Perspective: Of the world's 7 billion people, an estimated 2.6 billion do not have toilet access, and every day a reported 4,000 children die from sanitation-related illnesses. However, in May, in Portland, Ore., Douglas Eki and "Jason" Doctolero were awarded $332,000 for wrongful firing because they complained about being inconvenienced at work by not having an easily available toilet. Menzies Aviation had arranged for the men to use facilities at nearby businesses at their Portland International Airport site, but the men said they felt unwelcome at those places and continued to complain (and use buckets). One juror said afterward that having easy access to a toilet was a "basic human right," citing the "dignity (of) being able to go to the bathroom within 30 seconds or a minute." Said Doctolero, "Hopefully, no one will have to suffer what I went through." [The Oregonian, 5-21-2012]

-- When Sherry Bush returned home in Westlake, Ohio, in May, she found an "invoice" written on a napkin, left by "Sue Warren," billing her $75 for a housecleaning that Warren had done while Bush was out. However, Bush never heard of Warren, and there had been reports by others in Westlake of Warren's aggressive acquisition of "clients." "Did you get the wrong house?" Bush asked Warren when she found "Sue Warren Cleaning" online. "No," said Warren, "I do this all the time. I just stop and clean your house." Warren was not immediately charged with a crime. [WKYC-TV, 5-30-2012]

-- Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker still owes the IRS a reported $6 million and now sells a line of "survival" products to help true believers live through the coming apocalypse. (It is unclear whether believers need to "survive," since the popular reading of the apocalypse casts it as a fast track to heaven for the faithful.) The Talking Points Memo blog did some comparative shopping and found many of Bakker's items to be overpriced by as much as 100 percent. Bakker also offers the devout a $100 Silver Solution Total Body Cleanse Kit, which includes enemas. [Talking Points Memo via The Atlantic, 5-17-2012; National Enquirer, 5-28-2012; JimBakkerShow.com]

-- Medical Marvel: A 63-year-old woman in South Korea bit into a portion of squid and later felt "bug-like organisms" moving around in her mouth. According to doctors at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Md., writing in a recent paper, the squid had probably expelled its spermatophores as if it were attempting insemination. (When squid is eaten in the West, the internal organs have been removed, but apparently not in South Korea.) A scientist who has worked with squid commented on the professional network Science 2.0, "I've probably had hundreds of spermatophores ejaculate on my fingers and never felt a sting." [Daily Mail (London), 6-15-2012]

-- A start-up venture in Singapore announced in June that it has developed an adult diaper made of "Sofshell," a substance that hardens on contact and redistributes weight -- so that if seniors fall on their rear ends, the impact will be absorbed with a lesser risk of broken bones. One of the developers demonstrated by dropping a bowling ball on a cellphone protected by the material, and the phone suffered not a scratch. [The Straits Times (Singapore), 6-5-2012]

-- Researchers at the National University of Singapore described, in a recent issue of the journal Biology Letters, how a certain species of male tropical spider seemingly improves its chances of successful mating by castrating itself after releasing sperm. The scientists hypothesize that testes-removal makes the male nimbler and better able to trick and outflank competitor males that attempt to reinseminate the same females. Improving their strategic mobility also enables the male to avoid being killed by the female, which is yet another hazard in the spider-mating process. [New York Times, 6-19-2012]

-- While top stars of World Wrestling Entertainment, such as John Cena and Triple H, earn upwards of several hundred thousand dollars a year in U.S. rings, pro wrestlers in Senegal can (in the wrestling variation called laamb) make almost that amount too. In May, the undefeated national "champion," the "King of the Arena" Yekini, suffered his first defeat in 15 years at the hands of Balla Gaye 2, before a capacity crowd at Demba Diop Stadium in Dakar, earning the combatants a reported equivalent of $300,000 each. (Per capita income in the U.S. is about $40,000 and in Senegal, $1,900.) [New York Times, 5-25-2012]

-- Hard Times: (1) In May, the Missoula (Mont.) Sheriff's Office was investigating the theft of a car from the victim's yard -- a 1976 Ford Pinto (which, in addition to being a Pinto, had four flat tires). (2) In Mesa, Ariz., in May, Manuel Ovalle, 35, was charged with burglary after allegedly breaking into a home and taking a Playstation 3 and two bags of water from the home's swimming pool. (Ovalle told police his own home had no water supply.) [The Missoulian, 5-29-2012] [KPHO-TV (Phoenix), 5-29-2012]

