First Amendment Blues: (1) A bar in Horry County, S.C., named the Suck Bang Blow filed a lawsuit in May challenging the county's new ordinance prohibiting motorcyclists' "burnouts" (engine-revving with back-tire-spinning, creating smoke -- and enormous noise). The bar claims that burnouts are important expressions of its customers' "manliness and macho" and as such are protected by the First Amendment. (2) Luigi Bellavite complained to reporters in Mountain View, Colo., in July that the theft of his "Vote Satan" yard sign ought to be prosecuted as a "hate crime" under state law -- as he is a member of the Church of Satan. Police called it an ordinary theft. [Sun News (Myrtle Beach), 6-10-2012] [KMGH-TV (Denver), 7-2-2012]

-- Miniature golf is remarkably simple to play, requiring neither experience nor much exertion, and even toddlers can negotiate their own brand of fun on the course. However, in March, a set of "accessible design" standards went into effect, under the Americans With Disabilities Act, governing such things as the "slope" of courses (maximum 1:4 rise on some holes), the maximum length of the blades if artificial turf is used, and the minimum area of the "tee-off" landing (48 inches by 60 inches, with a slope not steeper than 1:48). [CNS News, 6-26-2012]

-- The only unlimited-issue U.S. visa allowing fast-lane entrance for certain foreign workers is the O-1, available to those (e.g., scientists, technology engineers) who, in the opinion of the State Department, demonstrate "extraordinary ability." Reuters reported in June that an O-1 recently went to British journalist Piers Morgan, whose extraordinariness seems limited to replacing Larry King on his CNN interview program, and another to Shera Bechard, Playboy's Miss November 2010, whose other accomplishment seems to be the creation of an online photo-sharing experience called "Frisky Friday." [Reuters, 6-29-2012]

-- Canadian rap singer Manu Militari was, until earlier this year, sufficiently patriotic to have received more than $100,000 in government grants that originated with the Canadian Heritage department. However, a June video released ahead of his new album "L'Attente" portrayed Afghan Taliban fighters targeting a convoy of Canadian soldiers, planting a roadside bomb and aiming their rifles at the Canadians' heads. Over 150 Canadian soldiers have died fighting the Taliban and their insurgent allies. [National Post, 6-29-2012]

-- Forgetful: (1) USA Today, quoting a Pentagon official, reported in July that, during the last decade, the Pentagon had paid "late fees" totaling $610 million for not returning leased shipping containers by the due dates. (2) A Government Accountability Office report in July revealed that the federal government's vast properties include about 14,000 offices and buildings that are vacant (or nearly so), but which the government still pays to maintain (at about $190 million a year). (A large building in Washington, D.C.,'s Georgetown -- among the most valuable real estate in the city -- has sat mostly unused for more than 10 years.) (3) The Miami-Dade County, Fla., government confirmed in April that it had discovered, in storage, 298 brand-new vehicles that had been purchased in 2006-2007, but which had never been used. [USA Today, 7-11-2012] [ABC News, 7-3-2012] [El Nuevo Herald (Miami) via Autoblog.com, 4-20-2012]

-- New Mexico is an "open carry" state, with otherwise-law-abiding adults authorized to display loaded handguns in public. However, in the town of Vaughn (pop. 500, located mid-nowhere), perhaps the only ones not authorized to carry are the town's two police officers. Chief Ernest Armijo had been convicted in 2011 of criminal nonsupport of a wife and two sons, and among the conditions of probation was the prohibition on gun possession. Deputy Brian Bernal has his own domestic issue: a conviction for family violence that bars him, under federal law, from carrying. [KOB-TV (Albuquerque), 6-28-2012]

-- Most people who call an FBI field office would be in serious trouble if they left an answering-machine message for a named agent, along with the caller's name and telephone number, in a message consisting of at least 13 F-word epithets threatening to "break (the agent's) (F-word) neck." However, when Thomas Troy Bitter left the message at the San Diego field office, according to a July report in OC Weekly, the agency, after initially charging Bitter, quietly dropped the prosecution with no further repercussions. OC Weekly speculated that Bitter is a confidential informant whom the FBI was late in paying. [OC Weekly, 7-9-2012]

-- Specialist Perps: (1) In May, Chicago police arrested a man they believed had just minutes earlier used a Bobcat front-end loader to crash through the window of a Family Dollar store and steal two cans of deodorant and a handful of gift cards (and nothing else) and walk away. (2) Police in Lorain, Ohio, were looking in June for a black man about 18 years old who had been seen on surveillance video breaking into the same Sunoco convenience store several times recently and taking up to $600 worth of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. [Chicago Tribune, 11-11-2012] [Lorain Morning Journal, 6-20-2012]

