Chengdu, China, barber Liu Deyuan, 53, is one of the few who still provide traditional "eye-shaving," in which he holds the eye open and runs a razor across the lids' inner surfaces. Then, using a thin metal rod with a round tip, he gently massages the inside of each lid. Liu told a reporter for the Chengdu Business Daily in April that he had never had an accident (though the reporter apparently could not be enticed to experience the treatment himself, preferring merely to observe), and a highly satisfied customer reported afterward that his eyes felt "moist" and his vision "clearer." A local hospital official said eye-shaving can scrape away scar tissue and stimulate the eyes to lubricate the eye sockets. [South China Morning Post, 4-15-2013]

-- One of April's most popular Internet images consisted of face shots of the current 20 contestants for Miss South Korea -- revealing that all 20 appeared eerily similar, and Westernized. Commented one website, "Korea's plastic surgery mayhem is finally converging on the same face." Wrote a South Korean commenter, "Girls here consider eye surgery just like using makeup." Wrote another, "I loved this episode of the Twilight Zone." The country has the highest rate of cosmetic surgery per capita in the world. [International Business Times (New York City), 4-24-2013]

-- Michinoku Farm of Tokyo finally agreed in May to withdraw its whale meat dog chews, but only after angering environmentalists for having favored the country's pampered canines over endangered North Atlantic fin whales, which were the source of the chews. The meat was purchased from Iceland, which openly defies the international moratorium on whale meat. (Japan officially disagrees with world consensus on which species are endangered.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 5-29-2013]

-- A marriage-encouraging initiative in the Sehore district of India's Madhya Pradesh state awards gifts and financial assistance to couples agreeing to wed in mass ceremonies, but the country also suffers from a notorious toilet shortage. Consequently, the district announced in May that to qualify for the government benefits, the groom must submit to officials a photo of himself beside his own toilet to prove that he and his wife will have home sanitation. [Times of India, 5-21-2013]

-- Recurring Theme (People Purporting to Speak for Islam): (1) A Saudi judge ruled in April that it was finally time for Ali al-Khawahir, 24, to suffer for stabbing another boy in the back when Ali was 14. The victim was paralyzed, and under Saudi justice, Ali must also be struck with paralysis or else raise the equivalent of about $260,000 to compensate the victim. (2) Saudi cleric Abdullah Mohamed al-Daoud in May urged his 100,000 Twitter followers to "sexually harass female cashiers" to discourage them from working outside the home. (He is the one who urged in February that babies be veiled to protect them from sexual harassment.) [The Guardian (London), 4-3-2013] [BBC News, 5-29-2013]

-- Closer to God Than You Are: (1) Crystal McVea, author of a recent book chronicling her near-death experience, told a "Fox & Friends" TV host in April that among her most vivid memories of the incident was getting so close to God that she could "smell" him. (2) In May, Anna Pierre, a candidate for mayor of North Miami, Fla., announced on her Facebook page that she had secured the endorsement of Jesus Christ. That would be doubly fortunate for her since a month earlier, she had complained that unknown people had been leaving bad-luck Vodou-ritual feathers, food scraps and candles on her doorstep. (Jesus' stroke is apparently not what it used to be: She finished seventh in the race.) [Raw Story, 4-2-2013] [Miami Herald, 5-14-2013; WTVJ (Miami), 5-15-2013]

-- Religious Messages From All Over: (1) A catering company in Leicestershire, England, became a holy site in May after the Hindu owner found an eggplant that resembles the elephant-headed Lord Ganesh. He said that he prays to it now twice daily and has so far welcomed about 80 visiting worshippers. (2) As part of his recent U.S. tour, the Dalai Lama, introduced to a University of Maryland audience by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, greeted the governor on stage by rubbing noses with him. [ThisIsLeistershire.co.uk, 5-6-2013] [Washington Post, 5-7-2013]

-- Expectant North Carolina parents Adam and Heather Barrington (who is due in July) have disclosed that they will accept underwater midwifing from the Sirius Institute of Pahoa, Hawaii, which arranges for the mother to swim with dolphins pre- and post-natally. "It is about reconnecting as humans with the dolphins so we can ... learn from one another," said Heather. Said Adam: "Dolphins are very intelligent and healing, which ... calms mother and baby. ..." Biologists writing for the Discovery Channel, however, reminded readers that underwater births are extraordinarily dangerous and that dolphins are "wild animals" that gang-rape female dolphins and "toss, beat and kill small porpoises." Said another, the Barringtons' plan is "possibly the worst idea ever." [Discovery, 5-29-2013; io9.com, 5-28-2013]