-- Suspicions Confirmed: Scientists from Lund University's Primate Research Station Furuvik in Sweden announced in May that they had evidence that chimpanzees are able to delay using weapons they encounter, hide them and retrieve them later for use against "foes." The weapons were stones and chunks of concrete, and the foes were visitors to the zoo who annoyed the chimps. According to the researchers, the 33-year-old chimp Santino also took pains to hide the weapons in locations where they could be accessed easily for the element of surprise against the visitors. [PLoS ONE via Live Science, 5-17-2012]

-- Bullfighting may be on the wane in some countries because of complaints about cruelty, but in the village of Aproz, Switzerland, there is a replacement each May: cow-fighting contests. According to a Wall Street Journal dispatch, this is a serious business, especially for Alain Balet, whose cow Manathan has won the heavyweight title for three years running, and who "follow(s) training regimens worthy of professional athletes," including engaging masseuses. The action, however, is mostly head-butting (plus "abundant slobber," reported the Journal), and the "contest" is won when one of the cows loses interest and wanders away. Balet pointed out an obvious additional pleasure in raising championship cows: "It's still a cow. I can eat her." [Wall Street Journal, 5-8-2012]

Police in Decatur, Ala., were called to a home on South Locust Street in May on a report of a gunshot. They found that a 61-year-old man, who had been drinking beer to ease his toothache, had finally had enough and attempted to eliminate the tooth by shooting his jaw with a .25-caliber pistol. He was hospitalized. [Decatur Daily, 5-30-2012]

Undignified Deaths: (1) A prominent karate instructor and superhero impersonator (of the Marvel Comics character Wolverine) was found dead in Carshalton, England, in February, and a coroner's inquest in May determined it was yet another sexual-misadventure death. The 50-year-old was discovered wrapped in a red nylon sheet with his neck and ankles tightly bound in what police estimated was three rolls of cling film. (2) Though authorities could not be certain, evidence suggests that Vicente Benito, whose body was found in his home in the village of Canizal, Spain, in May, might have been lying there for almost 20 years. The mayor of the 520-person hamlet told a reporter for London's The Guardian that since the man had always been a hermit, he had apparently not been missed. No one noticed a smell coming from the home, but since the house was close to a pigsty, that was not unusual, either. [Daily Mail, 5-31-2012] [The Guardian, 6-1-2012]

(1) A pair of mated giant tortoises that had lived in harmony for 115 years in zoos in Klagenfurt, Austria, are a couple no more, and apparently things ended badly. In June, the female Bibi bit off part of the male Poldi's shell, and efforts to reconcile the pair, including using aphrodisiacs, proved futile. (2) Daniel Collins Jr., 72, was charged with aggravated assault in Teaneck, N.J., in June after allegedly threatening to shoot a 47-year-old neighbor. Collins said he was reacting to the neighbor's passing gas loudly outside Collins' apartment after the two men had been discussing noise. [Austrian Times via Christian Science Monitor, 6-13-2012] [NorthJersey.com, 6-26-2012]

Thanks This Week to Telaraj Webster, John Beyrau, Gary DaSilva, Peter Levy, and Michael Tubbs, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Japanese Scientists, Overperforming: (1) Researchers at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Information Science and Technology have developed goggles that can enlarge the image of a bite of food so that the eater might fool himself into thinking he has consumed more than he has (and thus, that his hunger might dissipate sooner). The software is so sophisticated, they said, that the food carrier (a fork, or the eater's hand) is not transformed and appears at normal size. In basic tests, according to a June Agence France-Presse report, a 50 percent increase in imagined cookie size reduced actual consumption by 9 percent. (2) Prolific inventor Nobuhiro Takahashi announced in May that he had created a silicone-and-foam "buttocks robot" that can clench, twitch or protrude when probed (primarily for training proctology students to deal with patient anxiety). [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-4-2012] [Daily Mail (London), 5-14-2012]

-- In May, two members of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee requested the total number of U.S. citizens who have been legally spied upon (by phone calls, e-mail, etc.) since 2008 by the National Security Agency, but the NSA's inspector general said he was prohibited from answering. To go back through agency records, he said, would violate the privacy rights of those spied-upon U.S. citizens, which the agency cannot do without judicial warrant. [Wired.com Danger Room blog, 6-18-2012]

