Legendary banjo player Eddie Adcock, age 70 and suffering hand tremors that failed to respond to medication, volunteered for a revolutionary neurosurgery in August in which he finger-picked tunes while his brain was exposed, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center surgeons tried to locate the defective area. In "deep brain stimulation," doctors find a poorly responding site and use electrodes to arouse it properly. As Adcock, conscious but pain-free, picked out melodies, doctors probed until suddenly Adcock's playing became disjointed, and electrodes were assigned to that spot. By October, according to an ABC News report, Adcock, with a button-activated chest pacemaker wired to his head, was back on stage, as quick-fingered as ever.

(1) Clair Robinson, 23, told an interviewer in September that she believes the only reason she survived the deadly flesh-eating infection recently was because she had too much weight for the bacteria to consume. "Being big saved my life," she told Australia's "Medical Emergency" TV show. (2) Though Mayra Rosales, 27, stands charged with capital murder in Hidalgo County, Texas, she was not ordered to jail pending trial but was allowed home detention because of her obesity. At about 1,000 pounds, Rosales requires special transportation and facilities and was ruled by a judge in August certainly to be no "flight risk."

-- Murderers in the Money: (1) Reggie Townsend, 29, serving 23 years in a Wisconsin prison for reckless homicide against an 11-year-old girl, won $295,000 from a jury in September as compensation for a two-month confinement with only a "wet, moldy and foul smelling" mattress to sleep on (about $4,900 per unpleasant night). (2) Muri Chilton (aka Murray Gartton), serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, was awarded $2,500 by a Canadian Federal Court judge in September as compensation solely for feeling "utterly humiliated" in 2000 when guards roared with laughter after he mangled his thumb in a prison workshop accident.

-- Brian Hopkins, 25, severely burned in 2006 after climbing onto the roof of an empty train at Boston's South Station at 2 a.m., filed a lawsuit in August against Amtrak. Though admitting that he was trespassing at the station when he was zapped by 27,500 volts of overhead wire, Hopkins said Amtrak ought to have known that people trespass and climb on top of trains, and therefore should have parked its train in a less-accessible place.

-- Roy Hollander filed a civil rights lawsuit against Columbia University in New York City in August, claiming that its "women's studies" curriculum teaches a religion-like philosophy that oppresses men by blaming them for nearly all social problems. (When interviewed by the New York Daily News, Hollander declined to give his age, saying such a revelation would crimp his pickup success with young women: Frequently, he said, women "think I'm younger than I am, so I don't want to disillusion them.")

-- Complaints were lodged with the Swedish government in June against the state-run retail pharmacy Apoteket, alleging illegal sex discrimination, in that its stores stock sexual aids that benefit women (e.g., vibrators) but none that particularly benefit men. Said one complainer, "(A) woman with a dildo is seen as liberated, strong and independent, whereas a man with a blow-up plastic vagina is viewed as disgusting and perverted." The government's Equal Opportunities Ombudsman rejected the complaints.

-- In September, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the 18-year sentence of a 73-year-old South Bend man who had insisted that he was only trying to revive his 68-year-old wife after she became fatally incapacitated in June 2007. However, police noted that he had not called 911, nor checked her vital signs, nor performed CPR, but that instead, his "reviving" consisted of performing an oral sex act on her (which the judges concluded was merely the fulfillment of a desire that his wife had long since denied him).

Neighbors in the previously quiet New York City neighborhood of Nolita complain about the raucous, late-night trance music and crowds at the recently opened Delicatessen, according to an August New York Post story, but with little success. However, 10 of the apartments next door happen to look directly down upon the club's architectural signature, a see-through ceiling, and at least one resident has taken to relieving himself out his window, splattering the roof. (Another of the residents, though, said that when the man misfires, it ruins his air-conditioning unit.)

