"Many of my young patients think about getting plastic surgery the way they'd think about getting their hair done," explained Dr. David Alessi of Beverly Hills, Calif., who is still amazed at women's willingness to endure "extreme" cosmetic alterations. "Vaginal rejuvenation" (labiaplasty) might be the most sensational procedure, but surgeons also do "forehead implants" and ankle and shoulder liposuction, break and reset jaws to tweak smiles, and lengthen or shorten toes (for "toe cleavage" with certain shoes). Alessi told a Glamour magazine writer for an April story that one 25-year-old recently asked him to "remove" her navel (whereas most umbilicoplasty patients merely request reshaping). Said a bemused colleague, "There's some consensus about what makes for an attractive ... face, but we have no definition of the ideal navel."

-- Gulfport, Miss., resident Michael Petro pleaded to a documentary filmmaker (in a clip later uploaded with his permission to the Internet) for help in recovering from his shattering loss during Hurricane Katrina, when his 115-year-old house was destroyed. Since then, he said on the video (reported by WLOX-TV in April): "Church groups have not come through, the government has not come through, insurance has not come through like was promised," and "(S)omebody has to fight to get these things back and going." According to WLOX-TV, the house that stockbroker Petro lost was 2,500 square feet, and the replacement he's pleading for help with is 6,000 square feet. Said Petro to the station, "I'm not too proud to ask ...."

-- Jerome Kerviel told reporters in April that he is planning to sue Societe Generale bank in Paris for unfair dismissal, even though he is the "rogue" derivatives trader the bank says cost it the equivalent of about $7.5 billion by making risky, unauthorized deals that came to light in January and for which he is under indictment for fraud. Kerviel pointed to an independent investigator's conclusion that SocGen management had ignored 75 warning signs about Kerviel's trades and continued to support him, but SocGen said Kerviel doctored paperwork to disguise trades.

-- Cumberland County (Pa.) Commissioner Bruce Barclay resigned in April after disclosure that he had built a hidden video system in his home and recorded as many as 500 sexual episodes with unknowing men. While the videos may have violated state law (investigation is under way), one of them has exonerated Barclay of a separate rape charge filed by a 20-year-old man, in that the video evidenced a consensual relationship. (The young man has been charged with making a false police report.)

-- Instant Karma: (1) In March in Leesburg, Va., driver's license test-taker Nita Sureka was told by the examiner to park beside the Department of Motor Vehicles building, but she accidentally crashed into it, tearing a hole in the wall and forcing the department to close for the day. (2) The Manitoba (Canada) Bar Association, which was hoping to file a brief in a controversial police investigation case in Winnipeg in March, announced it would have to forgo participation because it lacked sufficient funds to hire a lawyer.

-- World's Greatest Lawyer: Oregon public defender Ethan Levi agreed to represent Eric Kincaid, 29, who had been identified by DNA as the man (in a miniskirt, wig and fishnet stockings) who one night last year had hidden in the closet of a woman he did not know before fleeing. Kincaid denied that he meant the woman any harm, maintaining that he had been invited by a mysterious second woman, whom he also did not know, to have sex but had realized after seeing the first woman that he was in the wrong apartment, and he left. In April, Levi convinced the jury to accept Kincaid's explanation and acquit him of all charges.

-- Well, That Explains That!: (1) Gene Morrill, 57, hoping for a shorter sentence after his conviction for soliciting sex from teenage boys over the Internet, told a court in Fredericksburg, Va., in March about his rough life as a child, beginning with the time he was sexually molested by Bigfoot. (2) A 26-year-old driver was arrested in Bay County, Fla., in April after being spotted on the side of a road masturbating. According to the police report, the man said "he had just left work and explained that he needed some personal time with himself that he could not have at home."

-- Student Vinicios Robacher, 15, said in March he was preparing to file a lawsuit against school officials in Danbury, Conn., over an ear injury. Robacher said that, while he had his head down, sleeping in class, the teacher slapped his desk so hard with her palm, to wake him, that he still has constant pain.

-- Astrid Literski, in prison after pleading guilty to murdering her 4-year-old daughter in 2003, is due in tax court in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in May to argue that she should not have to give back $1,296 (Cdn) in tax benefits she was wrongly paid for the child during 2002. Actually, the girl was living with her father at the time, but Literski says she deserved the tax benefits, anyway, because she provided "emotional" support.

What Housing Crisis? "This is heaven on earth," said one resident living on burned-out lava rocks about a mile from the oozing Kilauea volcano near Kalapana, Hawaii, explaining the lure that he and his neighbors feel, having built houses by hand, collected rainwater to drink, installed solar panels for power, and planted vegetables between the rocks for food. Said one of the semi-hermit residents, to an Associated Press reporter in March, "I'm more scared of people than I am a volcano."

