Undocumented immigrant Jose Munoz, 25, believed himself an ideal candidate for President Obama's 2012 safe-harbor initiative for illegal-entry children, in that he had been brought to the U.S. by his undocumented parents before age 16, had no criminal record and had graduated from high school (with honors, even). Since then, however, he had remained at home in Sheboygan, Wis., assisting his family, doing odd jobs and, admittedly, just playing video games and "vegging." Living "in the shadows," he found it almost impossible to prove the final legal criterion: that he had lived continuously in the U.S. since graduation (using government records, payroll sheets, utility bills, etc.). After initial failures to convince immigration officials, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in March, Munoz's lawyer succeeded -- by submitting Munoz's Xbox Live records, documenting that his computer's Wisconsin location had been accessing video games, day after day, for years. [Journal Sentinel, 3-24-2013]

-- Among the lingering costs of U.S. wars are disability payments and compensation to veterans' families, which can continue decades after hostilities end. An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records, released in March, even found two current recipients of Civil War benefits. Vietnam war payments are still about $22 billion a year, World War II, $5 billion, World War I, $20 million, and the 1898 Spanish-American war, about $1,700. [Associated Press via MassLive.com, 3-19-2013]

-- Each year, Oklahoma is among the states to receive $150,000 federal grants to operate small, isolated airfields (for Oklahoma, one in the southern part of the state is so seldom used that it is primarily a restroom stop for passing pilots). The payments are from a 13-year- old congressional fund for about 80 similar airfields (no traffic, no planes kept on site), described by a February Washington Post investigation as "ATM(s) shaped like (airports)." Congress no longer even requires that the annual grants be spent on the actual airports drawing the grants. [Washington Post, 2-25-2013]

-- During the massive February Southern California manhunt for former Los Angeles cop Christopher Dorner, nervous-triggered LAPD officers riddled an SUV with bullets after mistakenly believing Dorner was inside. Instead there were two women, on their early-morning job as newspaper carriers, and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck famously promised them a new truck and arranged with a local dealership for a 2013 Ford F-150 ($32,560). However, the deal fell through in March when the women discovered that Beck's "free" truck was hardly free. Rather, it would be taxable as a "donation," reported on IRS Form 1099, perhaps costing them thousands of dollars. [KNBC-TV (Los Angeles), 3-13-2013]

-- Sculptor Richard Jackson introduced "Bad Dog" as part of his "Ain't Painting a Pain" installation at California's Orange County Museum in February. Outside, to coax visitors in, Jackson's "Bad Dog's" hind leg was cocked, with gallons of yellow paint being pumped onto the building. "We'll see how long it lasts," he told the Los Angeles Times, "but you never know how people will react." "Sometimes, people feel they should protect their children from such things, then the kids go home and watch 'South Park.'" [Los Angeles Times, 2-15-2013]

-- Australian dilettante David Walsh's 2-year-old Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart is acquiring a reputation for irreverence. Among the exhibits is Greg Taylor's "My Beautiful Chair," which invites a visitor to lie next to a lethal injection chair and experience a countdown, mimicking the time it takes for execution drugs to kill (and then flashing "You Are Dead"). Also, at 2 p.m. each day, a "fresh fecal masterpiece" is created by artist Wim Delvoye, in which a meal from the museum's restaurant is placed into a transparent grinder that creates slush, turns it brown, and adds an overpowering defecation-like smell. The resulting "masterpiece" is channeled into (also transparent) vats. [Agence France-Presse via France24.com (Paris), 2-14-2013]

-- Career-Ending Jobs for Runway Models: British "design engineer" Jess Eaton introduced her second "high-fashion" collection in December at London's White Gallery, this time consisting of supposedly elegant bridal wear made in part with roadkill, cat and alpaca fur, seagull wings and human bones. [Daily Mail (London), 3-8-2013]

U.S. political consultants may recommend to their candidates gestures such as wearing an American flag lapel pin. In India, the advice includes creating the proper suggestive name for the candidate on the official ballot. Hence, among those running for office this year (according to a February Hindustan Times report): Frankenstein Momin, Hamletson Dohling, Boldness Nongum and Bombersing Hynniewta, and several Sangmas (related or not): Billykid Sangma, Mafiara Sangma, Rightious Sangma and Winnerson Sangma. More confusing were Hilarius Dkhar and Hilarius Pohchen and especially Adolf Lu Hitler Marak. [Hindustan Times, 2-19-2013]

