At a June hearing, a Philadelphia judge became so exasperated at defendant Robert Williams' seeming cluelessness about his need to keep his probation appointments that she ordered him to take "etiquette" classes before returning to court. Williams, a rap singer and budding music mogul still under court supervision on gun and drug charges from 2008, cavalierly defended his inability to find time for his probation officer by explaining that he was a busy man, working with seven "artists," with a demanding travel schedule, and uninhibitedly using social media (creating posts that, allegedly, led to threats against the probation officer). (Williams, of course, was accompanied to court by a several-man entourage.) [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6-30-2013]

-- An atheist "church" in Lake Charles, La., run by lapsed Pentecostal Jerry DeWitt, conducts periodic services with many of the trappings expected by the pious -- except for the need to believe in a supreme being. Such "churches" (reported The New York Times and Washington Post in coincidental stories the same day in June) can help soothe the "biological" needs for survival and avoidance of loneliness by congregational rituals (such as celebrating a sabbath) and in helping find meaning "in something other than (oneself)." For example, atheist Sigfried Gold praised a "rigorous prayer routine" (beseeching a "vivid goddess he created") in overcoming his weight problem. [New York Times, 6-24-2013; Washington Post, 6-24-2013]

-- War Endangers War Relics: In June, fighting in the Syrian civil war spread to its west, threatening archaeological digs and already recovered artifacts near the ancient city of Hamoukar -- which is the site of history's earliest known urban warfare (about 5,500 years ago). [LiveScience.com, 6-24-2013]

-- The business website Quartz reported in June that a popular consumer item in North Korea's perhaps-improving economy is the refrigerator, made in China and increasingly available as a reward to stellar performers among civil servants and other elites. The appliances, however, cannot reliably store food because the country's electric grid is so frequently offline and are mostly just status symbols. One item Quartz says often gets displayed in the refrigerator: books. [Qz.com, 6-18-2013]

-- Robert Dugan, 47, a full-time patrolman for the Delaware County (Pa.) Park Police, was charged in June with illegally impersonating a police officer. According to authorities in Brookhaven, Pa., Dugan had accosted a woman double-parked outside her home to pressure her into moving the car, but she refused. Dugan allegedly claimed he was an Upland Borough police officer (with authority to write parking citations and make arrests, which he did not actually have). [Delaware County Daily Times, 6-2-2013]

Shower rooms in health clubs are slippery enough, but Marc Moskowitz, 66, cited the one at the Bally Total Fitness gym on E. 55th St. in New York City as especially dangerous, according to his recent lawsuit to recover expenses for a broken shoulder suffered in a fall. Moskowitz claimed that so much gay male sex was occurring in the shower and locker-room area (unsupervised by Bally) that he had probably slipped on semen. [New York Daily News, 6-19-2013]

-- Lame: (1) Rodger Kelly was arrested in St. George, Utah, in June for rape of a female neighbor, but he told police that he committed the act only to "save" her, since he had discovered her "cold" and unconscious. He had violated her body only "to try and get her temperature up," according to the police report. (2) The low-price air carrier GoAir of New Delhi announced in June that in the future it would hire only females for the cabin crew -- because they weigh less than men (and expects eventually to save the equivalent of $4 million annually in fuel based on average weights). [Salt Lake Tribune, 6-10-2013] [The Times of India, 6-28-2013]

-- In May, former schoolteacher Kathleen Cawthorne, 33, of Rustburg, Va., successfully negotiated a reduction in her 11-year sentence for having sex with an underage student. Cawthorne's punishment was set at only four months in prison when she presented the judge with a clinical diagnosis of "hypersexuality," supposedly showing that she had little ability to control her desire to seduce the boy. [New York Daily News, 5-24-2013]

Floridians Standing Their Ground: In May, a jury in Tampa decided that Ralph Wald, 70, was not guilty of murdering a 32-year-old man he had shot in the back three times. He said he had caught the man having sex with his wife (successfully claiming that he thought the man was a dangerous intruder in his home). However, Marissa Alexander, 34, of Jacksonville, was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison for "aggravated assault" for merely firing a warning shot during an altercation with her estranged husband. The man, Rico Gray, is a serial domestic abuser and admitted that he was threatening Alexander that night and that she never actually pointed her gun directly at him. However, the judge denied Alexander use of the "stand your ground" defense because she had declined to simply walk away from Gray. [Tampa Bay Times, 5-30-2013] [Miami Herald, 5-28-2012]

