For some reason, South Korea (with about one-sixth the men that America has) is the world's largest consumer of male cosmetics, with its leading company approaching $1 billion a year in sales. According to a September Bloomberg Business Week dispatch, South Korean males became fascinated with the country's 2002 World Cup soccer team's "flower men," who had smooth, flawless skin, and the craze took off from there. Said a male college student, "Having a clean, neat face makes you look sophisticated and creates an image that you can handle yourself well." Makeup routines include drawing "thicker, bolder" eyebrows and, of course, expert application of lipstick. Said one admiring woman, "I feel like I have more to talk about with guys who use makeup." [Bloomberg Business Week, 9-17-2012]

-- Cliche Come to Life: In an August report, the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs warned that the regional office building in Winston-Salem, N.C., was in danger of collapsing because there were too many claims files stacked on the sixth floor. "We noticed floors bowing under the excess weight to the extent that the tops of file cabinets were noticeably unlevel throughout the storage area." The report also warned of the potential of files falling on, and injuring, employees. For the short term, the agency relocated all the folders (estimated: 37,000) on the sixth floor to offices on the fifth, seventh and eighth floors. [Winston-Salem Journal, 8-31-2012]

-- For years, U.S. senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall (of the Select Committee on Intelligence) have been asking the director of National Intelligence to disclose how often the government might be "overcollecting" information on U.S. citizens by too enthusiastically applying the Patriot Act, but the director's office has maintained that such information, whether or not it reveals wrongdoing, is classified. In July, the office finally declassified one fact that it said the senators were free to use: that the government had "on at least one occasion" overcollected information in violation of constitutional protections -- but that's all. The number of times, and all other details, remain classified. [Lowering the Bar blog via Forbes, 7-25-2012]

-- In August, a Michigan government watchdog group learned, in a Freedom of Information Act request, that the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department still to this day retains one job classification for a horseshoer. (The department owns no horses.) Over the years, the position has become a patronage slot paying about $57,000 a year in salary and benefits, sometimes requiring the "horseshoer" to do "blacksmith" work such as metal repair. (Because of severe budget cuts, the city employees' union fights to retain every job, no matter its title.) [Michigan Capitol Confidential, 8-20-2012]

-- Are We Safe? In August, the former director of Homeland Security's office in charge of shoring up the nation's chemical plants against terrorist attacks told CBS News that, five years after Homeland Security started the chemical program, "90 percent" of the 5,000 most vulnerable plants have still not even been inspected. The official, Todd Keil, said that when he left the job in February, $480 million had been spent, but that no plant had a "site security plan" and that management of the program was "a catastrophic failure." (A July Government Accountability Office report confirmed that 4,400 chemical plants had not been properly inspected.) [CBS News, 8-2-2012]

(1) KETV (Omaha, Neb.) reported in September that local mother Andrea Kirby had decided to give away her stored-up breast milk to a family in greater need. She had amassed a freezer-full of 44 gallons for her now-8-month-old child. (2) How Hard Could Medical School Be? Tokyo police arrested Miyabi Kuroki, 43, in September, and charged him with forging a medical license in 2009 and subsequently treating patients at a Tokyo hospital, providing, among other things, examinations and electrocardiogram counseling. Hospital officials estimate he "treated" 2,300 patients before being caught. [Associated Press via Star Herald (Scottsbluff, Neb.), 9-12-2012] [Japan Today, 9-25-2012]

-- Photographer Clayton Cubitt's video-art exhibit "Hysterical Literature" (the first installment of which was reviewed in August) features an attractive woman sitting at a table reading mainstream literature aloud ("everything from Walt Whitman to a science book on fungus"), but in a sexy voice and accompanied by squirming in the chair prompted by unspecified activities of a "distractor" agent supplied by Cubitt. After a few minutes, it is clear that the woman is experiencing an orgasm. Cubitt told Salon.com that he was mocking the "quack Victorian medical theory of 'hysteria' in women." [Salon.com, 8-24-2012]

-- Without the work of scientists Gregory Gage and Tim Marzullo, we might never know the effect of playing a loud hip-hop song to create vibrations that make squids' pigmented cells change colors. The men's Backyard Brains setup involved a 1993 Cypress Hill hit ("Insane in the Brain"), an iPod nano, and a "suction electrode" to jar a Longfin Inshore's muscles to reveal the squid's "chromatophores" that are either red, brown or yellow. A Time magazine writer gave her take on the work's reason for being: "Because really, you know, why not?" [Time NewsFeed blog, 8-26-2012]

