Ric Hoogestraat is married to Sue and works at a call center in the Phoenix area but spends 30-plus hours a week inside the online Second Life video game, pretending that he is the digitally drawn Dutch Hoorenbeek, a 6-foot-9, muscular babe magnet who lives on his own island. That unnerves Sue, according to an August Wall Street Journal profile, especially since Dutch recently "married" a digital woman and set up housekeeping with their two digital dogs. (The real-life creator of the new Mrs. Hoorenbeek has never met Ric and says she never will.) Dutch and his wife spend hours shopping and motorcycling together, leaving Ric little time for Sue. "Is this man cheating on his wife (meaning Sue)?" the Journal asked. Lamented Sue: "You try to talk to (Ric) or bring (him) a drink, and (he)'ll be having sex with a cartoon."

World of Warcraft, too, is an online game as popular as Second Life, with warrior-players amassing digital gold coins from every opponent they vanquish, and the greater the lucre, the higher they advance in the WOW ranks. Some players take the easy route, though, and buy their WOW gold coins from dealers, who mostly get them from "Chinese gold farmers" in Nanjing and other cities -- men and women hired to play the game 80 hours a week, not for advancement but to score coins that they can sell to other players, at the equivalent of about $1.25 per 100 coins (marked up to $20 per 100, retail), according to a June New York Times Magazine article.

-- Solving Two Female Problems at Once: Cytori Therapeutics (cited in a recent Chemistry and Industry Magazine report) has developed a procedure to grow breast tissue from a mixture of stem cells and fat liposuctioned from the recipient's belly, thighs or butt. A spokesman for British plastic surgeons said he was hopeful for success, on behalf of mastectomy patients, but less generous toward women seeking ordinary breast-enlargement. The implanting surgery is still in clinical trials, but is expected to be available in Europe next year.

-- In August, the Discovery Channel reported on the equipping of Bushmen (indigenous to Africa's Kalahari Desert) with handheld Palm Pilot personal digital assistants to track animals and locate plants via special software. The illiterate hunters can tap screen icons representing various animals, the activities they're engaging in, and how many they see, with a global positioning satellite automatically recording the location.

-- They're Scientists So They Must Know What They're Doing: Researchers from Johns Hopkins University announced in July that they had bred the world's first mentally ill mouse (with schizophrenia) to see if it could help them understand the disorder in humans. (The human schizophrenia genes came from a mutant gene from a family in Scotland.) And Duke Medical Center researchers announced in August similar success inducing obsessive-compulsive disorder in mice.

-- The New York Times reported in July that at least eight buyers were vying to purchase one of the five parking spaces in the basement of the new condominiums at 246 W. 17th St., for $225,000 each. And in Chappaqua, N.Y., the owner of the Via Genova water bar told WCBS-TV in July that she offers 80 different bottled waters from around the world, with the most popular at $30 and "Bling H2O" priced at $55, but hopes business picks up: "There are so many people that are uneducated about water."

-- How Executives Deal With Stress: In June in Spain, about 30 executives were chosen in a contest by NH Hoteles to help demolish Madrid's NH Alcala hotel; they were let inside with mallets and told to have at it. In London and Tokyo, another option recently became available, according to the Daily Mail: misery clubs (such as Loss in London). Executives can rent rooms and view weepy movies or attend group crying sessions and "tear therapy" to "indulge their inner gloom," wrote the newspaper.

(1) Belleville, Ill., psychiatrist Ajit Trikha pleaded guilty in June to defrauding Medicare and Medicaid of at least $1.85 million, including invoices claiming he worked more than 24 hours a day on 76 different occasions (40 hours on one day and treating 83 patients in 2 1/2 hours on another). He also claimed to treat patients 1,267 times in Belleville while he was traveling in Europe. (2) In June, the New York state comptroller charged Brooklyn dentist Mohinder Mayell with defrauding Medicaid of at least $124,000, including claims for treating eight patients between 123 and 170 times each and filling 52 cavities in another patient in about two hours' time.

