Update: Gary Medrow, 68, has periodically surfaced in News of the Weird since 1991 for his unique behavior of using a false identity to persuade Milwaukee-area strangers over the phone to lift other strangers off the ground -- behavior for which he has occasionally been jailed and ordered to psychiatric care. After a recent period of calm, Medrow slipped in November and was charged with impersonating a photojournalist to convince two Cedarburg (Wis.) High School students to hoist each other on their shoulders (and four similar incidents were under investigation). At an earlier hearing, Medrow said that his "addiction" helps him to relieve tension and anxiety. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11-16-2012]

-- Floyd Johnson pleaded guilty to attempted murder in an odd scene in a New York City courtroom in November. Johnson has only one leg, and had been charged with stabbing a fellow homeless shelter resident who has no legs. Johnson's public-defender lawyer (who caught the case at random) has only one leg, also. Johnson said he was taking the plea in part because of excruciating leg pain -- in the leg he doesn't have ("phantom leg" syndrome), and Johnson's lawyer said he suffers from the same thing. (The lawyer subsequently filed to withdraw the guilty plea because the pain had clouded his client's judgment.) [New York Post, 11-9-2012]

-- Amber Roberts, 30, a resident of the unit for the criminally insane at Eastern State Hospital in Spokane, Wash., informed officials in November that "I (just now) murdered someone, but you're going to have to find him." As staff members searched the facility, Roberts offered to help by shouting "hot," "cold," "you're getting warmer," and so forth. Roberts yelled "Hot!" as they closed in on the room containing the body of a 56-year-old patient that Roberts then admitted strangling. (However, a few days later in court, she pleaded not guilty.) [Associated Press via KATU-TV (Portland, Ore.), 11-21-2012]

-- Tunisia's Ministry for Women and Family Affairs demanded in October that the government prosecute the publisher of the children's magazine Qaws Quzah ("Rainbow"), aimed at ages 5 to 15, for an article in the then-current issue on how to construct a gasoline bomb (aka the "Molotov cocktail" in America). The country has been rocked by the same kind of upheaval experienced in other Arab countries, except less so since its longtime president stepped down rather quickly in January 2011. [BBC News, 10-9-2012]

-- Notwithstanding its nuclear submarines, ballistic missiles and spy satellites, France maintains Europe's last "squadron" of military carrier pigeons. Legislator Jean-Pierre Decool lauds the pigeons and campaigns for their upgrade, warning that in the event of war or other catastrophe, the birds would be a valuable messaging network. (Pigeons have been used at times in the current Syrian civil war.) Until very recently, according to a November Wall Street Journal dispatch, pigeons wearing harnesses had been used by a hospital in Normandy to ferry blood samples to a testing lab (a 25-minute flight). [Wall Street Journal, 11-10-2012]

Jason Schall, 38, who has retired as a financial planner and now devotes his energy to fishing, had a spectacular week in September when he won a catch-and-release tournament in Charleston, S.C., came within 1 1/2 inches of a world record on another catch, and was notified of recently setting two Nevada state records for largest fish caught. Schall's coup de grace, he told the Charleston Post and Courier, came a few days later when he caught a redfish while sitting on his living room sofa in Daniel Island, S.C., watching a Clemson football game with a pal. He had run a line with bait through a crack in the door, through his yard into the lake behind his home. [Post and Courier, 10-2-2012]

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found recently in tests that 10th-grade students who play video games (especially shooting and sports games) regularly score just as high in robotic surgery dexterity as resident doctors. The lead researcher said that surgery simulations (for example, suturing) have built-in unpredictability, for training purposes, but since complex video games are laden with unpredictability, players logging at least two hours a day with the joystick in fact may even slightly outperform the residents. [Slate.com, 11-21-2012]

-- How Drunk Do You Have to Be? (1) College student Courtney Malloy, 22, was rescued in November after getting stuck at about 1 a.m. trying to cut between two buildings in Providence, R.I. The space between City Sports and FedEx Kinko's was 8 to 9 inches, said firefighters, who found Malloy horizontal and about 2 feet off the ground and "unable" to explain how she got there. (2) Leslie Newton, 68, was pulled over by Florida Highway Patrol officers near St. Augustine in December while driving erratically. He also had a portion of a traffic sign embedded in his skull after colliding with it. (In both cases, officers said they believed the victims to be intoxicated.) [Providence Journal, 11-9-2012] [WTEV-TV (Jacksonville), 12-3-2012]

