"Coming Up Next! The Resurrection! Live!": "If the Messiah descends from the Mount of Olives as foretold in the Bible," wrote the Los Angeles Times in an October dispatch from Jerusalem, the two largest Christian television networks in the U.S. promise to cover the arrival live from a hilltop in the city. Daystar Television has already been beaming a 24/7 webcam view, and Trinity Broadcasting Network bought the building next door to Daystar's in September and has already begun staging live and pre-recorded programs using the broad expanse of the Holy Land city as background. [Los Angeles Times, 10-1-2012]

-- Once again, in September, the upscale Standard Hotel, in New York City's lower Manhattan, made headlines for the views it provides to amazed pedestrians. In 2009, it was the hotel's floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing amorous couples at play (unless the guests knew to draw the curtains), especially delighting out-of-towners seeking inexpensive entertainment. Now, a September 2012 report in the New York Daily News revealed that the restrooms at the hotel's Boom-Boom Room restaurant posed a bigger problem: no curtains at all. One restroom user, from Australia, said, "Sitting on the royal throne, you don't expect a public viewing." On the other hand, the Daily News noted one gentleman relieving himself and waving merrily at the gawking crowd below. [New York Daily News, 9-11-2012]

-- Valerie Spruill, 60, of Doylestown, Ohio, disclosed publicly in September that she had unknowingly married her own father following the dissolution of her first marriage, which had produced three children. Percy Spruill, a "nice man," she said, died in 1998, and Valerie told the Akron Beacon Journal that she had heard family rumors after that but only confirmed the parentage in 2004 (with DNA from an old hairbrush). After eight years of silence, from embarrassment, she went public, she said, as an example to help other women who come from tumultuous childhoods in which many men are in their mothers' lives. [Akron Beacon Journal, 9-8-2012]

-- Earlier this year, the National Football League suspended some New Orleans Saints players and the head coach for having a reward system that paid players for purposely injuring opponents. In September, coach Darren Crawford of the Tustin (Calif.) Pee Wee Red Cobras team was suspended when former players reported that the coach ran an apparently similar scheme among his 10- and 11-year-olds, using a cash reward of up to $50 for the "hit of the game" (with last year's top prize going to the boy who left an opposing running back with a mild concussion). At press time, the investigation was ongoing, and no charges had been filed. [Orange County Register, 9-27-2012]

-- Because We Can, That's Why: In September, the National Geographic cable TV show "Taboo" featured three young Tokyo partiers as examples of the "bagel head" craze in which fun-lovers inject saline just under the skin of the forehead to create a swelling and then pressure the center to achieve a donut look that lasts up to 24 hours before the saline is absorbed into the body. Some adventurers have injected other areas of the body -- even the scrotum. [Daily Mail (London), 9-25-2012]

-- Recurring Theme: In Ventura, Calif., in September, once again, a scammer tried to bilk victims out of money by assuring them that he could double their cash (in this case, $14,000) merely by spraying it with a secret chemical. (Of course, the victims had to wait several hours for their newly doubled cash to dry and eventually discovered that the scammer had substituted blank paper and by that time was long gone.) But the weirdest aspect of the scam is that people who are so unsophisticated as to fall for it somehow managed to amass, in this tight economy, $14,000 cash to begin with. [Ventury County Star, 9-20-2012]

-- For a September beauty contest of female college students in China's Hubei province, certain minimum body requirements were established at the outset (beyond the traditional chest, waist and hip sizes). Among them, according to a report in China's Global Post: The space between the candidate's pupils should be 46 percent of the distance between each pupil and the nearer ear, and the distance between a candidate's nipples should be at least 20cm (7.8 inches). [Agence France-Presse via New York Daily News, 9-7-2012]

-- Punishment Must Fit the Crime: (1) In September, Britain's Leeds Crown Court meted out "punishment" to a 25-year-old man convicted of sneaking into the changing room of China's female swimmers during the Olympics: He was banned -- for five years -- from entering any female toilet or changing room. (2) In September, the city of Simi Valley, Calif., adopted Halloween restrictions on the residences of its 119 registered sex offenders, forbidding enticing displays and requiring signs reading "No candy or treats at this residence." Shortly after that, several of the sex offenders sued the city for violating their rights, in that none of the offenders' convictions were for molestations that occurred during Halloween. (The lawsuit is pending.) [BBC News, 9-17-2012] [Los Angeles Times, 10-1-2012]