(1) In September, alleged flasher Patrick Dodenhoff, 39, fled after a report of indecent exposure, and police chased him from Atascadero, Calif., south to Pismo Beach, and finally caught up with and arrested him at a well-known local nude beach. (2) As urban Detroit continues its decline, with an estimated 5,000 residents fleeing annually, it is not just living people who leave. Dead bodies depart, as well, at a rate of 500 a year, according to an August Detroit News report, as relatives unwilling to travel to the crumbling city's cemeteries have their loved ones disinterred and relocated.

Christina Downs, 24, of Portsmouth, N.H., mounted a full-blown defense to the speeding ticket (44 mph in a 25 mph zone) she received in 2007 (even though the officer said Downs had arrogantly sped off again immediately afterward and had to be stopped a second time). Acting as her own lawyer, Downs filed motions and at a trial, put the officer through a meticulous, 96-point cross-examination about such matters as work schedule, training, engineering studies of road speeds, radar technology, weather conditions, traffic flow, and the use of a tuning fork to calibrate the radar device. The judge ruled against her, and in October 2008, the state Supreme Court ordered her to pay the $100 ticket.

(1) A 38-year-old woman described as "very large," using the "abductor" thigh-tightening machine at the New York Sports Club in Harlem in July, failed to dismount properly, according to a witness, and was "sling-shot" off, across the room, startling other gym users. Paramedics had to use a "Stokes basket" instead of a regular stretcher to carry her out, according to the New York Post. (2) Also in July, in Kokomo, Ind., pastor Jeff Harlow attempted to illustrate a sermon on "unity" by riding a dirt bike onto the stage in front of the congregation at Crossroads Community Church. However, he lost control, fell off the stage and broke his wrist.

Food engineers in Japan, especially, are notorious for their odd-flavored ice creams that challenge the palate, as News of the Weird has noted several times. In August, voters at the Taste of Britain festival selected their own regional favorites, some of which rivaled Japan's (e.g., ice creams of sausage and mash, pork pie, cheddar cheese, Worcestershire sauce, Welsh rarebit and even haggis). The Japanese still love their ice cream, though. Among the flavors at this year's Yokohama Ice Cream Expo in August (celebrating the 130th anniversary of ice cream in Japan) were beef tongue, octopus, eel and beer.

According to the Palais de Justice in Paris, a recent preliminary hearing marked the first time in France, and perhaps in the world, in which a dog had been called as a formal witness in a murder case. "Scooby Doo" was brought into the courtroom so that a judge could watch how he reacted when he approached the defendant, who was accused of killing Scooby's master, and according to a dispatch in London's Daily Telegraph, the dog "barked furiously," helping convince the judge to set the case for trial.

(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.)

CORRECTION: Two weeks ago, News of the Weird mentioned a story from the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner that accused school board candidate Bernard LeCorn of not having college degrees from the institutions he claimed. Subsequently, the Star-Banner corrected its story. LeCorn does have the degrees he claims. The error was made by school personnel who initially responded inaccurately to the Star-Banner reporter.

Developing Democracies: Candidates for local office in Brazil can either register under their own names or make them up, and in the October election this year, three candidates chose "Barack Obama" (none won), and others registered under "Bill Clinton," "Jorge Bushi" and "Chico Bin Laden," but more than 200 offered themselves under the name of the country's popular president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. And in July, when the government of India tried to push its historic nuclear pact with the United States through the parliament, it found six more votes among elected members who were serving prison sentences, and ordered them released so they could vote for the bill. (Nearly one-fourth of the 540-member parliament have criminal charges pending against them.)

-- (1) Britain's Bristol City Council warned residents in government housing in September to always leave their sheds unlocked. Otherwise, thieves would have to break the doors down to get inside, and taxpayers would be stuck with the repair bills. (2) Atlanta Pentecostal preacher Thomas Meeks told the Journal-Constitution in October that he was "in talks" to create a "Survivor"-type TV reality show in which the twice-divorced evangelist navigates a field of single women and selects a winner. "Holy Hook Up: Who Will Be the Next Mrs. Weeks?" will, he said, be a "very tasteful, five-star presentation."

