Obsessions: (1) Don Aslett, 76, recently opened the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho, as the culmination of a lifelong devotion to tidying up. Highlights are several hundred pre-electric vacuum cleaners plus interactive exhibits to encourage kids to clean their rooms. Aslett told London's Daily Mail in December that people who don't understand his dedication must never have experienced the satisfaction of making a toilet bowl sparkle. (2) Also starting early in life, Dustin Kruse, 4, is so knowledgeable about toilet models and plumbing mechanics that the Kohler Co. presented him with an advanced-model "dual flush" commode for Christmas. Dustin, a fan of the Kohler showroom, has been known to explain toilet technology to other showroom visitors.

-- Predator drones are an important weapon against terrorists in Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries, but in June, an unarmed predator was employed stateside to help catch cattle rustlers. The Department of Homeland Security owns eight predators for surveillance and occasionally assists local law enforcement. The cattle rustlers had been arrested, then jumped bail and holed up on their vast ranch near Lakota, N.D., but the predator spotted their exact location on the property, leading to a raid that ended without bloodshed.

-- Government Inaction: India's legendarily plodding government bureaucracy had long stymied a snake charmer named Hakkul (a villager in Uttar Pradesh state), who had sought a snake-conservation permit, which had been authorized at one level but delayed locally. In November, finally exasperated, Hakkul walked into the land revenue office in the town of Harraiya with several sacks of snakes (including cobras) and turned them loose, sending clerks and visitors climbing furniture or fleeing. Recent news accounts report that "almost all" of the snakes had been rounded up.

-- A December news release from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control warned of the dangers of Campylobacter jejuni bacteria infections on a sheep ranch, but apparently only among workers who used an old-style (19th century) method of castrating the animals. CDC strongly urged that workers stop biting off the sheep's genitals and instead use modern tools.

-- From U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn's periodic list of the most "unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects" that the federal government currently funds (announced in December): $75,000 to promote awareness of the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees and poinsettias; $48,700 for promoting the Hawaii Chocolate Festival; $113,227 for a video game preservation center in New York; and $764,825 to study something surely already done adequately by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs -- how college students use mobile devices for social networking. Also on Sen. Coburn's list: $15.3 million in continuing expenses for the famous Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" that was widely ridiculed in 2005 but apparently refuses to die.

Convicted serial rapist Steven Phillips was exonerated in 2008, one of a continuing string of wrongly convicted Dallas-area "criminals" proved innocent by DNA testing, and under a formula by state law, he was awarded about $4 million, tax-free, for his 25 years behind bars. Recently, Phillips' ex-wife filed a petition in court demanding a portion -- even though the couple had been divorced for the last 17 years of his incarceration, and the ex-wife had remarried and had a child. (The ex-wife claims it was Phillips who originated the divorce and that she had given up on him only because he had revealed a "disgusting" history as a "peeping tom" and flasher.)

(1) Dan D'Amato, 45, partying in an Orlando, Fla., motel room in December, was accidentally shot by a stranger who was having a dispute with another partygoer. Later, as his wounded hip was being treated at a hospital, doctors discovered and removed two "huge" tumors in D'Amato's abdomen that had so far gone unnoticed. The tumors were not cancerous but had they not been found, they would soon have disabled him. (2) At a home in Taylorsville, Utah, in December, one housemate who was pursuing a mouse in the kitchen accidentally shot another housemate. As police investigated, they discovered a 13-year-old girl hiding in a closet. A third housemate, Paul Kunzler, 28, was then arrested and charged with carrying on a months-long sexual relationship with her.

-- John Whittle, 52, was charged in December with robbing a Wells Fargo Bank in Port Richey, Fla. According to police, Whittle ordered a beer at the Hayloft Bar shortly after 1 p.m., then excused himself, and a few minutes later, returned to finish his beer. In the interim, police said later, Whittle had walked down the street to the bank and robbed it.

