Giddyup! When a strain of equine herpes led to a temporary quarantine at horse farms in central Utah, the sponsors of the Davis County Mounted Posse Junior Queen contest in May had a dilemma, but instead of canceling the competition in which the cowgirls show their skills on horseback, they decided to conduct the show except with the girls "riding" stick "ponies" to get style points. Former queen Savanna Steed told KSL-TV the change would be good because it would better test riders' knowledge of the routines instead of their relying on their horses to make the moves.

-- Unclear on the Concept: India's Ganges River has become famously polluted, in part by reverent Hindu pilgrims who toss "offerings" (such as clothing, statues and the cremated ashes of loved ones) into it in hope of prosperous lives and holy afterlives. Hindu immigrants in New York City, without access to the Ganges, have called upon Jamaica Bay as a stand-in. The formerly quiet waters adjacent to JFK International Airport now ebb and flow with similar offerings that ultimately litter the bay's federal recreation area shoreline. Hindu community leaders in New York, with only mixed success, constantly urge greater environmental sensitivity.

-- From time to time, clever rabbis suggest ways of bypassing ancient Talmudic laws that restrict observant Jews' behavior on the Sabbath (a day of "rest"). In April, Rabbi Dror Fixler, an electro-optics expert from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said he could foresee a day when even driving a car might be permitted on the Sabbath. The driver would wear an encephalography helmet that could catch brain signals and transmit them to a car's operating and steering system, removing the need for "action" on the driver's part (thus theoretically leaving him "at rest").

-- Mattel revealed that its best-selling fashion doll in the last year, for the age-6-and-up market, has been the teen werewolf "Monster High" model, Clawdeen Wolf, who comes with heavy makeup, a short skirt and high boots, and who supposedly spends her time "waxing, plucking and shaving." (Says Clawdeen, in promotional materials, "My hair is worthy of a shampoo commercial, and that's just what grows on my legs.") Though Mattel claims the doll celebrates girls' imperfections, a counselor told Fox News she was appalled that the company tells young girls they "need to sculpt, tweeze, wax and ... change their bodies" to attract men.

-- Cyber Making-Out: Tokyo's Kajimoto Laboratory has created a tongue-kissing machine to enable lovers to suck face over the Internet, according to a May CNN report. At separate locations, the pair place special straws in their mouths and mimic a deep kiss, which is recorded and transmitted to each other's straws. Researcher Nobuhiro Takahashi sees profit in "celebrity" tongue-kissing applications, but said more work is needed to establish individual taste, breathing and tongue moistness. (Another team of Japanese researchers, using a harness-type device, reported making similar advances -- in Internet "hugging," with sensors that mimic lovers' heartbeats and even their spine's "tingling" and stomach's "butterflies.")

-- Tacky: (1) The Columbus, Ohio, school board accepted principal Kimberly Jones' resignation in May following revelations by The Columbus Dispatch that she, though earning $90,000 a year, swore on federal forms that she made just $25,000 -- so that her own two children would qualify for reduced-price school lunches. (2) Prime Healthcare Services, with a reputation for rescuing financially failing hospitals, reported that two new acquisitions, in Victorville, Calif., and Redding, Calif., somehow curiously experienced rates about 40 and 70 times the state average in patients with a rare Third World Ghanian sickness that, conveniently, qualified the hospitals for enhanced Medicare reimbursements.

In a pre-trial motion in a Chicago court case in May, the defense lawyer for Exotic Motors Inc., which is being sued over car repairs, complained about plaintiffs' lawyers' unusual decision to permit a female paralegal to sit at their courtroom table, especially since she is a "large-breasted woman." Her "sole purpose" at the table, lamented defense lawyer Thomas Gooch, was "to draw the attention of the jury," presumably in favor of the plaintiffs. Gooch later told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that he was concerned only with her "qualifications" to sit at the table.

-- The recent Memorial Day weekend was a time of reflection for the residents of Long Island (N.Y.)'s Shelter Island, who were honoring a soldier from the neighborhood who had recently been killed in Afghanistan. The local American Legion placed new, heavy-duty American flags on telephone poles along a parade route, but only afterward was informed that Long Island Power Authority, which owns the poles, is required by state law to charge an unwaivable rental fee for the poles.