-- In October, Britain's Gravesham Borough Council, weary of neighbors' complaints about the noise and smell from Roy Day's brood of 20 birds, ordered him to remove them and find them a new home. Day, a member of the National Pigeon Racing Association, told reporters of the futility of the order: "They are homing pigeons." Said a friend, wherever Day sends them, "(T)hey will just fly straight back to him. ... He has never lost one." [Daily Telegraph, 10-19-2012]

(1) Richard Parker Jr., 36, was arrested in New London, Conn., in September after allegedly hitting a man several times with a pillow, then taking his car keys and driving off. (2) An 18-year-old college student who had moved to New York City only three weeks earlier was knocked briefly unconscious in September when a mattress fell 30 stories to the sidewalk from a building on Broad Street in Manhattan. [The Day (New London), 9-20-2012] [New York Daily News, 9-20-2012]

(1) James Davis, 73, has been ordered by the town of Stevenson, Ala., to disinter his wife's body from his front yard and re-bury it in a cemetery. The front yard is where she wanted to be, said Davis, and this way he can visit her every time he walks out the front door. Davis, who is challenging the order at the Court of Appeals, said he feels singled out, since people in Stevenson "have raised pigs in their yard," have "horses in the road here" and "gravesites here all over the place." (2) In October, eight units in the Clear View Apartments in Holland Township, Mich., were destroyed, with two dozen people displaced, when one resident, preparing a meal of squirrel, had a propane torch accident as he was attempting to burn off the rodent's fur. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 8-19- 2012] [WOOD-TV (Grand Rapids), 10-11-2012]

Recurring Theme: Eric Carrier, 24, was charged once again in September, in Hampton, N.H., with attempting to commit indecent exposure by his scheme of faking a brain injury so that he could hire an in-home nurse to change his diaper regularly. He was similarly charged in July 2011 in Hooksett, N.H., after soliciting five women on Craigslist, and convicted in July 2012. (Though not explicit in news reports, the nature of the charges suggests that Carrier can very well control his bowel movements.) [Union Leader (Manchester), 9-20-2012]

It has been four years since News of the Weird mentioned the growing controversy over one response to Peru's stray-cat problem, especially in the suburbs of Lima, and still, the outrage continues. Each September, the city of La Quebrada holds its Gastronomic Festival of the Cat, in which the country's chefs try to out-do each other with creative gourmet feline (e.g., cat stew, grilled cat with huacatay herbs), which some Peruvians, of course, believe to be aphrodisiacs. Said one Peruvian, such cultural events "are our roots and can't be forgotten." Even so, animal rights activists have stepped up their protests. [BBC News, 10-6-2012]

Thanks This Week to Sandy Pearlman, Wesley Wegley, Gary DaSilva, Christopher Smith, Debra Taylor, Milford Sprecher, and Perry Levin, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Horse show jumping is a longtime Olympics sport, but for the last 10 years, equestrians have been performing in "horseless" show jumping, in which horse courses are run by "riders" on foot (who, by the way, do not straddle broomsticks). According to an October report in The Wall Street Journal, an international association headed by retired pro equestrian Jessica Newman produces at least 15 shows a year, with between 40 to 130 competitors galloping over jumps that vary from two to four feet high (five feet in "Grand Prix" events), with the "riders" graded as if they were on horses (timed, with points off for contacting the rails). Explained Newman about the shows' success: "It's just fun to be a horse." [The Wall Street Journal, 10-8-2012]

-- Official Gaydar: Malaysia's Education Ministry has held at least 10 seminars recently to teach parents and teachers how to head off the pesky homosexuality that their kids may be in "danger" of developing. According to officials, sure signs are when boys wear "V-neck" or sleeveless shirts or carry big handbags. For girls, the most obvious sign is "having no affection for boys." Last year, according to a September Reuters report, the government set up camps specifically to teach "masculine behavior" to "effeminate" boys. [Reuters via Washington Post, 9-14-2012]

-- Championship eaters gobble down hot dogs on New York's Coney Island, but in August, when a Filipino restaurant in Brooklyn wanted a more ethnic contest, it offered plates of "baluts" -- the Philippine delicacy of duck fetuses. Wayne Algenio won, stuffing 18 down his throat in five minutes. Typically, the baluts have barely begun to develop, sometimes allowing a "lucky" diner to sense in his mouth the crackle of a beak or the tickle of a feather. Since baluts are exotic, they are considered to be (as is often the case in Asia) aphrodisiacs. [Huffington Post, 8-27-2012]