-- In December, Russell Mace, 55, was caught soon after robbing a Union Savings Bank branch in New Milford, Conn. A bank employee had spotted Mace acting "suspicious" in the parking lot, and indeed, he said, Mace entered, robbed the bank of about $3,000, and fled to a waiting car. Police, however, identified the car, which they had noted from Mace's recent arrest for shoplifting. (The "suspicious" behavior the bank employee had noticed, he told police, was Mace, pants down, defecating, in plain view among parked cars.)

(1) A 28-year-old man in New York City quietly excused himself the morning after his wedding in November (at a hotel following an elaborate reception), took a taxi to a Harlem River overlook, and jumped to his death. According to a relative, the man's suicide note mentioned that he "couldn't take it anymore." (2) Luna Oraivej, 37, was ordered in 2010 by a court in Seattle to take an anger- management course to settle a charge of domestic violence, but in December 2011, she sued the creator of the course because a fellow attendee had stabbed her in the arm during a classroom dispute. (The instructor was playing a video of "Dr. Phil," and Oraivej had urged the classmate to listen to Dr. Phil's message, but the classmate apparently could not bear it.)

Rookie Mistake: Tyechia Rembert, 33, was arrested and charged with robbing a Burger King drive-thru cashier in York, Pa., in December but only after making police officers' job easier. After her clean getaway, she called the restaurant to reassure herself that none of the witnesses had noted her car's license plate number. None had, but using cellphone records, police traced that call to Rembert.

Not all states have anti-bestiality laws, and Peter Bower's ongoing case in Ohio exemplifies prosecutors' frustration. There was evidence that Bower had had sex with a dog ("Maggie") and had written her "love" letters, and police arrested him in June. Prosecutors were willing to settle the case in November for minimal punishment because the only law Bower could have been charged under is "animal cruelty," and they explained that they might have had trouble showing harm to the apparently adored dog. (At the time of Bower's arrest, a search had uncovered human-animal pornography and a life-sized inflatable sheep.)

(1) A 77-year-old man was killed by a sheriff's deputy in December while standing beside his own engraved tombstone in a Gardnerville, Nev., cemetery. (The victim was holding a shotgun and was distraught over the death of his wife.) (2) A 20-year-old man died of an apparent cocaine overdose in North Charleston, S.C., in December as a result of trying to help his older brother. The pair had been arrested and placed in a police cruiser when the older brother convinced the younger one to swallow the ounce of cocaine the older man was carrying. (According to a police report, the cocaine had been stored in the older man's "backside.")

Intelligent Design: If the male nursery web spider were a human, he would be sternly denounced as a vulgar cad. Researcher Maria Jose Albo of Denmark's Aarhus University told Live Science in November that the spiders typically obtain sex by making valuable "gifts" to females (usually, high-nutrition insects wrapped in silk), but if lacking resources, a male cleverly packages a fake gift (usually a piece of flower) also in silk but confoundingly wound so as to distract her as she unwraps it -- and then mounts her before she discovers the hoax. Albo also found that the male is not above playing dead to coax the female into relaxing her guard as she approaches the "carcass" -- only to be jumped from behind for sex.

-- Son Theodore Zimmick and two other relatives filed a lawsuit in November against the St. Stanislaus cemetery in Pittsburgh for the unprofessional burial of Theodore's mother, Agnes, in 2009. Agnes had purchased an 11-by-8-foot plot in 1945, but when she finally passed away, the graveyard had become so crowded that, according to the lawsuit, workers were forced to dig such a small hole that they had to jump up and down on the casket and whack it with poles to fit it into the space.

-- Managers of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., decided recently to relocate the statue of Abraham Lincoln that since 1895 had occupied a seldom-visited site and whose advocates over the years had insisted be given more prominence. It turned out that the most viable option was to swap locations with a conspicuous 1906 statue of Dr. Alexander Skene. Lincoln is certainly universally revered, but Dr. Skene has advocates, too, and some (according to a December Wall Street Journal report) are resisting the relocation because Dr. Skene (unlike Lincoln) was a Brooklynite, and Dr. Skene (unlike Lincoln) had a body part named after him ("Skene's glands," thought to be "vital" in understanding the "G spot").