-- Chilean-Danish artist Marco Evaristti is working with condemned Texas inmate Gene Hathorn, 47 (convicted killer of three in 1985), on an anti-capital-punishment exhibit to be staged after Hathorn's execution. The murderer's body would be frozen, then made into flakes that museum visitors could feed to goldfish. Evaristti is most noted for his 2000 exhibit in which he placed live goldfish in several electric blenders and invited museum-goers to turn them on.

-- An unfortunate burst of wind disrupted an outside art installation at the Paul Klee center in Bern, Switzerland, in August, ripping an inflatable exhibit from its moorings and carrying it away. The exhibit, by American Paul McCarthy, was a sculpture entitled "Complex Shit," and the inflatable item was supposed to be a dog dropping the size of a house. Explained the Klee center's Web site (challengingly), the show features "interweaving, diverse, not to say conflictive emphases and a broad spectrum of items to form a dynamic exchange of parallel and self-eclipsing spatial and temporal zones." (Or, wrote London's Daily Telegraph in broken French, it is "what happens when la merde hits le ventilateur.")

-- Sculptor Marc Quinn unveiled "Siren" in October at the British Museum, feting the model Kate Moss, who posed for him, though not quite in the position Quinn ultimately created. "Siren" is life-size, in 18k gold (that cost Quinn around $2 million), and treats the gaudiness of the so-called supermodel. As such, Moss is posed seated, holding her legs behind her head. (Some, but not all, news outlets chose to show "Siren" modestly, from the side rather than the front.)

-- Things Government Does When It's Not Bailing Out the Economy: (1) The municipal transit company in Austin, Texas, unveiled a rider-education campaign in August, giving step-by-step instructions in how to stand up on buses without falling over. When the bus is accelerating, "lean forward and put your weight on your front foot." (The introductory frame on the poster features a harried rider exclaiming, "Help! I'll never figure it out!") (2) A British government-funded poster campaign, also introduced in August, aims to encourage those waiting for municipal buses to do Pilates-type movements to improve physical fitness. Among the suggestions: standing on one leg, pointing the toes forward, clenching the buttocks.

-- Most workers who have retired in the last few years from New York's Long Island Rail Road have also qualified for disability payments (though most did not claim such disabilities while working), according to a September New York Times investigation of state records. Lax union work rules, plus the astonishingly cooperative "Railroad Retirement Board" (which virtually never rejects a disability application), have resulted in nearly every worker drawing about as much money in retirement as he made on the job. In October, the Times also discovered that many of the same retirees were apparently so confident that their "disability" status would be approved that they also purchased private disability insurance to make retirement even more lucrative.

-- Awesome: Police in Dortmund, Germany, arrested six Romanian men in June and charged them with stealing from trucks on the open highway. Allegedly, the thieves would drive their own truck carefully up behind a tractor-trailer at highway speed, and a man on the hood would reach out and open the back of the rig with a bolt cutter. He would climb in and loot the rig of computers and cell phones by passing them out to a partner sitting on the hood of the trailing truck.

-- Almost Awesome: Motorist Michael Mills Jr., 38, who was making a getaway from police in Chesapeake, Va. (who wanted him on identity-theft charges), broke through a drawbridge warning arm and tried to jump ("Dukes of Hazzard"-style) onto the span that was being lowered (but which wouldn't be completely down for another several minutes). He missed, and the car plunged into the Elizabeth River, where it sank (but Mills was rescued and arrested).

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) A 30-year-old man appears to be the most recent person (according to the account of police in Woodland, Calif., in August) to attempt to throw burning fireworks at a target while traveling in a car, but having the toss fail to clear the window and thus explode inside the car. He was hospitalized. (2) In another familiar scene, two 18-year-old men spotted police approaching their trailer-park home in Salina, Kan., in August, panicked, and tossed illegal drugs out a window. However, police spotted the flying drugs, even though cops had originally intended only to serve warrants on two of their neighbors. The men were arrested.