-- Helen Springthorpe, 58, with only three months on the job as the bell-ringer at St. Nicholas Church in Bathampton, England, was knocked unconscious in November when she became entangled in the bells' ropes and was jerked too-and-fro around the belfry, her head smashing against a wall. Fire and ambulance crews eventually lowered her about 20 feet to the ground. [BBC News, 11-6-2012]

Homeless man Darren Kersey, 28, was jailed overnight in November in Sarasota, Fla., after being busted for charging his cellphone at an outlet at a public picnic shelter in the city's Gillespie Park. The police report noted that "(T)heft of city utilities will not be tolerated ...." However, for owners of electric cars (less likely to be homeless!), the city runs several absolutely free charging stations, including one at city hall. The American Civil Liberties Union has accused the city for years of being aggressively inhospitable toward the city's homeless. (Kersey was released the next day when a judge ruled the arrest improper.) [Sarasota Herald Tribune, 11-12-2012]

Stubborn: (1) Briton Robert Moore, 31, got a relatively light sentence in Bradford Crown Court in October when he convinced a judge that he only inadvertently possessed child pornography, in that he was largely interested in human-animal porn (including with a pig, a goat, a horse and an octopus). Moore was not eligible for a court-ordered "treatment" alternative to prison because he told the judge that he does not believe he has a deviancy. (2) Carlos Romero, 31, told arresting officers in Ocala, Fla., in September that Florida was a "backwards" state because it still punishes his sexual behavior with a donkey. He admitted to being aroused by animals "in heat" but explained that all he did was stand behind the animal and masturbate while fondling her genitals. Any genital-genital contact, he said, was "accidental." [Daily Mirror (London), 10-19-2012] [The Smoking Gun, 9-18-2012]

Orly Taitz, an Orange County, Calif., dentist and lawyer, is America's most prominent "birther," having filed dozens of lawsuits, appeals and other legal petitions expressing her certainty that President Obama was not born in America. In her latest legal foray, a California judge tossed her lawsuit against Occidental College (to require it to disregard privacy rights and release Obama's college transcripts and other papers). The loss brings birthers' record (Taitz's plus a few comrades') to 0-for-258, according to the websites WhatsYourEvidence.com and LoweringTheBar.net. And of course, when Taitz's lawsuit was dismissed in November, she merely appealed again. Taitz was described by one critic as "almost charmingly insane." [Huffington Post, 12-3-2012; Lowering the Bar, 10-26-2012]

Daniel Greer, 24, told the New York Daily News that on Sept. 7 in Brooklyn, N.Y., a police officer who had been trailing the bicyclist stopped him and issued separate traffic tickets for riding through three red lights while listening to music through earphones. The three offenses, plus a related ticket, forced Greer to court, where he clumsily pleaded guilty, not aware of the amount of the fine. His multiple offenses made him a repeat offender, and he was fined $1,550. [New York Daily News, 10-13-2012]

Thanks This Week to Gary Scher and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The head of the Perse School in Cambridge, England, recently instituted a "10-Second Rule" for minor disciplinary infractions: Students could avoid punishment if they quickly produced a clever explanation for their misbehavior. "Getting children to talk their way out of a tight corner in a very short period of time" said Ed Elliott, encourages creativity and could produce a generation of British entrepreneurs. Said a supporter, "Often the ones who get further are the artful dodgers," who "bend the truth." (Elliott warned, though, that "out-and-out falseness" would not be tolerated.) [BBC News, 11-19-2012]

-- Family Values: (1) A Tampa, Fla., mother and daughter (ages 56 and 22, with their familial ties verified by a Huffington Post reporter), shoot scenes together for their pornography website ("The Sexxxtons"), including threesomes with a man, but the women insist that they never incestuously touch each other. (2) Tiffany Hartford, 23, and George Sayers Jr., 48, were charged in Bethel, Conn., in December with selling unauthorized videos of Hartford having sex with another woman. That other woman charged, and a DNA test confirmed, that Sayers is Hartford's father and that the two have a baby (although both deny knowing they were father-daughter at the time they had sex). [Huffington Post, 12-5-2012] [New York Daily News, 12-5-2012]