-- Principal Terry Eisenbarth apologized to parents and children at Washington Elementary School in Mount Vernon, Iowa, in May and promised to stop his ritual "whammies," in which he summons kids on their birthdays to his office, sings "Happy Birthday" to them, and ceremonially spanks the child's backside with a cushioned hockey stick (with the number of whacks equaling the child's age).

In May, based on five women's complaints, Virginia Beach, Va., police arrested restaurateur Henry Fitzsimmons, 54, for abduction and sexual assault for harshly beating them as punishment for violating the terms of the "scholarship" he supposedly offered them. The women claim that Fitzsimmons is a devotee of the "Spencer Plan" of orderly discipline, in which contracting parties adhere to agreed-on roles but at a cost of being physically disciplined if they fail. Fitzsimmons acknowledged his fascination with the Spencer Plan, but denied the assaults, pointing out that he had fired one of the women and that the other four were helping her retaliate.

(1) Former Camden, N.J., police Sgt. Jeffrey Frett pleaded guilty in May in a scheme to qualify for early retirement by arranging to be shot in the leg (to be attributed to random street violence). The plan deteriorated, police said, when Frett's wife (the designated shooter) missed his leg, merely ripping a hole in his uniform pants. (2) Ryan Martin, 29, and Erica Clayburn, 20, were charged with reckless endangerment in Derry Township, Pa., in April after Martin was shot in the jaw. The couple were playing a game resembling "Marco Polo" with a loaded handgun, with an eyes-closed Clayburn firing when Martin shouted "Gun!" (Martin was supposed to duck out of the way before Clayburn pulled the trigger.)

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Anthony Wayne Smith (former Oakland Raiders football player), Los Angeles (March); Theron Wayne Johnson, Weston, Texas (May); Michael Wayne McGray, Vancouver, British Columbia (May); Darrell Wayne Morris, Price, Utah (May). Convicted of murder: Thilbert Wayne Hager, Statesville, N.C. (October). Execution for murder stayed by U.S. Supreme Court: Daniel Wayne Cook, Phoenix (on death row since 1987) (April). Sentenced for murder: Billy Wayne Haynes, Odessa, Texas (life) (May); Jeffrey Wayne Riebe, Conway, S.C. (40 years in prison) (June).

In September (2006), according to sheriff's officials in Buffalo, N.Y., Thomas Montgomery, 47, murdered a 22-year-old colleague in an online love triangle involving a West Virginia woman, except that two of the three people involved did not exist. Ostensibly, a young Marine flirted with an 18-year-old woman, but unknown to each other, the "Marine" was actually Montgomery, and the woman was actually her mother, 45, pretending to be her daughter. The workplace colleague (not pretending to be anyone else) had struck up an online conversation with the "daughter," also, making Montgomery jealous enough to kill him. Thus, in the make-believe "triangle," the only real person is now dead.

A 53-year-old man with failing eyesight and who had recently undergone intestinal surgery told Sonoma, Calif., police that on Sunday afternoon, May 1, a woman had come to his home and instructed him to drop his pants and get face-down on the bed so that she could administer an enema. He said he assumed his doctor had sent her and thus complied, and it was over in two minutes, and she was gone. The doctor later said he had no idea who the woman was. (In the 1970s, in the Champaign, Ill., area, Michael Kenyon operated similarly as the "Illinois Enema Bandit" -- and inspired the late Frank Zappa's "Illinois Enema Bandit Blues.")

-- Several funeral homes in the United States have drive-thru windows to serve rushed mourners or those stressed by the parlor experience. "Not quite as emotional," said one visitor to the Robert L. Adams Mortuary in Compton, Calif., referring to the need not to linger in the queue of bereaved, idling motorists. The Adams facility was even more popular during the peak of gang murders in the area, according to an April Los Angeles Times report, because the drive-thru window's bulletproof glass rendered unnecessary the precarious indoor service in which gangbangers tried to further desecrate late rivals' corpses.