-- Surviving a cobra bite in Nepal is simple, some natives believe. If the victim bites the snake right back, to its death, the venom is rendered harmless. One confident farmer bitten in August in Biratnagar told BBC News that he went about his business normally after fatally biting his attacker and survived only after his family convinced him that perhaps the custom was ridiculous and hauled him to a hospital. [BBC News, 8-13-2012]

-- A September religious festival in Nanchang, China, is a favorite of beggars, as visitors are in a generous mood, but officials expressed concern this year about the increasing hordes of panhandlers harassing the pilgrims. Thus, town officials ordered all festival beggars to be locked up in small cages (too tiny to allow standing) to minimize the hustling. Beggars are free to leave, but then must stay away permanently. Most beggars chose to stay since they still earned more in festival cages than they would have on the street. [Daily Mail, 9-19-2012]

-- In August, schoolboy Charlie Naysmith of Christchurch, England, taking a nature walk near Hengistbury Head beach, came upon a rocklike substance that turned out to be petrified whale vomit -- which, to his surprise, proved worth the equivalent of from $16,000 to $64,000. "Ambergris," a waxy buildup from the intestines of a sperm whale, produces a foul odor but is valuable commercially for prolonging the scent of a perfume. (Actually, after floating in the sun, on salt water, for decades, the ambergris on the beach was smooth and sweet-smelling.) [Daily Echo (Bournemouth), 8-25-2012]

-- Tucker, an 8-year-old black Labrador mix, is the only dog in the world trained to detect the faint whiff of the tiniest specks of whale feces in the open ocean water (and from as far as a mile away!). A September New York Times dispatch from coastal Washington state noted that the 85 or so orcas that populate the area have been identified and tracked for decades, but locating them at any given time was always a problem until Tucker came along. One of his trainers explained that the dog's directional signals are accurate but often subtle (such as by a twitch of the ear). [New York Times, 9-1-2012]

-- The CIA and the National Security Agency may play roles, but Kentucky's homeland security law explicitly acknowledges "God" as the key to the war on terrorism. In August, the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to hear atheists' challenges to the state's 2002 "legislative finding" that the state's "safety and security" cannot be achieved without God's help. A lower court wrote that since the law did not "advance" religion but merely paid "lip service" to a belief in God, it did not violate the separation of church and state doctrine. [Louisville Courier-Journal, 8-19-2012]

-- Seventy people, including 20 children, were discovered in August in an eight-story-high, all-underground bunker in Kazan in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, and authorities said the quasi-religious sect had probably been there for nearly 10 years without heat or forced ventilation -- or sunlight. The group is nominally Islamist, but according to a dispatch by London's The Guardian, the sect is more likely under the individual control of 83-year-old, self-described prophet Fayzrahman Satarov. [The Guardian, 8-9-2012]

-- The Tax on Worship: When the Roman Catholic Church in Germany warned in September that too many Catholics were opting out of paying the country's "religious tax," many Americans got their first-ever notice that some European democracies actually tax worship. The Catholic Church made it official that anyone backing out of the income tax surcharge would be ineligible to receive Holy Communion or religious burial (although the tax avoider could still receive Last Rites). (Under the German constitution, a church can directly recoup its expenses from members or choose to allow the government to collect the levy on the church's behalf, minus a collection fee. Two German states add 8 percent to whatever the church member's tax bill is, and the other states add 9 percent.) [BBC News, 9-24-2012]

-- The Bronx, where nearly one-third of the population lives in poverty, is the poorest of the five New York City boroughs, with per-capita income 70 percent lower than neighboring Manhattan's. Yet among the city's most ambitious public works projects under construction is an 18-hole golf course in the Bronx's Ferry Point Park, estimated to cost the city $97 million, according to a September New York Times report. Furthermore, golf may be losing popularity. The Times reported that rounds of golf in New York City have dwindled (from 880,000 on 12 municipal courses in 1966 to 561,000 on 13 courses in 2011). From the city's standpoint, it gets a course to be operated by a Donald Trump company and is hoping to build a waterfront esplanade adjacent to the course. [New York Times, 9-29-2012]