(1) According to Chicago police, Gerardo Perez, 50, broke away while on a tour in May of the Chicago Animal Care and Control Facility because he had been struck with a sexual attraction. He was discovered minutes later on his hands and knees beside a pit bull, "appearing to have just had sex with the animal," according to a report on WMAQ-TV. (2) Shaun Orris, 41, was charged with disorderly conduct in Waukesha, Wis., in June after raising a ruckus outside the Montecito Ristorante Lounge, harassing passersby by loudly expressing his "constitutional right" to have sex with goats. [WMAQ-TV (Chicago), 6-3-2013] [WaukeshaNow.com, 6-17-2013]

Not Well-Thought-Out: (1) A 64-year-old man was arrested in Geelong, Australia (near Melbourne) in June after carjacking a 22-year-old woman's vehicle. He was still on-scene when police arrived, as it took him time to load his walker into the car, along with several bags he had nearby when he decided to commandeer the vehicle. (2) A well-dressed, 5-foot-10 man bailed out of an attempted robbery in May of a New York City Bank of America when, after handing a teller his holdup note, the woman panicked, began screaming "Oh my God!" and ran to the other side of the bank, diving under a counter. According to a witness, the robber stood in silence for a few seconds before fleeing. [Geelong Advertiser, 6-24-2013] [New York Post, 5-18-2013]

When last we checked on Wesley Warren Jr., 49, of Las Vegas, he was delaying his inevitable surgery to repair his permanently inflamed, 140-pound scrotum ("scrotal lymphedema"). He said at the time that he was enjoying the many television and radio appearances discussing his plight and that he feared becoming a nobody again after the surgery. He has now had the 13-hour operation, done pro bono by Dr. Joel Gelman of University of California, Irvine, and will soon be walking without hindrance, but his latest dissatisfaction, he told a British TV show in June (reported by The Sun), is that the surgery left him with a penis about 1 inch long. [The Sun, 6-21-2013]

Lonely Japanese men (and a few women) with rich imaginations have created a thriving subculture ("otaku") in which they have all-consuming relationships with figurines that are based on popular anime characters. "The less extreme," reported a New York Times writer in July, obsessively collect the dolls. The hardcore otaku "actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a (teenage character) is his girlfriend," and takes her out in public on romantic dates. "She has really changed my life," said "Nisan," 37, referring to his gal, Nemutan. (The otaku dolls are not to be confused with the life-size, anatomically correct dolls that other lonely men use for sex.) One forlorn "2-D" (so named for preferring relationships with two-dimensionals) said he would like to marry a real, 3-D woman, "(b)ut look at me. How can someone who carries this (doll) around get married?" [New York Times Magazine, 7-26-09]

Despite Chicago's recent crisis of gang-related street murders, the Roseland Community Hospital in a tough south-side neighborhood is on the verge of closing because of finances, and community groups have been energetically campaigning to keep it open. Joining civic leaders in the quest is the Black Disciples street gang, whose co-founder Don Acklin begged in June for the hospital to remain open, explaining, "It's bad enough we're out here harming each other." Besides wounded gang members needing emergency care, said Acklin, closing would amount to "genocide" because of all the innocent people exposed to crossfire. [WMAQ-TV (Chicago), 6-3-2013]

-- Suspicions Confirmed: A warehouse in Landover, Md., maintained by a company working on contract for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, contained "secret rooms" of furniture and equipment described as "man caves" for company employees. The EPA inspector general announced the discovery in May, and the government confiscated TVs, refrigerators, couches, personal photos, pin-ups, magazines and videos that the contractor's personnel brought in while ostensibly "working" on agency business. [Government Executive, 6-4-2013]

-- Scotland's Parliament was revealed in May to be considering, as part of its Children and Young People Bill, guaranteeing that specific, named persons would be appointed for every Scottish child at birth, charged with overseeing that child's welfare until adulthood. A Daily Telegraph story acknowledged that the bill is "remarkably vague" about the duties and powers of the designated persons and thus it is unclear how the law might affect typical parent-child relationships. [Daily Telegraph (London), 5-25-2013]

-- Update: "(Supermodels) is the one exception (to U.S. immigration policy) that we all scratch our heads about," said a Brookings Institution policy analyst, speaking to Bloomberg Businessweek in May. Foreign-born sports stars and entertainers are fast-tracked with American work permits under one system, but supermodels were excluded from that and must thus compete (successfully, it turns out) with physicists and nuclear engineers to earn visas among the 65,000 slots available only to "skilled workers with college degrees." As such, around 250 beauties are admitted every year. (The most recent attempt to get supermodels their own visa category was championed in 2005 and 2007 by, appropriately, then-U.S.-Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.) [Bloomberg Business Week, 5-23-2013]