-- Canadian artist Taras Polataiko's two-week-long live re-creation of "Sleeping Beauty" was featured through early September at Ukraine's National Art Museum in Kiev, with an unexpected outcome. Five women had been chosen to fall asleep daily and, by signed contract, to agree to marry the first man who awakened them with a single kiss (thus to witness "the birth of love," according to Polataiko). Only one awoke during the exhibit, but since that payoff kiss was applied by a female gallery-goer, the contract could not be fulfilled in that Ukraine forbids same-sex marriage. [Associated Press via Los Angeles Times, 9-11-2012]

-- Francesco Piserchia, 36, filed a $17 million lawsuit in August against Bergen County, N.J., police, and individual officers, for being shot following a wild, high-speed car chase through residential neighborhoods in 2010. Although Piserchia and an associate had nearly hit a squad car and were fleeing on foot after their car crashed, they claim the police had no reason to shoot at them because, just moments before the shots, the men had decided to surrender. (In a separate matter, two officers involved were indicted by a grand jury in August for tampering with evidence in the case.) [WCBS-TV (New York City), 8-2-2012, 8-20-2012]

-- An unnamed passenger on the Russian rail company Krasprigorod won a lawsuit in September for his 2010 experience of being stuck in a crowded train station for two hours and having to endure "moral suffering" from exposure to other passengers cussing. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that the lawsuit (which also noted physical injuries including having his feet stepped on) originally asked the equivalent of $1,550 but that the court in Krasnoyarsk awarded much less. [RIA Novosti (Moscow) via United Press International, 9-4-2012]

Ihor Stetkewycz appeared in court in Warren, Mich., in June to answer for an indecent exposure incident, brought on, he told the judge, because his pants, purchased by his mother, were "10 sizes" too large. According to police sources, Stetkewycz had also recently dumped large sections of a tree in the middle of a Detroit street; had protection orders against him from two Warren neighbors; was late to the hearing in June because he raced down Interstate 94 chasing his allegedly stolen car that he had spotted on the way to court; and told a female TV reporter inquiring about the tree stumps, "I don't take no orders from no woman, by the way." He did promise to go clean up the tree parts: "I'm Mr. Clean Up." [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 6-7-2012]

Dakoda Garren, 19, was arrested in Vancouver, Wash., in September on suspicion of stealing an antique coin collection in May that was estimated to be worth $100,000. Garren and his girlfriend were identified after spending some of the coins at a movie theater and a pizza restaurant, using rare Liberty Head quarters (worth from $5 to $18,500) at their face value. [The Daily News (Longview, Wash.) via The Columbian, 9-20-2012]

At a conference in August, researchers from North Carolina State University demonstrated their latest technological advance in aiding "first responders" to peacetime and wartime disasters: cockroaches. Outfitting Madagascar hissing cockroaches with electronic backpacks that include antennas, batteries, cameras and microphones, the scientists hacked the bugs' nervous systems to steer them remotely into the tiniest of openings -- a crucial step toward finding survivors of earthquakes or bomb damage in densely built-up and populated areas. Said one researcher, to ABC News, "(S)omewhere in the middle (of tons of rubble) your kid is crying," and huge machines are "not very efficient" at finding him. [ABC News, 9-13-2012]

-- Cue the Black Helicopters: A website that tracks sometimes-obscure federal government purchases disclosed in August that the Social Security Administration had recently requested a price for 174,000 hollow-point bullets and that the National Weather Service had requested a price for 46,000 rounds of ammo for semi-automatic pistols. (The latter was subsequently corrected; it was actually the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Office that needed bullets.) Both agencies told reporters that they have armed officers investigating potential crimes. [CNSNews.com, 8-16-2012; Washington Post, 8-14-2012]

-- Weapons for the 21st Century: Thousands of farmers in the northeastern India state of Assam are growing the world's hottest chili peppers and selling them to the army to make weapons, reported London's The Guardian in a July dispatch. One expert said a "few drops" of "bhut jolokia" "could make you senseless." Blasting a container of it into a terrorist hideout, he said, would "make them all drop their guns" after "just one breath." (Bhut jolokia has also been used traditionally to repel elephant attacks.) [The Guardian, 7-29-2012]

-- In a tactical risk, Russian gay rights leaders went to court in Moscow in March to demand the right to hold a rally not only this year but, daring the city to oppress them, also a rally every year for the next 100 years. However, the city did not blink. It rejected the demand, and in August, a Moscow city court ruled that the city could be gay-rights-rally-free until the year 2112. [BBC News, 8-17-2012]