Some Third-Worlders eat dirt because they are mentally ill or have no meaningful food. However, diners at Tokyo's upscale Ne Quittez Pas eat it because it is a trendy dish prepared by prominent chef Toshio Tanabe. Among his courses are soil soup served with a flake of dirty truffle, soil sorbet and the "soil surprise" (a dirt-covered potato ball). (Spoiler alert: It has a truffle center.) Tanabe lightly precooks his dirt and runs it through a sieve to eliminate the crunchiness. [Village Voice, 2-4-2013]

-- In some jurisdictions, a driver can be presumed impaired with a blood alcohol reading as low as .07 (and suggestively impaired at a reading below that), but according to a WMAQ-TV investigation in February, some suburban Chicago police forces allow officers to work with their own personal readings as high as .05. (While officers may be barred from driving at that level, they may not, by police union contract, face any discipline if they show up for work with a reading that high.) [WMAQ-TV, 2-15-2013]

-- From the Blotter: (1) Arlington County, Va., police reported in February that a resident of Carlin Springs Road told officers that someone entered her home and stole chicken from her simmering crock pot -- but only the chicken, leaving the vegetables as they were. The report noted that they had no suspects. (2) Prison guard Alfredo Malespini III, 31, faces several charges in Bradford, Pa., resulting from a marital dispute in March, when, presumably to make a point, he tried to remove his wedding ring by shooting it off. (The ring remained in place; his finger was mangled.) [ArlNow.com, 2-22-2013] [Associated Press via WCAU-TV (Philadelphia, 3-15-2013]

Serving Pediphiles: In March, a 19-year-old New York University student described to the New York Post her one-night experience last year as a foot-fetish prostitute at a spa in which men paid a $100 entrance fee plus $20 for each 10 minutes of fondling and kissing young women's feet. She said the men wore business suits, which they kept on the whole time, and that the dressed-up women had to first pass a strict foot examination by the "pimp," seeking candidates with the desired "high arches and small feet." She guessed that more than two dozen men patronized the spa during her shift and that she earned $200, including tips. [New York Post, 3-10-2013]

(1) In March, Jose Martinez pocketed an $8,000 settlement with California's Disneyland after he was stranded on a broken It's a Small World ride for a half-hour in 2009. Because Martinez is disabled, he could not easily be rescued and was forced, he said, to listen to the "It's a Small World" song on an endless loop until help arrived. (2) A woman and her son doing yard work at their home in Texarkana, Texas, in March "cleverly" dealt with a menacing snake by dousing it with gasoline and setting it afire, but of course it slithered away -- under brush next to their house. Moments later, according to an Associated Press dispatch, the home caught fire and burned down, and their neighbor's house was heavily damaged. [Daily Mail (London), 3-26-2013] [Associated Press via Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald, 3-22-2013]

Thanks This Week to Peter Wardley, Sharon Teris-Whitney, Bruce Strickland, Russell Bell, Bruce Leiserowitz, and Peter Smagorinsky, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Wait ... What? A startup company in Austin, Texas, also serving San Francisco, promises to take its customers' incoming U.S. mail three times a week, photograph it and deliver it back to the customers via mobile phone app, for $4.99 a month. The company, Outbox, provides some value-added services, removing the customer from junk-mail lists and paying bills. Still, Outbox's unorthodox business model assumes that a growing number of people absolutely hate opening, filing or discarding pieces of paper. Co-founder Will Davis told CNN in February that at least he does not fear competition: "No one is crazy enough to do what we're doing." [CNN, 2-26-2013]

-- College basketball player Shanteona Keys makes free throws at a 78 percent rate for her career, but on Feb. 16, she weakly shanked one of those 15-foot shots, causing it to thud to the floor about eight feet short of the rim -- the worst collegiate free-throw attempt of all time, according to several sports commentators who viewed the video. Keys explained to Deadspin.com that she always brings the ball close to her face when she shoots, "and my fingernail got caught on my nose, so I couldn't follow through correctly." Her Georgia College (Milledgeville, Ga.) team lost to rival Columbus State, 70-60. [Deadspin.com, 2-19-2013]

-- Research Hurts: Between 2002 and 2010, according to the March BJU International (formerly British Journal of Urology), an estimated 17,600 patients came to U.S. hospital emergency rooms reporting genital injuries from trouser zippers (presumably by accident, but researchers took no position on that). Seven authors (six from University of California, San Francisco) took credit for the report, funded by a National Institutes of Health grant, and found that "zip" wounds were only about one-fifth of emergency penile injuries. [BJUI, 3-13-2013]