-- Sheriff's officials in Deerfield Beach, Fla., arrested nine people in October and charged them in connection with a betting ring that set point spreads and took bets not only on pro and college games but on kids' games of the South Florida Youth Football League. Six thousand children play in the 22-team association. [Associated Press via CBS News, 10-30-2012]

-- Too Silly To Be True: (1) Police in Geraldton, Australia, reported in November that they had captured a thief they were chasing in the dark through a neighborhood's backyards. As the thief came to a fence and leaped over it, he happened to land on a family's trampoline and was propelled backward, practically into cops' laps. (2) Guy Black, 76, was charged in Turbotville, Pa., in October with threatening housemate Ronald Tanner with a chainsaw. Tanner, defending himself with the only "weapon" within reach -- an umbrella -- managed to pin Black with it as the chainsaw jammed. (Most people who bring an umbrella to a chainsaw fight would be less successful.) [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 11-14- 2012] [Associated Press via WPVI-TV (Philadelphia), 10-22-2012]

-- Deputy NYPD Commissioner Paul Browne told reporters in November that, in the 24 hours of Monday, November 26th, not a single criminal shooting, stabbing, or slashing was reported in the five boroughs. Browne said no police official could remember such a day, ever. (The city is on track to finish 2012 with fewer than 400 homicides--compared to the record year of 1990, when 2,245 people were murdered.) [New York Daily News, 11-28-2012]

-- "Braco," a Croatian-born "healer" (although he rejects the term), seems to make legions of sick or troubled believers feel better merely by entering a room and gazing at them in silence for a few minutes before leaving. (A Washington Post reporter, seeking relief from his allergies, attended a 100-person session in Alexandria, Va., in October, but found no improvement.) "Whatever is flowing through him," said one transfixed fan, "is able to connect with a part of us." Said another enthusiast, "The thing that makes Braco unique is he really doesn't do anything." [Washington Post, 10-12-2012]

-- In October, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals petitioned Irvine, Calif., to create a roadside memorial for the truckload of live fish that had perished in a recent traffic accident. (After all, fish, like humans, use tools, tell time, sing, and have long-term memories, wrote PETA.) On the other hand, the traffic casualties that day were en route to the Irvine Ranch Market to be sold as food. [Orange County Register, 10-29-2012]

-- The governing Council of Brentwood, England, professes a "reputation as one of the most transparent" in the country, but in November, responding to a Freedom of Information request for documents on a government contract, it merely released 425 totally-blackened ("redacted") pages. The official explanation was that all of the papers concerning construction of a movie theater were deemed "commercially sensitive" and "not in the public interest." (Following an outcry, the Council re-thought the FOI request and disclosed "considerably more information," according to the Daily Telegraph.) [Daily Telegraph, 11-29-2012]

(1) Detroit police chief Ralph Godbee was suspended in October after an affair with a subordinate became public. Godbee's predecessor had been fired for the same reason (among other reasons), and in fact, Godbee had previously had an affair with the same subordinate who had been implicated with his predecessor. (2) The former mayor of Flint, Don Williamson, who resigned in 2009 while being targeted in a recall election, recently erected a large bronze statue of himself outside his home in Davison Township. (3) In June, former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, having served 99 days in jail on obstruction-of-justice charges and still awaiting a federal corruption trial, asked Michigan prison officials to relieve him of "community service" parole obligations -- because he had a number of paid speeches scheduled out of town. [Detroit Free Press, 10-2-2012] [Associated Press via West Virginia Gazette (Charleston), 11-2-2012] [Associated Press via Austin American- Statesman, 6-5-2012]

-- Shortly after drug-possession suspect Patrick Townsend, 30, was arrested in Lakeland, Fla., in November and had allegedly confessed into a detective's digital recorder, Townsend managed to snatch the unattended recorder from a table, took a restroom break, and flushed it down the toilet. Townsend's subsequent advice to the detective: "Tighten up on your job, homie." ("Destroying evidence" was added to Townsend's charges.) [The Ledger (Lakeland), 11-23- 2012]

-- Casey Anthony was acquitted by a jury in Orlando in 2011 of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, in part because investigation of her computer did not yield incriminating evidence (e.g., suspicious search terms in her Internet Explorer's history). However, in November 2012, with Anthony protected by the Constitutional prohibition against "double jeopardy," investigators admitted they had overlooked the computer's other web browser (Firefox). There, on the date of Caylee's disappearance, were pages containing such search terms as "fool-proof suffication" (sic) and "asphyxiation." [USA Today, 11-25-2012]

