Fast-Food Culture Shock: Since December, the White Castle restaurant in Lafayette, Ind., has provided diners with a stylish experience that includes table service and a wine selection to go with its iconic "slider" hamburgers. A state wine industry expert told The Wall Street Journal in February, after a tasting, that she would recommend the Merlot, although the Moscato was "fun" and the Chardonnay passable (though all wines come in $4.50, screw-off-top bottles and is served in clear plastic glasses). (As for the sliders, said the wine expert, eyeing the burgers on her plate, "At some point, that was a cow, I guess.") [Wall Street Journal, 2-22-2012]

-- When workers at the Carlsberg Beer plant in Vilnius, Lithuania, decided to walk out over poor pay and conditions, the company went to court to block them, and in March, a judge ruled for the company, temporarily halting a strike as not in the national interest because Carlsberg Beer is "vitally essential," thus placing the brew in the same legal category as medical supplies. (Said a British labor union official, "This is probably the most ridiculous decision in the world.") [Daily Telegraph, 3-5-2012] 

-- Recurring Theme: In March, a new peak was reached in New York City's ongoing search for the most preposterously underpriced (because of rent control) apartment in the city. The Gothamist website identified a one-bedroom apartment at 5 Spring Street in Manhattan's SoHo district renting for $55 a month even though, according to a real estate agent, it should be drawing $2,500. The tenant's parents moved in upon immigrating from Italy in the 1940s, and since the tenant, now in his 70s, has a much younger wife, the apartment could remain under rent control for decades. (New York City rent controls were imposed to meet an "emergency" in housing during World War II, but the law gets routinely renewed.) [Gothamist, 3-18-2012]

The Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia recently won a $36,000 grant to study the genetic basis of Trimethylaminuria, otherwise known as the disorder that causes sufferers to smell like dead fish. The first case reported in medical literature was in the 1970s, but according to a Science News report, "an ancient Hindu tale describes a maiden who 'grew to be comely and fair, but a fishy odor ever clung to her.'" [ABC News via WLS Radio (Chicago), 3-6-2012; Science News, 3-15-1999]

-- Eight to Go: (1) After the year-old house cat Sugar survived a 19-floor fall at a Boston high-rise in March, an Animal Rescue League official explained to MSNBC that extra fur where the legs attach to the body enables cats to "glide" and partially "control" their landing. Research suggests that steep falls are thus easier to survive, as cats have time to spread themselves out. (2) The 5-year-old cat Demi survived a 40-minute tumble-dry (temperature up to 104 F) in Whitchurch, England, in March (although she needed oxygen, fluids and steroids to recover). Jennifer Parker, 45, had tossed a load of clothes in, unaware that Demi was in the pile. [Time, 3-22- 2012] [The Sun, 3-21-2012]

-- Something Else to Worry About: A computer science professor working with the Bonobo Hope Great Ape Trust Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa, has developed a bonobo robot that can be controlled by live bonobos. Among the first applications of the robot, said Dr. Ken Schweller in March, is a water cannon that bonobos will be taught to operate via an iPad app in order to "play chase games" with each other -- "or to squirt guests." [IEEE Spectrum (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), 3-29-2012]

-- In January, Kentucky state Sen. Katie Stine, presiding over a ceremony in the state capitol honoring the Newport Aquarium, posed with aquarium officials and with Paula, a blackfooted penguin brought in for the warm-and-cuddly photo opportunity. It fell to Senate President David Williams to gently interrupt Stine's speech and inform her that Paula was in the process of soiling the floor of the august chamber. [Herald-Leader (Lexington), 1-24- 2012]

Drive-By Etiquette: In February, Kendall Reid, 36, was extradited from New Jersey back to LaPlace, La., where he had been sought for allegedly shooting at a car on Interstate 10 on Christmas Eve. According to police, Reid failed to hit the car he was aiming at, instead inadvertently shooting out the back window of a car in which two women were riding. However, as the damaged car stopped on the side of the road, Reid pulled his Corvette over, too, walked up to the women, and apologized ("Sorry, wrong car") -- before resuming his pursuit of his intended target. [Times-Picayune, 2-13-2012]