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) In March, Christopher Koch, 28, became the latest to wait outside a bank, building up his nerve to rob it, and then finally put on the ski mask and walk up to the front door (of the Citizens & Northern Bank, Liberty, Pa.), only to realize that it was by then 12:01 p.m., and the bank had closed at noon. (Employees got Koch's license plate number.) (2) Angelo Trujillo, 20, became the latest, in March, to attempt to rob someone who was pumping gas (at a Smith's store in Santa Fe, N.M.). The customer, Ms. Bernie Garcia, 83, calmly sprayed Trujillo with gasoline, sending him fleeing (but he was soon arrested). -- That Sacred Institution: The Al-Shams newspaper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, reported in March that Mohammed al-Rashidi, 11, had just married a cousin, who is 10, remarking: "I am ready for this marriage. It will help me study better." And in April, in a courtroom in Sana'a, Yemen, a courageous 8-year-old girl walked in alone and demanded that the judge grant her a divorce from the 30-year-old man her father had contracted to marry her. The judge, rejecting tradition, granted the divorce.

More people who accidentally shot themselves recently: Mr. Roland Scott, the victim of a street robbery, took away the perp's shotgun and started beating him with it, but jarred the trigger, and it fired, hitting Scott, fatally, in the stomach (Baltimore, March). A 31-year-old man, fleeing police after a "pump and run" at a gas station, lost control of his car, and the collision jarred his gun, firing a shot into his abdomen (Morgan County, Colo., March). A 20-year-old man shot himself in the groin when he stuffed a shotgun (that he had allegedly just stolen) inside his pants (Seattle, April). A 44-year-old woman recanted her rape and assault claims, admitting that she shot herself in the knee while reaching for a flashlight (Springfield, Mo., December).

(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.)

Update: Experimental "natural orifice" surgery might be health care's next big thing following its U.S. introduction last year at Columbia University (as reported also in "News of the Weird"), where doctors removed a woman's diseased gall bladder not by an abdominal incision but through her vagina. In March, doctors at UC-San Diego Medical Center removed a woman's appendix through her vagina, and a man's through his mouth. (A microscopic camera must be inserted through the abdomen, however, to guide the surgeons.) Pain and healing time are usually less than half that of ordinary surgery, but the risk of internal infection is greater. The next step, doctors say, will be removing kidneys through the anus.

-- A Maryland governmental fund created to assist "innocent" victims of violent crime has paid out nearly $1.8 million since 2003 to injured (or deceased) "drug dealers, violent offenders and other criminals," according to an investigation by the Baltimore Sun published in March. Burial expenses were awarded for a carjacker, a victim of an inter-gang killing and a sex offender who was fatally beaten in prison. The Maryland courts have ruled that as long as the applicant was not engaged in a crime at the time he was injured, he must be considered for an award.

-- The Associated Press reported in March that "dozens" of locked-up sexual predators are receiving federal aid to take mail-order college courses through Pell grants, even though prison inmates normally are ineligible. Sex offenders who have completed their sentences, but are held for "treatment," are not technically "prisoners," and many have spent their stipends on "living expenses" such as DVD players, in that they have no "room and board" expenses.

-- Graduate art student Matthew Keeney's latest piece of performance art, in February, called "The Waiting Project," had him standing on streets in Syracuse, N.Y., waiting for someone to ask him what "The Waiting Project" is. In previous pieces, Keeney had held a "Super Bowl party for one" on a park bench, had earnestly watched ice sculptures melt, and had walked from the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C., to the Lincoln Memorial but stopping each time he heard a car horn and then starting again when he heard another.

-- Two aggressive art pieces sexualizing Jesus' Last Supper were displayed earlier this year: Among the 74 plaster models shown in Gateshead, England, in January by British artist Terence Koh was one of Jesus and several disciples sporting generous erections. And in March, a retrospective of Austrian Alfred Hrdlicka went on display in the Cathedral Museum in Vienna, with the blessing of the archbishop of Vienna, even though it included a painting of the Last Supper as a "homosexual orgy," in Hrdlicka's description (because, he said, there were no women in the original Da Vinci painting that inspired it). (That piece was removed during the first week, after complaints.)

-- Last year, Montreal, Quebec, artist Michel de Broin created, as art, the hollowed-out shell of an old Buick powered only by a four-seater bicycle (with hand brakes, or, failing them, Fred Flintstone-type brakes). Nonetheless, when a group took the car out for a spin last October, an overzealous officer ticketed them for "driving" an unsafe "car," but in April, after a daylong court hearing, the charges were dropped.

