Several Duke University campus organizations, including the Women's Center, the Student Health Center and the Women's Studies Department, sponsored a "Sex Workers Art Show" on Feb. 3, at which nearly nude "artists" danced for students and others while vulgarly criticizing America via acts such as a woman's pretending to eat excreted dollar bills and a man's kneeling with an American flag inserted in his rear end. Two years ago, Duke's men's lacrosse team was vilified by the Duke administration and faculty merely for hiring two female strippers for a party (from which emanated false charges of rape and the eventual disbarment of the local district attorney). A university spokesman explained to a National Journal reporter that the recent show was acceptable because it was "art" and "social commentary," rather than male-bonding entertainment.

-- Brand-new Japanese parents receiving a gift are then customarily obligated to give a lesser one in return, and the Yoshimiya rice shop in Fukuoka recently created the ideal such return: small bags of rice of the exact weight of the newborn, printed with its face and name, so that original gift-givers (relatives, friends) can experience cuddling "the baby." Then, of course, according to Yoshimiya's owner, they can break open the bag and eat the rice, though he admitted some people have a problem with that.

-- "We sleep with the snakes (meaning cobras), we eat with the snakes, we live with the snakes (but) we are not scared," said a 14-year-old girl in a village near Calcutta, India, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in November. Said a village leader, "Whenever I lie down in my bed, a cobra will just slide on top of me, without hurting me." In fact, more than 3,000 cobras live in one hamlet, mostly in peace, with few bite victims (though a cobra bite is often fatal because villagers initially trust the gods and spirit doctors to treat them). Cobras are so revered in the village that cobra bites are usually described as attacks by vipers or by "nonresident" cobras, based on a belief that local cobras are incapable of evil.

-- There is usually a well-stocked Red Cross tent when the January "corralejas" (amateur bullfights) take place in towns in the Colombian countryside, reported The New York Times in January. "This year was calm, no deaths yet," said a newscaster in Sincelejo. Hundreds of wannabe matadors jump into makeshift rings, some sponsored by local merchants but others merely inebriated or sober and foolish, some gaudily dressed, some in bunches (with one group even picnicking). Wrote the Times, "A stream of men arrived" in the Red Cross tent, "intestines peeking out of a belly, bone protruding from a fractured shin, blood spurting from a gash in the buttocks." Said a local, "This is about the ecstasy of escaping death."

Lord Balaji was a locally popular Hindu god in Hyderabad, India, until a few years ago when a priest noticed that more of his worshippers were complaining that valuable U.S. professional "H-1B" visas were harder to get. Overnight, Balaji was transformed from a purveyor of general prosperity to the "visa god," specializing in lucky H-1Bs, and the temple now draws 100,000 visitors a week. Said one, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in December, "I've never heard of anyone who's gone to the temple whose visa (application) got rejected" (even though typical advice from priest C.S. Gopala Krishna is simply to walk around the temple "11 times").

Questionable Judgments

-- In December, even after the widely reported tiger attack on a visitor at the San Francisco Zoo, the Houston Zoo was still allowing its visitors to play "tug of war" with its own lions and tigers. A 20-pound slab of meat, attached to a long rope, is tossed into the enclosure, and visitors are encouraged to toy with the cats by yanking on it as the animal lunges for it. Said a Houston zookeeper, the game keeps the animals from getting bored. Besides, a zoo official said, "(The lion or tiger) kind of lets us know when he wants to play, and we go along with that."

-- Two counselors in the Denver school system proposed in December that the school board give high school girls who get pregnant at least four weeks of maternity leave, without academic penalty, so they can bond with their newborns. The counselors said the policy would encourage teen mothers to stay in school. (Meanwhile, the Department of Education of the Australian Capital Territory in Canberra granted permission for a 16-year-old student at Stromlo High School to take smoking breaks, based on a doctor's finding that she is so "clinically addicted" to nicotine that her work suffers without it.)

-- A teacher at Yamata Elementary School in Yokohama, Japan, was disciplined in January after a finding that she improperly punished her class because a few students would not come to order. Officials said she lined up all students and walked down the row, slapping each one in the face.

(1) Geraldine Magda, 44, was arrested in Austin, Minn., in January, following a nursing-home visit to hold the hand of her dying sister in her final hours. Magda was charged with stealing the wedding ring from her sister's finger during the hand-holding. (2) A Chicago man traveled to Sheboygan, Wis., in December to finally meet the 18-year-old woman who was his biological daughter, but during the same visit, he was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting her while she was sleeping.

In December, street performer John Domingue said the Huntington Beach, Calif., police have finally stopped hassling him for soliciting tips at the city's famous Pier Plaza when he demonstrates his skill at hammering nails into his nose without serious injury. (Some bleeding results, which is why police said they stopped him in the first place.) The American Civil Liberties Union said it is watching the case, citing Domingues' constitutional right to perform his nose-nailing, sword-swallowing and fire-eating acts for donations.