(1) A 41-year-old man was treated with antivenom at the USA Medical Center in Mobile, Ala., in March after he was bitten by a cottonmouth. The man had seen the snake at an encampment, beaten it to death with a stick and decapitated it. At that point, according to the man's friend, he for some reason started to "play with" the head. (The dead snake's teeth still contained venom.) (2) James Davis of Stevenson, Ala., vowed in April that he would forever resist a judge's order that he dig up his late wife's body from his front yard and rebury it in a cemetery. "I'm in it for the long haul," he said, promising to wait out the authorities. "I don't have much to do but sit around (and) think about what's going on." [WALA-TV (Mobile), 3-28-2012] [WAFF-TV (Huntsville, Ala.), 4-2-2012]

Thought of Almost Everything: Mishelle Salzgeber, 20, was arrested in March in New Port Richey, Fla., after failing a drug test, which was a condition of her probation for an undisclosed crime. Apparently, Salzgeber knew that she would probably fail on her own and had gone to the trouble of inserting a small tube of someone else's urine into her vagina. Unfortunately for her, a pre-test body-scan revealed the tube. (Besides, authorities tested the urine in the tube and found that it also failed.) [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 3-20-2012]

Bill Dillon, released from a Florida prison in 2009 after 27 years' wrongful incarceration, received a public apology in March from Gov. Rick Scott (and will get $50,000 from the state for each year of lockup). Dillon is one of the first inmates to have received justice among as many as an estimated 60 who were convicted with the help of the now-deceased dog trainer John Preston, whose supposedly heroic-nosed German shepherds could somehow track smells through water and pick out lone scents among highly contaminated crime scenes -- thus magically confirming speculative parts of prosecutors' cases when no other evidence was available. Pushover judges allowed Preston a free hand until one thought to subject the dog to a simple courtroom smell test, which the dog totally failed. Though satisfied with his own outcome, Dillon begged authorities to open other cases involving Preston's dogs. [Orlando Sentinel, 3-3-2012]

In March, authorities in Davis, Okla., after viewing surveillance video, charged Jimmy "Hawkeye" Jeter, 77, with a "detestable and abominable crime against nature" for "violating" a show pig at a barn on the property of the local school system. According to a KFOR-TV report, Jeter told investigators (in farm language, apparently) that he "poured corn out to hold the gilt still" and then "stuck my finger up her private." Nonetheless, he assured them that he was "not trying to poison the gilt" and that he had done this "in the early '70s." Later, he acknowledged that he was acting for sexual gratification. [KFOR-TV, 3-9-2012]

Thanks This Week to Josh Levin and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

As the U.S. government's role in health care is debated, the French government's role was highlighted in February with a report on Slate.com about France's guarantee to new mothers of "10 to 20" free sessions of "la reeducation perineale" (vaginal re-toning to restore the pre-pregnancy condition, a "cornerstone of French post- natal care," according to Slate). The sessions involve yoga-like calisthenics to rebuild muscles and improve genital flexibility. Similar procedures in the U.S. not only are not government entitlements, but are almost never covered by private insurance, and besides, say surgeons, the patients who request them do so almost entirely for aesthetic reasons. The French program, by contrast, is said to be designed not only for general health but to strengthen women for bearing more children, to raise the birth rate. [Slate, 2-15-2012]

-- Drill, Baby, Drill: U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas may have been joking, but according to a February Washington Post story, he seemed serious at a Natural Resources Committee hearing when searching for yet more reasons why the U.S. should support oil drilling in Alaska. Caribou, he said, are fond of the warmth of the Alaskan pipeline. "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline." That mating ritual, Rep. Gohmert concluded, is surely responsible for a recent tenfold increase in the local caribou population. [Washington Post, 2-7-2012]

-- In assigning a bail of only $20,000, the judge in Ellisville, Miss., seemed torn about whether to believe that Harold Hadley is a terrorist -- that is, did Hadley plant a bomb at Jones County Junior College? In February, investigators told WDAM-TV that the evidence against Hadley included a note on toilet paper on which he had written in effect, "I passed a bomb in the library." However, no bomb was found, and a relative of Hadley's told the judge that Hadley often speaks of breaking wind as "passing a bomb." The case is continuing. [WDAM-TV (Hattiesburg, Miss.), 2-8-2012]