-- Because the words were not those ordinarily used by vandals keying a car's paint, Newcastle, England, police looked immediately to a better-educated vandal and arrested University of Newcastle professor Stephen Graham, who had been a prominent critic of neighborhood parking rules that allowed outsiders to use the few spaces on his street. Scratched into several outsiders' luxury cars' exteriors were words such as "arbitrary" and "really wrong" and "very silly" (as opposed to the usual crude vandal references to anatomy and maternal promiscuity). [Daily Telegraph (London), 8-30-2012]

(1) Arrested in New York City in August on charges that he used a tiny camera in a folded newspaper to crudely peek up female subway riders' skirts: Dr. Adam Levinson, assistant professor at the prestigious Mount Sinai school of medicine. (2) Arrested in Beverly Hills, Calif., in July and charged in a string of vandalism incidents (shooting metal marbles from a slingshot at windows of dozens of businesses and homes): investment banker Michael Poret, 58, of the Rodeo Drive office of UBS Financial Services. [New York Daily, News, 8-2-2012] [Los Angeles Times, 7-18-2012]

-- Carl Funk, 58, told Broward County, Fla., judge John Hurley (on a video feed from jail to a courtroom) that he is innocent of the seven-year-old charges (trespassing and open-alcoholic-container counts) and that, besides, he is now wheelchair-bound in pathetic medical condition and should be allowed to go home. The judge was skeptical, but finally, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel report, he offered to fine Funk only $50 on the charges, and Funk agreed to plead guilty. "Good luck, Funk," said Judge Hurley. At that point, Funk rose from his wheelchair and quickly walked away. Wrote the Sun-Sentinel: "Raising both hands, Judge Hurley declared, 'He's been cured.'" [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7-14-2012]

-- Missouri Associate Circuit Judge Barbara Peebles was suspended in September and recommended for removal by the state judicial commission for various offenses, including being late for work and destroying a court document in order to avoid embarrassment. The most serious charge, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, was that she allowed her "clerk," Whitney Tyler, who was Peebles' personal friend and hairdresser (and apparently without formal legal training), to dispose of as many as 350 cases as Tyler saw fit. Said one lawyer, "Until the judge (showed up), (Tyler) was the judge." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9-1-2012]

A sign at the entrance of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor asks that visitors "conduct yourself with dignity and respect at all times. Remember, this is hallowed ground." However, as the New York Post reported in September, visitors to the National September 11th Memorial in New York City show no such restraint, with some treating that hallowed ground more like a "Disney attraction." They sit (or worse, lie down) on the bronze-plaque names of the dead, and lay (and spill!) their drink cups on them, creating an "almost cheerful" atmosphere, the Post said. The head of New York City's retired association of emergency medical service firefighters said the elegant memorial more resembled a visitor's "kitchen table." [New York Post, 9-2-2012]

-- "Number 1" Complaints: (1) Albert Sultan filed a lawsuit in August in New York City against his hard-charging former boss, real estate broker Jack Terzi, accusing Terzi of various workplace abuses including (to make a point in front of co-workers) deliberately urinating on an item of Sultan's clothing. (2) Timothy Paez, 22, was arrested in Boulder, Colo., in July based on an incident at Shooters Grill and Bar, in which, after being rejected by a woman, he later approached her and allegedly urinated on her leg. (3) Australia's Illawarra District Rugby Union reported in July that it was investigating an unnamed Avondale player who had allegedly urinated all over his uniform pants during play so as to discourage his Vikings opponents from trying to tackle him. [New York Daily News, 8-11-2012] [Daily Camera (Boulder), 7-30-2012] [Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 7-6-2012]

-- July was especially active for bestiality arrests. Among them: Shane Walker, 38, and his wife, Sarah, 33, at a motel in Mesa, Ariz., where Sarah had supposedly planned to consummate her dream of sex with a German shepherd. Cody Slaughter, 22, in Yuma, Ariz., after an investigation revealed sexual assaults against a dog, a horse and a pig. And Dana Kintz, 28, pleaded guilty in St. Louis to performing sex acts on the dog belonging to her and her boyfriend, Shawn Ingram, 37. [New York Daily News, 7-4-2012] [Yuma Sun, 7-6-2012] [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7-11-2012]