Paris designer Jean-Emmanuel "Valnoir" Simoulin's latest project combines his boyhood fascination with jacket patches and the societal fascination with body modification. He said he will sew patches featuring his band's next album directly onto the skin of his own back. "It's a nostalgic project about my teenage-hood, when I had an iron faith (in) black-metal (music)." [Imprint magazine via Salon.com, 7-18-2012]

People With Too Much Money: The dogs could not care less, but the luxury doghouse market is thriving, according to a June New York Times report. "Many of them have carpeting, heating and air-conditioning, indoor and outdoor lighting, elaborate ... entertainment systems," wrote the Times, and some even have solar panels. But, said one owner, "Maggie's never been in (hers). She's a house dog." Although walmart.com offers upscale houses for $4,400 to $4,600, the more tony ones can go for more than $25,000. Top-shelf interior designers have created dog beds suspended from the ceiling and houses in which the music kicks on only as the dog enters (meaning that it almost never kicks on). [New York Times, 6-27-2012]

It has been reported variously as an urban legend and a true story, but a well-documented July report in Chinese media, picked up by CNN, looks unfortunately authentic. A 13-year-old boy in Shandong Province was severely injured by a prank at an auto repair shop at which he worked. Doctors at Bayi Children's Hospital in Beijing confirmed that the co-workers had inserted the nozzle of an air pump into his rectum and shot air into the intestines, inflating his belly, damaging his liver, kidneys and stomach, and sending him into a coma for eight days. Doctors deflated him, but at press time, he remained in intensive care. [CNN, 7-13-2012]

(1) Police in Lewiston, Idaho, discovered in July that someone had passed a counterfeit $1 bill recently. A veteran officer told the Lewiston Tribune that counterfeiting a $1 bill is so stupid that he had seen only one in his life, made by a junior-high student to pay off a bully. (2) In June, firefighters were called to a trolley stop in National City, Calif., to free the arm of a 17-year-old boy after he got it stuck when he reached up a vending machine slot to try to steal a soda. The rescuers employed axes, crowbars, an air chisel and a rotary saw. [Associated Press via KREM-TV (Spokane, Wash.), 7-24-2012] [KGTV (San Diego), 6-24-2012]

(1) Rodney Valentine, 37, was released from jail in Wentworth, N.C., on July 21 about 8 a.m., but adamantly refused to leave until deputies agreed to drive him to a local motel. They declined, and by noon, Valentine had been re-arrested and charged with trespassing in the jail. (2) TSA Meets Its Match: Jonah Falcon told Huffington Post in July that he had recently survived a pat-down at San Francisco International Airport. Falcon was named in a 1999 HBO documentary as having the largest penis on record, and apparently the "suspicious" bulge drew the attention of the TSA screener, who patted him down and dusted him with explosive-detecting powder before releasing him. [WGHP-TV (Greensboro), 7-23-2012] [Huffington Post, 7-17-2012]

Fern Cooper, 65, and 13 other cataract-surgery patients arrived at Ontario's Oakville Trafalgar Hospital on June 25 to learn that they would not receive the usual anesthesia because the hospital had decided to schedule an "experimental day" to evaluate how unsedated patients responded. (The Ontario Health Insurance Plan had recently cut anesthesiologists' fee.) A topical numbing gel, plus doctors' reassurances were provided, but Cooper, previously diagnosed with severe anxiety, told the Toronto Star of the terror she felt when, fully awake, she watched the surgeon's scalpel approaching, and then cutting, her eyeball. [Toronto Star, 7-6-2012]

-- Officials organizing a show for high school girls in June in Sherbrooke, Quebec, signed up a 20-year-old apprentice hypnotist to perform, but by the end of his session, he had failed to bring all of the entranced girls out of their spells, including one who was so far under that the man had to summon his mentor from home (an hour's drive away) to come rescue her. The mentor, Richard Whitbread, quickly rehypnotized her and then snapped her out of it with a stern voice, according to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News report. He noted that his protege is a handsome young man, which might have unduly influenced the girls. [CBC News, 6-15-2012]

-- Christianity has grown in acceptance recently in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia, according to a June report in the Phnom Penh Post, as up to 80 percent of the population has given up the traditional Theravada Buddhism (mixed with animism) as too demanding. According to local officials, traditional priests typically prescribe expensive offerings, such as a slaughtered buffalo, as the price of improving a relative's health. Said one convertee, with the money saved using Western medicine instead of traditional sacrifices, she was able to build a house for her family. [Phnom Penh Post, 6-12-2012]