-- John Hughes, 55, was fined $1,000 in February in Butte, Mont., after pleading guilty to reckless driving for leading police on a 100-mph-plus chase starting at 3:25 a.m. After police deflated his tires and arrested him, an officer asked why he had taken off. Said Hughes, "I just always wanted to do that." [Montana Standard, 2-4-2012]

-- Melvyn Webb, 54, was acquitted in March of alleged indecent behavior on a train. An eight-woman, four-man jury in Reading (England) Crown Court found Webb's explanation entirely plausible -- that he was a banjo player and was "playing" some riffs underneath the newspaper in his lap. "(S)ometimes I do, with my hands, pick out a pattern on my knees," he said. (On the other hand, the female witness against him had testified that Webb "was facing me, breathing heavily and snarling.") [Daily Mail, 3-7-2012]

-- Earl Persell, 56, was arrested in Palm Bay, Fla., in February when police were summoned to his home on a domestic violence call. Persell's girlfriend said he had assaulted her and held her down by the neck, and then moments later, with his truck, rammed the car she was driving away in. The subject of the couple's argument was legendary singer Tina Turner and her late, wife-beating husband, Ike. [Florida Today (Melbourne), 2-3-2012]

-- U.S. military forces called to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, including reservists and National Guardsmen on active duty, have their civilian jobs protected by federal law, but every year the Pentagon reports having to assist personnel who have been illegally fired or demoted during their tours of duty. Of all the employers in the United States who are seemingly ignorant of the law, one stands out: civilian agencies of the federal government. The Washington Post, using a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed in February that during fiscal year 2011, 18 percent of all complaints under the law were filed against federal agencies. [Washington Post, 2-19-2012]

-- Mark "Chopper" Read only wanted to help out his son's youth athletics program in the Melbourne, Australia, suburb of Collingwood in February, but was rebuffed. He had offered his assistance at track meets by, for instance, firing the starter's pistol for races, but officials declined after learning that Read had recently been released from prison after 23 years and had boasted of killing 19 people and once attempting to kidnap a judge at gunpoint. [The Mercury (Hobart), 2-14-2012]

-- Damien Bittar of Eugene, Ore., turned 21 at midnight on March 15 and apparently wanted to get a quick start on his legal-drinking career. By 1:30 a.m., his car had been impounded, and he had been charged with DUI, reckless driving and criminal mischief after he accidentally crashed into an alcohol rehabilitation center. [KVAL-TV (Eugene), 3-15-2012]

Internal Revenue Service is battling the estate of art dealer Ileana Sonnabend over the value of a Robert Rauschenberg stuffed bald eagle that is part of his work "Canyon." IRS has levied taxes as if the work were worth $65 million, but the Sonnabend estate, citing multiple auction-house appraisals, says the correct value is "zero," since it is impossible to sell the piece because two federal laws prohibit the trafficking of bald eagles, whether dead or alive. (Despite the law, IRS says, there is a black market for the work, for example, by a "recluse billionaire in China (who) might want to buy it and hide it.") [Artinfo, 2-23-2012]

(1) Maureen Reed, 41, was charged with DWI in March in Lockport, N.Y., after arriving at a police station inebriated. She had gotten into an altercation with two others at the Niagara Hotel and left to go press charges. The police station is about 200 feet from the hotel, but Reed unwisely decided to drive her car there instead of walking. (2) Two men were robbed in a motel room in Bradenton, Fla., in February by Cedrick Mitchell, 39, who pulled a handgun on them, but lost it in a struggle when the men started to fight back. One of the men pepper-sprayed Mitchell, sending him fleeing. He returned a few minutes later and begged to buy the gun back for $40, but all he got was another pepper-spraying. Police arrested Mitchell nearby. [Lockport Journal, 3-13-2012] [Bradenton Herald, 2-23-2012]

Dr. Peter Trigger, 62, apparently suffered a relapse in Thorplands, England, in February. Dr. Trigger violated his Anti-Social Behavior Order (the one reported in News of the Weird in 2009) by standing passively alongside the grounds of the Woodvale Primary School as parents dropped kids off for classes. As before, he was wearing a thigh-length gray skirt and a blue Northampton Academy Blazer even though forbidden to be near a school while dressed in either a skirt or a school uniform. His lawyer said that Dr. Trigger desperately wants to be a woman. [Northampton Chronicle, 2-29- 2012]

