Through the years, News of the Weird has reported on restaurants around the world with singularly quirky themes and signature dishes, such as the one in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, that seats all diners on toilets and the Beijing restaurant whose cuisine features animal penises. Last year, a group of doctors in Riga, Latvia, opened Hospitalis, a medical-themed restaurant whose dining room resembles an OR, with "nurse" waitresses bringing food on gurneys, accessorized with syringes and forceps in addition to knives and forks and with drinks served in beakers and test tubes. Hospitalis' signature dish is a cake with edible toppings that resemble fingers, noses and tongues.

-- It was thought to be the backwoods version of an "urban legend," but the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department reported in March its first documented case of a deer hunter's attempting to avoid detection after shooting a doe (instead of the permissible buck) by gluing antlers onto its head. Marcel Fournier, 19, used epoxy and lag bolts, said a game warden, but the finished product looked awkward because of the angle of placement and the size mismatch of the antlers. (Fournier was jailed for 10 days and fined, and had his license revoked.)

-- "It was initially just an experiment," said the 26-year-old, Sebastopol, Calif., midwife apprentice who last year talked her boyfriend into photographing her cervix for 33 straight days so that she could chart its physical changes while monitoring her own mood, libido and body temperature. It was not easy, she told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in February. "It's so dark in there (that) even with (a lamp shining on it), the camera wouldn't focus." However, the boyfriend made it work. "He's a very talented guy." Eventually, the photos made it to the Internet, with her cooperation.

-- Christos Kokkalis, 19, allegedly doing 65 mph in a 30 mph zone, was charged with assault in Framingham, Mass., in March, for reacting badly to a pedestrian's hand gesture suggesting he slow down. According to a police report, Kokkalis swerved across a street into the man's path, drove by, turned around and did it again. The report said Kokkalis denied fault, claiming that his car "turns on its own" because of an "alignment" problem.

-- Herman Rosenblat, whose best-selling "memoir" of his Holocaust love affair with his wife was yanked off the market by the publisher when parts were proven false, insisted to ABC News in February that he never lied. Of his heartbreaking, well-worn story that his non-imprisoned future wife lovingly tossed apples to him over a fence at his concentration camp (which physically could not possibly have happened, according to historians), Rosenblat said: "It wasn't a lie. (E)ven now, I believe it, that she was there and she threw the apple to me. In my imagination, it was true."

-- In March, Dominique Fisher, a "tattooist," received a probation-type sentence by Britain's Burnley Crown Court despite having carved her name and other marks with a box cutter on her new lover's body while he was passed out. She and Wayne Robinson had been on a four-day drinking binge, and he panicked when he sobered up. However, Fisher said that Robinson knew all along that she did tattoos and told him, "I thought you'd like it."

-- Angel Galvan-Hernandez, 26, facing a long prison term after being convicted in a Seattle court, begged the judge in February to execute him, that he'd rather die "a thousand times" than be jailed. The reason, he said, was his fear of being raped in prison because of his petite frame and his history of being attacked as a youth. He admitted that he was a coward, "but I just don't want to be raped." His crime: He had pleaded guilty to raping two women. (He got 20 years.)

-- What We Say, What We Do: (1) About 200 members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) launched a protest campaign in March, accusing their employer of improper layoffs, unlawful bans on union activities, and reclassifying of workers in order to disempower the union. The employer of the workers is the national SEIU office, where they are staff members. (2) A federal arbitrator ruled in March that an employer had, for years, "willfully" violated the Fair Labor Standards Act in exploiting workers by failing to pay overtime. The guilty employer: the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

-- (1) New Zealand's Employment Relations Authority ruled in February that a worker who, in a fury, tells his boss to "stick his job up his arse," has not officially resigned unless he follows up the incident with a formal notice. (2) Two competitors vying to sell the same type iPhone application (arrays of sounds of breaking wind) are embroiled in a trademark dispute, according to a March Denver Post report. The developers of Air-O-Matic's "Pull My Finger" claim that InfoMedia's "iFart" application improperly uses "pull my finger" in its own marketing. InfoMedia said that the phrase is generic and not trademarkable.

-- From an advertisement in the News Reporter of Whiteville, N.C., placed by attorney C. Greg Williamson on Jan. 5, 2009, to give legally required pre-adoption notice to the unknown father of a girl (about whom the mother apparently recalled very little): The father "was about 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a light brown complexion and 'funny' shaped eyes," and the "date and place of conception" were during December 2002 "at a house in Bolton, N.C., thought to be the second house on the left after turning left on the street just past Bubba's Club as you head east from Lake Waccamaw." Under state law, that man had 40 days from the placement of the ad to challenge the adoption of the child, now age 5.

