Christmas Madness: (1) In November, the upscale New York City menswear and accessories store Jack Spade removed from its holiday catalog a $40 frog-dissection kit (with a real carcass) after numerous queries from people wondering what in the world the store was thinking. (2) A holiday party for inmates at Britain's Peterborough Jail promised a fun time with Xbox and PlayStations, along with cash gifts of 5 pounds each (about US$9), which is greater than the value of the candy boxes the jail will give its guards for Christmas. (3) Police in Rock Hill, S.C., put a 12-year-old boy under arrest at the insistence of his mother after he had defied her and opened his Christmas gift three weeks early.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned the cocaine-possession conviction of Timothy Stone in September, ruling that a search of his person was unconstitutional even though he had given police permission. The judges agreed with Stone that when he consented, he never expected that the search would include the officers holding out the waistband of his sweatpants and shining a flashlight on his genitals (which is where he happened to be hiding a small container of cocaine).

(1) The "Berkeley Pit" in Butte, Mont., is the nation's largest environmental-disaster site, with 40 billion gallons of highly toxic copper-mine waste that the federal government has long feared too expensive to clean up. However, Montana Tech researchers, writing in the Journal of Organic Chemistry in July, have found more than 160 types of "extremophiles" (organisms that thrive in toxicity) in the pit and have demonstrated that some are effective against lung and ovarian cancers. (2) Kimberly Baker, 22, sought child support in Warrensburg, Va., in October from the father of her daughter. However, when officials realized that the father, now 16, would have been 13 when the child was conceived, that made him a rape victim under state law, and thus, they arrested Baker.

-- Ricardo Meana, 81, was charged with attempted murder in November in Sun City, Fla., when his 82-year-old wife, who has Alzheimer's, was found inside a van in a store's parking lot struggling with the plastic bag over her head. Police were called, but Meana seemed unconcerned and even nonchalantly resumed shopping, saying that he often put the bags on when his wife felt sick, so that she would not vomit on herself.

-- Not Our Fault: In 2002, Jeffrey Klein and Brett Birdwell, both 17 at the time, trespassed onto a railroad yard in Lancaster, Pa., and climbed atop a boxcar to see what the view was like, but were severely burned by a 12,500-volt line on the roof and thus sued Amtrak and Norfolk Southern railroads for not having done enough to prevent them from trespassing. In October, a federal jury awarded the two men a total of about $12 million in compensatory damages plus $12 million in punitive damages.

-- In a deposition, Ennis, Texas, physician Aniruddha Chitale admitted that semen that patient Sherry Simpson found on her face after a 2004 colonoscopy was his and thus later pleaded guilty to sexual assault. However, in his deposition (according to a report by Dallas' WFAA-TV), Chitale insisted that the act that produced the semen was "unintentional." (Simpson is now suing Ennis Regional Medical Center for having tolerated Chitale's behavior.)

-- Federal prosecutors have insisted so far that any ill-gotten money that former Enron executives had squirreled away in their spouses' names still can be fully recovered by the government, except for one executive. Michael Kopper, once a director of Enron's global finance unit, pleaded guilty in 2002 to illegally obtaining $16.5 million, but he is openly gay. And since his home state of Texas does not recognize his union with his longtime partner, prosecutors cannot treat the partner as a "spouse" and have lumped him with "third party" transferees, whose assets are much more difficult to obtain (according to a November report in Washington Blade).

-- University of California, Irvine, professor Elizabeth Loftus, a prominent scholar on people's overconfidence about memory, was turned down by the judge as an expert witness in November in the forthcoming trial of "Scooter" Libby (Vice President Cheney's former assistant, who has been charged with lying to prosecutors about phone conversations, which Libby says weren't lies but just forgetfulness). At a hearing on Loftus' credentials, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald not only exposed some problems with her research but elicited from Loftus the confident assertion that the two had never before met. However, Fitzgerald then immediately refreshed Loftus' memory, reminding her that he had cross-examined her in court once before.

Pleading guilty to manslaughter in Pierre, S.D., in August was Mr. Austin First In Trouble, 19. And in Providence, R.I., in November, the teenager sentenced to life in prison for murder (where his life might rot away) is Mr. Phearin Rot. On the brighter side, a linebacker for South Sumter High School in Bushnell, Fla., had a good year: Yourhighness Morgan (whose brother Handsome Morgan and cousin Gorgeous Morgan were undoubtedly proud of him).

