Almost-anything-goes "ultimate fighting," also known as "human cockfighting," is a major "sport," mostly in Southern and Western states, but only in Missouri are kids as young as 6 permitted on the mats, according to a March Associated Press dispatch from Carthage, Mo. Members of the Garage Boys Fight Crew, ages up to 14, including one girl, regularly square off with only a few concessions in rules and protective gear from their adult counterparts. Parents seem to regard the sport as casually as they regard Little League or soccer, and sportsmanship is in evidence, as kids are still best friends, pummeling each other inside the cage but then heading off afterward to play video games.

-- A highlight of this year's Easter promotion by the Jelly Belly company (as additions to its 50 standard flavors) was its surprise BeanBoozled boxes, with odd tastes and non-standard colors. Although garlic beans, buttered-toast beans and cheese pizza beans are no longer available, connoisseurs can sample jelly beans made to taste like pencil shavings, ear wax, moldy cheese and vomit. A Jelly Belly spokeswoman told Newhouse News Service in March, "There are 20 flavors in each little box ... so you don't know what flavor you are tasting ... coconut or baby wipe."

-- Los Angeles businessman Llewellyn Werner told The Times of London in April that he plans to spend $500 million to build a Disneyland-type theme park in the heart of Baghdad, with the first phase (a skateboard facility, with 200,000 free skateboards to hand out) to open in just three months. Eventually, the park will include rides and a concert theater adjacent to the Green Zone.

-- Questionable new products: (1) The Japanese manufacturer Nihon Sofuken recently introduced a slightly peach-flavored drink called Placenta 10000, but Wired.com was not able to verify whether it contains actual human placenta (which is supposed to have miraculous regenerating powers for some parts of the body). (2) From Nickelodeon merchandising has come a Spongebob Squarepants Musical Rectal Thermometer (which plays the Spongebob theme that (the designer apparently imagines) makes the temperature-taking process less unpleasant).

-- Prairie Orchard Farms in Manitoba told Toronto's Globe and Mail in March that it has been successfully infusing hogs with omega-3s, the oils that get the best press among fatty acids, since it is found plentifully in healthful salmon and other seafood. A laboratory analysis of a slab of Prairie Orchard's "enriched" ham had the omega-3s of almost one-fourth of a large salmon filet, but the best news of all was that a 100-gram side of bacon equaled that of the salmon filet.

-- While many lab mice get selected, unfortunately, for work like cancer research, one group of male rodents at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston has been hard at work, with constant erections, helping researchers develop a biochemical treatment for priapism, which plagues men with certain blood disorders. (The condition is named for the Greek god Priapus, who, to be punished for sexual misbehavior, supposedly received an enormous, but useless, wooden penis.)

-- Personality Transplants: (1) Cheryl Johnson, 37, described to London's Daily Telegraph in March the many ways in which her personality suddenly changed following a new kidney that she received from a deceased, 59-year-old man. Some researchers believe in such a "cellular memory phenomenon," but it is unclear whether, for example, Johnson's recent abandonment of trashy reading in favor of Dostoevsky and Jane Austen would qualify. (2) Sonny Graham of Hilton Head, S.C., committed suicide in April after having spent 13 years with the transplanted heart of suicide victim Terry Cottle. The cellular implication is somewhat less likely, though, because Graham's widow was the same woman who was married to Cottle at the time of his suicide.

"Obviously, this is not as important as helping starving kids in Africa, but it's the same basis," Karla Rae Morris told Canada's Sun newspapers in February. "They want to help us out," she said, referring to her benefactors who had donated money (from two men, over $1,000 (Cdn) each) so that she could afford breast implants, based on arrangements commenced by the Web site MyFreeImplants.com, which facilitates e-mail exchanges and chats for prospective contributors and collects the money until the goal is reached. "It's like donating to any charity," said Morris, of her donors. "You feel like you're doing good."

Among the notable offerings at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland, in April were beer-flavored jelly (non-alcoholic) to spread on biscuits, and artificial, removable nose hair (swabs of pipe cleaner for the nostrils to block pollen and dust). ("Most people do not have enough nose hair," inventor Gensheng Sun told The Associated Press.) Italian engineer Enrico Berruti said it was his personal laziness that led him to develop a bed that makes itself, with automatic sheet-shaking and straightening. Diane Cheong Lee Mei of China swore that her novel computer software employed algorithms sophisticated enough to enable the user to detect the gender of any e-mail writer.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Ahmed Jalloul, 20, was convicted in April of robbing a post office in Adelaide, Australia, based on DNA evidence. Witnesses said Jalloul seemed unsteady and unsure of himself during the crime and consequently vomited on the floor before running from the scene. (2) Eric Hardin, 20, was charged in March in St. Louis with possession of child pornography on compact discs, which his former roommates had turned over to police after cleaning his room. They had kicked Hardin out for his unbearably poor hygiene.

"Freestyle" dog dancing continues to thrive, at least in British Columbia (where the first organization sprang up in 1999, amassing an 8,000-person mailing list, as News of the Weird reported). A Globe and Mail dispatch in April noted that Gail Walsh's school for dog dancing, Paws2Dance, teaches moves like dog "weaves" around its human partner's legs and "backups," in which the dog sets its own paces apart from its partner. Holding the dog's paws and waltzing, as in at-home dog-dancing, is apparently tacky and non-artistic and thus never allowed.

Elderly drivers' recent lapses of concentration, confusing the brake pedal with the gas (or however artfully they try to explain what happened): A Citrus Heights, Calif., woman, 81, drove into the ATM lobby of a Wells Fargo bank, injuring a customer (March). A Chicago Heights, Ind., woman in her 80s drove through a Dairy Queen (April). A Burbank, Calif., woman, 88, drove into a post office, injuring two (March). An Indianapolis woman, 90, backed into a McDonald's restaurant, injuring two (April). A Springfield, Ill., woman described as "elderly," drove through a delicatessen (March). A San Diego woman, 81, drove her car onto the support wires for a power pole, where it was dangling when police arrived (March). And in a variation, a Mount Pleasant, Pa., funeral home attendant, 73, mistakenly shifted into reverse and fatally struck the owner of the car, who had just turned it over to the man to park (March).

At a March British soccer match between Blackpool and Burnley teams, greyhound owner Jane Holland was escorting her retired dog Fool's Mile for a presentation when the crowd noise evidently energized the champion racer, who broke away. "(W)hen she heard the crowd, she was off," said Holland, and Fool's Mile circled the track four times before being restrained. Said London's Sunday Telegraph, the dog appeared to be reliving her glory days.

(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.)

"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.)