Criminals Not Keeping Low Profiles: (1) Motorist Christopher Cadenhead, 39, was stopped in Osceola County, Fla., in January for having an expired tag. Inside his car, police found 200 pounds of marijuana. (2) Jose Melendez, 54, and his wife and daughter were stopped by Douglas County, Neb., deputies in January after their RV was driving on the shoulder of Interstate 80. Cover-story discrepancies among the three occupants as to where they were headed and which "relatives" they were "visiting" aroused a deputy's suspicion, and a search of the vehicle revealed $2.5 million worth of cocaine under a floorboard.

Karma: (1) A 25-year-old man who was a passenger in a car driven by a drunk friend was killed in Houston in February when he was thrown from the car in a crash. That incident came seven months after the victim had, himself, been charged with DUI in a crash that killed two people. (2) Two brothers driving a stolen car and being chased by police on Interstate 70 near St. Louis in November were killed when they accidentally crashed into another car. That car, also, had been stolen.

In March 2003, the double life of wealthy Tampa construction magnate Douglas Cone, 74, surfaced when, following the death of his socialite wife, Jean Ann (with whom he lived Thursdays through Sundays and had three kids), he quickly married his socialite paramour Hillary Carlson (with whom he had lived for years in a second mansion 20 miles away as "Donald Carlson," Mondays through Wednesdays, and had two kids). Cone's philanthropic contributions (donated in both his names, though "Mr. Carlson" never appeared at events), and both women's dedicated community service, made the "four" of them prominent figures in Tampa. (The consensus among the families' members, according to a St. Petersburg Times report, is that Hillary knew; Jean Ann might not have; and others did not.)

Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence said recently that he would install a prosthetic eye with a camera and wireless transmitter (of the size now used for colonoscopies) into the socket from which one of his eyes had been removed as the result of a childhood accident. He hopes to control the prosthetic eye in the same way that his muscles control his good eye, to record what his eyes see, and his first project will be a documentary on people's attitudes about privacy in an "Orwellian society." "(T)he best way to make a connection (with an interviewee) is through eye contact," he said. "When you bring in a camera, people change."

-- Artist Beth Grossman created her wall exhibit, "Seats of Power," to encourage citizens to greater activism in local affairs around Brisbane, Calif. (just south of San Francisco Bay). The "Seats" are upholstered cushions individually tailored with the buttprints of each of the 10 city council members, who allowed Grossman to photograph them from behind, clothed, through a sheet of Plexiglas pressed against their posteriors to simulate being seated. All 10 co-operated, including Mayor Sepi Richardson, who said she had been considering her "legacy" lately, "but I never thought it would be my butt."

-- Small-Town Politics: (1) Resident Tony Randall of Ashland, N.H. (pop., 2,000), a surveyor by trade who was elected chief of the town's 12-member police force in March, promised he would know more about his job by September, when he will finish police academy training. (2) The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a March meeting of the Medina, Ohio, City Council required a recess when all members engaged in serial giggling over one person's flatulence. (3) Mayor Jerry Oberholtzer of Snellville, Ga., involved in a recent feud with an aggressive city council member, called on police chief Roy Whitehead to escort him to the men's room at City Hall for his safety.

-- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with the impossible task of "regulating" 18,000 makers of drug devices (and thousands of other companies and enforcing 123 new federal laws since 1988), has had virtually no increase in staff in 15 years. It's little wonder, then, that the AM2PAT company of Angier, N.C., was not caught before bacteria in its pre-filled syringes were linked to five deaths and hundreds of illnesses in December 2007. Subsequently inspected, AM2PAT's saline and heparin syringes were found to contain "debris" and "sediment" and to be "muddy" and "dingy brown" in color. Furthermore, according to a February report in the Raleigh News & Observer, the required "clean (air) room" was found to be just a room with a fan, and the company's "chief microbiologist" was revealed to be a teenager who had dropped out of high school. The company's owner has fled to his native India to avoid prosecution.

-- The U.S. Transportation Security Administration ruled in January that a post-9-11 federal maritime law, which requires comprehensive background credentials for mariners holding U.S. Coast Guard authorization on U.S. waters, applies even to the two "mule skinners" who work, in tourist season, dressed in colonial costumes at the Hugh Moore Historical Park in Easton, Pa. The park's lone mule-pulled boat is operated in a 2-mile-long canal that is near nothing of strategic significance, said the park director.

-- In addition to addressing the usual state homeland-security concerns, Kentucky's statute requires anyone licensed as a first responder to disasters to take an oath against dueling ("I, being a citizen of this state, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons ... nor have I sent or accepted a challenge (to duel), nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge (to duel), so help me God"). Another provision requires the state Homeland Security Office's executive director to "publicize" a legislative finding that "reliance upon Almighty God" is necessary to homeland security.

