location of the liquor service on the application was to be Murphy's prison address. Said Town Manager Robert Forguites, "We (just) determined that the application was incomplete."

(1) The prime suspects (and their addresses) in a July murder-robbery in Washington, D.C., were actually known to police a month earlier (thanks to a tip from a previous robbery victim), but police didn't pick them up until after the murder, according to a July Washington Post report. (2) In June, the D.C. inspector general reported that the mugging death of a former New York Times reporter involved "complacency and indifference" by almost all police and rescue personnel involved, from ambulance crew to investigating officers to hospital doctors, resulting in the victim, who was severely beaten, being treated merely as a street drunk. (3) In June, the D.C. police's crime-solving average went down as investigators found 119 more unsolved crimes that had been originally written up only as "injuries."

(1) The New York Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics ruled in July that judges can, if they wish, carry guns in the courtroom if they are otherwise permitted by state law, provided the judges are "patient, dignified and courteous." (2) Filing a lawsuit in Santa Ana, Calif., in May, Jinsoo Kim said he had a valid contract in which Stephen Son promised to repay the $170,000 that Kim had invested in Son's Korean corporation, especially considering that the promise was written entirely with Son's blood.

(1) "Houdini," the 12-foot-long Burmese python in Ketchum, Idaho, that accidentally swallowed a large electric blanket in July (and electrical cord, after pulling it from the wall) (Veterinary surgeons managed to remove the whole thing, leaving Houdini in good condition.); (2) "Crash," the pelican that smashed into a car in Malibu, Calif., and had undergone a month's rehabilitation (only, when finally released in July, to collide beak-first with some rocks, before successfully lifting off) (Wildlife officials said Crash may have been disoriented from eating toxic algae.); (3) "Barney," the Doberman pinscher guarding a children's museum near Wells, England (who lost control and chewed up almost $1 million worth of rare teddy bears in August, including one once belonging to Elvis Presley).

Police in Groningen, Netherlands, announced that a 40-year-old man whom they had previously counseled had once again resumed his compulsion to rummage through garbage seeking discarded tampons (and leaving notes for the discarders) (July). And Paul Zakszewski, 54, was arrested in Salem, Mass., for having allegedly made audio recordings from women's restroom stalls (July). And Denver schoolteacher Mark Asimus was arrested and charged with offering to pay one teenage girl to bloodily beat up another, merely so that he could watch (June).

News of the Weird has mentioned several times those "yogic fliers" (who sit cross-legged and, by Transcendental Meditation, "fly" by levitating their posteriors). In July, two weeks after Israel began its retaliatory attack on Hezbollah, a former Israeli army colonel, Reuven Zelinkovsky, was critical, alleging that a squadron of yogic fliers could provide a "shield of invincibility" around the country, just as effective as a military campaign. TM experts use the formula of the square root of 1 percent of a country's population as the critical mass of fliers necessary to affect the national spiritual consciousness (for Israel, 265 fliers).

(1) At commencement this year at Gallatin High School in Nashville, Tenn., the principal had the valedictorian arrested for trying to make a speech that was reserved for the senior class president. (2) The Buffalo (N.Y.) News reported skyrocketing absentee rates at local high schools this spring because of a new district policy that the lowest possible semester grade would be 50, even for those missing every class (meaning that a grade as low as 80 for one semester could be averaged with a no-show 50 to reach the minimum-passing grade of 65).

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 months, they'll be reviewed here.

Nowadays, too many burglars coming in from the roof seemingly get stuck in vents or chimneys. And even if burglars get inside, sometimes they fall asleep on the job. And visitors to court houses (not only suspects but ordinary citizens) sometimes forget about their drug stashes when the security guard has them empty their pockets. And some driver's license applicants, perhaps a little too anxious, pull up in front of the examining station and then accidentally crash into it. Those stories certainly used to be weird, but no longer.

(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.)