A 41-year-old engineer in suburban Toronto has accumulated, and worn, about 800 pairs of sports socks over 15 years (half of them off the feet of professional athletes), according to a lengthy November profile in Canada's National Post, which did not reveal his name. The worst part of his hobby, he said (besides having to keep it secret from his wife), is that he is often contacted by foot and sock fetishists, which he denies that he is, preferring to think of himself as sort of a "custodian of history," wrote the Post. (A more conventional fetishist, Masashi Kamata, 28, was arrested in Nagoya, Japan, in October after police found about 5,000 pairs of used girls' and boys' shoes at a rented warehouse. "I was enjoying their smell," he said, according to Mainichi Daily News.)

Noel Methot, 24, was cited for inattentive driving after her car wound up half-submerged in a pond near downtown Orlando, Fla., in November. She was driving down a street but apparently missed the signs warning of the end of the road, and according to witnesses, the most likely reason for that was that she was arguing loudly with her boyfriend over her cell phone. The car went airborne about 20 or 30 feet before splashdown, but Methot was not seriously hurt.

In yet another case of a person practicing what is allegedly acceptable in another country but illegal in the United States, a 28-year-old woman from Cambodia was arrested in Las Vegas, Nev., in October for kissing her 6-year-old son's penis, which she said was simply an expression of motherly love. An official in California's Cambodian Association of America confirmed the custom to the Las Vegas Review-Journal but said it never extends past age 2.

(1) With dozens of puzzled beachcombers witnessing, a cow marched into the surf off the coast of Queensland in Australia in November and swam out as far as 300 yards for four hours (returning to shore twice but venturing out again) before drowning from swallowing water. (2) In October in Vancouver, Wash., a Doberman pinscher named Victoria jumped on an electric stove and accidentally nudged a switch that started a fire in her apartment, resulting in about $100,000 damage. It was the second time this year that Victoria had jumped on the stove and started a fire, but the first one did much less damage.

(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.)

In November, a judge upheld a rule passed by a condominium association in Golden, Colo., prohibiting owners from smoking even inside their own units (in that neighbors had been complaining for five years that a couple's cigarette smoke had been seeping into their town houses). A few days earlier, Belmont, Calif., became the first American city to ban smoking everywhere in the city limits, including condominiums and even cars (but not detached, single-family homes). (A day before that, however, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to instruct the police to treat marijuana-smoking as the city's lowest law-enforcement priority.)

-- Bright Ideas: The City Council of Greenleaf, Idaho, passed an ordinance in November to require nearly all residents to keep a gun at home in case the town becomes overrun by people relocating after Gulf Coast storms. Also in November, a report from the Missouri House's Special Committee on Immigration Reform blamed much of their state's acquiescence to illegal immigration on the fact that since Roe v. Wade in 1973, 80,000 potential Missourians have been aborted, thus helping to create job vacancies for aliens.

-- Super-protective: The Powys County Council in Wales warned the maker of Welsh Dragon sausages in November that it must label its product better, such as by marking it "pork sausages" (so as not to mislead about the type of meat it contained). And in October, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sought to extend its abstinence education program (which currently gives grants to states for programs for teenagers), to start reaching unmarried people up to age 29.

-- A New York City housing program begun in the 1970s to encourage new construction has enabled huge reductions in property taxes on certain buildings in Manhattan, and those savings continue to this day (and at least through next year and maybe beyond). Among the beneficiaries: Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, who saves $130,000 a year on his $4 million Trump World Tower apartment; designer Calvin Klein ($134,000 savings on his penthouse); and actress Natalie Portman (saving $26,300 a year on her $5.8 million condo) (according to an October New York Post report).

-- "I've always had the desire to play (the cello) naked," said Ms. Jesse Hale, a music major at Austin Peay State University (Clarksville, Tenn.) and member of the CJ Boyd Sexxxtet of nude cellists who play their experimental, chant-like songs in concert around the country. Hale, who says she's been playing naked since sixth grade, explained to Austin Peay's newspaper in September that cellists "make full body contact with (their) instrument," and their legs even "wrap" around it so that "(i)t just feels natural."

-- Social Messaging: (1) The magazine Time Out New York reported in September on the "artistic palettes" of the Sprinkle Brigade of artists who dress up dog droppings on New York City streets with glittering candy bits and colorful toothpicks, for "urban beautification." (2) British performance artist Ian Thorley, working on grants from several local councils, did a week's stint on an Ashington street in October, stepping onto and off of a doormat while wearing a badge identifying him as a government doormat tester.

-- At the county jail in Dubuque, Iowa, in November, Michael Kelley Jr., 29 and accused of attempted murder, was swapping stories with inmate Jamie Brimeyer, 34, when he asked about Brimeyer's facial scar. As Brimeyer described being stabbed in the cheek by an unknown assailant in 2005, Kelley realized that he was the one who had stabbed him and recalled the incident so well that he corrected some of Brimeyer's recollections. Brimeyer later reported Kelley, who is now also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.