-- Police were called to the Aliso (Calif.) Town Center on March 15 after a woman telephoned 911 to report being attacked near the center's fountain by another woman, who had flung her dog's feces at her and her infant. The flinger was said to be upset about complaints from passersby about the enema she was giving her dog in public.

-- Names in the News: Charged in Albuquerque in February with giving her daughter marijuana: Ms. Jodi Weed. The victim of a January beating by her middle school classmates in Tampa (for the obvious reason): Miss Special Harris. Charged with arson and destruction of property in Charleston, W.Va., in March: Mr. J. Edgar Hoover. Charged with prostitution in Tampa in February: Ms. Ho Suk Kim.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal agreed in February to hear the charge brought by Roxanne Stevenson that she was turned down illegally for a clerk's job by the city of Kelowna because she smokes. "Smoking," itself, is not covered by the law, and a city official said Stevenson frequently used sick leave at a previous job and that, during her interview, she "reeked" of smoke and coughed constantly. Lawyers interviewed by the Vancouver Sun said, however, that employers cannot discriminate on account of health status or addiction without offering to accommodate the worker's condition.

Alcohol Was Involved: (1) A 19-year-old University of Colorado student required emergency assistance in March after spending all evening badgering fellow partygoers to hit him in the face. Finally, at 2 a.m., someone complied, resulting in a broken nose and massive bleeding. (2) A National City Bank in downtown Pittsburgh was broken into on March 7, inadvertently, when an intoxicated man accidentally tripped and crashed through the front window (narrowly avoiding decapitation). (3) According to sheriff's reports, a man reported to Huntsville (Ala.) Hospital on Feb. 18 after having passed out drunk with an ex-girlfriend and waking up with a sewing needle in his urethra.

That Sacred Institution (as practiced in villages in India): (1) To prevent mysterious illnesses in the village, two 7-year-old girls were married, separately, to frogs (Pallipudupet, Tamil Nadu state; January). (2) To bring prosperity to the village, an elder married off two trees to each other (Subhasnagar, West Bengal state; February). (3) To overcome the effect of a baby's odd-looking tooth, which is said to portend death by a tiger unless remedied, the 18-month-old boy was married off to a female dog (Jaipur District, Orissa state; February).

(1) A motorist survived a crash on Feb. 4 near Los Banos, Calif., though his car fell down a 200-foot cliff. After he climbed back to the highway and sought help, he was accidentally hit and killed by another driver. (2) A 60-year-old man, celebrating his retirement from a transportation company in Ritto, Japan, in December, was killed when three co-workers tossed him playfully into the air and then apparently miscommunicated as to who would catch him.

News of the Weird reported that hard-luck Oklahoma rapist Darron Bennalford Anderson had received a 2,200-year sentence in a Tulsa court in 1994 but had won a new trial. Unfortunately for him, he was re-convicted in 1996 and re-sentenced, to more than 90 additional centuries behind bars (a total of 11,250 years, including 40 centuries each for rape and sodomy, 17 centuries for kidnapping, 10 centuries for burglary and robbery, and five centuries for grand larceny). In July 1997, the state Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the grand larceny charge, as double jeopardy on the robbery conviction, speeding Anderson's release date up 500 years to 12,744 A.D.

A 1970s-style San Francisco commune is organized around the practice of "orgasmic meditation," but for women only, in daily sessions that start promptly at 7 a.m. Men belong to the commune, too, but are useful only digitally to the women and must remain clothed, according to a March report in The New York Times. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, 41, is considered by some former members to be running a "cult," because of her dominant personality and ability to play on the vulnerabilities of her members, but the three dozen now in residence seem to admire her vision. One man said, according to the Times, that he had improved his own concentration at work (as a Silicon Valley engineer) through "the practice of manually fixing his attention on a tiny spot of a woman's body."

-- We Welcome Our New Monkey Overlords: Researchers recently revealed that they had observed monkeys (1) planning future combat and (2) perhaps teaching their young to floss. A researcher from Sweden's Lund University, writing in the journal Current Biology, described a daily ritual of a 30-year-old chimpanzee that loathes his human visitors at a zoo north of Stockholm and thus begins every morning by roaming his enclosure to collect stones and place them strategically in handy piles for subsequently hurling at irksome visitors. And a researcher at Kyoto University's Primate Research Center told Agence France-Presse in March that he had observed mother long-tailed macaques in Thailand flossing their teeth (with strands of human hair) more frequently if their young are present and hypothesized that they were teaching dental hygiene.