-- The estimated one million Japanese (almost all males) who suffer from the major anti-social funk called "Hikikomori" and confine themselves inside (typically, a bedroom in their parents' home) for months at a time without live human interaction has been mentioned in News of the Weird in 2000 and 2005. In July, the Japanese software company Avex produced a video to help those men, simply featuring a series of young women staring into the lens, occasionally saying "Good morning," so that Hikikomori sufferers can practice feeling the gazes of strangers.

-- (1) Police in Fort Myers, Fla., said Jonathon Guabello, 29, who was angry that his girlfriend had denied him sex when they came home from a bar in October, left the room, shot himself twice in the arm, fell, and hit his head on a kitchen appliance, knocking himself out. (2) In Anderson Township, Ohio, in July, another frustrated lover, angry that his girlfriend kept falling asleep one night during sex, retaliated, according to police, by attempting to set fire to her van. (The 46-year-old man who couldn't sustain his lover's interest is Gregory Smallwood.)

-- From the self-composed obituary in the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune of James William "Jim" Adams, who died September 9th: "Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's [sic] courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he had lost his battle ... primarily as a result of ... not following doctor's orders. ... He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date."

(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.)

The world's most extensive array of animal "rights" took effect in Switzerland in September. Dog owners must take, at their own expense, classes in pet care (and anglers must take a class in humane treatment of fish). Animals listed as "social" (including goldfish, hamsters, sheep, goats, yaks) must be kept with or near another of their species. Goldfish must have some "privacy," e.g., no completely transparent tanks, and can only be killed humanely (never flushed alive). Even mud-loving pigs are entitled to showers. Yet, Swiss animal rights activists complained that the country still permits trading in cat fur (supposedly a pain-reliever for rheumatism), and that some new protections (for example, for rhinoceroses) are still inadequate.

-- In August two British couples were given sanctions by local councils because their loud, long sex sessions disturbed neighbors. Steve and Caroline Cartwright were issued a noise abatement order by the Sunderland City Council (Caroline: "I do admit I scream and make lots of noise"), and Kerry Norris was fined by the Brighton and Hove City Council for violating a previous sex-noise order with her boyfriend Adam Hinton (a neighbor said their headboard bangs against the wall until 6 a.m.). (Also in August, a neighbor of a swingers' party house in Des Moines, Wash., told a Seattle Times reporter than cries of ecstasy from the house sometimes sound "like a raccoon dying.")

-- Also, Some Animals Have Good Sex Lives: Officers responding to a neighbor's report of domestic violence in a subdivision near Payson, Ariz., in September decided that the "fight" the neighbor heard was the high-pitched mating scream of a male elk. And an August police search near Linz, Germany, was called off after the "bloodcurdling" screams reported as a woman in distress were actually the mating cries of a badger. And officials at the Bristol Zoo in England promised neighbors they would temporarily house gibbons inside during the night because of their loud mating duets.

-- Wealthy advertising executive Robert Schwartz died in 1997 and left a sizable estate, including a special "Party Trust" for his relatives, but with one condition: They must all celebrate Schwartz's birthday every August for at least 10 years at a posh party in Naples, Fla., with all expenses paid, and people missing two straight, or two in five years, would forfeit their inheritances. The Naples Daily News reported in September that each adult relative would receive up to $2,500 per party attended, and a final Party Trust accounting is now in the hands of a judge.

-- David Norris never knew his father, who left home when Norris was 5 months old. Now 22, Norris is serving a minimum-12-year sentence for killing a man after an earlier rape conviction and is housed in Peterhead prison, which is the primary lockup for Scotland's sex criminals. Soon after arrival, according to a Scottish Daily Record report, Norris ran into David Gilles, 39, serving life for the kidnapping and sexual torture of a young woman, and realized that Gilles is his dad.