Desperate Cries for Help: (1) The two aspiring robbers arrested for hitting Zhen Yang's convenience store in Gatineau, Quebec, in June were also immortalized by the store's surveillance video. As Yang resisted the masked, knife-wielding men, he spritzed one with a can of bear spray, sending the second man fleeing and temporarily blinding the first. As the heavily doused man tried to climb over the counter, Yang punched him, over and over again, on his buttocks. Police picked up both shortly afterward. (2) Latasha Singletary, 30, was arrested in Fall River, Mass., in June after allegedly robbing the same liquor store three times in a 24-hour period. The owner recognized her immediately because she had robbed the store two years earlier, as well. [Toronto Sun, 6-6-2012] [WLNE-TV (Providence, R.I.), 6-15-2012]

(1) A 44-year-old man dressed as Bigfoot (in a military-style ghillie suit) was accidentally run over by two cars on U.S. 93 south of Kalispell, Mont., on Aug. 26. Friends of the man said he was wearing the costume to convince people of Bigfoot's existence. (2) Former NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman acknowledged in July that he had recently met with his long-estranged father after 42 years. Mr. Philander Rodman lives in the Philippines, and by his count, has fathered 29 children by 16 mothers. [KAJ-TV (Kalispell), 8-27-2012] [Associated Press via New York Times, 7-2-2012]

Thanks This Week to Bruce Leiserowitz, Sandy Pearlman, Lance Ellisor, Gary Davidson, Jim Watson, Barry Rose, Jeff Ammons, John Beyrau, John McGaw, Steve Hopman, Ted Poppke, Roger Meiners, and Sherry Trujillo, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

And What Were Y-o-u Doing at Age 14? Among the students featured in Popular Science's September list of young inventors was Fabian Fernandez-Han, 14, of Conroe, Texas, who invented a bicycle that, when pedaled, also desalinates seawater (via reverse osmosis) from replaceable 15-gallon canisters. One hour of pedaling produces 20 gallons of drinkable water. Jack Andraka, 15, from Maryland, created a test for pancreatic cancer that is demonstrably much faster and more accurate than current diagnostics (using carbon nanotubes that can be specially activated by applications of the signature pancreatic-cancer protein, Mesothelin). [Popular Science, September 2012]

-- School officials in Grand Island, Neb., told Hunter Spanjer that the way he signs his name violates the schools' anti-weapons policy and that he'll have to abandon it. Hunter is 3 1/2 years old, deaf, fluent in the language Signing Exact English, and uses a hand flourish as his unique signature (registered with SEE), except that officials say the flourish looks like Hunter is threatening with a weapon. At press time, Hunter's parents were still negotiating with officials. [KOLN-TV (Lincoln), 8-28-2012]

-- An unidentified mother of twins was photographed at the Thanksgiving Point Deli in Lehi, Utah, in September apparently toilet-training her toddlers at a table. Another patron witnessed the mother's bringing in what at first glance looked like booster seats, but then the mom undid the kids' jumpsuits and placed them on the potties. A spokesperson for the deli (located 10 miles south of Salt Lake City) said the incident was over by the time it was reported to her, but the witness put a photo on the Internet (picked up by TV stations) so that millions of people could disapprove of the mother's parenting. [KNTX-TV (Bowie, Texas), 9-6-2012]

-- Police in Seneca Falls, N.Y., arrested Dawn Planty in August and charged her with statutory rape. Planty came to officers' attention when she called 911 to ask if the dispatcher knew the age of consent in the state because she had had sex with a 15-year-old boy recently and wanted to clear her conscience. [WHEC-TV (Rochester), 8-21-2012]

-- (1) The Washington Post, reporting in August the existence of a newly declassified communication between a cooperating Guantanamo Bay detainee and his lawyer, revealed that the "high-value" prisoner had, without explanation, been rewarded with a pet kitty cat. (2) On July 4, two peace activists who own a small advertising agency in Malmo, Sweden, pulled off their most audacious stunt yet by hiring a small plane to drop 800 teddy bears emblazoned with democracy-promoting messages over the capital of Belarus. The country's strongman president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, later fired two generals for their inability to prevent the breach of the country's airspace. [Washington Post, 8-16-2012] [New York Times, 8-2-2012]

-- Many Americans are still outraged that no major banking officials were punished for the malpractices that produced the 2008 financial collapse. However, in July, Richard Eggers, age 68 and with an otherwise-unblemished record, was fired by Wells Fargo -- only because of a 49-year-old conviction for attempting to rig a laundromat machine by making a "dime" out of cardboard. Wells Fargo said its hands were tied by a new federal law requiring dismissal of anyone with past convictions for "transactional crimes" (aimed at identity theft and money-laundering). (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which administers the law, has a waiver procedure, but the process is complicated, and Wells Fargo said it feared being fined if it did not terminate Eggers promptly.) [Associated Press via Des Moines Register, 8-29-2012]