More Questionable Judgments: (1) David Holland, 46, gave a DNA sample last year to police in San Jose, Calif., to help resolve murder charges against his brother, but was then arrested for an until-then-unsolved 2001 rape when his DNA sample matched that left behind by the rapist. (2) Edward Debrow of San Antonio, Texas, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for a 1992 murder conviction, appealed that sentence as too harsh. After a Texas appeals court granted his challenge and ordered a re-sentencing in October, a judge gave him 40 years. [San Francisco Chronicle, 11-20-07] [KSAT-TV (San Antonio), 10-24-07]

Awesome Capacities: Jason Panchalk, 36, was admitted to the Pima County (Arizona) jail in December, facing a charge of trafficking in stolen property, but he arrived prepared. According to a jailer, Panchalk was carrying "some syringes, matches, lighter, heroin, marijuana, and an assortment of pills," all inside his rectum. And in October, court officials in Cork, Ireland, who were suspicious of a defendant's demeanor, had him medically examined. According to a report in the Irish Independent, doctors found a mobile phone, SIM card and charger, all wrapped in foil and coated with lubricant, inside his rectum.

David Thomson, 49, was convicted in Edinburgh, Scotland, of smothering his mom to death after she had taunted him for his inept suicide attempt several weeks before (October). In Sydney, Australia, a man was charged with beating a neighbor to death because the neighbor was watering his lawn in violation of the city's water restrictions (October). The boss of a factory in North Korea was executed by firing squad before 150,000 people in a South Pyongan province stadium after he was convicted of the crime of making out-of-country telephone calls (November).

(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.)

Five of the 10 best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 were originally composed, and serialized, on cell phones, thumbed out by women who had never written novels, for readers who mostly had never before read one. The genre's dominating plotlines are affairs of the heart, and its characteristics, obviously, are simplicity of plot and character and brevity of expression (lest authors' sore thumbs and readers' tired eyes bring down the industry). Said one successful cell phone writer, for a January dispatch in The New York Times, her audience doesn't read works by "professional writers" because "their sentences are too difficult to understand."

-- The New Lucky Restaurant has been around since the 1950s in Ahmadabad, India, serving diners among the gravestones located at various points around the tables. No one is certain who was buried under the restaurant, according to a December Associated Press dispatch, but Indians aren't much spooked by the experience. Said a retired professor: "Graveyards in India are never scary places. We don't have a nice literature of horror stories, so we don't have much fear of ghosts." The restaurant's main concern is that waiters know the floor plan and don't trip over the ankle-high monuments.

-- It's the "holy grail" of beers, said a Boston pub manager, but, still, only 60,000 cases a year of Westvleteren are brewed because the Belgian Trappist monks with the centuries-old recipe refuse to expand their business (and even get on the phone to harass black-marketers). Westvleteren is sold only at the monastery gate, by appointment, with a two-case-a-month limit, at a price that's reasonable for retail beer, but anyone who gets it from a re-seller will pay 10 times that much. Producing more, said Brother Joris, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in November, "would interfere with our job of being a monk." Furthermore, said Brother Joris, referencing the Bible, "(I)f you can't have it, possibly you do not really need it."

-- Life's Necessities: (1) In January, Taser International introduced the Taser MPH, a combination dart-firing weapon and MP3 music player (that holds 150 songs). (2) In November, Bergdorf Goodman in New York City revealed that it was offering showings of the Guerlain cosmetic house's "KissKiss Gold and Diamonds" lipstick, which retails for $62,000 (housed in an 18-karat gold tube containing 2.2 carats of diamonds).

-- Latest Ape-Human News: The 4th Texas Court of Appeals in January affirmed a lower court decision that monkeys and chimpanzees have no legal right to file lawsuits against an animal preserve for mistreatment. In Apeldoorn, Netherlands, however, one prominent member of the family is full of human nature: Sibu, an orangutan at the Apenheul Primate Park, has so far rejected all overtures to mate with other orangutans and instead appears smitten with blond female zookeepers, especially those with tattoos, according to an October Reuters dispatch.

-- To learn how cockroaches socialize, a research team from Free University of Brussels created tiny robots programmed to act like cockroaches, doused them with the proper pheromones, and set them free within crowds of cockroaches to see if they could influence behavior. While some of the robots coaxed real cockroaches to follow them into an unshaded area (away from a dark area that most normally prefer), nearly half of the robots, despite programming, fell under the "spell" of the real ones and headed for the darkness.

It was not only banks in the U.S. that freely loaned money over the last few years, but also those in India, and not surprisingly, many of their debtors have recently run into trouble making payments. Indian banks, inexperienced at collecting from so many defaulting consumers, often prefer to hire "goondas" (thugs) to settle debts the old-fashioned way, according to a January Wall Street Journal report. Though iron-bar beatings are frowned upon, some bankers say it's their only recourse because of the numbingly slow pace of the Indian legal system.