Two Port Washington, Wis., inmates brawled in July, started (said officials) when James Lala (who has served time for having sex with an underage girl) asked another man what he thought of Woody Allen's having married the teenage daughter of his then-girlfriend Mia Farrow. When the man responded that he thought that was perverted, Lala punched him in the face.

-- In July, a California appeals court rejected the challenge of Nizameddine Chokr, 51, leaving in place his five-year-plus sentence for repeatedly masturbating in public. However, Chokr, a suede-pants-wearing, facially discomforting, secret FBI agent (according to him), shamelessly lamented that women are constantly demanding sex from him, leading him once to proclaim in court, "I am the best ever." He termed one of the masturbation episodes (according to a July Orange County Weekly report) an "involuntary" discharge and expressed confusion why patrons in Angelo's Hamburgers restaurant would scream when he unzipped to clean himself. In another incident, he said he tried mightily to resist two women who picked him up at a bus stop, but said he had to accede to their sexual demands lest they file bogus criminal charges.

-- In Orlando in July, Brittany Ossenfort complained that it was not she who had been jailed recently on a prostitution charge, that the arrestee claiming to be her was Richard Phillips, who had befriended Ossenfort last year (while pretending to be a woman) and become her roommate but who with the passage of time began dressing and acting like her until Ossenfort finally discovered "she" was a man (after which Phillips allegedly stole Ossenfort's financial identity). Ossenfort admitted to being completely fooled by Phillips: "(H)e acted like a girl, talked like a girl, looks like a girl. He doesn't even have an Adam's apple."

News of the Weird has reported several times on various designers, and even engineers, who claim to have invented a more comfortable bra. In July, a team from Hong Kong Polytechnic Institute, citing "the complex 3-D geometry" of the breast, offered a mathematical equation that they said would yield greater comfort, producing a larger variety of sizes. The researchers tried out 100 different measurements, eventually narrowed to eight -- overall build, volume, breast shape (inner, outer and lower), height, "gradient" and "orientation." Their "depth/width ratio" would increase the number of sizes from the current A/B/C/D to as many as 20.

(1) In April, a woman hanging out laundry on the sixth-floor roof of a building in Nanjing, China, fell off but was only slightly injured when she happened to land in a shallow pool of the contents of the building's septic system, which workers were cleaning. (2) A fiery auto crash in July near Augusta, Ga., had killed the driver and would likely kill the passenger, too, if the fire were not immediately smothered. Firefighters were still minutes away, but passing by was a pump truck from a local plumbing company, whose quick-thinking driver extinguished the flames with 1,500 gallons of raw sewage from a septic tank-cleaning job he had just finished.

(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.)

East Dublin, Ga. (in July), and Athens, Texas (in August), sponsored their own versions of Redneck Games, with events such as mud-pit belly-flopping, seed-spitting and making armpit music (Georgia), as well as (in Texas) "red-neck horseshoes" (played with toilet seats), a Spam-and-jalapeno-eating contest, a mattress chuck, men bobbing for raw animal parts in tomato paste, and the ever-popular coed butt crack contest. Wrote the San Antonio Express-News: "There was something strangely arresting about watching 10 serious-faced guys grind away at pink bricks of Spam while Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild' boomed from the loudspeakers."

(1) Amy Mueller filed a lawsuit recently against Samy's Bar and Grill in Joliet, Ill., after she willingly tried to climb onto the bar to dance in May 2006 but fell and broke her ankle. Samy's should have had a "ladder" or other climbing aid, said Mueller's lawyer. (2) Jeromy Jackson and his family filed a $10 million lawsuit in Morgantown, W.Va., in August against McDonald's because there was cheese on his Quarter-Pounder, which triggered a severe allergic reaction that required hospital treatment. Jackson's lawyer said the family's order was painstakingly clear that the burger should be cheeseless, but apparently, after being served, Jackson failed to lift the bun to check.