-- Police Blotter: (1) (from the Morning Sentinel, Waterville, Maine, Nov. 10) "6 p.m., a woman said she suspected someone had sabotaged her washing machine. A police investigation concluded that an imbalanced laundry load had caused the shaking." (2) (from The Star Press, Muncie, Ind., Nov. 4) "(A man) reported the burglary around 10 p.m. Thursday after he returned from the hospital and found his 36-inch Samsung TV missing. It (had been) replaced with an RCA TV that was missing a power cord. ... Decorative items were placed around the new TV, apparently in an attempt to fool (him)."

Libertarian Steve Osborn finished second in the U.S. Senate race in Indiana to incumbent Richard Lugar, more than 1 million votes behind, but two weeks later asked for a recount in 10 precincts. And Utah officials are investigating results in Daggett County, where 947 people were registered to vote on Nov. 7 (compared to the county's entire 2005 census population of 943). And in tiny Waldenburg, Ark., the mayor and his challenger tied at 18 votes each, with the only other candidate, Randy Wooten, receiving zero, which Wooten said was impossible because he had voted for himself. And in Lysowice, Poland (with November voting, also), an elections official became so distraught at irregularities at her polling station that she grabbed a box of ballots and locked herself in a restroom until police convinced her to come out.

(1) England's Liverpool Magistrates Court granted police a temporary "sexual offenses prevention order" in October against Akinwale Arobieke, 45, who had been jailed for pestering people with requests to feel their muscles. Arobieke is prohibited from touching, feeling or measuring muscles or asking people to do squat exercises. (2) In October, airline baggage courier Rodney Petersen, 30, pleaded guilty in Melbourne, Australia, to stealing hairs (head and pubic) from clothing or hairbrushes in women's luggage. At his home, police found 80 plastic bags containing hairs, labeled with each owner's name.

Amateurs: A teenager, 17, was booked into a juvenile detention center in Lynnwood, Wash., in October after he got his arm stuck in the dog door of a house he was allegedly attempting to burglarize. (Experienced burglars avoid houses with dog doors because that usually means that a dog is present.) And in Sheboygan, Wis., in November, police arrested Leah Jerolimek, 21, and charged her with trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a gas station, even though the bill (made with a computer and printer) was blank on the back.

News of the Weird first noted Professor Jukka Ammondt of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland in 1995, and apparently his twin passions (Elvis Presley and Latin) have only grown stronger since then. He performs Elvis' songs in the "dead" language that's far from dead in Finland -- a country that features a regular radio newscast entirely in Latin (drawing about 75,000 listeners), according to an October BBC dispatch from Helsinki. Among the Ammondt-Presley standards: "It's Now or Never" ("Nunc hic aut numquam") and "Love Me Tender" ("Tenere me, suaviter").

(1) A 48-year-old woman died from a timber rattlesnake bite during services at the East London Holiness Church in London, Ky., in November. The church features a monthly snake-handling service, during which people can prove they are true believers by not getting bitten. (2) In Shamokin, Pa., in October, Terry Jackson, 36, distraught for an undisclosed reason, kept police at bay in a suicidal standoff in which she wielded five poisonous snakes (from an aquarium in her home). They bit her hand and face numerous times, leaving her bloody, until police subdued her with a Taser gun. She was hospitalized in critical condition but survived and will face charges for threatening police.

(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.)

-- To settle a discrimination lawsuit by transsexual men in October, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority agreed to open all of its restrooms on the basis of individuals' "gender expression," meaning that, for example, any man dressed seriously as a woman could choose the ladies' room. And the New York City government is currently considering adopting a rule to permit people to switch genders on their birth certificates, regardless of whether they've had surgery, as long as they've lived in the new gender for two years and a physician and a mental-health counselor approve.

-- Karen Madden, 38, goes on trial in December in Harrisburg, Pa., after allegedly confessing to stealing $550,000 worth of jewelry and handbags from the residence of her former boss, who is the chancellor of the state's college system. The chancellor, testifying at a July hearing on the charges, said Madden had called her recently and apologized but then went on to say, "I hope you and I can still be friends, and I would like to use you, can I use you as a reference, just for the work part?"

-- Britain's Home Office announced in November that it had agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit by 197 heroin-addicted prisoners that it was "assault" and a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights for them to have been almost immediately denied all drugs when they were arrested. For forcing the inmates to go "cold turkey," the government agreed to pay each the equivalent of about $7,000.