-- Overtaking Washington, D.C., in Dysfunction: (1) Ever since Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy found 11,000 "rape kits" lying idle on police shelves in 2009, she has been seeking funding to test them. In a progress report in August 2012, of the 400 kits deemed most likely to yield results, 21 "serial rapists" were identified. (Manpower to find the men is unavailable, and yet to be learned is whether any have committed additional rapes since 2009.) (2) Two hours after an early morning multiple-shooting in Detroit on Sept. 1, a 36-year-old man reported to a fire station to turn himself in. However, firefighters were unable to persuade police to come arrest him, and eventually, reported WXYZ-TV, the firefighters put the man in a taxi and sent him to a police station. [WDIV-TV (Detroit), 8-23-2012] [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 9-2-2012]

-- A 30-year-old man told Providence, R.I., told police in August that he was the victim of a sexual assault, and police are investigating. The man said he had gone to the North Main Street Spa for a professional massage and was unable to avoid a sex act administered by his "masseuse," "Yo Yo." (The Providence Journal did not publish his name because he claims to be the victim of a sex crime.) [Providence Journal, 8-14-2012]

-- In July, Labor Party councillors in the Netherlands demanded that weather forecasters be punished for incorrect predictions -- since poor weather drives down resort business, resulting in slower hiring. One hotelier in Hoek van Holland lamented that the forecasters, ironically, were getting worse "(d)espite having more forecasting tools than ever before." (A week before that, tourist managers in Belgium reportedly called for "less pessimistic forecasts," and one urged meteorologists "to pay as much attention to sun as they do to rain.") [Daily Telegraph (London), 7-15-2012]

-- In a lower-level Norwegian soccer league match in May, player Talat Abunima was ejected for arguing with a referee who had just given him the benefit of a penalty. He was not fouled, he insisted. "(I) tripped over my own feet," he said later. "It was unbelievably clumsy of me and ... I felt I had to speak out." The referee first warned Abunima (a yellow card) for complaining and finally red-carded him, telling a local newspaper afterward, "It was a clear penalty. The player got it all wrong. I don't think the players know the rules properly." [Reuters via TheScore.com, 5-4-2012]

-- Sounds Like a Joke: (1) The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported in July that vandals had wrecked the pen that reptile farmer David Driver employed to confine his herd of 1,600 turtles -- and that they had all fled. (2) Apparently at their wits' end trying to get their rare Chilean flamingos to mate, handlers at the Drusillas Zoo Park in East Sussex, England, began piping in music at night, including songs by the human seduction machine, Barry White ("Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe"). [Chattanooga Times Free Press, 7-19-2012] [Press Association via West Australian (Perth), 8-10-2012]

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) The two robbers who walked into the 7-Eleven in Arlington, Va., in August apparently neglected to coordinate in advance and thus left empty-handed. As the first man pulled a gun and demanded money, the second, a few steps behind, tossed a firecracker on the floor, apparently to intimidate the clerk. However, it mainly served to scare the gunman, who dropped his pistol and ran out the door. (2) A 40-year-old man swiped a cellphone while visiting a patient at the Kagadi Hospital in Uganda in August. The facility is currently treating the country's Ebola virus outbreak, and the phone was in the room of an Ebola patient. Doctors urged the thief to return to the hospital for treatment. [Washington Post, 8-30-2012] [Daily Monitor (Kampala) via New York Daily News, 8-27-2012]

-- Ironies: (1) Five young men died in Ontario, Calif., in September when their car rolled over as many as five times after speeding through a red light at 1:45 in the morning. One of the occupants had sent Twitter messages during the ride referring to being "drunk," "going 120 drifting corners," and, daringly (in two messages), "YOLO" ("you only live once"). (2) A 47-year-old man was accidentally strangled in June in Eastern Cape province of South Africa. He had taken to wearing his recently deceased dog's leash around his neck in remembrance but, bending over, gotten the leash caught in a car's axle as it drove away. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles, 9-2-2012] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-11-2012]

Thanks This Week to John McGaw, Gary DaSilva, Sandy Pearlman, George Elyjiw, Conrad Golbov, James White, and Gary Abbott, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.