High School Inspirations: (1) Trent Bauer became a mid-season replacement as starting quarterback for Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Lexington, Ky.) after beginning the season merely as the team's bulldog-costumed mascot on the sidelines. In his first game, in October, he threw two touchdown passes in a 22-19 victory. (2) Also in October, South Plantation (Fla.) High School's third-string quarterback, Ms. Erin DiMeglio, was voted the school's homecoming queen. In her first game this season, she had come off the bench in a brief stint and completed two passes. [Herald-Leader, 10-15-2012] [New York Daily News, 10-13-2012]

Thanks This Week to Harry Thompson, Sandy Pearlman, Raan Young, Bruce Leiserowitz, Tim Trewhella, Francee Fulller, and Hal Dunham, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Plastic surgeons in Turkey and France told CNN in November that mustache implants have suddenly surged in popularity as Middle Eastern men use their increased lip bushiness to convey power and prestige. Surgeons extract follicles from hairier parts of the body in procedures that cost the equivalent of around $7,000 and show full results in about six months. An anthropology professor told CNN that, by tradition in Arab countries, a man of honor would "swear on my mustache," use mustaches as collateral for loans, shave off a vanquished foe's mustache as a reward, and gravely insult enemies with "Curse be upon your mustache!" [CNN, 11-29-2012]

-- At the religious festival of Pon, thousands of Muslims travel to Gunung Kemukus, on Indonesia's main island of Java, to have the required sexual intercourse with a stranger. The experience, which supposedly brings good fortune, has become heavily commercialized, but nevertheless, about half the participants are "pure," in that no money changes hands. More than a quick tryst is involved, according to an October Global Mail dispatch. The pilgrims must first pray, then bathe themselves, then select their proper stranger, then bathe themselves afterward (carefully saving the water for later re-use), and finally return seven times at 35-day intervals to refresh their ritual. [Global Post, 10-11-2012]

-- According to testimony in Perth, Australia, in November, one retired priest, Thomas Byrne, 80, bit off the ear of another, Thomas Smith, 81, in a brawl over a parking space. Father Byrne and Father Smith are residents of the same retirement home in the Perth suburb of Dianella. [Daily Mail (London), 10-10-2012]

-- For centuries, some residents of India's Madhya Pradesh state have allowed themselves to be trampled by garishly dressed animals in periodic attempts to have their prayers answered. The November "Ekadashi" (the 11th day of certain months of the Hindu calendar) this year began with prayers, followed by the liquoring up of the animals (cows in Ujjain and buffaloes in Bhopal, for example) to "remove their inhibitions," according to a WebIndia123 report. Even so, according to local press reports, hardly anyone ever gets hurt. [WebIndia123.com, 11-15-2012]

-- Things People Believe: (1) Personalities are heavily influenced by blood types, according to the Japanese. People with Type A blood are thought to be "sensitive perfectionists and good team players, but over-anxious," according to a November BBC News dispatch, while O's are "curious and generous but stubborn." Some industries market blood-type-specific products ranging from soft drinks to condoms. (2) Names given by their parents heavily influence a person's fortunes in life, according to many Thais, but that means relief from misery is just an official name-change away, according to a November Wall Street Journal dispatch from Bangkok. Services-for-fee are available to help find prosperous names, with one smartphone application suggesting five for the equivalent of about $10. [BBC News, 11-4-2012] [Wall Street Journal, 11-3-2012]

-- Saudis Remain Freedom-Challenged: (1) In September, officials in Jeddah detained 908 female Nigerian visitors who were not accompanied by appropriate male guardians as required for all females in the kingdom under age 45. (Women older than that are allowed merely to carry notarized permission slips from husbands, sons or brothers.) That the Nigerians were in the country only to make the required Muslim Hajj pilgrimage did not deter Saudi authorities. (2) Saudi immigration officials in November began a text-messaging service to notify husbands if a woman attempts to leave the country (at an airport or across a border) without the official "yellow sheet" authorizing her departure. [Associated Press, 9-26-2012] [Daily Telegraph (London), 11-23-2012]