(1) On Nov. 18, two inebriated men in separate cars, driving by the Carpet Classic Floor Studio in Highland Township, Mich., lost control at the same time, and both smashed into the store. (2) Christopher Dougherty, 22, the subject of a "drunk pedestrian" police call in Kingsport, Tenn., on Oct. 14, was tracked to a Hardee's restaurant, where he was face-down in a plate of gravy. (3) Tina Williams was arrested in St. Augustine, Fla., on Super Bowl Sunday, charged with DUI and failure to have her 1-year-old daughter seat-belted or in a car seat. However, a case of Busch beer was safely buckled up in the front seat.

Police in Madison, Wis., believe they ended the spree of vandal defecations in an apartment house on Schroeder Road (laundry room, hallways, items of clothing) with the January arrest of Ronnie Ballard, 19. At Ballard's first court appearance, Dane County Court Commissioner Todd Meurer set bail at $1,400 and issued a ruling he said he never imagined having to make: As a condition of release, should Ballard make bail, Meurer ordered him to defecate only in toilets.

A 53-year-old man from Vernon, British Columbia, was arrested in January and charged with robbing a CIBC bank. He had left his 20-year-old companion in the getaway car listening to the radio, but when the alleged robber got in with the stash, they discovered that the car would not start because the radio had drained the battery. The pair were captured in a nearby bakery, where they had fled, as law enforcement was plentiful in the area since the CIBC bank is located in a building with a Mounted Police station.

Undignified Deaths: (1) A 25-year-old woman jumped to her death from a department store roof in Tokyo in November and, as sometimes happens with such suicides, she landed on a pedestrian (who was hospitalized in serious condition). (2) At least five people choked to death in Japan over New Year's, as usual, from eating the extremely sticky "mochi" rice cakes that are a staple of the holiday. (3) In Ogden, Utah, in December, a 73-year-old woman was accidentally fatally run over by a motor home. It was unclear whether the first pass over her was fatal, but the driver behaved as others have: After feeling a thumping sound, he said, he stopped and backed up to see what he had hit, thus driving over the body a second time.

(1) "Jilted Lesbian Rugby Player Killed Herself After Brutally Beating Lover Who Had Webcam Affair" (Daily Mail (London)). (2) "Man, 75, Hurt While Riding Pet Buffalo" (MSNBC.com version of an Associated Press story). (3) "Boy Glues Hand to Bed to Avoid School" (MSNBC.com version of an Associated Press story).

(1) In Chaparral, N.M., in December, a loaded .357 Magnum was being traced by two men onto a pattern to create a custom tattoo design, but somehow, the gun went off. Both men were hit by the same bullet, one in the hand and the other in the arm. (2) A 77-year-old man in Des Moines, Iowa, who was trying a unclog his septic tank in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, lost his balance and fell in, head first with his legs sticking up. He remained in that position for about an hour until his wife saw him and called for help.

(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.)

China's historical fascination with crickets has recently been exhibited in cricket beauty contests, singing competitions and prize fights, according to a January Los Angeles Times dispatch, and has led even to increasing vigilance about crickets cheating with performance-enhancing drugs. The fighters duel in terrarium-sized containers, and, according to the Times, "Overhead cameras (project) the action onto large screens," allowing spectators close-ups of crickets tossing each other around with their powerful jaws. The best fighters may sell for the equivalent of $10,000, are raised on vegetables and calcium supplements, and are sexually active before fights. The doping issue mostly involves the "singers"; slowing the vibration of the cricket's wings produces an attractively lower pitch.

-- In October, Korie Hoke filed a $1.6 million lawsuit against the Tempe, Ariz., police, claiming that it was actually an officer's fault that she, after a New Year's Eve bender, crashed into a cement wall and suffered serious injuries. Hoke had called police to a party, distraught that she had caught her boyfriend cheating on her, and the officer summoned her parents to pick her up. (Hoke was cited only for underage drinking, but she later tested above the blood-alcohol legal limit.) The officer, after obtaining Hoke's assurance that she would await her parents and after searching Hoke and her car and finding no car key (Hoke had hidden it), left the scene. Hoke then drove away and crashed, and now claims it was the officer's fault for not staying with her.

-- Scott Anthony Gomez Jr. filed a lawsuit in January against jail officials in Pueblo County, Colo., alleging among other things that they failed to take security precautions to prevent him from escaping. He seriously injured himself last year when he fell 40 feet while scaling a wall in his second escape attempt. He said that, after his first escape, he had told then-sheriff Dan Corsentino how lax security was, but that no "improvements" had been made.