-- In Lytle, Texas, in May, just 33 people voted for candidates for three openings on the school board, including the only voter who cast a ballot in District 1. Christina Mercado was the 1-0 winner, but someone else voted for her. Mercado cannot vote for District 1 candidates because she does not live there, and neither does the one candidate who opposed her. However, according to Texas law, Mercado can legally represent District 1 on the school board. [KENS-TV (San Antonio), 5-13-2013]

-- Rewarding the Breast Disguises: (1) An April crime report in San Francisco, noting that a female driver had rammed another car in a parking-space dispute, noted that the victim gave officers little help. The man could not tell officers the model car that hit him, and certainly not a license plate number, but he "was able to give a detailed description of the suspect's cleavage." No arrest was reported. (2) Colombian prisoner Giovanni Rebolledo was serving a 60-year sentence (as a member of the "Los Topos" gang charged with extortion, kidnapping and torture) when he escaped and decided on an extreme identity change in order to move about in the country. He became "Rosalinda," complete with, according to Colombia Reports news service, "impressive" breast implants, but nonetheless was identified in May in a routine traffic stop and arrested. [SFGate.com, 4-11-2013] [Colombia Reports, 5-6-2013]

-- In Kobe, Japan, in May, an unemployed, 32-year-old man carried out a minor theft (stealing a wallet from a parked scooter) apparently just to be locked up in the world famous city. Besides being the home of Kobe beef, it is acclaimed for its French, Chinese and octopus cuisines, and in fact, Kobe's Nagata Ward Precinct is renowned for the special gourmet boxed meals prepared by local bento shops, delivered daily to prisoners, which the thief said was foremost on his mind. [Japan Today, 5-18-2013]

-- More Time Needed on the Firing Range: In May, an Orlando Sentinel columnist demanded a federal investigation into the 2010 police killing of Torey Breedlove in Orlando's Pine Hills neighborhood, noting that killing the unarmed Breedlove somehow required 137 shots, with cops missing on at least 115. The columnist added that the Justice Department is currently investigating a Cleveland, Ohio, case in which local police killed two unarmed men but coincidentally also required 137 shots. (In both cases, the officers were exonerated after local investigators determined the officers believed the suspects were armed.) [Orlando Sentinel, 5-7-2013]

Whitby, U.K., town councilman Simon Parkes, 58, confessed to a reporter in June that he had had an extramarital affair -- in fact, an extraterrestrial extramarital affair -- with the 9-foot-tall Cat Queen, and that she had borne him a child. Parkes said the Cat Queen is biding her time until technology is available to bring her and the child to Earth. Said Parkes, "There are plenty of people in my position who don't choose to come out and say it because they are terrified it will destroy their careers." Parkes said his wife knows about his periodic meetings with the Cat Queen and is "very unhappy, clearly." [Fox News, 6-18-2013]

-- Least Competent Criminals: Shaun Paneral was questioned by police in Carlsbad, N.M., in May, on a loud-music complaint and, concerned that he already had an outstanding arrest warrant, gave his name as "Shaun Paul." Paneral thus became the most recent perp to choose his alias badly. "Shaun Paul," whoever he is, is also wanted by police in New Mexico, and Paneral was arrested for the false ID. [Carlsbad Current Argus, 5-17-2013]

-- It's Good to Be a Dog in the First World: The British company Paw Seasons has created a holiday for dogs (surely to appeal to guilt-ridden owners who leave them behind on their own holidays) priced at the equivalent of $73,000, consisting of a private suite for two weeks, with dog-friendly Hollywood movies, trips to the beach, surfing "lessons," spa and grooming treatment (including pedicure) by Harrod's, outfits from Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, and Mulberry, and the piece de resistance -- a personal dog house created in the image of the owner's own house. [Daily Telegraph, 6-17-2013]

Recent Public Appearances: Norwalk, Conn., in May (Jesus in an ink smear on a page of the newspaper The Hour). Saugus, Mass., March (Jesus on a drop cloth in a home). Bradenton, Fla., February (Jesus in profile on a carton of Corona beer). Halifax, Nova Scotia, March (Jesus in a knot of wood on furniture in a store). San Antonio, December (Jesus on a tortilla shell -- an item on which he has appeared previously at other sites). Herne Bay, England, October (Jesus on a patch of mold behind a refrigerator). Phoenix, June (Jesus in a smudge on the floor at Sky Harbor International Airport). Northumberland, England, March (Jesus in the condensation on a windshield). Brooklyn, Ohio, February (Jesus in bird droppings on a windshield).