-- Local Governments at Work: (1) Washington, D.C., began registering its dogs this year by their primary breeds and, faced with many owners who claimed not to know their dog's heritage, quixotically settled on the Mexican hairless dog, or "xoloitzcuintli" (pronounced "show-low-eats-QUEENT-lee," according to The Washington Post) as the breed that will be listed in city records for those dogs. An official said the decision might encourage owners to learn more about their dog's breed. (2) Of all the businesses that could fall out of favor with a local government, it was the restaurant Bacon Bacon that was shut down in May by the city of San Francisco -- because of neighbors' complaints about the smell! (The fragrance of bacon is widely experienced as entrancing all across America.) A petition to overturn the ruling was underway at press time. [Washington Post, 5-15-2013] [San Francisco Examiner, 5-15-2013]

-- More than 50 Iowa sex offenders have open-carry gun permits, thanks to a 2-year-old state law that requires any disapproving sheriff to demonstrate "probable cause" in advance that a sex offender will use a gun illegally in order to reject his application. Before that, a sheriff could use a sex offender's previous felony conviction as sufficient cause. Said Washington County Sheriff Jerry Dunbar, "(J)ust the presence of a gun on a hip could be a threat to get (sex-crime victims) to cooperate." [Des Moines Register, 5-5-2013]

Congress established the Interagency Working Group in 2009 to set guidelines on advertising healthy foods to children, and public comments on the guidelines are now being posted. General Mills appeared among the most alarmed by the IWG proposals, according to its comments on the Federal Trade Commission website (as disclosed by Scientific American in May). Of the 100 most commonly consumed foods and beverages in America, GM asserted, 88 would fail the IWG standards, and if everyone in America started following the health recommendations, General Mills asserts that the cost of feeding the entire nation would increase $503 billion per year. [Scientific American, 5-19-2013]

Dennis Gholston, 45, with outstanding traffic warrants in Pennsylvania, decided in May that, even though alone in his car, he could not resist using a high-occupancy vehicle lane (HOV) on the New Jersey Turnpike near Carteret. His decision was even more unsound because, according to the officer who stopped him for the HOV violation, Gholston was hauling about $4,000 worth of heroin in the car, and he was charged with intent to distribute. [Star-Ledger (Newark), 5-31-2013]

But What If the Device Falls Into the Wrong Hands? A 55-year-old British man whose bowel was ruptured in a nearly catastrophic traffic accident has been fitted with a bionic sphincter that opens and closes with a remote controller. Ged Galvin had originally endured 13 surgeries in a 13-week hospital stay and had grown frustrated with using a colostomy bag until surgeon Norman Williams of the Royal London Hospital proposed the imaginative operation. Dr. Williams, who was interviewed along with Galvin for a November 2009 feature in London's Daily Mail, wrapped a muscle transplanted from Galvin's leg around the sphincter and attached electrodes to tighten or loosen its grip. [Daily Mail, 11-10-2009, 11-13-2009]

Thanks This Week to Mark Hazelrigg and Bruce Leiserowitz and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Orestes De La Paz's exhibit at the Frost Art Museum in Miami in May recalled Chuck Palahniuk's novel and film "Fight Club," in which lead character Tyler Durden's principal income source was making upscale soap using discarded liposuctioned fat fetched from the garbage of cosmetic surgeons (thus closing the loop of fat from rich ladies recycled back to rich ladies). De La Paz told his mentor at Florida International University that he wanted only to display his own liposuctioned fat provocatively, but decided to make soap when he realized that the fat would otherwise quickly rot. Some visitors to the exhibit were able to wash their hands with the engineered soap, which De La Paz offered for sale at $1,000 a bar. [WLRN-TV (Miami), 5-16-2013]

-- As recently as mid-May, people with disabilities had been earning hefty black-market fees by taking strangers into Disneyland and Disney World using the parks' own liberal "disability" passes (which allow for up to five relatives or guests at a time to accompany the disabled person in skipping the sometimes-hours-long lines and having immediate access to the rides). The pass-holding "guide," according to NBC's "Today" show, could charge as much as $200 through advertising on CraigsList and via word-of-mouth to some travel agents. Following reports in the New York Post and other outlets, Disney was said in late May to be warning disabled permit-holders not to abuse the privilege. [New York Post, 5-14-2013; NBC News, 5-31-2013]