-- Update: As News of the Weird mentioned in July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found 11 instances since 2000 in which ultra-Orthodox circumcision priests (mohelim) had passed along the herpes simplex virus from their saliva when they used the ancient method of blood-removal from the wound by sucking it clean. Responding in September, New York City's Health Department ordered the mohelim to warn parents of the danger and to require written consent for the ritual, but in October, three rabbis and three Jewish organizations challenged the order in federal court, arguing that Jewish law "requires" that particular method of blood removal. (According to the CDC, in 10 of the 11 cases, hospitalization was required, and two boys died.) [Associated Press via Knoxville News-Sentinel, 10-11-2012]

(1) Todd Kettler, 37, was arrested in October in Kalamazoo Township, Mich., and charged with robbing a Southfield, Mich., bank five days earlier. The manager of a strip club in the Township had noticed that Kettler was handing women money saturated with red dye, and called the police. (2) Two men, ages 45 and 42, were arrested in Toronto in September after they walked into a neighborhood money-transfer store with $520,250 in a duffel bag and attempted to wire that amount to an address in Los Angeles. Police charged them in connection with an ongoing money-laundering investigation. [WDIV-TV (Detroit), 10-9-2012] [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 9-24-2012]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).

For September's Digital Design Weekend at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, artists Michiko Nitta and Michael Burton commissioned soprano Louise Ashcroft to sing, altering pitch and volume while wearing a face mask made of algae. According to the artists, since algae's growth changes with the amount and quality of carbon dioxide it receives, Ashcroft's voice, blowing CO2 against the algae, should vary the growth's "taste" as to bitterness or sweetness. After the performance, the audience sampled the algae at various stages and apparently agreed. The artists said they were demonstrating how biotechnology could transform organisms. [V&A Museum press release via io9.com blog, 9-27-2012]

-- Jordan and Bryan Silverman's start-up venture, Star Toilet Paper, distributes rolls to public restrooms in restaurants, stadiums and other locations absolutely free -- because the brothers have sold ads on each sheet. (Company slogan: "Don't rush. Look before you flush.") Jordan, with 50 advertisers enlisted so far, told the Detroit Free Press in August that he came up with the idea, of course, while sitting on the can at the University of Michigan library. [Detroit Free Press via USA Today, 8-21-2012]

-- First-World Problems: After an international trade association reported that women bought 548 million pairs of shoes in 2011 (not even counting those used exclusively for sports), the manufacturer Nine West has decided to start its own cable TV channel with programing on "various aspects of footwear," according to an August New York Times report. Programs will feature celebrities rhapsodizing about their favorite pair, women who hoard shoes (purchasing many more than they know they'll ever wear even one time), tips on developing one's stiletto-walking skills and shoe closet designs. It's about a "conversation," said a Nine West executive, "not about a shoe." [New York Times, 8-21-2012]

-- Habersham Funding of Georgia and its competitors make their money by buying terminally ill clients' life insurance policies for lump sums, then continuing to pay the policies' premiums so that they collect as beneficiaries upon death. The companies' business model therefore depends on those clients dying quickly; a client who outlives expectations turns the investment sour. Thus, according to an August report by the New York Times, the companies run extensive background checks on the illnesses and lifestyles of potential clients and employ sophisticated computer algorithms that predict, better than doctors can, how long a client will live. Supposedly, according to the report, the companies are nonchalant about erroneous predictions. No company, they claim, has an official policy of hoping for early death. [New York Times, 8-11-2012]

-- Scorpion antivenom made in Mexico sells in Mexico for about $100 a dose, but for a while over the last year, the going rate in the emergency room of the Chandler (Ariz.) Regional Medical Center was $39,652 a dose, charged to Marcie Edmonds, who was stung while opening a box of air-conditioner filters in June. She received two doses by IV and was released after three hours, to later find a co-pay bill of $25,537 awaiting her (with her Humana plan picking up $57,509), according to the Arizona Republic newspaper. The Republic found that Arizona hospitals retailed it for between $7,900 and $12,467 per dose -- except for Chandler. Following the newspaper's report, Chandler decided to re-price the venom at $8,000 a dose, thus eating a $31,652 "loss." [Arizona Republic, 9-4-2012, 9-20-2012]

-- Among the least-important effects of last summer's drought in the Midwest: Officials overseeing the annual Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw said there would be fewer high-quality cow patties. Said chairperson Ellen Paulson: "When it's hot, the cows don't eat as much. And what was produced, they just dried up too quick." A few patties had been saved from the 2011 competition, but, she said, "It's not like you can go out and buy them." [Wisconsin State Journal, 8-23-2012]