-- The two hosts of the Dutch TV show "Guinea Pigs" apparently followed through on their plans in December to eat pieces of each other (fried in sunflower oil) in order to describe the taste. Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno underwent surgery to have small chunks removed for cooking, with Zeno perhaps faring worse (a piece of Storm's "bottom") compared to Storm (who got part of Zeno's abdomen).

-- A December New England Journal of Medicine report described a woman's "losing" her breast implant during a Pilates movement called the Valsalva (which involves breath-holding while "bearing down"). The woman said she felt no pain or shortness of breath but suddenly noticed that her implant was gone. Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore discovered that, because of the woman's recent heart surgery, the muscles between the ribs had loosened, and the implant had merely passed through a rib opening. (They returned it to its proper place.)

-- A balaclava-wearing man "kidnapped" Julian Buchwald and his girlfriend in 2008 in Australia's Alpine National Park as they were picnicking. The man separated the couple, tore their clothes off and buried them, but Buchwald escaped and rescued the girlfriend, and they wandered around naked for days before being rescued. The balaclava-clad man, it turns out, was Buchwald, whose plan was to convince the woman by his heroism that she should marry him (and more immediately, to have sex even though they had both pledged to remain virgins until marriage). Buchwald was convicted in Victoria County Court and sentenced in December to more than seven years in prison.

-- Laurie Martinez, 36, was charged in December with filing a false police report in Sacramento, Calif., alleging that she was raped, beaten bloody and robbed in her home. It turns out that she had become frustrated trying to get her husband to move them to a better neighborhood and that faking a rape was supposed to finally persuade him. Instead, he filed for divorce. Martinez is employed by the state as a psychologist.

-- After 12 almost intolerable months, Ms. Seemona Sumasar finally received justice in November from a New York City jury, which convicted Jerry Ramrattan of orchestrating a complex and ingenious scheme to convince police that Sumasar was a serial armed robber. Ramrattan, a private detective and "CSI" fan, had used his knowledge of police evidence-gathering to pin various open cases on Sumasar as revenge for her having dumped him (and to negate her claim that Ramrattan had raped her in retaliation). Ramrattan was so creative in linking evidence to Sumasar that her bail had been set at $1 million, causing her to spend seven months in jail. (Said one juror, "If I had seen this on TV, my reaction would be, 'How could this really happen?'")

Prominent Birmingham, Ala., politician Bill Johnson describes his wife as "the most beautiful woman in the world," but he revealed in December that, while on temporary duty recently as an earthquake relief specialist in New Zealand, he had clandestinely donated sperm to nine women (and that three were already pregnant). Becoming a biological father is "a need that I have," he told a New Zealand Herald reporter, and his wife had been unable to accommodate him. Asked if his wife knew of the nine women, Johnson said, "She does now." Indeed, Alabama newspapers quickly picked up the story, and Mrs. Johnson told the Mobile Press-Register that there is "healing to do."

Not Ready for Prime Time: The unidentified eyeglass-wearing robber of an HSBC Bank in Long Island City, N.Y., in December fled empty-handed and was being sought. Armed with a pistol and impatient with a slow teller, the man fired a shot into the ceiling to emphasize his seriousness. However, according to a police report, the gunshot seemed to panic him as much as it did the others in the bank, and he immediately ran out the door and jumped into a waiting vehicle.

-- James Ward's second annual festival of tedium (the "Boring conference"), in November at York Hall in east London, once again sold out, demonstrating the intrinsic excitement created by yawn-inducing subject matter. Last year's conference featured a man's discourse on the color and materials of his neckwear collection and another's structured milk-tasting, patterned after a wine-tasting. This second edition showcased a history of the electric hand-dryer and a seminar on the square root of 2.