(1) Cheveon Ford, 21, was arrested in Pensacola, Fla., in July and charged with making false 911 calls; according to authorities, Ford's only explanation was that he had no more minutes on his phone and knew that 911 calls were free. (2) In Rochester, N.Y., in June, Eric Kennedy, 38, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for molesting an underage girl over a three-year period, which he partly attributed to his poor eyesight, in that at times he might have mistaken the girl for her mother, with whom he was living.

-- Florida state Rep. Bob Allen was a co-sponsor earlier in 2007 of legislation to increase the penalty for "public lewdness and indecent exposure," such as trolling for sex partners in public restrooms (upping the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony). The bill did not pass, which was lucky for Rep. Allen, who was arrested in July in a men's room in Titusville when undercover officers said he entered and exited three times in the space of a few minutes, peered over a restroom stall and offered oral sex for $20.

-- After a 25-year-old woman was accused of murdering her father and sister (and wounding her mother) in July in Sydney, Australia, authorities revealed that she had been diagnosed with a psychotic illness in 2006. However, she had been discouraged from seeking psychiatric treatment by her parents because they are Scientologists, who by doctrine reject psychiatry and psychotropic-drug treatment.

-- Great Moments in Anger Management: Raul Ponce Jr., 20, was arrested in San Diego in April and charged with killing his teenage girlfriend by stabbing her 122 times; he was arrested later that day at his anger-management class. And Rev. Robert Nichols, who for several years had been teaching anger-management classes for accused criminals in Gary, Ind., was arrested in July and charged with beating his wife.

(1) A 12-year-old girl was sentenced in Perth, Australia, in July to two months' detention for stealing a car and leading police on a harrowing high-speed chase. According to court records, she has already been convicted of more than 60 crimes. (2) A 7-year-old named Alisha told reporters in Reidsville, N.C., in August that she was just being a good daughter when she challenged the man who tried to rob her mom (a convenience store clerk). "I was pushing on him and telling him to 'back away, back away, man.'" (Her aggressiveness foiled the robbery, but the man got away. Said Alisha, "He should be locked up by his gills and towed to the police.")

An estimated 50 followers of Hira Ratan Manek live in the Atlanta area, according to an August Journal-Constitution report, and regularly follow his teaching to stare directly into the sun, supposedly for energy and clarity of thought. Ophthalmologists consulted by the newspaper expressed alarm, even though Manek advises to start at 10 seconds' time and gradually increase (to 45 minutes!) and to stare only when the sun is near the horizon.

(1) In July, a federal appeals court ruled that no one could challenge President Bush's order permitting warrantless eavesdropping on phone calls into and out of the United States, unless it was a person actually eavesdropped on. However, according to law professors cited by the Los Angeles Times, anyone who could prove that would be barred under other national security laws from revealing that fact in public. (2) Pamir Safi will soon be retried in Lincoln, Neb., accused of raping a woman in 2004 (after a hung jury in the first trial), but this time, Judge Jeffre Cheuvront has prohibited prosecutors from using the terms "rape" or "sexual assault" in front of the jury because they might prejudice Safi, who claims the sex was consensual. The alleged victim said she feels humiliated to refer to the incident as mere "sex."

-- The Orient Industry Co. of Tokyo each month turns out 80 life-size, anatomically correct and finely detailed "love dolls" that retail for the equivalent of $850 to $5,500 each, for men who would rather hang out with toys than women, according to a July Reuters dispatch. The more expensive models are admirably life-like, made of silicon and with 35 movable joints. Reuters found one customer, Mr. "Ta-Bo," who owns at least two dozen of them (each with a name), even though he claims to be seeing five real women on the side. "Sex with human girls was better," he said, "but I hate the process of dating."

