Somehow, upscale restaurateurs believe that diners will soon willingly pay more for a beef dish if it comes with disclosure of the DNA of the actual cow being eaten, according to a May Associated Press report. "People want to know where their food is coming from," said one excited chef, lauding the knowledge to be gleaned from a calf's upbringing. (A more practical beef-supply executive added that DNA can help identify the "multiple animals" whose parts were used in hunks of ground beef -- a 10-pound package of which may include contributions from "hundreds" of different cows.)

-- It was not difficult to find critics when the Orlando-area government job-service engine Workforce Central Florida said it was spending more than $70,000 of federal stimulus money to help the laid-off by handing out 6,000 satiny capes for jobless "superheroes" to "fight" "Dr. Evil Unemployment." ("Absolutely absurd" was the reaction of a laid-off customer-service representative.) Several critics interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel noted that such an awkward program further erodes the unemployed's fragile self-respect. WCF, though, remained convinced. In the words of a spokeswoman, "Everyone is a superhero in the fight against unemployment."

-- Urban Legend Come to Life: Too-good-to-be-true stories have circulated for years about men who accidentally fell, posterior first, onto compressed-air nozzles and self-inflated to resemble "dough boys," usually with fatal results. However, in May in Opotiki, New Zealand, trucker Steven McCormack found himself in similar circumstances, and had it not been for quick-thinking colleagues who pulled him away, he would have been killed -- as the air, puncturing a buttock, had already begun separating tissue from muscle. McCormack was hospitalized in severe pain, but the air gradually seeped from his body (according to a doctor, in the way air "usually" seeps from a body).

-- Oops! Oswind David was convicted of "first-degree assault" in a 2006 trial in New York City, but unknown to him, his lawyer and the judge, the charge had already been dismissed by another judge due to prosecutorial error. Nonetheless, David has been in prison since his conviction, serving a 23-year term, and was freed only in May when the error came to light. (However, the New York City district attorney still resisted releasing David, arguing that only the "first-degree" part had been dismissed. A judge finally freed David on bail while prosecutors ponder reopening the case.)

-- Parents were puzzled in June after Dry Creek School District in Roseville, Calif., passed out questionnaires asking for biographical details of prospective students, including whether or not the child has been delivered by C-section. Parents told Sacramento station KOVR-TV that school officials were refusing to explain why they wanted to know that.

(1) Night club singer Simon Ledger was arrested following a performance at the Driftwood Beach Bar on Britain's Isle of Wight in April after a patron complained to police. Ledger was covering the 1974 hit "Kung Fu Fighting," and two customers of Chinese descent reported that they felt victims of illegal "racially aggravated harassment." (2) Leslie Clarke, 29, turned himself in to police in Darwin, Australia, in May after authorities released surveillance tape of a break-in and vandalism at the Hidden Valley Tavern. Clarke, a large man, confessed to going on a drunken prowl with friends, but said he remembered the break-in only when he saw the video and recognized his distinctive image from the back, including several inches of his butt crack.

(1) An April Associated Press story, citing federal government sources, reported that 247 people on the terrorist "watch list" were nonetheless legally permitted to purchase guns in 2010 -- about the same number who did so legally in 2009. (2) In May, Oklahoma judge Susie Pritchett, receiving guilty pleas from a $31 drug-deal raid in 2010 that netted a mother and her two grown children, sentenced the mother and son to probation, but the 31-year-old daughter to 12 years in prison (just because the daughter showed "no ... remorse").

In May, a federal appeals court reinstated the Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit filed in 2007 by Darrell Miller after he was fired as a bridge maintenance worker by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Miller had been medically diagnosed with a fear of heights, and could not work on many projects, but a lower court dismissed his lawsuit, concluding that working at heights was an unavoidable condition of bridge maintenance. (The appeals court said that a jury "might" find that bridge maintenance could be done in "teams" with one worker always on the ground.)

(1) Zachary Woody, 21, of Calhoun, Ga., was charged with aggravated assault in May after stabbing a friend. Allegedly, Woody had escalated what was initially just a fistfight over whether Fords are better than Chevrolets. (2) Joseph Hayes, 48, was arrested in South Memphis, Tenn., in June after allegedly threatening (with a gun in his waistband) the hostess of a birthday party to which his kids had been invited but which ran out of cake and ice cream. "Y'all didn't save my kids no damn ice cream and cake," he was heard to say, and "I ain't scared to go to jail."

Stanley Thornton Jr., 30, and his "nurse"-roommate, Sandra Dias, featured on a May edition of the TV show "Taboo" (National Geographic Channel), are both drawing federal Supplemental Security Income as disabled persons, even though Thornton builds his own "adult baby" furniture (cribs and high chairs large enough to accommodate his 350-pound body) and operates a website where people living as adult babies can communicate. U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn asked the Social Security Administration to investigate whether Thornton is abusing the system (and Dias, too, since if she can "nurse" Thornton, she can "nurse" for a living). Thornton subsequently told The Washington Times that if his SSI checks were discontinued, he would kill himself.

Lawrence Bottone, 52, of Stamford, Conn., served four years in prison in the late-1990s for his fondness for attracting and convincing teenage boys and young men to strip down to underwear and allow him to torture (and photograph) them -- chaining them to his garage wall, whipping them and inserting stakes under their fingernails. In May 2011, police in Westchester County, N.Y., arrested Bottone for what appears to signal a return to his specialty but with an updated, 21st-century rationale: Now, according to police, he "recruits" young men to work at a fictitious "intelligence agency" -- which requires Bottone to "train" them to withstand torture.

Nakedness Recently in the News: (1) Just after Clayton County, Ga., schoolteacher Harlan Porter was told his contract would not be renewed, he walked naked through the school hallways (no students were present) and spoke of a "newer level of enlightenment" now that his "third eye was open" (April). (2) After a clothing malfunction, veteran marathoner Brett Henderson, 35, decided during the Flying Pig race in Cincinnati that, since marathoners sometimes run naked in California, he could do it there. Henderson outran police and stopped only when he was Tasered (May).

In December (1993), a New York appeals court rejected Edna Hobbs' lawsuit against the company that makes the device called The Clapper. Hobbs claimed she hurt her hands because she had to clap too hard in order to turn her appliances on: "I couldn't peel potatoes (when my hands hurt). I never ate so many baked potatoes in my life. I was in pain." However, the judge said Hobbs had merely failed to adjust the sensitivity controls.

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.