-- Update: Japanese and Chinese traditions absolutely reject the idea of reusing wooden chopsticks, and for many years Japan's (and then, China's) forests easily met chopstick demand. But Japan requires 23 billion pairs a year, and China 63 billion, which the wood industry (even China's) eventually could not provide. In 2011, Korean-born Jae Lee built a factory in Americus, Ga., near forests of poplar and sweet gum trees that proved the ideal combination of softness and hardness for the sticks. In 2011 and early 2012, he supplied Japanese, Chinese and Koreans with 20 million pairs of "Made in U.S.A." chopsticks every week. (In June, Georgia Chopsticks LLC was inexplicably closed by court order, even though its sales had remained brisk.) [New York Times review of "Consider the Fork," 11-18-2012; Business-Bankruptcies.com/cases/georgia-chopsticks-llc]

-- Police were seeking a 6-foot-3 man concerning an attempted child-abduction in November after a father intervened as the man led the father's 2-year-old daughter toward an exit of the Fashion Square mall in Charlottesville, Va. The father alerted Fashion Square's security, and the cops took the man into "custody," which turned out to mean escorting him off the property and warning him not to return (catch and release?). [WVIR-TV (Charlottesville), 11-25-2012]

-- Questionable Product Launches: (1) The Demeter Fragrance Library (maker of such "classic" scents as "Dirt," "Crayon" and "Laundromat") has added to its line with "Sushi" cologne, reported the website FoodBeast.com in November. Fortunately, the scent is not that of raw fish, but "cooked sticky rice," seaweed, ginger and lemon essences. (2) A company called Beverly Hills Caviar recently installed three vending machines in the Los Angeles area that sell nothing but varieties of caviar (ranging from pink mother of pearl ($4) to Imperial River Beluga ($500 an ounce). [FoodBeast.com, 11-5-2012] [Los Angeles Magazine, 11-20-2012]

"In beautiful La Jolla Cove," wrote The New York Times in November, describing the cliffside-vista community near San Diego, "art galleries and coffee shops meet a stretch of unspoiled cliffs and Pacific Ocean" -- unspoiled, that is, until recently, when seagulls took over. Now, because of California's showcase environmental regulations, use of the cove has been restricted, and cleaning the bird droppings from the land is subject to a permit-application process that might take two years. Some residents profess not to mind ("Smells just like the ocean," said one, "but maybe a little 'heightened'") while others are appalled ("As soon as we pulled up, it was like, this is awful"). Even though the smell grows "more acrid by the day," according to the Times, residents' and visitors' only short-term hope is for cleansing by the traditional winter rains (which, fortunately, do not require California permits). [New York Times, 11-25-2012]

Update: There was no one more different from us than Dennis Avner, last reported here in 2005. Having transformed his body through surgery, tattoos and implants, he had almost completely adopted the persona of a cat ("Stalking Cat," as he was known in the body-modification community). Mr. Avner had tiger-stripe tattoos covering most of his body, dental implants sharpened to points to resemble tiger teeth, and metal-stud implants around his mouth to hold his long, plastic whiskers. Ear and lip surgery had made his head more catlike, and special contact lenses made his eyes appear as ovals. Mr. Avner passed away in Las Vegas in November at the age of 54, reportedly of suicide. [Body Modification EZine, 11-12-2012]

Rookie Mistake: Joseph O'Callaghan, 31, was sentenced to nine years in prison by a court in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in November for having robbed an armored-car guard in 2011. He had made off with the guard's cashbox, but since he had accosted the guard on his way into Northern Bank, and not on his way out, the box contained no money. [BBC News, 11-9-2012]

(1) For two months, up to Nov. 20, the water company serving Johnville, Quebec, had left standing a utility pole even after the Quebec highway department had rebuilt Highway 251 to a location that left the pole squarely in the middle of the new two-lane street (which thus became a popular sight for fans of incompetence). Fortunately, during the two months, no accidents around the pole were reported. (2) A 35-year-old man was shot to death in Wilkinsburg, Pa., in September when he took a break from a game of dominoes on a second-floor balcony around 11 p.m. and urinated over the rail. Unfortunately, an unidentified man was walking below. He yelled, "Yo! Yo!" and fired several gunshots, killing the urinator. [National Post, 11-20-2012] [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9-19-2012]

Thanks This Week to John McGaw and Judy Cochrane, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.