Norwalk: [The Hour (Norwalk), 5-13-2013] Saugus: [WHDH-TV (Boston), 3-14-2013] Bradenton: [WWSB-TV (Sarasota, Fla.), 2-3-2013] Halifax: [National Post, 3-14-2013] pert San Antonio: [KHOU-TV (Houston), 12-17-2012] Herne Bay: [KentOnline, 10-19-2012] Phoenix: [AzCentral.com (Phoenix), 6-13-2013] Northumberland: [Sky.com (Newcastle upon Tyne), 3-12-2013] Brooklyn: [WEWS-TV (Cleveland), 2-23-2013]

Donald Duck may be a lovable icon of comic mishap to American youngsters, but in Germany, he is wise and complicated and retains followers well past their childhoods. Using licensed Disney storylines and art, the legendary translator Erika Fuchs created an erudite Donald, who often "quotes from German literature, speaks in grammatically complex sentences, and is prone to philosophical musings," according to a May Wall Street Journal dispatch. Though Donald and Uncle Scrooge ("Dagoberto") speak in a lofty richness, nephews Tick, Trick and Track use the slang of youth. Recently in Stuttgart, academics gathered for the 32nd annual convention of the "German Organization for Non-Commercial Followers of Pure Donaldism," with presentations on such topics as Duckburg's solar system. [Wall Street Journal, 5-23-2009]

Thanks This Week to Russell Bell and Annie Thames, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

-- As many as 50 exam monitors were forced to take cover at a high school in Zhongxiang, China, in June, fending off outraged students (and some parents) who hurled insults and stones at them after the monitors blocked cheating schemes on the all-important national "gaokao" exams. (It was "siege warfare," and eventually "hundreds" of police responded, according to a dispatch in the Daily Telegraph of London.) Metal detectors had found secret transmitters and contraband cellphones used by groups beaming in exam answers from outside. Independent proctors had been assigned because of longstanding suspicions that the schools' own proctors routinely enabled cheating (with results such as the 99 identical papers submitted in one subject on the previous year's exam). Said one student (in the mob of about 2,000), noting how widespread cheating is nationally, "There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat (also)." [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-20-2013]

-- Sheriffs and government deed-recorders in several states have reported annoying attempts recently by "Moorish American nationals" to confiscate temporarily vacant houses (often mansions), moving in without inhibition, changing the locks, and partying joyously -- based on made-up documents full of gobbledygook and stilted legalese granting them sovereignty beyond the reach of law-enforcement. There is a venerable Moorish Temple Science of America, but these trespassers in Florida, Maryland, Tennessee, and other states are from fanciful offshoots that demand reparations (usually in gold) for Christopher- Columbus-era Europeans having stolen "their" land. A North Carolina police investigator told the Washington Post in March that "every state" is experiencing the "Moorish American" invasion. [Washington Post, 3-18-2013] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 1-28-2013]

-- Britain's Anomalous Mind Management Abductee Contactee Helpline is the nation's "weirdest" support group, wrote the Daily Mirror in June, providing a range of services to victims of kidnapping by extraterrestrials and other haunting incidents to about 1,500 people a year, according to co-founder Miles Johnston. AMMACH uses an ordinary wall-stud detector to locate bodily implants and employs magnetic field meters and mineral lamps to identify "signatures" left on a skin's atoms by visits to another dimensional reality, Johnston explained. "We are under the threat of termination as a species if we do not get this sorted out." [Daily Mirror, 6-9-2013]

-- Sheriff's deputies arrested Shane Kersey, 35, in March as the one who made phone calls to four schools in New Orleans's Westbank neighborhood, threatening to burn them down. When taken into custody, Kersey had aluminum foil wrapped around his skull and secured by a baseball cap but explained to an officer that he needed it "to prevent microwave signals from entering his head." [WWL-TV (New Orleans), 3-6-2013]

-- Among the character witnesses in May at the New York City sex-trafficking trial of alleged pimp Vincent George, Jr., 33, and his father were three of the younger man's ladies, who praised him unconditionally to the jury as a good father to the children they bore for him and as the person responsible for helping them kick their drug habits. Heather Keith, 28, and Danielle Geissler, 31, referred to each other as Vincent, Jr.'s "wife-in-law." Geissler admitted that George ("Daddy") slapped her around a bit, explaining that they both "slapped each other around sometimes but never over work or staying in the (prostitution) life." (Three weeks later, the Georges were acquitted of sex trafficking, although convicted of money- laundering.) [New York Daily News, 5-28-2013; 6-19-2013]