-- Rachel Hope and Parker Williams, both apparently intelligent and attractive, decided to procreate and fully raise a child together -- even though neither has romantic intentions toward the other. Their relationship is likened to a business one, according to a February New York Times profile, in which they do their respective biological duties, separately, and then each basically outsources half the subsequent child-rearing to the other. Said another parent in a similar relationship: "When you think about the concept of the village, and how the village was part of child-rearing for so many cultures ... it makes total sense." [New York Times, 2-16-2013]

-- Robert Burton, 34, got a 15-year prison sentence in February for forcing women into prostitution, with evidence including a police report quoting Burton's 7-year-old son, who was in the car with Burton and two women when Miami police stopped them. The kid had earnestly identified the women: "Those are my daddy's hoes." [Associated Press via WFTV (Orlando), 2-27-2013]

-- Professor Peter Froehlich, who teaches computer science classes at the highly competitive Johns Hopkins University, contractually grades "on a curve," automatically marking the highest grade an A, with other grades trailing based on their proximity to the class's best. One clever student tried to organize the entire class for December's final exam, to persuade everyone to do no work at all -- thus rendering the "highest" grade a zero, meaning an A for everyone. (Of course, if a single student broke ranks, everyone except that student would receive an absolute zero.) Fortunately for the students, according to InsideHigherEd.com, the class held together, and a shocked professor Froehlich nonetheless honored his contract, giving everyone an A (but subsequently closing the loophole). [Inside Higher Education, 2-12-2013]

-- Thieves broke into the home of Earlie Johnson in Muskegon, Mich., in February and made off with several flat-screen TVs, but what really irked him was that they also stole his entire DVD pornography collection, consisting, he said, of the films of every African-American porn star since the 1970s. ("I'm not no scum bag guy, pervert, or nothing like that," he told WZZM-TV. "I just thought it was cool to own my own porn collection. It keeps my relationship (with his fiance) fresh and tight.") As soon as the news of Johnson's misfortune spread, several adult video companies donated DVDs to help restore the collection. [WZZM-TV (Grand Rapids, Mich.), 2-22-2013]

-- Sex Is Dangerous: (1) Officers from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority reported in March that a lion had attacked a couple having sex in the bush, killing the woman and sending the man dashing down a road wearing nothing but his condom (which reduced his chances of receiving help from motorists). (2) Near Daytona Beach, Fla., in February, Ms. Asia Walker, 30, driving her boyfriend around, could not resist his amorous advances and soon lost control of the car. It left the road and plowed completely through a vacant house. She was briefly hospitalized, but her boyfriend was not hurt. [International Business Times (London), 3-6-2013] [WESH-TV (Orlando), 2-15-2013]

Even though the British government refused to grant trademark protection to the Italian maker of "Jesus Jeans" because it would be "morally offensive to the public," the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had no such qualms and approved the application in 2007. Since then, according to a February Wall Street Journal story, the company has prevented a dozen other companies from using such clothing names as "Jesus First," "Sweet Jesus," "Jesus Couture" and, most recently, "Jesus Surfed." [Wall Street Journal, 2-24- 2013]

A persevering Brooklyn, N.Y., high school teacher, Ronald Grassel, finally relented and submitted himself to a psychiatric evaluation that had originally been ordered in 1997 after he angrily and overenthusiastically dumped teachers' union literature in his principal's office. Grassel had refused the exam and been benched, and for 14 years was neither fired nor paid while he filed a series of unsuccessful legal actions to overturn the decision. According to a March New York Post report, when he finally submitted to an exam in 2011, he was declared fit (his world-class obstinacy apparently not counting against him) and in September 2012 was back on the job. [New York Post, 3-4-2013]

Humans' belief that fragrances improve their allure can seemingly never be overestimated. Dutch-based artists Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug told The New York Times in March that they recently created a concoction to call attention to our neediness for artificial scent. Noting the deluge of new industry creations in 2012, Engelberts explained, "Our point is, why do you need nearly 1,400 new scents in one year?" The pair created Everything, which they claim contains a bit of every one of the year's fragrances they were able to obtain (including Fame by Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber's Girlfriend), dumped into one bottle and left to marinate -- and they offered it for sale for the equivalent of about $39,000. [New York Times, 3-7-2013]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Paul Masters, 47, was charged with a roof-entry burglary of a Roses department store in Lexington, Ky., in March. Those burglaries are common, but almost always nighttime jobs, when no one else is on the premises. Masters, though, dropped in just after lunchtime. After police swarmed the store, Masters eventually fell through a drop ceiling and was arrested. (2) Jarad Carr, 37, was arrested in Chippewa County, Wis., in March after he persisted in demanding a refund for the computer printer he said he had bought at a Wal-Mart (though he lacked a receipt). While examining the printer, the Wal-Mart employee noticed a sheet of paper still inside -- showing two counterfeit $100 bills -- and called police, who arrived while Carr was still haggling for a refund. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 3-20-2013] [Chippewa Herald, 3-8-2013]