-- According to a June lawsuit by a former student, Western Nevada College's course in human sexuality was so over-the-top that it might be described as a collection of instructor Tom Kubistant's erotic fantasies about college-age kids. Among Kubistant's demands, according to "K.R.," were keeping a masturbation journal (and ramping up the activity to twice the student's pre-course level), disclosing one's uninhibited sexual fantasies that in some cases were described by the instructor to the class at large, and conducting discussion groups on the uses of sex toys and lubricants. By the fifth week, K.R. claimed, Kubistant had abandoned his schedule of topics and begun to dwell extensively on "the female orgasm." Kubistant's instructions appear to fit the faculty handbook's definition of sexual harassment. [Courthouse News Service, 6-28-2012]

-- "Deer stands," classically, are jerry-built platforms hunters climb onto to spot deer in the distance, but county officials in Duluth, Minn., complained in July that the woods are becoming cluttered with elaborate tree houses that are too often abandoned on public land at the close of the season. One official was alarmed by "mansions" -- tree stands, he told the Duluth News Tribune, with "stairways, decks, shingled roofs, commercial windows, insulation, propane heaters, carpeting, lounge chairs, tables, and even the occasional generator." [Associated Press via The Oklahoman, 7-9-2012]

Rhesus monkeys have always posed delicate problems in India, where they are both revered (by Hindu law) and despised (for damaging property and roaming the streets begging for food). In Delhi, the rhesus population has grown dramatically, aided by the Hindus who feed them, and streets and private property are increasingly fouled. However, Amar Singh's business is good. He owns 65 langurs (apes much more vicious than rhesus monkeys) and, for the equivalent of about $200 per month, periodically brings one or two by a client's house to urinate in the yard so that the rhesus monkeys will steer clear. [New York Times, 5-23-2012]

-- Awww, Mo-ther! Alleged drug dealer Jesus "Pepe" Fuentes, 37, was arrested in Chicago in May after his mother botched a heroin pickup for him. Fuentes, eager to catch a concert by the rapper Scarface, sent his mother instead to gather the 10-kilo drop. She collected the drugs, but the entire shipment was lost when she failed to use a turn signal and was stopped by police. [Chicago Tribune, 5-24-2012]

-- Catherine Venusto, 45, was arrested in July and charged with breaking into the computer system of the Northwestern Lehigh School District in Pennsylvania (where she formerly worked) and changing the records of her two children (and while at it, reading private e-mails of 10 school officials). Venusto allegedly switched a daughter's F grade to M (for medically excused) and one grade of her overachieving son from 98 to 99. [ABC News, 7-19-2012]

Should Be an Olympic Sport: Romanian gang members have apparently been apprehended after a series of robberies during March, April and May that resembled a scene from a recent "Fast and Furious" movie. The gang's vehicle approaches the rear of tractor-trailers traveling at highway speed, and gangsters climb onto the hood, grab the 18-wheeler's rear door, open it using specialized tools, and steal inventory, apparently without knowledge of the driver. In one video released by police in Bucharest, the gang members, after peering inside the trailer, decided to take nothing and climbed back out. [Daily Telegraph, 6-12-2012]

Chicago staged its annual gun buy-back program in June (a $100 gift card for every firearm turned in) amidst its worst homicide epidemic in years, in which 259 have died on city streets in the first six months of 2012. However, the program appears to be, inadvertently, a win-win project for both anti- and pro-gun forces. The city reported that 5,500 guns were removed from circulation (bringing the total to 23,000 since the program was inaugurated), and included this year were several machine guns. On the other hand, 60 of this year's guns were handed in by a local pro-gun organization, Guns Save Life, which promised to use its gift cards to buy ammunition for a National Rifle Association-supported shooting camp for kids. [Chicago Sun-Times, 7-1-2012]

Jacksonville, Fla., sheriff's officers were investigating in July a suspect (not identified) who they believe is responsible for several incidents in which boxes of ready-to-use saline enemas were purchased at a CVS drugstore, opened, used, put back in the boxes, resealed and returned for refund (and which in some cases wound up back on the store's shelves). The sheriff's office noted that the man they suspect is in custody, having been arrested on unrelated charges in June. [The Smoking Gun, 6-29-2012]

British Scared-y Cats: U.K. bureaucrats are constantly drawing criticism for their alleged over-concern with safety. In June, Royal Mail notified businesses on a street in Doncaster that it would no longer deliver to them on rainy days because the street was too slippery. (One clumsy postman had just suffered a broken shoulder when he slipped and fell.) And in May, the Somerset County Council ordered the removal of a yard sign advertising an upcoming public fundraiser on the ground that someone might bump into it at night. An event organizer pointed out that the particular yard sign was stuck in the grass directly in front of a tree, which was likely equally hard to see in darkness. [The Star (Sheffield, England), 6-13-2012] [Western Daily Press, 5-17-2012]

(1) "Meth Lab Explodes in Man's Pants" was the headline on one newspaper's version of an April Associated Press dispatch from Okmulgee County, Okla. Police have warned that "one-pot" labs, "cooking" in a soda bottle, can be ready to go in about 40 minutes, but that the contents are many times more highly pressurized than, say, a fizzing soda bottle. (2) At first impression, visitors to New York City's Central Park seemed excited to be greeted by a man dressed as the "Sesame Street" character Elmo, but then, when a crowd gathers, Elmo incongruously begins a raunchy anti-Semitic rant, denouncing various Jewish conspiracies. Following complaints of several incidents, in June, police took him to a hospital for observation. [Associated Press via Kansas City Star, 4-27-2012] [The Smoking Gun, 6-25-2012]

Thanks This Week to Sandy Pearlman, Jeremy Hamilton, Scott Huber, Lisa Stapleton, Ben Hestir, Reid Stacey, and Roy Henock, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

New York City's tap water is already widely regarded as world-class, in safety and taste (and subjected to a half-million tests a year by the city's Department of Environmental Protection). However, two entrepreneurs recently opened the Molecule water bar in the city's East Village, selling 16-ounce bottles of the same water for $2.50, extra-filtered through their $25,000 machine that applies UV rays, ozone treatment and "reverse osmosis" in a seven-stage process to create what they call "pure H2O." The owners of Molecule are a restaurateur/art dealer and a "social-justice activist" who is a "former world champion boomerang player," according to a July Wall Street Journal profile. [Wall Street Journal, 7-18-2012]

-- In 2011, the Liberty County, Texas, home of Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton was raided by sheriff's deputies, the FBI, state officials and a trailing media crew (alerted by the sheriff), checking out a tip that "25 to 30" children's bodies were buried on the property. No evidence was found, and in a June 2012 lawsuit for defamation, Bankson and Charlton claim that the sheriff had organized the raid knowing full well that the tipster was a self-described "prophet" who had disclosed that her information came from "Jesus and the (32) angels" who were present with her. The sheriff said he did everything "by the book" and that a judge signed the search warrant confirming "probable cause" to believe that at least one crime (if not 25 to 30) had been committed. [Courthouse News, 6-8-2012; Simple Justice blog, 6-19-2012]

-- In July, the online magazine Salon profiled Virtuous Pedophiles -- an effort by two notably articulate men who insist that their sexual fascination with children would never extend to personal contact. Said one (who claims "advanced degrees from prestigious universities"): "We do not choose to be attracted to children (but) we can resist the temptation to abuse children sexually." He added, curiously, that "many" of the Virtuous Pedophiles "present no danger to children whatsoever." Lamented the group's co-founder, "Almost any group in the world can hold a convention, look out on a sea of faces, and say, 'These are people like me,'" but because pedophiles are treated with such scorn, "we can't." [Salon, 7-1-2012]

-- North Carolina state Rep. Becky Carney, an environmental activist, inadvertently cast the deciding vote in July to open up natural-gas hydraulic fracking in the state. The legislature had passed the bill earlier, but it was vetoed by Gov. Bev Perdue, and the House needed exactly 72 votes to override the veto and enact the bill. Carney's tireless lobbying of colleagues appeared to have helped halt the overriders at 71 votes, but when it came time to push the buttons, Carney accidentally became the 72nd. She could be heard on her microphone in the chamber, saying, "Oh my gosh. I pushed green." [The Atlantic blog, 7-3-2012]

-- "It's Just Politics": (1) Mark Schimel told reporters in Albany, N.Y., in May that it was nothing personal that caused him to run for the Republican nomination to the state assembly from Nassau County -- where the incumbent is his estranged wife, Democrat Michelle Schimel. Mark's mother seemed quite upset at her son. "I can't believe he'd do a thing like this (to Michelle)," she told a reporter. "I'm going to talk to him." (2) Democratic attorney Christopher Smith is the presumptive nominee for a Florida Senate seat from Fort Lauderdale, and it was just a coincidence, said Republican leadership in June, that their candidate is attorney Christopher Smithmyer. Registered Democrats dominate the district, but Smithmyer may win some votes by confusion. [New York Daily News, 5-13-2012] [Tampa Bay Times, 6-9-2012]

-- Coming Soon to American Democracy? (1) In March in Ireland, Bundoran Town Councilor Florence Doherty became exasperated with colleague Michael McMahon, who opposed a bill to strengthen whistleblowers' rights. "(T)his country doesn't need whistleblowers," McMahon said. Doherty replied, "Of course it does, you asshole." In a later radio interview, Doherty repeated her word-of-the-day four times. (2) In a live TV debate in July, Mohammed Shawabka, a member of the Jordanian parliament, became enraged when his opponent, Mansour Seif-Eddine Murad, called him a secret Israeli agent. Shawabka removed a shoe and hurled it at Murad, who ducked, but then Shawabka pulled a silver pistol from his waistband and waved it around (though no shots were fired). [Donegal Democrat, 3-7-2012] [Associated Press via Fox News, 7-9-2012]

-- Mainstreaming: In May, the brother of Jane Svoboda, 52, called for sympathy after a video surfaced of her addressing the Lincoln (Neb.) City Council with nonsense comments about Whitney Houston, Hillary Clinton and "corpse(s) found without clothes." The brother noted that his sister lives in an assisted living community and has been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Nonetheless, as the Lincoln Journal Star pointed out, Ms. Svoboda continues to be a registered lobbyist at the state capitol. [Lincoln Journal Star, 5-12-2012]

William Voss has a tough job, noted a Bloomberg News report in June. He is CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, which relentlessly campaigns for improving airline safety regulations, but admits that his primary obstacle is ... safe airlines. (The last major-airline accident in the U.S. was 11 years ago, leading to complacency by airlines, passengers and regulators.) "If anyone wants to advance safety through regulation," Voss said, "it can't be done without further loss of life." [Bloomberg News, 6-25-2012]

Perspective: The median annual per-capita income in the New York City borough of the Bronx is about $18,000. In the adjacent borough of Manhattan, as the New York Post reported in May, a resident of a certain condominium on East 11th Street was about to pay over 50 times that amount -- just for a parking space. The space is a deluxe one, though: about 12 feet by 23 feet by 15 feet high, meaning that it can be configured to store more than one car. [MSNBC, 5-20-2012]

Yet another woman made the news recently for having loaded up, over several years, in breast augmentation surgery. Paula Simonds, 44, of Miami, who is known professionally as model Lacey Wildd, is approaching her goal of having breasts large enough to place her in the top five in the world. However, the quest is grossing out her six kids -- two young, two grown and (especially tough) two in high school, where the taunts flow freely. Currently, Simonds measures herself as an "L"-cup, headed for a "triple-M." [Daily Mail, 6-14-2012]

-- James Allan, 28, was sentenced to three years in prison in Oxford, England, in July for robbing a news shop. Allan's getaway was delayed when he insisted, repeatedly, on pushing the front door open when he obviously should have been pulling. Finally, exasperated, he yanked off his balaclava, exposing his face to the surveillance camera, kicked the door, breaking the glass, and escaped. Police arrested him about three hours later nearby. (The 2000 British movie "Snatch" featured just such a memorable scene of push/pull helplessness.) [Oxford Mail, 7-3-2012]

-- When the assistant manager arrived early on June 26 to open up the Rent-A-Center in Brockton, Mass., he encountered a man with his head stuck underneath the heavy metal loading bay door (obviously as a result of a failed burglary attempt during the night). "Hang tight!" the manager consoled the trapped man. "The police are on their way." Manuel Fernandes, 53, was arrested. [The Enterprise (Brockton), 6-26-2012]

(1) Our Lady of Sorrows Academy in Phoenix, playing for an Arizona state boys' baseball title in May, decided to forfeit the game rather than field a team against Mesa Preparatory Academy -- because Mesa's second-baseman was a girl, Paige Sultzbach. (In two regular-season meetings, Mesa had honored Our Lady's beliefs by benching Sultzbach.) (2) The Judson Independent School District near San Antonio fired a kindergarten teacher in June for arranging an unorthodox solution to a colleague's bullying-student problem. The teacher ordered the class's 24 other students to line up and slap the bully (and encouraging the students to "hit him harder") to reinforce the message of "why bullying is bad." [AZCentral.com (Phoenix), 5-9-2012] [Associated Press via ABC News, 6-18-2012]

Thanks This Week to Gary DaSilva, Jim Weiss, and Perry Levin, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.