What is believed to be the world's only commercial lounge openly serving cocaine operates in La Paz, Bolivia, though the owners of "Route 36" have to change locations from time to time, depending on the moods of the bribed authorities. An August dispatch in London's The Guardian reported that a nearly pure gram costs the equivalent of about $14 ($22 for "premium"), served by waiters in an empty CD case, with straws, but bar drinks are also available. Route 36 is well-known to backpacking tourists. Recalled one waiter, "We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. (T)he only time they left was to go to the ATM."

-- Small Town: In Jericho, Ark., alleged harassment by cops got so bad, according to an Associated Press report, that the fire chief went to court twice in the same day in August to complain about speed traps. The chief's charge angered the seven officers attending the hearing, and a courtroom scuffle ensued, resulting in the chief's being shot in the back and hospitalized. WMC-TV reported that the shooter has not been charged but that an arrest warrant has been issued for the chief, who was then fired by the mayor. The police force has been disbanded by the Crittenden County sheriff, and all firefighters have resigned.

-- Big City: George Vera, who weighs nearly 600 pounds, was booked into jail in Houston in August and was in custody for more than 24 hours before he casually informed cops that they had missed finding the 9 mm handgun and two clips that were hidden in his rolls of fat.

-- Questionable Business Model: In September, in downtown Longview, Wash., a 23-year-old man held up a sign offering to be kicked in the groin for $5. He made one sale before police, acting on a complaint, made him move on.

-- Fierce Competition: (1) Police in Broome, Australia, reported in September that a five-year feud between two rival camel-ride vendors in the Cable Beach resort area had erupted again, this time involving allegations of camel theft and tossed camel dung. (2) In July, as the legal brothel business declined precipitously in Germany, owners adopted such gimmicks as free shoe-polishing and discounts for retirees. However, when several brothels began offering flat-rate plans (based on restaurants' all-you-can-eat model), police cracked down, judging them as a little too excessive.

-- Questionable Products: (1) The Spanish toymaker Berjuan has introduced a doll that suckles from a halter worn by young girls who want to mimic their breastfeeding mothers. The Bebe Gloton is not expected to be available in the U.S. until 2010 but is being shown worldwide on YouTube. Americans appear to regard breastfeeding, in general, as much more provocative than Europeans do. (2) The Brazilian company Petsmiling has created a prototype DoggieLoveDoll in three sizes, designed as a "mountable," anatomically correct sex partner for male dogs. It was introduced at the Pet South America fair in Sao Paulo in July, according to Associated Press photos.

-- Sharron Thornton had been blinded nine years ago from a severe reaction to medication that caused her mucus membranes, including the eye's lens, to die and shed (and caused her also to lose hair, skin and nails, though the latter three grew back). In a revolutionary procedure, the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami (Fla.) had the bright idea to shore up her eye with a piece of her tooth and jawbone (the cuspid, or "eye tooth") so that a prosthetic lens could be implanted. That was only part of it: The tooth portion, with the implanted lens, had to be micro-sculpted and implanted first into Thornton's chest for access to nutrients. Thornton's vision is now 20/70 without eyeglasses.

-- Recent Inexplicable Side Effects of Brain Injury: (1) Malcolm Darby, 70, awoke from surgery following a stroke in Oakham, England, last year to find that he had near-perfect vision (after having worn eyeglasses since age 2) but later discovered that he no longer spoke or understood French. (2) A 37-year-old German woman, who had been treated for epileptic seizures in 2006, reported recently that among the side effects were occasional feelings that she had undergone a sex change and was a man.

-- Calvino Inman, 15, is not part of the gothic subculture at his high school in Rockwood, Tenn., but he would be a natural. He has an annoying case of what one opthalmologist called "haemolacria," or bloody tears. The boy seems to bleed uncontrollably from the eyes, up to three times a day, according to a September ABC News report, but so far, specialists, employing ultrasound, an MRI, and a CT scan, are unable to determine the cause.

-- (1) Britain's National Farmers Union issued a general alert in August, after four fatal attacks on people by cows, that dogs should not be walked near grazing fields. "The cattle are interested in the dog, not the walker," said an official. (2) During a three-day period in August near the village of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, "dozens" of cows killed themselves by leaping off of a particular cliff. Officials discounted accidents as the cause since cows in the area generally become familiar with the dangers of cliffs.

-- (1) Japan's principal organized-crime Yakuza gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi, was reported in September to be giving written tests to its members to improve their knowledge of the law. The leaders were said to be trying to reduce the number of lawsuits against the group. (2) A prominent British Catholic organization recently issued a 64-page book of spousal prayers targeted to various marital events and even has one pre-coital offering emphasizing that the act to follow must be selfless and not undertaken for personal pleasure.