-- Last month, News of the Weird informed readers of the woman who wanted to "be at one" with her recently deceased horse and thus stripped naked and climbed inside the bloody carcass (posing for a notorious Internet photo spread). Afghan slaughterhouse employees surely never consider being "at one" with water buffaloes, but a November Washington Post dispatch from Kabul mentions a similarity. U.S. slaughterhouse authority Chris Hart found, as he was helping to upgrade an antiquated abattoir near Kabul, that the facility employed a dwarf, "responsible" (wrote the Post) "for climbing inside water buffalo carcasses to cut out their colons." (Nonetheless, the slaughterhouse is halal, adhering to Islamic principles.)

-- No Longer Weird? One would think that classical musicians who carry precious violins, worth small fortunes, on public transportation would be especially vigilant to safeguard them. However, from time to time (for example, in 2008, 2009, 2010 and May 2011), absentmindedness prevailed. Most recently, in December, student MuChen Hsieh, 19, accompanying a 176-year-old violin (on loan from a foundation in Taiwan and worth about $170,000) on a bus ride from Boston to Philadelphia, forgot to check the overhead rack when departing and left without it. Fortunately, a bus company cleaner turned it in. (Most famously, in 1999, the master cellist Yo Yo Ma left his instrument in the trunk of a New York City taxicab.)

A regional development commission in Michigan, purchasing equipment for 13 counties in May using homeland security grants, bought 13 machines that make snow cones, at a total cost of $11,700 (after rejecting one county's request for a popcorn machine). Pressed to justify the purchases, officials pointed out that the machines make shaved ice, which might be useful for medical situations stemming from natural disasters and heat emergencies (but that they also make snow cones to draw crowds at homeland security demonstrations).

NOTE: Once again this week, check out a few more recent instances of Recurring Themes of weird news (plus important updates of previous stories):

-- Once again, a genius tried to pass a piece of U.S. currency in an amount not even close to being legal tender: a $1 million bill. (The largest denomination is $100.) Michael Fuller, 53, was arrested in Lexington, N.C., in November when a Walmart cashier turned him in after he attempted to buy electronics totaling $475.78 (apparently expecting change of $999,524.22).

-- Most News of the Weird epic cases of "scorned" lovers who seemingly never give up obnoxiously stalking their exes are of Japanese women, but "dumped" Americans surface occasionally. In October, Toni Jo Silvey, 49, was arrested in Houston when her ex (artist Peter Main) reported that she made 146 phone calls in one day and more than 1,000 (and 712 e-mails) in three months, following their 2009 breakup over his seeing a younger woman. She was also charged with attacking his home with a tire iron, eggs and a sword.

-- "Take Your Daughter (Son) to Work" days are still popular at some companies, to introduce children to their parents' cultures. Inadvertently, even criminals mimic the phenomenon. Joseph Romano, 2-year-old son in tow, was allegedly selling drugs when police picked him up in September in Tunkhannock Township, Pa. And Edward Chatman Jr., 32, who was arrested for raping a woman in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in August, had brought his 6-month-old baby with him when he climbed through the woman's window (though, police said, he stashed the kid in another room during the assault).

-- A cutting-edge treatment when News of the Weird first heard of it in 2000 is now mainstream for those suffering extreme diarrhea due to a lack of "predator bacteria" in the colon (perhaps caused by antibiotics). Among the primary treatments now is a transplant -- a transfusion of "fecal flora" from the gut of a bacteria-normal person, to restore the natural balance (introduced by a colonoscope after the stool is liquified in a blender). Following months of failed alternatives, Jerry Grant, 33, said in October that his transplant, at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., worked remarkably well. (A recent study reported success in 70 of 77 patients.)

-- The law of child support changes only slowly in the U.S., but maybe less so in Australia. American courts are reluctant to end payments even if the man later disproves paternity (citing the harm to the child if the payments stop). However, in October, the Federal Magistrates Court in Melbourne, Australia, acting on fertility-test results, ordered a mother to reimburse the man she swore was the father after he proved he had been sterile. The woman also "recalled," after extensive therapy, that she might have had a one-night stand with a stranger around the time of conception.