-- Well-Put: Pushing for an Oklahoma state senate bill authorizing the open carrying of guns (which eventually passed), Sen. Ralph Shortey explained in a March committee hearing that it was an incident from his past that convinced him of the need to carry a gun openly. "I was in oil and gas. I was out on a lease at one time, and I got attacked by a turkey. Wait until you get attacked by a turkey. You will know the fear that a turkey can invoke in a person. And so I beat it with a club. That was all I could do. And (then) I started carrying a gun in my truck after that without a license because I didn't want to get attacked by a mountain lion." [Tulsa World, 3-31-2012]

-- Car Karma: Jerry Patterson suffered a road-rage pummeling on June 12 at the hands of three men who beat him into unresponsiveness on the side of Interstate 5 in Los Angeles, with the incident captured on cellphone video by a passing motorist. Six days earlier, Patterson had himself been arrested for allegedly administering his own road-rage beatdown of another motorist, who suffered two black eyes. [KNBC (Los Angeles), 6-23-2012]

-- Generally, airbags save lives, but apparently not Ronald Smith's. According to a coroner's inquest in Darlington, England, in May, Smith's airbag deployed, but in the process was cut open on jagged glass, which forced a rush of the bag's gas and talcum powder (used as a lubricant by many manufacturers) into his lungs. Smith soon afterward developed fatal bronchial pneumonia from inhaling the substances. [The Northern Echo (Darlington), 5-28-2012]

-- Sentencing statutes and guidelines generally assign heavier penalties to those more culpable for criminal enterprise -- but not always. Houston grandmother Elisa Castillo, then 53, was convicted in 2009 of conspiracy to smuggle a ton of cocaine from Mexico and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole (a penalty authorized by statute), despite substantial evidence that she was a minor figure and despite her previously clean criminal record. According to a May Houston Chronicle investigation, several higher-up drug smugglers, including those on law-enforcement's "most wanted" lists, have received much lighter prison terms than Castillo's, precisely because, being so high up, they have inside information that they can bargain with prosecutors over. Castillo, relatively insignificant, had nothing to trade. [Houston Chronicle, 5-10-2012]

-- As the court-appointed trustee seeking as much of Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff's ill-gotten gains as possible to pay back his victims, Irving Picard has secured, according to a May New York Times report, $330 million to distribute. During the same time, Picard and his associates have billed the court (in fees that run as much as $850 per hour) $554 million. (The Ponzi scheme "earned" around $65 billion, but much of that consisted of the fantasy "profits" that had so impressed clients to invest with Madoff in the first place.) [New York Times, 5-29-2012]

(1) After Nechemya Weberman, prominent in the Brooklyn, N.Y., ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, was accused of 88 counts of sexual misconduct against underage girls and others, the district attorney arrested four men and charged them with using extortion and bribery ($500,000 worth) to silence one accuser and her boyfriend. The Hasidic community is deeply split on whether "outsiders" (like district attorneys, for example) should judge its members. (2) British officials perhaps have the opposite problem, having been recently accused of failing to prosecute alleged pedophiles in a Greater Manchester Asian gang -- for fear of offending Asians. Police told the Daily Telegraph that as many as 50 girls had been recruited for sex by the gangs, but one victim's advocate said police were "petrified" at being called racist and thus "reverted to ... political correctness." [New York Times, 6-22- 2012, 5-10-2012] [Daily Telegraph, 5-8-2012]

-- Donnell Battie was in a Wal-Mart two years ago when a teenage boy commandeered the store's public address system and, as a prank, ordered all black people to leave. The boy was arrested days later on harassment and bias intimidation charges, but Battie, who is black, claimed in May 2012 that the boy's announcement still haunts him. He filed a $1 million lawsuit against Wal-Mart in Camden, N.J., claiming that he has required medical care due to the "severe and disabling emotional and psychological harm" of the boy's words. [Associated Press, 5-15-2012]

-- Myron Cowher, who claims he was harassed by workers as a truck driver for Carson and Roberts Site Construction and Engineering of Lafayette, N.J., filed a lawsuit in 2010 against his supervisors for making anti-Semitic comments about him -- even though he is not Jewish. After the trial court tossed the case out, an appeals court reinstated it in April 2012, ruling that Cowher deserves the opportunity to show how he felt persecuted by the comments even though they did not apply to him. [Star-Ledger (Newark), 4-22- 2012]