-- Tim Blackburn, 50, fell off a ladder in Stockton-on-Tees, England, in 2007, and shattered his arm so badly that doctors had to remove four inches of bone and attach a metal scaffold around his arm that took six years to heal completely (and then only because of help from a cutting-edge ultrasound procedure). In May 2013 -- one day after he got a clean bill of health -- Blackburn tripped over his dog and tumbled down the stairs in his home, and his arm "snapped like a twig," he said. [United Press International, 5-22-2013]

-- Technology companies are making great strides in odor-detection robots, valuable in identifying subtle scents ranging from contaminants in beer brewing to cancerous tumors in the body. And then there is CrazyLabo in Fukuoka, Japan, which is marketing two personal-hygiene robots, available for special occasions such as parties, according to a May BBC News report. One detector, shaped as a woman's kissable head, tests breath odor and responds (e.g., "smells like citrus"; "there's an emergency taking place"). The other, resembling a dog, checks a person's feet and can either cuddle up to the subject (no odor) or appear to pass out. [BBC News, 5-8-2013]

-- The local council in Brunete, Spain, near Madrid, has now seen a radical drop in unscooped dog droppings after employing volunteers to find the names of derelict dogs. They then matched the dog with the town's dog registrations to obtain the owners' addresses, then mailed them packages containing their dogs' business (terming it "lost property"). [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-4-2013]

-- Elementary school teacher Carie Charlesworth was fired recently by Holy Trinity School near San Diego, Calif. -- with the only reason given that her ex-husband has threatened to kill her. After a January weekend in which Carie was forced to call police three times because of the threats, the husband had shown up the next day in Holy Trinity's parking lot to see her, provoking officials to immediately put the school in lockdown. In a termination letter, officials noted that Charlesworth's students are constantly at risk from the ex-husband, that her restraining order against him is obviously not a deterrent, and that they thus "cannot allow" her to continue her career at the school, according to a report by San Diego's KNSD-TV. (Battered-women support groups, of course, were horrified at the school's decision.) [KNSD-TV, 6-12-2013]

-- Yasuomi Hirai, 26, was arrested in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, in June after being identified in news reports as the man who had crawled "dozens of meters" in an underground gutter solely to gain access to a particular sidewalk grate near Konan Women's University in order to look up at skirt-wearers passing over the grate. After one pedestrian, noting the pair of eyes below, summoned a police officer, Hirai scurried down the gutter and escaped, but since he had been detained several months earlier on a similar complaint, police soon seized him, and indeed, he later admitted, "I have done this numerous times." [Japan Daily Press, 6-13-2013] [Kotaku.com, 6-21-2013]

Undignified Deaths

-- The man who claimed the "world's record" for traveling the farthest distance on a zip line attached only to his hair was killed in April as he similarly attempted to cross the Teesta River in West Bengal, India, on a zip line. He died of a heart attack, and since observers were unclear whether his limpness was part of the performance, he hung lifeless for 45 minutes. (He was identified in news reports as a "Guinness Book" record-holder, but as with many such claims, the Guinness Book has no such category.) [BBC News, 4-29-2013]

-- A 22-year-old man was killed in March attempting to rope-swing from the picturesque, 140-foot-high Corona Arch near Moab, Utah, trying to emulate a famous 2012 Internet video at the arch, "World's Largest Rope Swing." This man, however, apparently overestimated the length of rope he would need to launch himself off the arch to begin his swing -- and crashed to the ground. [KSL-TV (Salt Lake City), 3-25-2013]

A News of the Weird Classic

A 48-year-old immigrant from Malta regularly hangs out in various New York City bars, but always on the floor, so that he can enjoy his particular passion of being stepped on. "Georgio T." told the New York Times in June (2009) that he has delighted in being stepped on since he was a kid. While one playmate "wanted to be the doctor, (another) wanted to be the carpenter... I would want to be the carpet." Nowadays, he carries a custom-made rug he can affix to his back (and a sign, Step on Carpet) and may lie face-down for several hours if the bar is busy. He is also a regular at "high-foot-traffic" fetish parties, where dozens of stompers (especially women in stilettos) can satisfy their own urges while gratifying Georgio's. [New York Times, 6-14-09]

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