-- Michelle Cossey pleaded guilty to one count of child endangerment in September in Norristown, Pa., admitting that she had bought her son Dillon, 14, a rifle and gunpowder (which prosecutors say Dillon was planning to use in a Columbine-style attack on former classmates at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School). Michelle said she had no idea of his plans, but only wanted to help boost Dillon's "self-esteem," since he is severely overweight and had left school after the seventh-grade because of bullying.

-- Wendy Brown, 33, was charged with identity theft in Green Bay, Wis., in September after she enrolled at Ashwaubenon High School pretending to be her 15-year-old daughter (who actually lives in Nevada). Though Brown has a "history" of identify-theft issues (according to a school official who spoke with Brown's mother), one motive in this case was to fulfill a longtime dream of becoming a cheerleader, and she had been attending practices and had made the squad, according to school officials, even though some people had noticed that she looked a little older than the other girls.

-- Entrepreneurs: (1) Sarah Lavely opened Sarah's Smash Shack in downtown San Diego this summer, inviting people who are angry at someone or something to slam ceramic plates, vases and glass pieces (such as framed photographs of an ex-) against walls in special rooms (15 minutes, 15 plates, $45). (2) Australian Wool Innovation recently introduced, for the Japanese executives' market, a washable business suit that can be cleaned in an ordinary shower and will dry overnight, virtually wrinkle-free (and, in a pinch, can even be worn in the shower).

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Nathaniel Wayne Lee, Attalla, Ala. (September); Michael Wayne Wood Sr. (arrested in Michigan in August as a fugitive from a 2005 Oklahoma murder warrant); Jeffrey Wayne Riebe, Myrtle Beach, S.C. (August); Barry Wayne Kaalund, Durham, N.C. (August); Joseph Wayne Keeler, Largo, Fla. (August). Captured after escaping while serving time for murder: Marlow Wayne Reynolds, Rosharon, Texas (September). Fugitive warrant issued: suspected murderer Larry Wayne Brucke Jr., Lenoir, N.C. (September).

-- Not Ready for Thugdom: (1) Police in Wilmington, N.C., arrested Anthony Mallette, 30, and Capria Rouser, 28, in September, driving a stolen car, after they had allegedly tried to extort money from the owner for its return. They wanted $40. (2) Two men attempted an armed robbery of the Brighton Mini Mart in Chicago in August, and when it was over, the man with the gun had accidentally shot himself in the foot and been stabbed in the back by the 61-year-old store owner. The pair fled, but the wounded man was arrested in a hospital waiting room.

-- Rookie Mistakes: (1) Kody Merrival, 21, was arrested in Iowa City, Iowa, in September after he used an alleged stolen credit card in three different establishments. At a coffee bar, he asked for points on his personal account while using the card; at another store, he absentmindedly signed his own name; and in the third, he offered his own ID to accompany the card (leading the merchant to confiscate the card and notify police). (2) Tommy Patterson, 41, vacationing in Ormond Beach, Fla., in July, decided to do some impromptu shoplifting at a Wal-Mart, according to police, but was caught after a chase that was brief because he was still wearing flip-flops from the beach.

The brain "fingerprinting" work mentioned here in 2000 and 2003, whose hypothesis is that different areas of the brain are active when a person recalls an actual experience, as opposed to recalling merely learned information, was used in June in Pune, India, to secure a woman's murder conviction. A neuroscientist convinced the judge that the suspect's responses to questions could only have come had she actually made a purchase of the arsenic in question and traveled the exact route taken by the alleged killer.

Daytime burglar John Pearce, 32, was arrested in Dartford, England, in August after getting his foot caught in a window and hanging upside down for over an hour in full view of congregating (and taunting) neighbors before police arrived. However, in Chester Township, Pa., in July, scrap-metal burglar Charles Ancrum, 50, beat that record, hanging from a window for an entire weekend, dead, after he broke his neck attempting to climb into a residential garage. (While sticking his head through a small window, he fell off the sawhorse he was standing on.)

(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.)