-- In July, a tractor-trailer overturned on Walker Road in Norridgewock, Maine, and its contents of nitrogen-concentrated chicken manure spilled onto rusted cars and the rest of the property of junk dealer Richard White. Days later, "There's stuff still 20 feet up the tree," he said. "It was like a tsunami wave of hot chicken (manure)," he told the Waterville Morning Sentinel. White grumbled that the truck company was slow on the cleanup, probably, he said, because his property is largely junk. "They think I'm a hick and don't matter. But my life didn't smell like this before." And "I hate flies."

Another prominent company of very large dancers is flourishing (this one in Cuba), performing with remarkable grace the forms of classical ballet, and even popular steps, despite sometimes thundering across the stage, "convey(ing) an excitement akin to a stampede," according to a July New York Times dispatch from Havana. Like others (such as Henri Oguike's Big Ballet in the U.K.), Danza Voluminosa is home to talented ballerinas who happen to be much too hefty (several around 300 pounds) for traditional troupes. Danza capitalizes on its bulk by offering storylines on gluttony, fat prejudice and the psychological problems of obesity.

(1) "(British National Health Service) Dentists Turn Away Patients With Bad Teeth" (a May report in London's Daily Telegraph) (compensation is sufficient only for routine treatments). (2) "Indian Lawyers Tie Man to Tree, Beat Him" (a May Reuters report from Lucknow, India) (the man had declined to marry one lawyer's niece). (3) "Principal Admits Throwing Excrement (at a kid)" (an April story in the Toronto Star) (said suspended principal Maria Pantalone, "I couldn't take it anymore").

(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.)

Kyle Krichbaum, 12, of Adrian, Mich., has had an obsession with vacuum cleaners since infancy, when he was mesmerized by the whirring, said his mother, and for years, he says, he has enjoyed vacuuming so much that he does the house up to five times a day, with one of the 165 new and used vacuum cleaners in his collection. Said a former teacher, "It's not that he didn't like recess. He just preferred to stay inside vacuuming." Older sister Michelle, interviewed for a July CBS News profile of Kyle, spoke for all of us: "He's constantly vacuuming. I'm just like 'why, why, why, why, why, why?' I don't understand."

-- In April, Britain's Office of Work and Pensions acknowledged to the Daily Mail that the multiple wives of polygamous husbands who are legally in the country routinely draw dependents' unemployment allowances from the government (even though polygamy itself is illegal in the U.K.). A single person receives the equivalent of about $120 a week, and a married couple about $180, with each additional wife about $60.)

-- Miles Nurse and Jennifer Plomt, condominium owners in Vancouver, British Columbia, learned in July that they would have to cohabit with as many as 80 bats that had infested their unit for the following six weeks because the B.C. Wildlife Act prevents disturbing the critters during their mating season, which would end in late August. At press time for a July Vancouver Sun story, the couple had found one bat in bed with them, another hanging upside down from a bathroom door frame and five in the ceiling over a kitchen pantry.

-- It's Good to Be a British Prisoner: (1) Faced with overcrowding, the government announced earlier this year that 25,500 inmates would be early-released, and since that would take away their "free" housing for the remainder of their sentences, awarded each released person "room and board" expenses to live on until their terms expired. (2) Britain's Prison Service announced in May that inmate obesity was such a problem that it had hired "dozens" of fitness trainers to serve at 25 U.K. jails. Trainers will provide individualized exercise routines and "holistic, alternative therap(ies)," according to a report in The Sun.

-- Seven years ago, the city council of Bainbridge Island, Wash., set out to build a public restroom for downtown Waterfront Park so visitors would no longer have to use portable toilets. Today, the toilets are still there, following council battles over million-dollar proposals such as a glass-tiled structure dug into a hillside, a combination restroom/scenic-viewing area, and a design that anticipated $45,000 just for artwork. In May 2007, the council gave the public works director some money and ordered him to (in the words of one council member) "just (build) a bathroom."