-- After setting out to create a protective garment for mixed martial arts fighters, Jeremiah Raber of High Ridge, Mo., realized that his "groin protection device" could also help police, athletes and military contractors. Armored Nutshellz underwear, now selling for $125 each, has multiple layers of Kevlar plus another fabric called Dyneema, which Raber said can "resist" multiple shots from 9 mm and .22-caliber handguns. He said the Army will be testing Nutshellz in August, hoping it can reduce the number of servicemen who come home with devastating groin injuries. [KSDK-TV, 5-6-2013]

-- "Ambulance-chasing" lawyers are less the cliche than they formerly were because of bar association crackdowns, but fire truck-chasing contractors and "public adjusters" are still a problem -- at least in Florida, where the state Supreme Court tossed out a "48-hour" time- out rule that would have given casualty victims space to reflect on their losses before being overwhelmed by home-restoration salesmen. Consequently, as firefighters told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in May, the contractors are usually "right behind" them on the scene, pestering anxious or grief-stricken victims. The Sun-Sentinel found one woman being begged to sign up while she was still crying out for her dog that remained trapped in the blaze. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 5-18-2013]

-- Researchers writing recently in the journal PLoS ONE disclosed that they had found certain types of dirt that contain antimicrobial agents capable of killing E. coli and the antibiotic-resistant MRSA. According to the article, medical "texts" back to 3000 B.C. mentioned clays that, when rubbed on wounds, reduce inflammation and pain. [Popular Science, 5-22-2013]

-- Researchers writing in May in the journal Pediatrics found that some infants whose parents regularly sucked their babies' pacifiers to clean them (rather than rinsing or boiling them) developed fewer allergies and cases of asthma. (On the other hand, parental-cleansing might make other maladies more likely, such as tooth decay.) [New York Times, 5-6-2013]

Archeologists discovered in May that a construction company had bulldozed 2,300-year-old Mayan ruins in northern Belize -- simply to mine the rocks for road fill to build a highway. A researcher said it could hardly have been an accident, for the ruins were 100 feet high in an otherwise flat landscape, and a Tulane University anthropologist estimated that Mayan ruins are being mined for road fill an average of once a day in their ancient habitats. Said another, "(T)o realize" that Mayans created these structures using only stone tools and then "carried these materials on their heads" to build them -- and then that bulldozers can almost instantly destroy them -- is "mind-boggling." [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 5-14-2013]

A woman in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood reported to a local news blog in May that she had seen (and her husband briefly conversed with) a man who was operating a "drone" from a sidewalk, guiding the noisy device to a point just outside a third-floor window in a private home. The pilot said he was "doing research" and, perhaps protected by a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision, asserted that he was not violating anyone's privacy because he, himself, was on a public sidewalk while the drone was in public airspace. The couple called for a police officer, but by the time one arrived, the pilot and his drone had departed, according to a report on the Capitol Hill Seattle blog. [Capitol Hill Seattle via Betabeat.com (New York City), 5-14-2013]

Army Major Nidal Hasan went on trial in June for killing 13 and wounding another 32 in the notorious November 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, but his 43 months in lockup since then have been lucrative. WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth) reported in May that Maj. Hasan has earned $278,000 (and counting) in salary and benefits because his pay cannot be stopped until he is convicted. By contrast, some of the 32 surviving victims complain of difficulty wrenching money out of the Army for worker compensation and disability treatment -- because the Army has refused to classify the spree-shooting as a combat-similar "terrorist attack" (in favor of terming it the politically correct "workplace violence"). [WFAA-TV, 5-22-2013]

(1) John Allison, 41, who was arrested inside a Hannaford's grocery store in Massena, N.Y., in May, first aroused suspicion as an anticipated shoplifter, but it turns out that all he wanted to do was to remove a pepperoni from the meat case, rub it on his penis and put it back. He was charged with criminal mischief. (2) David Beckman, 64, was charged in DuPage County, Ill., in May with misdemeanor animal cruelty after he allegedly sexually abused his pet peacock, "Phyl." [Watertown Daily News, 5-16-2013] [WMAQ-TV (Chicago), 5-12-2013]