-- The ongoing feud between two Warwick, R.I., households has intensified, according to an August complaint. Kathy Melker and Craig Fontaine charged that not only has neighbor Lynne Taylor been harassing them with verbal insults and threats, but that Taylor has now taught her cockatoo to call Melker, on sight, a nasty epithet (which rhymes with "clucking bore"). "I'm 53 years old, and I've never been called (that phrase) in my life," Melker said. [RhodyBeat.com (Providence), 8-16-2012]

-- At least two teams of Swiss researchers are developing tools that can improve farmers' efficiency and reduce the need for shepherds. The research group Kora has begun outfitting sheep with heart rate monitors that, when predators approach, register blood-pressure spikes that are texted to the shepherd, summoning him to the scene. Another inefficiency is cow farmers' frequent needs to locate and examine cows that might be in heat, but professors at a Bern technical college are testing placing thermometers in cows' genitals, with text messages alerting the farmer that a specific cow is ready for mating. (Since most insemination is done artificially, farmers can reduce the supply of bull semen they need to keep in inventory.) [New York Times, 10-2-2012]

-- Researchers writing in the journal Animal Behaviour in July hypothesized why male pandas have sometimes been seen performing handstands near trees. They are urinating, the scientists observed, and doing handstands streams the urine higher on the tree, presumably signaling their mating superiority. A San Diego Zoo researcher involved in the study noted that an accompanying gland secretion gives off even more "personal" information to other pandas than the urine alone. [Live Science, 8-28-2012]

-- Spending on health care for pets is rising, of course, as companion animals are given almost equal status as family members. In Australia, veterinarians who provide dental services told Queensland's Sunday Mail in August that they have even begun to see clients demanding cosmetic dental work -- including orthodontic braces and other mouth work to give dogs "kissable breath" and smiles improved by removing the gap-tooth look. [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 8-12-2012]

Endangering the "Presumption of Innocence": (1) Roy Mullen, posing for his most recent photo to be posted on the Tennessee sex offender registry in September, showed up wearing a t-shirt reading "Love Sucks / True Love Swallows." (2) Hubert Leverich, 40, was arrested in Danville, Va., in September and charged with sexual abuse of an underage girl. Leverich's permanently tattooed forehead reads "Felon Thoughts" and (in English gothic lettering) "Insane." [The Smoking Gun, 9-18-2012] [News & Advance (Danville), 9-6-2012]

-- Pathetic: (1) Kalpeshkumar Patel, 40, failed in June to carry out his longstanding threat to burn down the Chevron station in High Springs, Fla. After dousing his car with gasoline in front of the store, he realized he had no lighter or matches and had to ask several customers, without success, to help him out. He was arrested before he could do any damage. (2) Ignatius "Michael" Pollara, 46, and his mother, 70, were arrested following what police said was a 10-year shoplifting spree that might have spanned 50 states. They were nabbed in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because, said sheriff's Sgt. Rich Rossman, Pollara could not resist using a "rewards" card traced to him, which he used to get credit for some of the purchases he had switched for more expensive items. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-10-2012]

Recent, apparently dramatic public appearances of Jesus: Beeville, Tex.; August (Jesus in a breakfast taco). Belfast, Northern Ireland; August (Jesus on a tree stump in the Belfast City Cemetery). Sunderland, England; June (Jesus among the peeling paint on the door of a Chinese-food takeout stand). Port St. Lucie, Fla.; May (Jesus on the television show "The Bachelor" -- at least as per a woman's photo of the TV screen during the show). Splendora, Tex.; May (mold on a bathroom wall). New Orleans; April (Jesus in a shadow cast through a chandelier in the Ursuline Academy Chapel). Charleston, S.C.; April (Jesus on the back of a dead stingray). Clermont, Fla.; March (Jesus on an electric company meter at the Torchlite RV Park). Beeville: [KENS-TV (San Antonio), 8-6-2012] Belfast: [UTV New Media (Belfast), 8-9-2012] Sunderland: [Sunderland Echo, 6-28-2012] Port St. Lucie: [WPBF-TV (West Palm Beach), 5-15-2012] Splendora: [KTRK-TV (Houston), 5-31-2012] New Orleans: [WWL-TV via KTHV-TV (Little Rock, Ark.), 4-3-2012] Charleston: [Beaufort Gazette, 4-2-2012] Clermont: [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 3-21-2012]

Thanks This Week to Bruce Leiserowitz and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisers.