Unclear on the Concept (and the Image): The Associated Press, reporting in August from Jerusalem, noted that the ultra-Orthodox community's "modesty patrols" were selling eyeglasses with "special blur-inducing stickers" that fuzz up distant images so that offended men will not inadvertently spot immodestly dressed women. (The stickers apparently simulate nearsightedness, in that vision is clear in the near-field.) The "modesty patrols" have long tried to shame women dressed in anything other than closed-neck, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts, but may be losing that fight. A columnist for the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz praised the eyeglasses for shifting the responsibility to men for their priggishness. [Associated Press via Salon.com, 8-8-2012; Haaretz, 8-11-2012]

-- Periodically, News of the Weird reports on foreigners' cuisines that most Americans find "undelectable." A June Wall Street Journal story featured a hardy, fun-loving group of New Yorkers (the "Innard Circle") who dine monthly at out-of-the-way ethnic restaurants in order to sample such dishes as camel's eyeball ("way different from a goat's eyeball," said one member) and "crispy colorectal," and had recently learned, from a non-English-speaking waitress, that they had just consumed bull's diaphragm. Another member admitted "an element of showing off" to the exercise, and acknowledged that not all rookie members return for a second meal. The one body part that no one seems to recall having tried yet: uterus. [Wall Street Journal, 6-24-2012]

-- The way it usually happens is Mom and Dad start a road trip with their children, but after a rest stop, they fail to notice that one of the kids is not on board, and they may be well down the road before they turn around. However, in June, the family member left behind at a Memphis, Tenn., rest stop was Dad, and for 100 miles, no one grasped that he was missing. The family was traveling in a van, and everyone presumed Dad was in the back. He was still at the gas station, calling his own phone (which was in the back of the van). Dad finally reached Mom in the van by posting to Facebook. [WBIR-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), 6-25-2012]

-- In June, inmate Michelle Richards, 33, was about to begin her sentence at the Albany County (N.Y.) jail when guards discovered a hypodermic needle and seven packets of heroin inside her vagina. (She had been arrested for possessing a needle and heroin in her bra.) Richards' arrest came about a week after inmate Andrea Amanatides was caught at the very same jailhouse using the same hiding place to sneak in heroin and 256 prescription pills (reported in News of the Weird eight weeks ago). (Amanatides' stash was discovered when the baggie holding it became dislodged and broke open on the floor.) [Times Union (Albany), 6-13-2012]

-- Stores and transportation carriers are, after all these years, still unsure about which "assistance animals" they must allow without violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. Under the U.S. Department of Transportation's latest draft guidelines for airlines, released in February, miniature horses and pot-bellied pigs are allowed on board under certain conditions, but not ferrets, rodents, spiders, snakes or other reptiles. Apparently there is a North American Potbellied Pig Association, whose vice president pointed out to CNSNews.com that swine can be trained to open and close doors and to use a litter box. [CNS News, 7-6-2012]

-- Another Fortuitous Injury: Fortunately, 9-year-old Jacob Holdaway got hit in the head so hard during a game of kickball in Fairland, Ind., in July that he started vomiting and having severe headaches. Because his parents took him to a hospital for that head smack, doctors found a golfball-sized tumor that might not have been discovered until after it had become dangerously large. Doctors were able to remove most of it and suspect it was benign. [WRTV (Indianapolis), 7-17-2012]

-- Another Absent-Minded Musician: The most recent musician to carry a rare, expensive instrument on public transportation but then forget to take it with him was the person who in July left a borrowed Stradivarius violin on a train when he got off in Bern, Switzerland. Initially, the musician panicked, but the violin was eventually turned in by a good Samaritan. (The last News of the Weird report of such a Stradivarius was the one accidentally left in a New York City taxicab in 2008. That instrument, reported as worth $4 million, was also returned.) [Huffington Post, 7-31-2012]

-- Several inventors have attempted over the years to transport bodily sensations over the Internet so that couples separated by distance can simulate personal affections to each other. Now comes Hooman Samani of the Singapore company Lovotics, introducing his "Kissenger" at a design conference in Newcastle, England, in June. Kissenger is a large, soft ball with human-like lips and many pressure points, connected in tandem by the Internet, so that the unique lip movements by one lover are received precisely by the other as if their mouths were actually working the kiss. (In May 2011, Kajimoto Lab in Tokyo introduced a machine with a straw-like device that, when rotated by one lover's tongue, theoretically rotated one in the partner's device, thus simulating a "French kiss." That simulator, though, lacked the pillow-like facial feel of the Kissenger.) [New Scientist, 7-19-2012]

-- Attendance is still strong in tiny Shingo, Japan, where villagers are certain that Jesus Christ is buried. About 500 tourists joined the celebration on June 3 (an event first held in 1964), in honor of Jesus' relocation there (presumably a voluntary journey from Calvary after the crucifixion). According to legend, he lived out his life in Shingo uneventfully, and a festival with dancing girls marks the anniversary. [Kyodo News via Japan Times, 6-5-2012]

-- News of the Weird has reported several times on farmers who are certain that treating their cows to better lifestyles improves the quality of their milk and their meat. In July, London's Daily Telegraph, in a dispatch from Paris, touted Jean-Charles Tastavy's experiment feeding three cows with a fine wine for four months (in a mixture, along with their usual barley and hay). (They "loved" it and consumed it "with relish," said the farm's owner.) The resulting meat, labeled "Vinbovin," is now a delicacy in Paris restaurants (despite steeper prices to reflect the increased feeding costs for the cows). [Daily Telegraph, 7-10-2012]

-- Michael Wyatt first made News of the Weird in 1991 when foot fetishism was viewed as unfit to report in most newspapers. Several arrests (owing to his aggressiveness and threats of amputating feet) have followed, resulting in jail sentences, but Wyatt is apparently still unable to resist his urges. In July in Faulkner County, Ark., Wyatt, 51, was sentenced to a year in prison for violating the terms of a deferred sentence he had received for harassing a woman about her feet in 2011. [Reuters via KWCH-TV (Wichita, Kan.), 7-11-2012]

-- William "The Hackney Mole Man" Lyttle (first mentioned in News of the Weird in 2001) died in 2010 after spending most of his last 40 years compulsively digging elaborate tunnels underneath his home in east London. By the time authorities could stop him, the hollow shafts were endangering the street and adjacent homes. He was ordered to pay the equivalent of $560,000 so that the holes could be filled, and in July 2012 the refurbished, supposedly structurally sound home was placed at auction and drew a winning bid of the equivalent of about $1.5 million. [The Guardian, 7-19-2012]

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.