Three men committed home invasion of a Houston residence on May 14 and, although two escaped, one wound up in the hospital and under arrest. The three men kicked in a door and shut the resident in an upstairs closet while they ransacked the home, but they failed to inspect the closet first and thus did not realize that it was the resident's handgun-storage closet. A few minutes later, the resident emerged, locked and loaded, and wounded one of the men in the shoulder and leg. [Houston Chronicle, 5-14-2013]

(1) Bryan Zuniga, 20, was (according to a deputy) weaving in traffic in his SUV in May near the St. Petersburg, Fla., city limit, but instead of submitting to the deputy, he fled on foot and eventually climbed a fence to a water-treatment plant -- and apparently disturbed an alligator residing in a pond. Zuniga was treated at St. Petersburg General Hospital for bites to his face and arm. (2) In Albuquerque in May, Luis Briones, 25, became the most recent person arrested for distracted driving -- after he crashed into another car while engaged in sexual intercourse in the driver's seat. (His naked lady-friend was thrown from the car, but not seriously hurt.) [Tampa Bay Times, 5-9-2013] [The Smoking Gun, 5-29-2013]

Thanks this week to Elaine Weiss, David Swanson, Gary DaSilva, Michael Harris, Candy Clouston, John McGaw, Steve Dunn, Paul Krause, Peter Swank, and Chris Banta, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

-- The Food and Drug Administration proposed recently to limit the quantity of tiny "mites" that could occupy imported cheese, even though living, crawling mites are a feature desired by aficionados. ("Cheese is absolutely alive!" proclaimed microbiologist Rachel Dutton, who runs the "cheese laboratory" at Harvard University.) In fact, cheese is home to various molds, bacteria and yeasts, which give it flavor, and sellers routinely use blowers to expel excessive critters, but the FDA now wants to limit them to 6 bugs per square inch. However, according to a May report on NPR, lovers of some cheeses, especially the French Mimolette, object, asserting both an indifference to the sight of mites creeping around -- and a fear of taste-loss (since the mites burrow into the hunk, aerating it and

extending the flavor). [NPR, 5-11-2013]

-- Energy West, the natural gas supplier in Great Falls, Mont., had tried recently to raise awareness of leaks by distributing scratch-and-sniff cards to residents, demonstrating gas's distinctive, rotten-egg smell. In May, workers cast aside several cartons of leftover cards, which were hauled off and disposed of by crushing -- which released the scent and produced a massive blanket of odor over downtown Great Falls, resulting in a flurry of panicked calls to firefighters about gas leaks. [Great Falls Tribune, 5-8-2013]

-- Well, Of Course! (1) The Ypsilanti, Mich., City Council voted in May on a resolution that would have required the members always to vote either "yes" or "no" (to thus reduce the recent, annoying number of "abstain" votes). The resolution to ban abstaining failed because three of the seven members abstained. (2) Doctors told a

newspaper in Stockholm in April that at least one of Sweden's premier modeling agencies, looking for recruits, had been caught passing out business cards adjacent to the country's largest eating-disorder clinic, forcing the clinic to change its rules on patients taking outside walks. [Associated Press via WHTM-TV

(Harrisburg, Pa.), 5-23-2013] [The Local (Stockholm), 4-18-2013]

-- The United Nations Conference on Disarmament, a multilateral forum on arms control agreements, was chaired beginning May 27th (until June 23rd) by Iran, which, for that time, at least, had the awkward job of overseeing resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, which the country is widely thought to be ignoring. [Fox News, 5-13-2013]

-- Unclear on the Concept: (1) Ruben Pavon was identified by surveillance video in Derry, N.H., in April snatching a grill from the front porch of a thrift store. Pavon explained to police that the store's name, "Finders Keepers," indicated to him that the objects were free for the taking and admitted that he had previously taken items from the porch. (2) In May, Los Angeles police bought back

1,200 guns in one of the periodic U.S. buy-back programs, but they declined to accept the pipe bomb a man said he wanted to sell. "This is not a pipe-bomb buyback," said Chief Charlie Beck. "Pipe bombs are illegal ... " The man was promptly arrested. [WMUR-TV (Manchester, N.H.), 5-1-2013] [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles, 5-6-2013]

-- Too Much Information: John Casey, 51, was caught by security staff at an Asda supermarket in Washington, England last October after allegedly stealing a slab of beef. He was convicted in May even after offering the compelling explanation that he had concealed the beef underneath other purchases not to avoid paying for it, but only because the sight of the raw meat gave him "flashbacks" to his dead grandmother, who had passed away of a blood clot when Casey was a child. [Sunderland Echo, 5-23-2013]