(1) A judge in Racine, Wis., granted bail for Tyree Carter, 20, for his March arrest for "lewd and lascivious conduct" in the Racine Public Library, but among the conditions of his release was that, until trial, Carter "stay out of all the libraries on the face of the Earth." (2) In a ruling that lasted less than a week, England's Mid Devon District Council had decreed in March that henceforth, no street name could contain an apostrophe, e.g., St. George's would be St. Georges. Outraged punctuationists swung into action, causing the council to quickly reverse itself. [Journal Times (Racine), 3-14-2013] [BBC News, 3-15-2013]

Thanks This Week to Steve Dunn, Sandy Pearlman, Dale Wilke, Gary DaSilva, and Jay Brawley, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

In March, Microsoft was fined 561 million euros (about $725 million) by the European Commission after, apparently, a programmer carelessly left out just one line of code in Microsoft's Service Pack 1 of European versions of Windows 7. That one line would have triggered the system to offer web browsers other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, which Microsoft had agreed to include to settle charges that it was monopolizing the web-browser business. (Also in March, the government of Denmark said that Microsoft owed it about a billion dollars in unpaid taxes when it took over a Danish company and tried to route its taxes through notorious tax havens such as Bermuda. According to a March Reuters report, Denmark is among the first European countries to challenge such U.S.-standard tax shenanigans and is expecting payment in full.) [The Guardian (London), 3-6-2013] [Reuters, 3-4-2013]

-- Being identified with the number 666 (the "mark of the beast" in the Bible's Book of Revelation) continues to trouble the righteous. Walter Slonopas, 52, felt required to resign as a maintenance worker for Contech Casting in Clarksville, Tenn., in February after receiving his W-2 form, which he noted was the 666th mailed out by Contech this year. (However, perhaps Slonopas is not so innocent. He had been working for Contech for less than two years, yet had already been "assigned" the number 666 twice -- on the company's payroll books and the company's time-clock system.) [USA Today, 2-7-2013]

-- The Iconic Phantom Black/Hispanic Perpetrator: In February, victims of crimes in San Antonio, Texas, and Terrebonne Parish, La., complained to police that they had been assaulted by, respectively, a "Hispanic male" and an "unknown black man" -- whom the victims admitted later did not exist. San Antonio police learned that their victim had been accidentally, embarrassingly, shot by a friend mishandling his gun. Louisiana authorities found that their victim had not been abducted and raped (and had her baby stolen). Rather, she had wanted to hide her miscarriage from family and friends and invented a phantom attack as more acceptable. [KENS-TV (San Antonio), 2-6-2013] [WWL-TV (New Orleans), 2-28-2013]

-- Chinese New Year, especially, turns out not so festive if busy young professional women are unable to show off a boyfriend to their parents. Thus, men offer themselves as fake boyfriends for the equivalent of about $50 a day, plus extras including about $5 an hour to accompany the woman to dinner, $8 for a kiss on the cheek, and $95 to spent the night -- on the couch, of course, since "sex" is not part of the concept. Recently, a reality TV series appeared for men needing women for home visits -- often they are gay men who have not "come out" to their parents. [BBC News, 2-6-2013]

-- Backward Incentives: Society continues to suffer from questionable company policies that encourage precisely the wrong behaviors. Bartender Twyla DeVito said she knew that one of her regulars at the American Legion Post in Shelby, Ohio, was too inebriated to drive home and thus telephoned police, alerting them to a potential drunk driver. An officer responded, observed the driver, and arrested him when his blood-alcohol read twice the limit for presumed impairment. Two days later DeVito was fired because, as her boss allegedly said to her, "(I)t's bad for business to have a bartender that will call the cops." [WBNS-TV (Columbus), 2-22-2013]