-- In February, a New Jersey appeals court ruled against the town of Voorhees, which had waged a nearly three-year battle with a businessman because it disputed the shade of paint he had used on his Friendly's restaurant. Town officials said it wasn't "sandy" (the required color for buildings in that particular shopping center), but rather "creamy yellow." The township spent $20,000 fighting for "sandy," and the restaurateur spent $70,000 to show that "creamy yellow" matched the other buildings, and the appeals court judges seemingly just shrugged.

The Horror of War: A U.S. law professor representing Guantanamo prisoners compiled a book of poems by some of the detainees, to be published this month by University of Iowa Press and featuring a cover blurb by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky. Among the verses, for example, by Sami al Haj, quoted in a June Wall Street Journal story: "When I heard the pigeons cooing in the trees / Hot tears covered my face" and "My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish / Violent with passion." The U.S. military had to approve the text, citing the ease with which imagery could be used as coded messages to colleagues outside.

-- (1) James Coldwell, 49, was arrested in Manchester, N.H., in July and charged as the man who robbed a Citizen Bank branch dressed as a tree (branches duct-taped to his body and head, obscuring much of his face, though he was still identified from the security camera). (2) A prosecutor in Chelsea, Vt., refused in June to pursue police officers' charges against Jayna Hutchinson, 33, that she had committed a crime because she made faces at a police dog and "star(ed)" at him.

-- Community Policing: One traditional opportunity for police in the United States to mediate problems occurs when they facilitate the exchange of driver information (identification and insurance) in traffic accidents. Similarly, in Braunschweig, Germany, in June, police were called to a legal brothel to mediate a prostitute-client dispute following the rupture of a condom during their encounter. Police were successful in encouraging the prostitute, and the reluctant customer, to exchange information, in case of future health problems.

(1) Authorities in Doylestown, Pa., arrested 34 people after a seven-month police investigation of drug-dealing, which began last December when a man on probation gave the police information about the ring in order to avoid going back to prison. He had been facing a charge of public urination. (2) Chicago police arrested three alleged dope-sellers in June after casually spotting one of them inside a garage with the door open, bagging $670,000 worth of marijuana. The police came upon the garage while chasing a man who had been urinating in public.

-- Accidents that leave victims relatively normal but with severely heightened sexual desires have been mentioned several times in News of the Weird, back to a 1978 collision with a Pepsi truck that, according to a jury in Detroit, left a man with a spontaneous, intense desire to become a woman. In 2002, motorcyclist Kunal Lindsay was hit by a car and, after an arduous physical recovery, realized he had become maniacally horny (and, incidentally, unusually interested in cell phones) and that his marriage was near collapse because he constantly pestered his wife for sex, often in "pornographic" terms. London's High Court approved an insurance settlement in March 2007 for the equivalent of about $2.4 million (with more should Lindsay's condition "deteriorate").

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) In May, Damion Mosher, 18, of Lake Luzerne, N.Y., became the most recent person to injure himself by needing to find out if putting a bullet into a vise and hitting it with a screwdriver would cause it to fire. (It would; he was slightly wounded.) (2) Two men and a woman were among the recent wave of people trying to cash in on the high price of copper scrap metal when they broke into an abandoned nursing home in Gainesville, Ga., in July. However, they had missed the sign at the entrance announcing that the building had recently been converted into a training facility and kennel for police dogs, and they were quickly sicced on and arrested.

(1) Police in Brandon, Fla., arrested Willie Tarpley Jr., 46, in May, alleging that he killed his ex-wife's boyfriend because he was upset that she was dating a man who was a registered sex offender (even though Tarpley and his ex-wife are reportedly also registered sex offenders). (2) At a Toronto nursing home in May, a 69-year-old resident angrily kicked a 79-year-old fellow resident, causing him to fall and fatally hit his head. The victim had taken up with a female resident, thinking she was his wife, but the jealous younger man thought the woman was his own wife. She was actually married to neither; all three had Alzheimer's disease. (No charges were filed.)

(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.)