-- Noses Know: (1) In April, two Italian entrepreneurs introduced a perfume meant to evoke the scents of a person's blood, varying by type (A, B, AB, O) -- but with no actual blood. A prominent member of the U.S. "vampire community" fondly described the "intriguing" olfactory sensations of Type B (the "black cherry, pomegranate and patchouli infusions") and Type O ("raspberry, rose hips and birch"). Another "vampirist" called the whole idea "cheesy." (2) Artist Charity Blansit (aka Cherry Tree) told AOL News in May that she has been working on a fragrance based on her own urine (although not prepared to bring it to market yet), enhanced mainly with sugar.

Because of a loophole in Michigan law (which, at press time, legislators were working to fix), a winner of the "Make Me Rich" lottery game in July 2010 (publicized value: $2 million) has been openly receiving the same food-stamp allotment he had been receiving before he won. In May 2011, confronted by WNEM-TV in Saginaw, winner Leroy Fick was defiant about his food stamps. Currently, eligibility is based on regular income, and Fick had taken his payoff last year in one lump sum.

(1) Dugan Smith, 13, is almost as good as new, having overcome an extremely rare malignant tumor on his thigh bone. A surgeon at Ohio State's James Cancer Hospital removed the middle of Smith's leg, turned the bottom of it around so that the back faces the front, and reconnected the parts. (2) According to a February report in China's Wuhan Morning News, a 55-year-old farmer from Jiayu county in Hubei province finally has a functioning anus. His congenital condition had required him to restrict his diet severely and to "squeeze stools out with his hands."

The Belly Button Biodiversity project at North Carolina State University has begun examining the "faunal differences" in the microbial ecosystems of our navels, to foster understanding of the "tens of thousands" of organisms crawling around inside (almost all benign or even helpful). An 85-year-old man in North Carolina may have "very different navel life" than a 7-year-old girl in France, according to a May Raleigh News & Observer report. So far, only the organisms themselves and the host's demographics have been studied; other issues, such as variations by hairiness of navel, remain.

Good Jobs: (1) Prison Guard ("the greatest entry-level job in California," according to an April Wall Street Journal report highlighting its benefits over a typical job resulting from a Harvard University education). Starting pay is comparable; loans are not necessary (since the guard "academy" actually pays the student); and vacation time is more generous (seven weeks, five paid). One downside: The prison system is more selective (Harvard accepts 6.2 percent of applicants versus the guard service's fewer-than-1 percent of 120,000 applicants). (2) California taxpayers were also astonished to learn in May that several beach communities (led by Newport Beach) pay some lifeguards more than $100,000 annually in salary and benefits. (Generally, those are for long-time and supervisory jobs; ordinary "summer job" lifeguards typically make $16 to $22 an hour.)

-- Cat Failing to Know Its Role: In Cleveland, Texas (near Houston), a man had to be airlifted to an emergency trauma unit after losing a fight with a house cat. He was even armed with a knife as he took on the beast, but somehow the attacking cat caused him to lose his balance and fall on the blade.

-- Procreation Interventions: (1) Because female giant tortoises are lackadaisical about mating, the Knoxville (Tenn.) Zoo in May temporarily moved its two males, Al and Tex, to Zoo Atlanta to encourage Knoxville females Patches, Corky and Standup to yearn for them. Tex, by the way, is 90 years old, and Al is 130 (and hasn't had a date since 1983, according to a May Knoxville News-Sentinel story). (2) Hopewell Township, N.J., officials, responding to noise complaints in April, passed an ordinance limiting rooster access to hens to only 10 days a year. (The chickens also must, of course, be "disease-free.")

Oklahoma inmate Eric Torpy has served only six years of his 33-year sentence for armed robbery, but already he is looking ahead to the years 2035-2038. His original sentence was 30 years, but he challenged the judge that if he was "going down," it would be in "Larry Bird's jersey" -- the number 33 worn by the basketball player. Judge Ray Elliott then accommodated Torpy by adding three years. Said Torpy, in May, "Recently, I've wisened up." "I'm pretty sure (Bird) thinks I'm an idiot. (T)ruthfully, most people do. My own family does, so I'm pretty sure he does, too."