(1) Asian News International, citing a March China Today report, disclosed that a 68-year-old woman from the countryside, visiting her son in the city of Dalian, China, for the first time, used an unheard-of (for China) 98 tons of water over a two-month period because she was apparently mesmerized by the wonder of seeing her first flush toilet (which she continually engaged approximately every five minutes). (Her use breaks down to 391 gallons a day, somewhat higher than the average U.S. household.) (2) In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in March, police finally straightened out the street confrontation between several men and a wheelchair-using man who, they thought, was making their penises disappear. According to National Network Newspapers, the police brought all parties to the station and ordered pants to be pulled down. All organs were said to be intact, but one man still complained that his had been made "lifeless." [China Today via ANI, 3-28-2012] [National Network Newspapers (Port Harcourt), 3-21-2012]

Like most states with active trade associations of barbers and beauticians, Iowa strictly regulates those professions, requiring 2,100 hours of training plus continuing education -- but also like many other states, Iowa does not regulate body piercers at all (though it forbids minors from getting tattoos). Thus, the puncturing of body parts and insertion of jewelry or other objects under the skin can be done by anyone, with or without formal training, under no one's watchful eye except the customer's. (A few cities' ordinances require a minimum age to get pierced.) Said one professional piercer to the Des Moines Register for a March report, "The lack of education in this industry is scary." [Des Moines Register, 3-11-2012]

-- Controlling the Waters: (1) A February bill in the Wyoming legislature to prepare the state for possible secession authorized a task force to consider establishing a state army, navy, marine corps and air force, and one amendment added the consideration of purchasing an aircraft carrier. Wyoming is, of course, landlocked, but it does have the 136-square-mile Yellowstone Lake, though that body of water is high up in the Teton mountains. (The aircraft- carrier amendment was defeated even though 27 representatives voted for it.) (2) Texas announced in February that it would deploy six gunboats to patrol the Mexican border's Rio Grande river. Said a state Department of Safety official, "It sends a message: Don't mess with Texas." [Billings Gazette, 2-27-2012] [CNN, 2-29-2012]

-- With a National Institute of Justice grant, the Houston Police Department was able to learn precisely how embarrassingly bad it had been in investigating rape cases. In February it conceded that, as of December, it had on hand 6,663 untested rape kits (some from the 1980s) taken from rape victims at the time of the crime but then apparently ignored. (Not all are significant: In some rapes, a perpetrator has already confessed or been convicted, and still other victims recanted, and in still others, the statute of limitations has run out.) [KPRC-TV, 2-14-2012]

-- After every snowfall in recent years, Doug Rochow of Ottawa, Ontario, has routinely taken his shovel and cleared two paths in a park near his home (since the park is apparently a low priority for municipal snow-clearing), but in March, the city ordered him to stop. Rochow said his aim was to keep people from hurting themselves on uncleared paths (thus perhaps saving the city money on lawsuits). The city's reverse-logic position, according to a Toronto Star report, was that if Rochow cleared the paths, more people would be encouraged to use them, increasing the city's exposure to lawsuits. [Toronto Star, 3-5-2012]

-- It wasn't on a scale with an infinite number of orangutans using an infinite number of iPads, but the conservation group Orangutan Outreach has begun to supply certain zoos with iPads, hoping to encourage apes' creativity and social networking. At the Milwaukee Zoo, a handler holds the device while an orangutan operates a painting app with its fingers. ("Orangutans like to paint, and they're capable of using this (tablet)," he said, adding the benefit that "there's no paint to eat.") At the Memphis Zoo recently, said an Outreach official, the apes seem happy when they recognize images of other apes on the iPad. The Toronto Zoo's iPad is expected soon. [Toronto Star, 2-29-2012]

-- In March came word from Taiwan that the prominent Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts had awarded a prize worth the equivalent of $13,500 to student Wong Tin Cheung for creating the face of a man by using the artist's own urine. His piece, "Blood Urine Man," presented to judges in a toilet bowl, used urine of different colors, supposedly to match the pigments of the Marvel Comics superhero Iron Man. [Newser, 3-19-2012]