-- Recurring Themes: (1) Broward County (Fla.) Sheriff's Office is looking for the man who robbed the Citi Trends store in Oakland Park in September and has released the surveillance video, showing the man removing his mask. However, the man continued trying to shield his face, using only his hands, but the video makes him appear to be playing peek-a-boo, according to a WFOR-TV report. (2) David Perticone, 46, was arrested in Severn, Md., in August and charged with stealing about $25,000 worth of items from a woman's house just down the block. The woman discovered the items in Perticone's front yard, part of a yard sale he was conducting.

-- Charged recently with murder and awaiting trial: Michael Wayne Limley, St. Joseph, Mo. (August); Timothy Wayne Sanders, Suffolk, Va. (September); Marcus Wayne Barber, Port Arthur, Texas (September); Robert Wayne Howell, Longview, Texas (September); Barney Wayne Keizer, Salmo, British Columbia (September). Murder trial ordered: Bryan Wayne Hulsey, Glendale, Ariz. (charged in 2007, trial rescheduled for October 2010); Benjamin Wayne Holcroft, Goulburn, Australia (September); Billy Wayne Hall, Sparta, Mo. (trial site changed, September). Sentenced for murder: David Wayne Alexander, Pittsburgh (September); Benjamin Wayne Watta, Seal Beach, Calif. (January). Committed suicide after (according to police) murdering his girlfriend: Jason Wayne Strickland, Gilbert, S.C. (August). Confessed to murder: Billy Wayne Wallace, Fort Worth, Texas (confessed to police in August in cold-case murders from 1986 and 1994 but had not yet been charged at press time).

-- Golf Imitates Miniature Golf: In May 1998 at Beaver Brook Golf Course in Haydenville, Mass., Todd Obuchowski was credited with a hole-in-one on a par 3 hole after his tee shot went over the green and onto a highway, hit a passing Toyota driven by Nancy Bachand, ricocheted back to the green, and rolled into the cup. At least eight golfers witnessed the shot.

A male Swedish college student, Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, has begun pumping his breasts at three-hour intervals in a 90-day experiment to see if he can produce milk. If he succeeds, he said, it could prove "very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an early stage." A professor of endocrinology told the daily Aftonbladet that male lactation without hormone treatment might produce "a drop or two," but suggested that men instead consider offering their breasts to babies as a matter of comfort and warmth, rather than as food. Bengtsson, who will report regularly on his progress via Stockholm's TV8 channel and the station's Web site, acknowledged that his timetable would sometimes require that he pump during classes.

-- Improbably Successful Pick-up Line: In September, school officials in Australia's Queensland state said they were investigating an incident earlier in the year in which two teenagers had consensual sex that they recorded on a cell phone camera. The girl reportedly said she was convinced to lose her virginity out of fear that the world would soon end as a result of the scheduled re-start of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, later this year.

-- Police in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, decided in August not to press charges against three boys whom they had previously believed had harassed a young moose so badly that it had to be put down. A final piece of evidence against prosecution came from the father of one of the boys, who vouched that the three could not have committed such a crime since they had been busy at the time, vandalizing a nearby church.

-- Not My Fault: (1) A 60-year-old highway worker was injured when struck by motorist Catherine Stotts, 62, who was speeding down a blocked-off road construction lane near Willits, Calif., in July. The worker required hospitalization, but Stotts complained about receiving a traffic citation, telling officers that the man could have jumped out of the way faster. (2) Alexander Kabelis, 31, was arrested for slashing tires on almost 50 vehicles in Boulder, Colo., in May, but offered several explanations, including being overwhelmed by radiation from the nearby Rocky Flats nuclear facility and having been forced by his mother to wear braces on his teeth as a child.

-- What Century Is This? During the recent influence-peddling trial against Ottawa, Ontario, Mayor Larry O'Brien, local politician Lisa MacLeod, 34, gave seemingly important evidence for the prosecution. However, it was ruled of minimal value by Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Cunningham. The judge, 69, reasoned that since MacLeod, as a working woman with a long commute that leaves a husband and 4-year-old daughter at home, has "a number of rather significant things going on in her life" and must therefore be "distract(ed)" and thus a less reliable witness. One member of Parliament called Cunningham's ruling "pathetic."

-- Undesirable Medical Specialty: Athena Sidlar, 28, was fired in August from her trainee job at the Allentown (Pa.) State Hospital after being accused of helping a mental patient swallow metal objects. Belatedly, hospital personnel discovered that Sidlar, herself, has a history of compulsive metal-swallowing.

-- To Fight Sin, One Must Know Sin: In April, the Arizona State Parks Board unanimously chose Renee Bahl, thought to be a dynamic, experienced professional, to be director of state parks. However, her employment record while an assistant parks director in California in 2001 included an incident in which she was disciplined for etching "Renee 2001" into the wall of one of the parks' historic adobe barns.