An unidentified man told police in Niles, Ill., in May that he had been victimized by a medical exam, which was conducted in an otherwise-abandoned office, by a lone "doctor" wearing a white lab coat, who used toothpicks for acupuncture pressure points, and who dispensed a container of pills (labeled "dietary supplements") with an expiration date of February 2002. The man said he paid $200 and is not sure he got his money's worth.

(1) A judge in Britain's Cambridge Crown Court sentenced two teenage boys to jail for burglary in May but allowed their 20-year-old partner, who has a much longer criminal record, to have a non-custodial sentence because he has a "cleanliness disorder" that a jailhouse would traumatize. (2) In a widely reported story that originated in the Brazilian press, accountant (and severe-anxiety and hypersexuality sufferer) Ana Catarian Bezerra, 36, was said to have prevailed after a court battle in April to be allowed breaks during the work day to masturbate.

Police in East Patchogue, N.Y., filed a false-report charge against Nicholas Lalla, 32, in January (1995) after he had sworn out a complaint that his estranged wife slapped him. Lalla played for police an audiotape he had made, clandestinely, in which slapping sounds are heard amidst his yelling "Don't hit me." When police informed Mrs. Lalla of that clandestine audiotape, she played for them a clandestine videotape she had made of him staging the audiotaping: He is shown, alone, yelling "Don't hit me" outside her house after she had walked away.

UPDATE: Morris Wayne Givens, charged with murder in October 1998 in Prattville, Ala., was subsequently freed and all charges dropped, according to a family source. His name has been removed from the News of the Weird Classic Middle Name series.

Thanks This Week to Brian Bjolin, Bruce Leiserowitz, Barry Rose, Kathryn Wood, Roy Henock, Derek Costello, and Jeff Jacobovitz, the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

In Chinese legend, tea leaves picked by fairies using not their hands but just their mouths yielded brewed tea that would bring prosperity and cure diseases, and now the historic, picturesque Jiuhua Mountain Tea Plantation (in Gushi, Henan province) has promised to hire up to 10 female virgins to provide the equivalently pure and delicate tea leaves, picked with the teeth and dropped into small baskets worn around the women's necks. According to an April report in London's Daily Mail, only virgins with strong necks and lips (and a bra size of C-cup or larger), and without visible scars or blemishes, will be considered for the equivalent-$80-a-day jobs (an almost unheard-of salary in China, especially for agricultural field work).

-- Cliche Come to Life: The person in the news most recently for slipping and falling on a banana peel might be Ida Valentine, 58, who filed a lawsuit in February against the 99 Cents Only chain after slipping on one while shopping in its store in Fontana, Calif., in April 2010. The fall, she said, left her with a herniated disk and tissue damage.

-- News of the Weird has reported several times on the confusion many art gallery visitors reveal in evaluating "abstract impressionist" pieces when they compare them to random scribblings of toddlers (and animals, such as chimpanzees and elephants). In April, academic researchers at Boston College reported that, indeed, gallery patrons correctly differentiated serious works from squiggles only about 60 percent to 70 percent of the time. Commented one survey subject, apparently realizing his confusion: "The chimpanzee's stuff is good. I like how he plays with metaphors about depth of field, but I think I like this guy (Mark) Rothko a little bit better."

-- The powerful suction of swimming pool filters can trap not only toddlers against the drain but a grown man in excellent physical condition, according to a lawsuit filed in May by the family of the late John Hoy Jr., who drowned when unable to pry himself loose from the vacuum drain of a hot tub at the Sandals resort in Nassau, Bahamas, in 2010. (The most notorious drain-pegging of all time was perhaps a 1994 incident at a Scottish Inn motel in Lakeland, Fla., when a 33-year-old guest's penis became stuck in the drain, apparently as he was testing the filter's suction. That story did not appear in News of the Weird, but several sources cite a July 1994 story in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.)

-- British welfare benefits are being reduced in two years, but for now, work-shunning parents who blithely navigate a series of government "support" payments can make a nice living for themselves. Kathy Black, 45, of East Hanningfield, Essex, with 16 children by six fathers thus qualifies for the equivalent of at least $1,000 a week (the take-home pay of someone earning the equivalent of $68,000 a year), and child support from one of the fathers adds even more to her account. Black's second husband, her 17-year-old son and her 22-year-old daughter spilled secrets of her irresponsibility to a Daily Mail reporter in February.