-- (1) Britain's Channel 4 public television announced in July that it would soon schedule a week of documentaries on masturbation, including one by self-designated "orgasm coach" Betty Dodson, "Masturbation for Girls," teaching hands-on techniques to three women. (2) The pendulum swung the other way in October, however, when Britain's Tesco stores agreed that a kit for learning pole dancing (advertised on its Web site), to "(u)nleash the sex kitten inside," with a garter and suggestive DVD, was perhaps unsuited for its "toy" section, where it might have been appealing to adolescent girls. (Tesco moved the listing to its physical fitness section.)

-- Two men in a Dodge Neon were seriously injured in a rollover accident on Interstate 75 near Toledo, Ohio, in October after a red bra flew from the radio antenna of another car, startling the Neon driver and causing him to swerve and lose control. The Ohio Highway Patrol later learned that the owner of the bra had hung it from the aerial after she realized that it had broken due to her dog's having chewed on it earlier that day. A prosecutor said a misdemeanor littering charge would be filed against the woman, but was exploring whether there had been out-the-window socializing between the cars' occupants before the rollover.

-- After shooting video undercover in 10 Army recruiting offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, ABC News released in November an episode of recruiters telling a prospect that no one is going to Iraq anymore. "No, we're bringing people back," he said, and his partner followed with, "We're not at war. War ended a long time ago." In a separate on-camera interview, Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of Army recruiting in the Northeast, generously told ABC News that he disagreed with the recruiters. "We are a nation and Army at war still."

-- (1) Race-separatist cult leader Yahweh Ben Yahweh is awaiting a decision on release from parole (after serving 11 years of an 18-year sentence on racketeering charges in connection with as many as 23 gruesome murders, some involving beheadings) and is dying of cancer. His lawyer asked a federal judge in October to approve his immediate release so that his client could "die with dignity." (2) Washington, D.C., council member (and former mayor) Marion Barry was charged in September with DUI and other vehicle violations but told The Washington Post that authorities were just trying to "embarrass and discredit" him.

-- An investigation by a state agency is under way in Revere, Mass., of a residence condemned by local officials as (according to a neighbor) "worse than any Stephen King movie" because it reeked of garbage, feces and cockroaches. It is the home of Andrea Watson, a child-rights advocate who lived there (until the condemnation) with her two children and two grandchildren. Watson's colleagues told the Boston Herald that she is a tireless activist for children who put her "heart and soul" into Parents for Residential Reform.

-- (1) An apparently poorly trained Kentucky election worker physically tossed a voter out of a polling station in Louisville on Election Day because he hadn't marked all the offices on his ballot. (2) And a voter in Allentown, Pa., was arrested after he suddenly erupted in the voting booth and began pounding the machine with a paperweight.

-- In elections for sheriff, Chris Abril was elected in Polk County, N.C., despite his arrest in August on years-old charges of statutory rape (which Abril said he'd straighten out as one of his first orders of business), and Rick Magnuson was soundly defeated for sheriff of Aspen, Colo., after "all of my skeletons (were) exposed," he said, in the course of the campaign. Among the skeletons was a stint in alcohol rehab; his unauthorized use of a criminal database; his onetime letters to Osama bin Laden as part of an "art project"; and (also as an art project) the video he made of himself masturbating into a hole in the ground in the Mojave Desert.

-- A prison inmate named Calvin Miller, who was angry with a former partner in crime who had escaped conviction, called police in Kansas City, Mo., in 2003 with information that led them to reopen that cold case, and eventually the partner, Johnny Chapple, was convicted of murder (along with two others). However, also convicted was a fourth participant: Calvin Miller. While Chapple received a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, Miller got 17. (By the way, Miller's well-known nickname, acquired before any of this transpired, is "Cheesy Rat.")

-- James C. Burda surrendered his Ohio chiropractor's license in September after an investigation (mentioned in April in News of the Weird) revealed that he offered to treat patients via telepathy (for $60 an hour) and had the ability to go back in time to realign bones and joints at the point at which they were damaged, via his techniques of telekinetic vibration, which he called "bahlaqeem vina" and "bahlaqeem jaqem," which he admitted were nonsense words that came to him one day while he was driving around. An exam ordered by Ohio chiropractic regulators found, not surprisingly, that Burda suffered from "delusional disorder, grandiose type."

-- The Tel Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported in October that the much tighter border security that resulted from the recent war with Hezbollah guerrillas had caused marijuana prices in Israel to jump as much as 800 percent. And, though general tensions between Arabs and Jews remain high inside Israel, prominent ultra-Orthodox Jews joined militant Palestinian Muslims in fierce opposition to the November gay-pride parade in Jerusalem, according to a Boston Globe dispatch. (Said activist Rabbi Yehuda Levin, "Only this onslaught of homosexual radicalism could bring together such disparate voices.")

(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.)