When last we left America's most prolific litigant, Jonathan Lee Riches (in October 2010), he was serving 10 years in prison for stealing credit card numbers after achieving Guinness Book notoriety for having filed at least 3,800 fanciful lawsuits, mostly involving public figures. He was released on April 30, and apparently rehabilitation is out of the question. Within days, he had sued the Kardashian women for a variety of imagined ills including their forcing Riches to steal clothing for them from Saks Fifth Avenue and Target. Kim Kardashian was also sued for having spilled Riches' McFlurry drink on his head, and Khloe would have to answer for stealing Riches' Whopper sandwich and ramming Riches' Aston Martin car with her Volvo. Other post-release litigation initiated by Riches implicated Kanye West, Bruce Jenner, Charlie Sheen and an al-Qaeda training camp in West Virginia. [Miami New Times, 6-28-2012; AboveTheLaw.com, 6-11-2012]

Once again, there has emerged an alleged child-pornography trader who does not fit the profile. Wealthy Dallas socialite Erika Perdue, 41, was arrested in June, and in a search of her "mansion," police found hundreds of images and videos, including some depicting what authorities consider the worst kind of child porn. WFAA-TV reported that Perdue confessed to having traded child porn online since 1999. [WFAA-TV (Dallas) via KENS-TV (San Antonio), 6-3-2012]

When Cats Fly: In June, Dutch artist Bart Jansen showed off his latest creation, which was quickly an Internet sensation: He had his pet cat Orville (who had recently been run over by a car) stuffed with arms spread like an airplane (a "helicopter," Jansen said) and mounted a radio on the carcass so that he could control its flight. Jansen showed off Orville at the Kunstrai art festival in Amsterdam in June. [Daily Mail (London), 6-4-2012]

Thanks This Week to Thomas Goodey, Thad Leeper, Craig Cryer, and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Slaved Over a Hot Stove: Delivering gourmet meals to customers' doors is a fast-growing business model, with chefs in nearly every large modern city trying to cash in. So far, perhaps only London's brand-new Housebites goes the extra step. According to its press release, cited by Huffington Post in June, Housebites not only home-delivers "restaurant quality" cuisine (at the equivalent of about $15 to $20 per entry), but offers an optional dirty-pans service (about $8 extra), lending out the containers in which the food was prepared, thus allowing clients entertaining guests to display "evidence" of their culinary skills and hard work. [Huffington Post, 6-14-2012]

-- Big Fish: The U.S. Department of Justice has been widely criticized for failing to bring to fruition investigations of Wall Street traders' alleged lies (such as accusations that the firm MFS Global made bets on European bonds by illegally using clients' money, of which CEO Jon Corzine suspiciously professed to be unaware). However, in several notable instances, its investigators have been relentless -- for instance, prosecuting baseball's Roger Clemens for lying to Congress and, in January, indicting marine biologist Nancy Black, who faces 20 years in prison for allegedly lying to investigators about whether her crew might have illegally fed whales to attract their attention for a boatload of whale-watchers. [Huffington Post, 1-7-2012]

-- The government office in Liverpool, England, that takes applications for benefits from disabled persons acknowledged in March that it needed to relocate. The office's parking garage is 13 stories high, but that still requires visitors to climb two more flights of stairs from that level to reach the offices. A Liverpool Council statement admitted that the office was "not (in) the ideal location." [Liverpool Echo, 3-3-2012]

-- Worth Every Penny: (1) In April, police chief John Crane of Gadsden, Ala., learned that his department has owned, for two years, two unmanned aerial drones. He said he has no idea why they were purchased (at about $150,000), but that local taxpayers need not worry since they came with a federal law enforcement grant. (2) NBC Bay Area reports periodically on uses of 2009 federal stimulus money distributed in the San Francisco area, and in May revealed that the University of California, San Francisco, had received $1.2 million to interview 200 men on what effect being overweight has on their sex lives. A government budget activist decried funding a "sex study over fixing bridges and roads that are crumbling every day." [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 5-1-2012] [KNTV (San Francisco), 5-16-2012]

-- The Indispensability of Arts and Crafts: (1) There are not enough video games, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, which in April awarded a $40,000 grant to the University of Southern California to help produce another, based on Henry David Thoreau's "Walden." (2) Australia's Council for the Arts announced in May that it would give A$20,000 (U.S. equivalent, $20,380) to the "death-metal" band Ouroboros, citing the band's distinct genre and its need for a symphony orchestra for its next album. Said the drummer, "We wouldn't consider hiring an orchestra to do this without (the grant)." [Time, 4-30-2012] [The Australian, 5-21-2012]