-- Two motorists inadvertently wound up in backyard swimming pools recently: In July, flat-bed truck driver Nicholas Sparks, 25, hauling two motorcycles and towing two trucks, learned that he could not also handle talking on one cell phone while texting on another and accidentally crashed into a house in Lockport, N.Y., ending up with his truck and part of his cargo submerged. And in Mesa, Ariz., in June, a 27-year-old man who had rigged a short sword to his steering wheel (aimed at his chest) and driven into a brick wall in an effort to kill himself, failed in the attempt when an airbag inflated, causing him to lose control of the car, swerve into a nearby home and plunge into the pool.

-- Things You Thought Didn't Happen: (1) Several state law enforcement agencies raided a home in Shelton, Conn., in July, breaking up an alleged canary-fighting operation. (A neighbor called the raid "crazy": "I can't picture little canaries with razor blades taped to their feet.") (2) Convenience-store developer Michael Sesera might have thought he was merely following New Jersey protocol when he offered Hanover Mayor Ronald Francioli $20,000 to intercede for him with zoning authorities (i.e., a bribe). However, Mayor Francioli actually called the police, and in August Sesera pleaded guilty.

Three physicians, reporting in The Canadian Journal of Urology in July, described how they handled an emergency-room patient who arrived with a ballpoint pen in his urethra. The man, 57, had assumed that the insertion would be pleasurable, and when it wasn't, thought initially that maybe the pen was not in far enough. After pushing further, to even greater discomfort, he thought that if he pushed it all the way through, it would exit in his rectum, where he could remove it more easily. (Actually, they're not connected.) Doctors removed the pen with the same procedure used to remove kidney stones.

Kevin Ollie, 17, and Damien Cole, 19, completely failed in their attempted street robbery in Milwaukee, Wis., in August, when they accosted a young man and woman. The male "victim" drew his own gun, shot Ollie fatally and held Cole for the police. Later, Cole, though not the shooter, was charged with Ollie's death under the state's "felony murder" rule, which makes felons responsible if anyone at the scene should die as a result of the crime. Cole could get 55 years in prison.

Two longtime News of the Weird ongoing sagas came to an end this summer. In August, the annual Gotmar festival in India's Madhya Pradesh state was finally banned, after "centuries" of tradition. Residents of two neighboring villages would come together once a year to bombard each other all day long with rocks (resulting in dozens of bloody injuries and, most years, deaths), but at the sundown cease-fire, both sides would bandage their wounded and celebrate with each other (only to do it all over a year later). And in July, H. Beatty Chadwick, 73, was finally released from a Pennsylvania jail after serving more than 14 years behind bars because a series of judges believed they could thereby force him to admit that he was hiding marital assets from his 1995 divorce (which he always denied). Chadwick was the longest-serving incarcerated American who had not been charged with a crime.

An August 2000 Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro, Sardinia (Italy), described locals' love for "casu marzu" (rotten cheese), brown lumps of sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a "viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue" and whose "wiggling worms (often) jump straight toward the (diner's) eyes with ballistic precision." Though the cheese is banned by the government, a black market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary cheese. Some locals believe the live maggots provide authentication, in that only when the maggots die does the cheese become inedible.

If society were ever attacked by zombies, we would probably be doomed, and quickly. That was the conclusion of two university researchers in Ottawa, Ontario, who set up mathematical models hypothesizing zombie attacks as infectious diseases with the well-known characteristics of zombie biology from popular fiction. In fact, according to a July BBC News report, zombies are more threatening than virulent diseases because they can regenerate (unless decapitated or incinerated, of course). More troubling was the researchers' presumption that zombies move slowly, as in older movies, but in recent fiction, they're super-quick, making them nearly invincible.

-- Scared-y Cat Brits: (1) In June the Peterborough City Council ordered retirees who come together for weekly coffee at the public library to give up hot drinks, in case one accidentally spilled on a child. (2) In July the Dagenham Pool in Essex, citing (according to the manager) drowning risks, banned swimmers from doing "lengths" and forced them instead to swim "widths." (3) In June the Brighton and Hove City Council ordered nature-lover Hilaire Purbrick, 45, out of the cave that has been his residence for 16 years, citing its lack of a "fire exit."

-- In April, the Pelham (Mass.) Board of Selectmen notified residents that it proposed to "alter a (four-mile) portion of Amherst Road" and needed their co-operation. The board said the road, in service with exactly the same contour since 1822, must better conform to what Amherst Road looked like on an 1822 map. Thus, some property owners along the route were asked to cede some rights to the government to un-modernize the road.

-- Among the personal tasks allegedly demanded by Portsmouth (Va.) mayor James Holley of his public-payroll assistant Lorraine Stokes (from a list Stokes released in August, alleging Holley's abuse): affixing labels to boxes identifying Holley's assorted-color argyle socks; placing orders for "tummy support T-shirts" and "90-minute abs" videos; and locating retailers for his favorite English Leather cologne, Stri-Vectin Cream (for "turkey neck"), geese repellant, T. Barry underwear, grass seeds and Gillette hair paste.