-- The Fabulous British Government "Safety Net": Heather Frost, 36, and mother of 11, is getting a brand-new, specially designed house through the Tewkesbury (England) Borough Council, which deemed inadequate the duplex that the family had been using at taxpayer expense for five years. Frost had complained that she needed larger quarters because one daughter now owns a horse and needs to stable it (and, said a stable worker, had almost acquired two more horses, but that deal fell through). [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-19-2013]

-- Fathers caught up unfairly in state laws on child support have appeared in News of the Weird, but Lional Campbell's story seems unusually harsh. Authorities in Detroit continue to bill Campbell for past-due support (which Campbell admits he owes even if unsure how much), but only recently did he discover that they were counting $43,000 past-due to support "Michael," who had died 25 years ago at age 3. Campbell said he had thought the support was for another child, born seven years after Michael, but it turns out neither the authorities nor Campbell knows precisely which fatherhood Campbell is paying for. The latest audit reduced Michael's $43,000 balance to about $6,500. [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 2-15-2013]

-- Third-World Penis-Snatchings Continue to Vex: In Tiringoulou (pop. 2,000) in the Central African Republic, phantoms are thought often to steal penises, or shrink them, but according to a March dispatch in the magazine Pacific Standard, the stories' origins may simply reflect distrust of outsiders. Townspeople over-attribute worldly powers to strangers, and when outsiders' business deals go sour, men check their genitals. Also, animal-organ poachers operate nearby and arouse suspicion that they may be after human genitals, as well. (Asking for perspective on this weirdness, though, the Pacific Standard reporter wondered what Tiringoulou citizens might think about Americans who, for instance, starve themselves "near to death because their reflection in the mirror convinces them that they are fat.") [Pacific Standard via Alternet, 3-14-2013]

-- More Poor Planning: (1) In San Diego, Calif., in February, two people broke into a Hooters after closing and stole a jukebox, apparently, said police, mistaking it for an ATM inside the darkened restaurant. (2) Jose Perales Jr., 24, was charged with breaking into Dr. John's Lingerie Boutique in Davenport, Iowa, in February. Surveillance video revealed he was wearing men's clothing when he entered, but left in a dress and blond wig. In fact, while changing clothes, his bare back was visible, revealing "Perales" tattooed on his shoulder. [KGTV (San Diego), 2-22-2013] [Quad City Times (Davenport), 2-23-2013]

-- Loretta Lacy, 49, perhaps set some kind of record in January as she sped from Sioux Falls, S.D., to Racine, Wis. (about 500 miles away) just to make her granddaughter's school dance. Although her daughter told a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter that her mother "can make it from A to B faster than maybe the average person," Lacy collected four speeding tickets during one 2 1/2-hour stretch, including for speeds of 88, 99 and 112. Of course, she arrived late. [Star Tribune, 1-30-2013]

-- Sherwin Shayegan might be again acting out his well-known (to News of the Weird readers) obsession of coaxing strangers (usually teenage boys, especially athletes) to give him piggyback rides. A Bettendorf, Iowa, police report obtained by Deadspin.com in February showed his arrest on an unrelated charge, but police noted that Shayegan had attended a college basketball game in Moline, Ill., the night before -- and such a scenario has been fertile ground in the past for Shayegan's easing himself into locker rooms to hop on a back or two. [Deadspin.com, 2-01-2013]

-- News of the Weird mentioned in October that China and Japan are currently engaged in an ownership dispute over two islands in the South China Sea and had dispatched ships to the region to accompany their countries' verbal blustering. (Taiwan also claims the islands.) The Japanese daily Nikkan Spa reported in December that China's very recent takedowns of Internet pornography from Japan was likely caused by the spat. In comments on Internet porn sites, some Chinese subscribers patriotically vowed to give up watching Japanese sex videos, even if it meant going without one of their favorites -- the Japanese star Aoi Sola. [Nikkan Spa via Kotaku.com, 12-6-2012]

-- News of the Weird has noted the street-wise pointers offered by al-Qaida's online magazine Inspire, and the new issue, released in February, offers yet more tips for causing infidels mayhem. This issue ignores large-scale destructions (such as bringing down airliners) and focuses on smaller chaos, such as torching parked cars, greasing up sharp-angled roadways to force cars to skid, and outfitting pickup trucks with knives affixed to the grill. Insight also cautions the jihadists to use care to protect themselves in the process -- advice which, based on experience, will not be heeded. [Wired Danger Room, 3-1-2013]

Thanks This Week to John McGaw, Gerald Sacks, and Thomas Sullivan, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.