-- Questionable Pricing: (1) Yale University student Jesse Maiman, 21, filed a lawsuit against US Airways in March because someone stole the Xbox console from his luggage, for which he wants $1 million. (2) In January, after the New York City subway system barred the oversized "assistance dog" of Estelle Stamm, 65, she filed a lawsuit for $10 million. (3) In Lonnell Worthy's lawsuit against Bank of America, filed in November in California, Worthy values his now-ruined iPod playlist at $1 trillion.

-- After Elizabeth Russell, 45, and her 13-year-old daughter were arrested in February in Hartford, Conn., and charged with shoplifting from a Kohl's department store, her husband, Daryll, 47, and son, Jonathan, 19, arrived at the police station to bail them out. However, a quick check revealed that both Daryll and Jonathan had warrants against them for violating probation, and were arrested. Said a police lieutenant, "I don't ever recall having four related people in lockup at the same time."

-- In December, Idaho State University sent certified-mail letters to its adjunct faculty to disclose (as required by law) that some of them would soon be laid off. However, only the first-class mail fee was billed to the university, leaving each professor to pay on receipt the certified-mail surcharge in order to find out what the university would send them that was so important. (The Idaho State Journal reported that it was the Postal Service's error.)

-- Jailers Not Paying Attention: (1) Christian Colon, 21, had a plea deal worked out to testify against alleged murderer Joel Rivera in exchange for a lighter sentence, but suddenly decided in February that he would not take the stand. The change of heart came right after Colon was accidentally housed in the same Milwaukee County Jail holding cell with Rivera. (With no plea deal, Colon got 46 years.) (2) At least Colon is still alive. A 23-year-old inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary was found beaten to death in March after being mistakenly assigned to the same cell as his ex-partner-in-crime, against whom he had testified in a 2002 murder trial.

-- At least four culinarily daring food emporiums in the U.S. serve deep-fried pizza, including the takeout Pizza Snobz in Wilson, Pa., though owner David Barker admits the specialty is more common in Scotland. The key point, he said, is to begin only with frozen pizza; otherwise, the cheese soon slides off into the fryer.

-- When a supporter of the animal-rights organization PETA contributed, for a fund-raising auction, a towel that had recently been used by actor George Clooney, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk had what she thought was a better idea: extracting Clooney's perspiration from it and using the sweat to flavor a tofu dish. "I can see people having parties to try CloFu," she said. (Clooney rejected the idea, according to a March Washington Post report.)

-- In February, Britain's Southwark Crown Court ordered so-called "countess" Eida Beguinua to give back the equivalent of $1.2 million to investors who had believed her story that she could recover treasures in the Philippines but needed money for expenses. Despite the setback, she told the judge that she was sticking with her story and begged him for more time to look for the "22 caves," protected by "10,000" guards, containing tons of jewelry and gold worth "300 followed by 41 zeros" (presumably in British pounds).

(1) The venerable 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei was honored at a gallery in Florence, Italy, in February to mark the 400th anniversary of his transformative work, which was widely discredited at the time (as contradicting the Bible) and which subjected him to vicious slanders. The exhibit includes Galileo's only preserved body part: one of his middle fingers. (2) London's Royal Opera House announced in February that its next biennial original production will be a libretto based on the life of the late Anna Nicole Smith.

(1) The Court of Appeal in Brisbane, Australia, rejected in March the challenge of the man convicted last year for having sex with his underage stepdaughter but who had tried to protect himself by having her sign a "contract" of consent. (When arrested, the incredulous stepfather indignantly asked the police, "Did you not see the (expletive) contract?") (2) Schoolteacher Andrew Melville, 48, was sentenced in January in Scotland's Edinburgh Sheriff Court for possession of child pornography after the tribunal heard that Melville had initially sought to cover up word of his March 2008 arrest by buying up all copies of the newspapers in his hometown of Gullane.

Least Competent Criminals: (1) Alleged bank robber Feliks Goldshtein was arrested after a brief chase by police, who were summoned to National City Bank in Stow, Ohio, in January. Employees may have been tipped off because Goldshtein, wearing a ski mask, had waited patiently in a teller's line and only displayed a gun when he finally reached the counter. (2) Romeo Montillano, 40, who was being sought in the December robbery of a Kmart in Chula Vista, Calif., pleasantly surprised the cops when they learned that a "Romeo Montillano" had registered for the upcoming police officers' exam on Feb. 25. Indeed, he showed up, and he was arrested.

From a May 1999 police report in The Messenger (Madisonville, Ky.), concerning two trucks being driven curiously on a rural road:

A man would drive a truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so on, into the evening. He did it, he told police, because his brother was passed out drunk in one of the trucks, and he was trying to drive both trucks home, at more or less the same time. (Not surprisingly, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be impaired.)