-- Perversion Du Jour: The 10-year-old law-enforcement crackdown on Internet child pornography has lately hit a technicality-based roadblock. Several times recently, perverts have beaten charges after creating "child pornography" that consisted of nude adult female bodies onto which facial photos of young girls had been pasted. This handiwork was apparently arousing to two Lakeland, Fla., men, Danny Parker, convicted in 2011, and John Stelmack, convicted in 2010, but both ultimately had their convictions overturned because no actual child was involved in sex.

-- Forgetting to pay the monthly rental fees on a storage locker can have serious consequences if the locker was used to store embarrassing or even incriminating materials. News of the Weird reported one such hapless client in 2007: a central Florida political activist under investigation whose locker yielded a rich trove for a local reporter. Similarly, perhaps, Dr. Conrad Murray (then under suspicion in the death of Michael Jackson) reportedly missed three payments on a Las Vegas storage locker, and prosecutors recovered items that appeared to contribute to their case (although it is not clear that any of the items were ever presented in court).

-- Hospital protocols may be changing, but too slowly for Doreen Wallace, who fell in the lobby of the Greater Niagara General Hospital in Ontario in October and broke her hip. Though it was less than 150 feet from the lobby to the emergency room, hospital personnel, following rules, instructed her to call an ambulance to take her around to the ER, though the nearest such ambulance, in the next city, did not arrive for 30 pain-filled minutes. Hospital officials said they would handle things better in the future.

-- A New York City jury awarded the family of a late teenager $1 million in November in its lawsuit against the city for mishandling the boy's brain after his 2005 death. Following "testing," the medical examiner kept the brain in a jar on a shelf, where it was inadvertently spotted by the victim's sister during a school field trip to the mortuary (treatment the family considered extremely disrespectful). The case calls to mind that of Arkansas rapist Wayne Dumond, who had been castrated by vigilantes in 1984 and whose genitals the local sheriff had recovered and kept in a jar on a shelf in his office as a symbol of "justice." Dumond subsequently (in 1988) won $110,000 in a "disrespect" lawsuit against the sheriff.

-- Jennifer Petkov of Trenton, Mich., is still charming the neighbors. An October 2010 Detroit News summary of a years-long feud between Petkov and various neighbors reported that she had been mercilessly taunting the family of Kathleen Edward, then 7 and suffering from the degenerating brain disorder Huntington's disease, which had taken her mother the year before. The more Kathleen's disability showed, the greater was Petkov's Facebook-page glee. In October 2011, Petkov, after a short promise of civility, returned to mocking Kathleen and the memory of her mother, such as in recent Facebook postings: "You thought the (past) 4+ years were bad you (sic) haven't seen nothing yet!" and "Block party when that kid dies."

-- In October, Colorado state Sen. Suzanne Williams settled more-serious 2010 traffic charges by pleading no contest to a misdemeanor and paying $268 to a court in Amarillo, Texas. State troopers had accused Williams of driving with unbelted grandchildren in her SUV when it drifted across a center line and hit another vehicle, killing the driver and ejecting the kids. The Texas troopers suggested that Williams scooped up the worse-injured grandchild, returned him to the SUV and belted him into a child seat, which was especially significant because Williams had sponsored a mandatory child-safety belting law in Colorado in 2010. However, the grand jury declined to indict her, and she refused to discuss the case further.

-- No Longer Weird: Some Recurring Themes appear so frequently as to be boring even to the creator of News of the Weird. For instance, people steal scrap metal for sale to recyclers, even if it winds up disrupting the infrastructure. Two brothers, Benjamin and Alexander Jones, of New Castle, Pa., were charged in October with having dismantled an entire, little-used, 15-ton bridge in the area, anticipating a big payday, but ultimately clearing only about $5,000 from laborious work with blow torches. (But Kirk Wise, 45, told the Phoenix New Times in August that he had earned about $95,000 in the previous year and a half selling scrap metal -- though he admitted blowing most of it on methamphetamines.)