-- Keith Judd filed a lawsuit in Iowa in May, in essence to invalidate the 2012 election by having President Obama officially declared a Kenyan and not an American. Judd filed the papers from a federal penitentiary in Texas, where he is serving 17 years for threatening a woman he believed to be a "clone" of the singer Stevie Nicks, because Nicks (or the clone) had tried to sabotage his home improvement company. (Bonus Fact: In the 2012 Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, Judd, a write-in candidate, defeated President Obama in nine counties and lost the state by only 33,000 votes.) [Des Moines Register, 5-23-2013]

-- Edward Kramer, co-founder of the annual Atlanta fantasy-character convention Dragon*Con, was arrested in 2000 for allegedly having sex with underage boys, but has yet to stand trial in Georgia because he has engineered a never-ending set of legal delays -- if not because of his version of Orthodox Judaism that limits his diet and activities, then it his allegedly poor health. ("As soon as he puts on an orange jumpsuit," said prosecutor Danny Porter, "he becomes an invalid," requiring a wheelchair and oxygen tank.) In 2011, after managing to get "house arrest," he violated it by being caught with an underage boy. Lately, according to a May Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, he files an average of three demands per day from his Gwinnett County, Ga., lockup, each requiring painstaking review before being rejected. Kramer still owns about one-third of Dragon*Con, whose current officials are mortified that they cannot expel a man they consider a child molester. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5-28-2013]

-- In May, the Florida House of Representatives adjourned for the year without assessing themselves even a nominal increase in health insurance premiums for their own taxpayer-funded deluxe coverage, which will remain at $8.34 per month for individuals ($30 for families). Several days earlier, the House had voted to reject several billion dollars in federal grants for extending health insurance

coverage to about a million more poor people in the state's

Medicaid program. The House premiums are even lower than those of state senators and rank-and-file state employees, and lower than the premiums of Medicaid recipients who have the ability to pay. [Tampa Bay Times, 5-13-2013]

Apparently running out of space on his body (which is two-thirds tattooed), Brazilian Rodrigo Fernando dos Santos has moved on to his eyeballs. According to the body-modification website BME.com, eyeball-tattooing is safe if done correctly, which involves the artist injecting the ink precisely between the conjunctiva and the sclera layers --with the main risk, of course, that the client can go blind. In April, Sao Paulo tattoo artist Rafael Leao Dias, who said he had studied eyeball work for two years, successfully turned dos Santos's eyes into pools of dark ink. "I cried ink for two days," he told a local blogger. BME.com said eyeball tattoos have been reported for nearly 2,000 years. [Huffington Post, 4-17-2013]

-- Paul Gardener and Chad Leakey were arrested in Tempe, Ariz., in May and charged with a spree of car burglaries. According to police, the men were trying various cars' doors, looking for any that were unlocked, when they inadvertently opened the back door of an unmarked police car. The men had apparently not noticed (until too

late) that two uniformed officers were sitting in the front seat and had also failed to notice that cage wiring separated the back seat from the front seat. [AzFamily.com (Phoenix), 5-14-2013]

-- Timothy Adams, 24, was charged with home invasion in May in Gardner, Mass., but only after resident Michael Salame slammed him into the floor. Salame is 70 years old, has had eight heart stents, and is forced to wear special coverings on his arms at night because of nerve damage -- yet Adams apparently went down easily and at one point offered Salame "thousands of dollars" to let him up before police arrived. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 5-

9-2013]

-- Dogs Gone Wild: (1) Oscar, a Lawrence, Mass., K-9, accidentally fired a gun into an occupied home during a police chase in March. He had pawed the trigger while digging into snow where a fleeing suspect had tossed his gun. (No one was injured.) (2) In March, a dog left inside an otherwise unattended, engine-running car accidentally kicked it into gear and pinned an unidentified pedestrian, knocking him unconscious. He was taken to a hospital in York, Pa., and revived. (3) Gregory Lanier, 35, driving his dog in a truck in Sebring, Fla., in February, was shot in the leg when the dog stepped on a .380 caliber pistol. He was not seriously hurt. [WFXT-TV (Boston), 3-3-2013] [York Daily Record, 3-29-2013] [Highlands Today (Sebring), 2-25-2013]

Thanks This Week to Dave Ryan, David Rubin, Rebekah

Kogelschatz, Dave Abdoo, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.