-- Latest Domestic Disturbance Calls: (1) A couple fought with each other using water, mouthwash and powdered whey protein (Bremerton, Wash., July). (2) A wife repeatedly punched her husband and then, as officers arrived, pulled him inside the house by his ear (Niceville, Fla., August). (3) A 78-year-old woman kicked her husband in the groin several times recently because she believes he had an affair 35 years ago (Lynnwood, Wash., May).

-- Unclear on the Concept: San Antonio police chief William McManus announced in August an upgraded training program to teach his officers how to obey the law while off-duty. The department has had to fire 10 officers so far this year for law-breaking, and included in McManus' program is a personal talk to each incoming cadet to stress that police officers must not commit crimes.

(1) In August, Jorge Iglesias petitioned a judge in Madison, Wis., to regain custody of his 66 roosters and hens that police confiscated in a suspected cockfighting raid. Iglesias said he feared that the Dane County Humane Society, temporarily holding the animals, was treating them with "cruel and barbaric" abuse. (2) Afghan refugee Fridoon Sadiqi filed a lawsuit against Britain's Home secretary in August after being turned down for political asylum because he had presented a forged passport to enter the U.K. According to Sadiqi, the rejection made him clinically depressed.

-- Elsie Poncher decided reluctantly in August to go back on a promise she had made to her late husband. Richard Poncher had purchased a crypt (for himself) just above the one in which the body of Marilyn Monroe rests in a Los Angeles memorial park, but Elsie now needs money and thus offered the crypt for sale in August, planning to move Richard to a less prominent place. Richard had been assured by Elsie that he could spend eternity lying face down "over Marilyn."

-- Ultra-Dangerous Activities: (1) In May, a man in his 20s was killed in a fight at a community center in Calgary, Alberta, following a dominoes tournament. (2) Kenneth Reppke, 54, was charged with assault in Fraser, Mich., in July for allegedly smacking a woman in the head, knocking off her glasses, because she refused to sell him Boardwalk and Park Place in a Monopoly game. (3) Jason Keller, 40, was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June of hitting a fellow homeless man in the face with a skateboard. According to testimony, Keller had become angry during a discussion about particle physics.

Geography professor Melanie Patton Renfrew, 54, was convicted in Burbank, Calif., in August of violating a judge's order to stop stalking KNBC-TV weatherman Fritz Coleman. Renfrew had badgered Coleman for two years, via e-mail and telephone calls, about his "error" in terminology, confusing "onshore" winds with "offshore" winds. Coleman, she insisted, needed to apologize. "Offshore" winds blow out to sea; "onshore" winds blow in.

Lisa Newsome, 42, was arrested in Zachary, La., in August, caught trying to smuggle a 24-can case of beer out of a convenience store. The heavyset, housecoat-clad Newsome was squeezing the 20-pound case between her legs as she waddled from the cooler toward the front door. When police arrived, Newsome offered to pull up the dress to demonstrate how she carried the case, but, said a police captain: "I told her, no thanks. I wasn't into that."

News of the Weird reported in June 2006 that a second forensic expert had concluded that an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, had been executed in Texas in 2004 -- that the "arson" that killed his three daughters was surely only a tragic accident. One of the experts had made a last-second appeal to the Texas pardons board and Gov. Rick Perry to spare Willingham's life, but his report was ignored. Since 2006, two more forensic fire experts have concluded that the fire was not a crime and, said one (in August 2009), the trial testimony of local fire investigators had more resembled the musings of "mystics or psychics." (Nonetheless, in an unrelated 2009 case, two U.S. Supreme Court justices noted that the Constitution has "never" declared it wrong to execute an actually innocent man who nonetheless has been convicted.)

More people who accidentally shot themselves recently: A 44-year-old man, shoving a shotgun down his pant leg after an argument with his girlfriend, blew his little toe off (Alameda, Calif., July). A 21-year-old man, stopping in an alley to urinate with a gun in his pocket, shot himself in the thigh (South Bend, Ind., July). A 26-year-old man, teaching gun safety to two people, was killed when he fired his supposedly unloaded gun at his own head (Phoenix, May). A 15-year-old boy impulsively grabbed the gun that was slipping down his pants from his waistband and shot himself in the penis (Brooklyn, N.Y., September).

In March 1996, an 18-year-old dockworker at Roadway Express in Dallas was arrested at a local Western Union office and charged with forgery after trying to cash a check made out to his employer. The man produced a homemade photo ID that gave his name as Mr. "Roadway V. Express." After questioning him, the Western Union manager said, "OK, Mr. Express, I'll be right back (with the money)," but went into another room and called the police.