-- Difficult Fact-Check: According to the Utah Highway Patrol, a one-car crash in February left the following injured in serious condition: Ms. Me Htwe and Mr. Hsar Kpaw Doh and Mr. W.T. Htoo, along with the driver, Mr. Tar Eh. (Ms. Mula Er, 14, died of her injuries.) All were from Heber City, Utah. [Salt Lake Tribune, 2-28-2012]

-- "(E)very single cop in the state has done this. Chiefs on down." That practice, referred to by the unidentified Minnesota law enforcement officer, is the personal use of the police database that is supposedly off-limits for all except official business. According to an imminent lawsuit (reported by the weekly City Pages in Minneapolis), former officer (and apparently still a "hottie") Anne Marie Rasmusson, 37, learned that 104 officers in 18 different agencies in Minnesota had accessed her driver's license record 425 times. Rasmusson's lawyer said the reality is that officers tend to treat the confidential database more like a "Facebook for cops." [City Pages, 2-22-2012]

(1) In January, police in Bridgeville, Pa., investigated a series of vehicle break-ins, including one of a car belonging to Kathy Saunoras, who reported that only her dentures were taken. (2) Two weeks later, health worker Marlene Dupert, 44, was charged with yanking dentures out of the mouth of one of her charges at a nursing home in Selinsgrove, Pa. (3) Also in February, Evelyn Fuller, 49, was charged with robbing the First National Bank in Waynesburg, Pa. -- a crime necessitated, she told a police officer, because she needed money for new dentures. [Associated Press via WPVI-TV (Philadelphia), 1-26-2012] [Daily Item (Sunbury, Pa.), 2-18-2012] [Observer-Reporter (Washington, Pa.), 2-1-2012]

Only the Lonely: Adrian Baltierra, 51, was charged with solicitation in February in Bradenton, Fla., after, according to police, he approached an undercover female officer, who was posing as a prostitute, and agreed to a transaction. In exchange for $15, Baltierra would be accorded the opportunity to take a whiff of the "prostitute's" genital aroma (although street slang was used in the negotiation). [The Smoking Gun, 2-27-2012]

(1) Didn't See It Coming: Canadian Jasmin Klair pleaded guilty in federal court in Seattle in March to smuggling nearly 11kg of cocaine into the U.S. She had been arrested upon arrival at a bed and breakfast called the Smuggler's Inn, located about 100 feet from the border in Blaine, Wash. (2) Greedy: According to police in Lake Ariel, Pa., alleged burglar Christopher Wallace had loaded his van with goodies from a home's first floor, but instead of calling it a night, he re-entered to check out the second floor. Wallace was later rushed to the hospital after accidentally falling out a second-floor window, resulting in a broken back, hip and arm. [News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.), 3-20-2012] [Wayne Independent (Honesdale, Pa.), 3-19-2012]

Fathers of Our Country: News of the Weird has reported on several prolific men who sell their sperm to sperm banks, to be selected from catalogs by multiple mothers-to-be seeking high-quality breeding (and also one case of a middle-aged physician who collected women's money to find donors but then decided to self-supply his clients). Fremont, Calif., computer-security worker Trent Arsenault, 36, is America's most notorious "rogue" donor, offering his output absolutely free to same-sex and low-income clients who have difficulty procuring through sperm banks. He is so far the father of at least 15 children. Since 2010, the federal Food and Drug Administration has been trying to shut him down as an unregistered "manufacturer" of body tissue who must therefore adhere to federal safety regulations. Arsenault, according to a profile in New York magazine in February, is the son of disapproving parents (father, a Pentecostal minister), and in addition, is a virgin. [New York Daily News, 12-9-2011; New York magazine, 2-13-2012]

On March 3, police in Kantale, Sri Lanka, found the body of Janaka Basnayake, 24, who with the help of friends had buried himself in a 10-foot-deep trench for an attempt to set a "world record" for the longest time buried alive. Clearly, his 6 1/2 hours underground was too ambitious. An Associated Press report noted that it was "unclear" whether an "official" record exists in this category. [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 3-5-2012] 

Thanks This Week to John Cohen, Steve Dunn, Brian Bjolin, Gary Locke, John Connell, Pete Randall, Skip Mendler, and John Votel, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.