-- In May, a man exploring rural property in Lebanon, Ore., came across what appeared to be a classic World War II-era bomb, but, unfamiliar with the ordnance, he became only the most recent person to make the completely unwise decision to load it into his vehicle and drive to a police station (in Corvallis). Officers at the station reacted predictably and logically: They fled the room, closed down the streets around the station, and called the nearest bomb squad (which later detonated it safely).

-- Least Competent DIY Homeowners: Reports still frequently emerge of homeowners battling household pests, yet only creating an even worse problem (as if the pests ultimately outsmart them). In recent cases, for example, Robert Hughes tried to oust the squirrels from his townhome in Richton Park, Ill., in March, but his smoke bomb badly damaged his unit and his neighbor's. (Firefighters had to rip open the roof in the two units to battle the blaze.) Two weeks after that, in Mesa, Ariz., a man set his attic on fire trying to get rid of a beehive with brake fluid and a cigarette lighter.

-- Beauty contests for camels are very big business in Saudi Arabia, as News of the Weird reported in 2007, but the first one in Turkey (in Selcuk) was held in January and featured considerably lower-market camels. (The Turkish winner had been purchased for the equivalent of $26,000; a Saudi camel once won $10 million in a single show.) Judges supposedly look for muscle tone, elegance of tail wag and tooth quality, according to a January Wall Street Journal dispatch. Charisma is also important, according to one judge. "Camels," he said, "realize that people are watching them (and) are trying to pose." "Some will stop, open their back legs, and wave their tail, or (throw) their head back and moan ... this is the kind of posing we (judges) are looking for."

-- From time to time, someone visiting his bathroom looks down and finds eyes of a critter staring back at him from the toilet bowl. In March, Dennis Mulholland, 67, of Paisley, Scotland, encountered a 3-foot-long California king snake hiding in the bowl after escaping from elsewhere in the building. In December a woman in Edmond, Okla., had a similar experience with a squirrel, which, hypothesized police, might have crawled through a sewer drain.

-- "Personal body orifices," as storage units for contraband, seem more than ever in vogue. Recent inventories made by police of suspects' vaginas included LSD in aluminum foil and marijuana in two sandwich bags (woman in Englewood, Fla., January); pills (woman in Manatee County, Fla., February); heroin (woman in Scranton, Pa., March); a fraudulent driver's license and credit card (woman in Lee County, Fla., May); and pills and a knife (woman in Fort Myers, Fla., May). Rectal safe-keeping included a man with a baggie of marijuana (Louisville, Ky., March); a man with a marijuana pipe (Port St. Lucie, Fla., May), and a man with 30 items inside a condom (Sarasota, Fla., February), including a syringe, lip balm, six matches, a cigarette, 17 pills and a CVS receipt and coupon.

-- Christopher Bjerkness, 33, was arrested in May in Duluth, Minn., and charged with burglary after being discovered mid-day in the physical-therapy room at the Chester Creek Academy. The room contained inflatable exercise balls that appeared to be undisturbed, but Bjerkness has been arrested at least twice before, in 2005 (reported in News of the Weird) and 2009, because of his self-described compulsion to slash inflatable balls.

-- When News of the Weird first mentioned buzkashi (1989), it was merely the "national game" of Afghanistan, resembling hockey on horseback, with a dead goat (or calf, which is more durable) as the puck, carried by a team and deposited in a circle guarded by opponents (and played largely ruleless). As warlords' power has grown, and the Taliban has departed, and Western money and commerce have been introduced, team owners now bid on the best players, some of whom also have lucrative product-endorsement contracts and are treated as Afghan royalty. Said champion player Jahaan Geer, 33, to a Wall Street Journal reporter in April, "I used to practice buzkashi on donkeys. Now I drive a Lexus!"

-- David Truscott, 41, was convicted in Britain's Truro Crown Court in February of violating a restraining order to keep away from the Woodbury House Farm in Redruth, Cornwall, after being caught there two times previously wallowing in the farm's manure pit while masturbating. Said the prosecutor, "This is the only place (Truscott) seeks to gratify himself in this particular manner ..."