-- No Man's Land: "The Bride of Palestine" (a 26-year-old drag queen) is the best-known of a group of sexually uncertain Israeli Arabs who gather in underground venues in Tel Aviv and "struggle to define themselves," according to a March dispatch from McClatchy Newspapers. Though they are proud Palestinians at odds with the "occupying" Jewish society, some feel even more rejection by their own conservative communities and seem grateful that the "oppressors" permit the spaces that one woman called her "only refuge."

Latest Police Chases: (1) In Ocala, Fla., in March, Bret Wass, 28, scrambling from police investigating a sexual battery, commandeered a tow truck and drove away, even though the truck had a car hooked onto it; during the chase, he hit the patrol car and was captured on foot nearby. (2) Police in Osaka, Japan, mobilized in January to apprehend fugitive Hirofumi Fukuda, 27, who was wanted for assaulting an officer (which tends to get the attention of fellow officers). By the end of the two-hour episode, a helicopter and 460 patrol cars, involving 2,240 law-enforcement officers, were on the case.

Thirty years ago, before Wal-Mart became an international giant, a small video company made a "handshake" deal to shoot promotional footage of the firm's executives and was given free rein within the company. It made 15,000 tapes, including many, inevitably, showing Wal-Mart leaders in awkward situations. In 2006, an incoming Wal-Mart executive decided to end the relationship, devastating Flagler Productions' bottom line, and to compensate, the company began offering to research its library for historians and, more notably, litigants suing Wal-Mart on product safety, employment and union-busting issues. According to an April Wall Street Journal report, a treasure trove of embarrassing moments is available.

Even though 20 states outlaw keeping monkeys as pets, the Humane Society of the U.S. estimates that there are 15,000 privately owned primates, with at least 200 Floridians licensed for pet capuchins, according to an April Orlando Sentinel report. Since experts warn that the animals are biters and scratchers and are very aggressive when agitated, the Sentinel asked what accounts for their popularity. Said the editor of Monkey Matters Magazine, it's their humanlike features and owners' desires to dress them up. "Believe me," said the editor, "if people could get their cats (into) outfits, a lot of those cats would be wearing outfits."

In three incidents in March and April, robbers were arrested in the act after police were tipped off in advance. The source of the tip each time was a store employee who had been brazenly notified by the perp to expect a robbery soon. Daniel Glen, 40, was arrested in Windsor, Ontario, having called ahead to make sure there was enough money in the convenience store's cash register. An 18-year-old man was arrested in Chicago, having given his phone number to a Mufflers For Less employee and instructing him to call when the manager, with access to the safe, arrived at work. And two men were arrested near Traverse City, Mich., having described to a gas station employee two hours earlier exactly how they would soon rob him.

Earnest residents continue to accidentally destroy their homes: (1) A house in Galveston, Texas, had the roof blown off on Jan. 21 when the resident set out six bug foggers but neglected to turn off the gas stove's pilot light; (2) A Jacksonville, Fla., woman who smelled something unusual in her home on Nov. 15 decided to light the fireplace to clear the air, and a gas leak created a fire that destroyed the home; (3) An apartment building in Sioux Falls, S.D., was wiped out on Feb. 21 when a resident tried to thaw frozen pipes with a blow torch.

(1) Bernard Fincher Jr., 25, was arrested in Buffalo, N.Y., in March for possession of cocaine when police found a stash of the drug that Fincher had allegedly tried to hide in a doughnut box. (2) Cody Young, 13, complained in January that when he parked his expensive BMX bicycle inside the front door of a Goodwill Industries store in Salem, Ore., so he could browse, an employee mistakenly sold the bike to a customer for $6.99.

(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.)

Lawyer confidentiality rules kept one man improperly on death row for 10 years and a probably innocent man in prison for 26, according to news that surfaced in January (in Virginia) and March (in Illinois). Daryl Atkins (sentenced to death in 1997) was the victim of probable prosecutorial misconduct, according to his co-defendant's lawyer, Leslie Smith, who said he witnessed the misconduct but could not report it because a lesser sentence for Atkins would have exposed his own client to greater punishment. In Illinois, Alton Logan was convicted of a murder during a 1982 robbery. However, shortly afterward, Andrew Wilson admitted to his lawyers that he was the murderer, but bar association rules prohibited them from revealing that. When Wilson died in 2007, the lawyers went public, and Logan's case has been re-opened.

(1) Mayor Art Madrid of La Mesa, Calif., apologized in February for an incident the week before when police found him, along with a female city employee, passed out about 10:30 p.m. Madrid was lying on the sidewalk near an SUV; the woman was in the driver's seat with her legs sticking out the open door; and vomit littered the area. (2) A patient reporting for an appointment with dentist Norman Rubin in Smithtown, N.Y., in March told the New York Post that Rubin was in the otherwise-empty office, passed out, drooling, with a gas mask on his face. (Rubin later told the Post, in defense, that it was, after all, his lunch hour.)