-- On Second Thought: (1) In August 2004, business executive Tomas Delgado, driving 100 mph in a 55 mph zone, fatally smashed into a 17-year-old bicyclist near Haro, Spain. In 2006, Delgado sued the boy's family for the equivalent of about $29,000 for damage to his car, and the lawsuit languished until January 2008, when, perhaps shamed by worldwide publicity, Delgado dropped it. (2) In December, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority filed a lawsuit demanding payment from the families of four people killed by an out-of-control tractor-trailer in 2006 (presumably to recoup clean-up costs and damage to the roadway). However, after the New York Post asked NJTA lawyer William Ziff for a comment, he rushed to the Union County courthouse and withdrew the lawsuit.

-- As the home-mortgage industry continued to reel in January from the Countrywide Financial Corp. debacle, a federal bankruptcy judge learned that the company, in at least one case (with others suspected), had not only backdated crucial documents but fabricated them altogether and then told the judge the company was merely trying to be "efficient." A court had approved the recasting of a client's debt to Countrywide in March 2007, closing the case, but the next month, Countrywide "discovered" a way to get extra money and thus created three letters supposedly sent to that client before March 2007. However, Countrywide later acknowledged that the letters were actually written after March 2007 but that making up documents was merely "an efficient way to convey" information.

-- A prize-winning paper from a Hebrew University researcher, seeking to explain the paucity of rapes by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian women, concluded that the soldiers were merely using a "strategy" of non-rape, according to a December report on Arutz Sheva. Such a hands-off policy "strengthens the ethnic boundaries," wrote Ms. Tal Nitzan, seemingly suggesting that Israeli soldiers primarily feared increasing the Palestinian population. Nowhere, critics pointed out, did Nitzan suggest that rape is rare because Israeli culture condemns it.

-- California's Solar Shade Control Act protects solar panels from obstructions from sunlight, and in January, Santa Clara County officials sought to enforce the law against homeowners who themselves are staunch environmentalists. Since the back yard of Prius-owners Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett contains lush redwood trees that block their neighbor's panels, the county ordered that the trees be cut down.

-- Tolerance: (1) In November, 70 petitioning neighbors said they were fed up with the Museum of Tolerance in West Hollywood, Calif. The final straw was the museum's application to expand its building, extend hours of operation until midnight, and reduce the buffer zone between it and nearby homes. (2) Officials of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, initially agreed to host the annual multi-denominational Austin Area Interreligious Ministries Thanksgiving celebration last year, but abruptly canceled when they came to realize that Muslims might actually pray there. Under criticism, the church said that it "hopes" the religious community "will ... be tolerant of our church's beliefs" that necessitated the decision.

-- In January, the Chinese retailers at Beijing's Silk Street Market, which is a notorious supplier of knock-off merchandise such as Louis Vuitton, announced that they would begin creating clothing and other items under their own SilkStreet brand, and they naturally issued the warning, "Anyone using the brand (without permission) will be held liable."

Energetic Perverts: (1) Elementary school principal John Stelmack, 60, was arrested in Bartow, Fla., in December and accused by prosecutors of innocently photographing young girls but then using a computer software program to place their heads on photos of nude women (which may not even be illegal, according to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision). (2) Kazuo Oshitani, 48, was arrested in Osaka, Japan, in December as the one who draped perhaps more than 170 items of women's underwear over objects in his neighborhood (and who possessed at least 200 more such items in his home). He was charged with littering.

It is apparently becoming more difficult to recruit competent suicide bombers in Afghanistan because twice in a two-day period in January, clumsy bombers accidentally blew themselves up before they ever had the chance to take their targets out. One fell down a flight of stairs while on his way to an attack in the town of Khost, and the other's bomb accidentally exploded as he was getting dressed for an assignment in the town of Lashkar Gah (although the latter bomber did take three colleagues with him).

At least one collector spent the equivalent of $40 on an original "Freddie W.R. Linsky" abstract expressionist painting, praising its "flow" and "energy," according to a December report in London's Daily Mail, and a gallery in Berlin was said to have made an inquiry about Linsky's other works. Linsky, as longtime News of the Weird readers might guess, is an enthusiastic 2-year-old, whose mother had him daub ketchup splotches onto canvases and then uploaded the images to art patron Charles Saatchi's online gallery. Among Mom's lush captions to Linsky's ketchup-period works was: "The striking use of oriental calligraphy has the kenji-like characters stampeding from the page."

More Ironies: (1) A 66-year-old millionaire roofing company founder was killed at his home in Rock, Wis., in December when he accidentally fell through the roof of his garage. (2) An 18-year-old Amish man was killed in Hustisford, Wis., in October when, working on a construction crew, he came into contact with a high-voltage wire and was electrocuted. (3) Inmate Frederick Fretz, 45, serving time for molesting a young boy, died in January in the dining hall at the federal penitentiary in Atwater, Calif., when he choked on a hot dog.

(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.)