-- In May, performance artist Stuart Ringholt opened his show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, naked. His pieces (a hodge-podge of exhibits on current art-world commentaries) were secondary to his insistence that all visitors to the show also shuck their clothing. His subtext, he said, was to explore reactions to extreme embarrassment (and told a New York Times correspondent that in an earlier self-shaming display, he had stood by a marble fountain for 20 minutes, dressed formally but with toilet paper trailing from his trousers). According to a Times dispatch from Sydney, Ringholt was joined by 48 nude-yet-nonplussed patrons -- 32 men and 16 women. [New York Times, 5-2-2012]

-- London's Hayward Gallery staged an exhibition in June of "invisible art" -- pieces that depend almost completely on the imaginations of viewers. For example, "1000 Hours of Staring" by Tom Friedman is a blank piece of paper that Friedman eyeballed off and on over five years before deciding that the object was finished and display-ready. Friedman also "submitted" an empty section of floor space, which he said was once cursed by a witch. Also there: an Andy Warhol bare platform that looks like it should have something resting on it, but doesn't, and, by Yoko Ono, a typed set of instructions urging patrons to imagine some stuff. [Daily Telegraph (London), 5-18-2012]

-- Germany's Spiegel Online reported in April that police in Hamburg had charged a 33-year-old man with 96 burglaries based in part on the "ear prints" he left at each scene when he leaned against a front door to detect whether anyone was home. DNA and fingerprints were also collected, said a police source, but "earprints are of similar value as fingerprints in terms of evidence." [Spiegel Online, 4-30-2012]

-- Easy Collar: Kalvin Hulvey, 35, was charged with attempted auto theft in Tulsa, Okla., in June after jumping into Jeremy Penny's van and fleeing. Penny and his dad took up the chase and caught Hulvey. Said Penny later, "I rodeo. (Dad and I) both rodeo." When police arrived, Hulvey had been neatly hog-tied and secured to a fence. Explained Penny, "(L)ately, I've been having bad luck keeping calves tied (in rodeos), so (Dad) did the tying up." [KOTV (Tulsa), 6-19-2012]

(1) Charles Marshall, 28, was arrested in Cincinnati in June and charged, for the fourth time in two years, with crimes involving exposing himself and simulating sex with a teddy bear. (It was not reported whether it was the same teddy bear.) (2) A 36-year-old man was arrested in Harvard, Idaho, in May and charged with indecent exposure. A newspaper account reported that the target of his flashing was a dog, which he was allegedly trying to entice to approach the fence and nuzzle the man's genitals. [The Smoking Gun, 6-15-2012] [Moscow-Pullman Daily News, 5-26-2012]

You Would Think ...: (1) In June, Logan Schwab, 20, who used to work at the police department in Carlisle, Pa., was seen on surveillance video sneaking into an office at the station, prying open a desk, and taking away $200 to $300 in parking-ticket money. (2) In Panama City, Fla., in May, Michael Marquez, 34 (who had been arrested with another man after being caught fighting over suspected stolen goods), was seen snatching a clock off the wall of the room in which he was being interrogated. He had stuffed it into his backpack when an officer left the room briefly, but was recorded on surveillance video. [Associated Press via Pocono Record, 6-13- 2012] [WJHG-TV (Panama City, Fla.), 5-22-2012]

In the U.S., most preschoolers who parade down pageant runways with their mothers cheering them are 5- and 6-year-olds. Britain's upcoming Miss Mini Princess U.K. will probably feature Eleanor June Rees-Sutherland, who has yet to reach her second birthday. Though Eleanor June's father strongly disapproves, Mom Robyn told the London's Daily Mail that Eleanor June is a born pageant contestant ("such a girly girl") who loves to wear makeup and nail polish, especially bright colors, and already owns a wardrobe of 20 dresses and 15 pairs of shoes. Robyn seems assured that pedophiles pose no threat: "I don't think there's anything sexy about a child who's dressed like a little princess." [Daily Mail, 6-10-2012]

Tragedy struck Poplar Bluff, Mo., on June 5 when five teenage girls parked their Jeep on railroad tracks at night at a spot notorious in local lore for the "ghost train" that once killed two people. As a train approached at 12:30 a.m., the girl driving tried to start the Jeep, but, as in the movies, the engine failed. Three girls fled, but, as in the movies, two were not able to unfasten their seat belts in time (and began screaming). One of the girls returned and helped one trapped girl escape, but the rescuer and the other trapped girl died when the train hit the Jeep. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6-5-2012]