-- Dirk Opalka (whose fox scored 96 of 100 possible points) won best in show at the World Taxidermy Championships in February in Salzburg, Austria, beating over 100 competitors in the art of stretching animal skin over fake bodies so the critters look better than they ever looked alive. The attention to detail was astonishing, according to a dispatch in Der Spiegel, on such features as a stag's nostrils, a hyena's lips, a hamster's whiskers, the neck length of a female peregrine falcon (precisely 5.5 cm), and the proper rosiness of a bat's anus.

-- In March, the Tokyo High Court reversed the conviction of pinup model Serena Kozakura, who had been found guilty of kicking a hole in the door of her former boyfriend's apartment so she could break in and scream at him. Kozakura had appealed, claiming that the man had made the hole himself, and as evidence, explained that she could never have squeezed through it, anyway, because her breasts are too big. That argument apparently won the day, creating enough "reasonable doubt" to overturn the verdict.

-- Two German air force sergeants were suspended in December after being caught in a side venture selling sausages based on an old family recipe requiring human blood. Their first batches were made with their own, but as they began mass-producing, they had allegedly asked their colleagues because, according to instructions from one of the men's grandmothers, all blood must be "fresh." "Do not use too many breadcrumbs," she had written, "but if the blood starts to curdle, stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar."

-- Court documents revealed in March that federal judge Eduardo Robreno had fined New York mortgage banker Aaron Wider and his lawyer $29,000 for using variations of the "F word" 73 times (thus, about $367 per usage) during a contentious deposition he gave in a lawsuit brought by GMAC Bank.

-- Several psychotherapists told The New York Times in February that treatments are being developed for people who are excessively worried about their own carbon emissions being responsible for "global warming." More than 120 therapists are now listed as specialists in the field on Ecopsychology.org, and schools such as Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., have created courses on counseling such patients.

-- Sheila and Paul Garcia of Northfleet, England, acknowledged to London's Daily Mail in February that they invited their 16-year-old daughter's boyfriend to come live with her in her bedroom, despite the fact that he is 36 and divorced, with one child. The parents said they weren't thrilled with the situation, but that it was preferable to the daughter's running away with the man.

-- Cutting-Edge Parenting: (1) Sheriff's deputies in the Orlando area were on the lookout in March for two women who, according to surveillance video from the Magical Car Wash, had pulled into a stall and deposited coins but then proceeded only to scold and then pressure-wash a small child. (2) Aron Pritchard, 27, was convicted of child endangerment in March in Hutchinson, Kan., after a jury declined to accept his explanation for his girlfriend's kids, age 2 and 3, being burned in a hot clothes dryer. Pritchard said he was just trying to show them they could have fun without necessarily spending money.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Two boys, 12 and 14, were quickly arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in March when they tried to rob a woman who was working at a counter behind protective glass in an office, by picking up the convenience phone and threatening her, implying that they had a gun. The woman was in no danger because of the protective glass, but besides that, the place they had chosen for the hit was a regional office of the Port St. Lucie police department. (2) Donald Baker, 51, was re-arrested in March in Peterborough, Ontario, when he called the police department to request a wake-up call for his court appearance the next morning; amazed at his audacity, police ran a records check and found an additional arrest warrant on him.

-- News of the Weird cited a police report last May that an unidentified man in Guelph, Ontario, had committed at least three incidents of approaching women and asking to be kicked in the groin. After seven such incidents, Jarrett Loft, 28, pleaded guilty in March 2008 to one count and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. Loft offered no explanation for his behavior, other than that he was "curious." One victim, saying that she feared what Loft might do if she refused, repeatedly kicked him between the legs, after which he thanked her and rode off on his bicycle.

-- Good Friday in the Philippines town of San Pedro Cutud has meant, for over 20 years, that two dozen men will line up to be nailed to a wooden cross for a few minutes each to mark their penitence for sins of the previous year (although this year, the government issued an advisory recommending getting tetanus shots and using only sterile nails). Ruben Enaje, 47, was first in line once again (the 22nd time in 23 years that he has been crucified) and, once again, screamed in agony for five minutes at the 6-inch nails driven into both palms and both feet while he lay on the cross. Before the crucifixions, dozens of other men punished themselves by whipping their backs bloody, using bamboo rods.

(1) A 76-year-old Baptist minister was found dead in Clarksville, Tenn., in March after he had tried to pull a goat back into a fenced-in area of his property; apparently, the goat had resisted the slip knot, and somehow the animal's jumping had wound the rope around the minister's feet and neck, and he had begun to turn blue by the time his wife found him. (2) The day before that, an 82-year-old man in Lake Hallie, Wis., was killed when he apparently slipped while using a plumber's auger on his septic tank and fell in, head first, eventually drowning.

(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.)