Although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged 9/11 mastermind) was waterboarded 183 times among several extreme interrogation techniques, he and his CIA captors eventually reached a moderated state. In 2003, though still housed in a "black site" in Romania, "KSM" asked permission to design a household vacuum cleaner, and the highest echelons of the agency co-operated, according to a former senior CIA analyst, speaking to the Associated Press in July. In reality, when a detainee exhausts his intelligence value, the agency's main mission is to keep him "sane," in case he is later put on trial, and the vacuum cleaner project was thought likely to engage KSM, who, 15 years before the murders of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, had earned a mechanical engineering degree from North Carolina A&T State University. [Associated Press, 7-11-2013]

-- The gourmet lollipop company Lollyphile announced its latest flavor in June: Breast Milk Lollipops (four for $10). Owner Jason Darling said it "slowly dawned on" him that his friends were "producing milk so delicious it could turn a screaming, furious child into a docile, contented one. I knew I had to capture that flavor." [Lollyphile press release, 6-4-2013]

-- Marketing Challenges: (1) The Rocket Fizz Soda Pop and Candy Shop franchisers, already with a lineup of sometimes-unappreciated flavors such as buffalo chicken wing soda, briefly experimented in June with "ranch dressing" soda, a mistaken adventure that co-founder Rob Powells jokingly blamed on his business partner. (2) Brewmaster John Maier of Rogue Ales in Newport, Ore., pointed out that "wild yeasts" have been used in beer for centuries and thus (according to a June report on FoodBeast.com) his company's Beard Beer (from yeast of beards, including at one time, his own) should be regarded as a traditional brew. [Huffington Post, 6-14-2013] [Food Beast, 6-5-2013]

-- Carnivorous Vegetation: It was a special occasion in Surrey, England, in June as a rare plant prepared to bloom. The 3-foot-tall Puya chilensis, native to Chile, features neon-bright greenish-yellow flowers with blooms large enough to yield drinkable nectar, but its most startling distinction is its ability to nourish itself by trapping small animals in its razor-sharp spines, leaving them to decay. (At Britain's Wisley Garden, it is fed with ordinary fertilizer rather than animals.) [The Independent (London), 6-17-2013]

-- Too Much Information: During a June debate in a House Rules Committee hearing on abortion legislation, U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas, himself an obstetrician/gynecologist, criticized a proposal to outlaw abortion at the 20-week limit (where a fetus is said to begin to feel pain), insisting on an earlier ban, at 15 or 16 weeks. "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week-old baby," said Burgess, "and they have movements that are purposeful. ... If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs." Thus, "If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?" [RawStory.com, 6-17-2013]

-- Physicians at Kwong Wah Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, publishing in the Hong Kong Medical Journal recently, described a 66-year-old man seeking relief from a swelling in his abdomen (after having had a sparse history with doctors). They concluded that the man was basically a woman and that the cause of the swelling was an ovarian cyst. The patient had both Turner syndrome, which causes women to lack some female features, and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which boosts male hormones. (While females have two X chromosomes, and males an X and a Y, Turner syndrome patients have one X and no Y.) [South China Morning Post, 6-4-2013]

-- Alarming Headlines: (1) "Koala Chlamydia: The STD Threatening an Australian Icon" (BBC News). (2) "Super-Sized Crabs and Oysters With Herpes" (Field & Stream). (3) "Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers" (International Business Times, reporting June rallies of two British nationalist parties and their opposition occurring at the same time and place as a better-attended demonstration against the government's cull on badgers). [BBC News, 4-24-2013] [Field & Stream, 4-10-2013] [International Business Times, 6-1-2013]

-- Horse Bullies: In June, Barbour County, W.Va., firefighters, called to a farm in Belington, rescued the horse "Rowdy," whose entire body was somehow trapped inside an industrial-sized tire. Rowdy's owner said she believes Rowdy had an altercation with some of the other horses. [The Inter-Mountain (Elkins, W.Va.), 6-19-2013]

A staff report by Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce released in June and using data from Wisconsin (because of the state's comprehensive record-keeping) found that taxpayers wind up paying out at least $75 million a year in "safety net" assistance to the state's Wal-Mart workers (food stamps, Medicaid, school lunches, earned-income tax credits, etc.) allegedly because the company's wages and benefits are so meager. The report, an update on 2004 numbers that were less than half those found this time around, estimated that Wal-Mart families accounted for more than 9,000 Wisconsin Medicaid enrollees. The $75 million, covering 75 stores, represents a low-end estimate with the high end about $130 million. [The Capital Times (Madison), 6-7-2013; Los Angeles Times, 6-7-2013]

Melanie Typaldos, 57, and her husband, Richard Loveman, 54, in Buda, Texas, are supposedly part of a growing trend of people keeping pet capybaras (giant, semi-aquatic guinea pigs that are the world's largest rodents, at more than 100 pounds). "Gary" sometimes lounges on the couple's marital bed and frolics in the above-ground pool the couple installed for him. Although Melanie and Richard keep other, more traditional, animals at their home (they told London's Daily Mail in June), Gary is, of course, the only one as large as a human but with the distinctive body and head of a rat. [Daily Mail, 6-21-2013]

(1) Apprentice Brooklyn, N.Y., tree-trimmer David Fleischer, 21 (and son of the company owner), had to be rescued by firefighters in July after he apparently violated the cardinal rule in the business by cutting lower branches first -- until he was stranded at the top of the tree. "He is a good boy," said "Izzy" Fleischer, "but he is learning." (2) Emergency crews in Fort Worth, Texas, responded to a Quik Trip gas station in June when an unidentified man got his finger caught in his car's gas cap after he poured in some additive. Rescuers had to use a hammer and screwdriver to break the plastic around the cap and finally freed the man's hand, unscathed, after a 20-minute struggle. [New York Post, 7-6-2013] [KRLD-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 6-18-2013]

"Breatharianism" Revisited: Kirby de Lanerolle of Sri Lanka appeared on National Geographic television in June to claim that he had lived without food for five years -- on nourishment only from the sun, wind and the "vibrations of God." But his story provoked the same skepticism faced by other breatharians -- that who can know if he cheated? In May, Ms. Naveena Shine, a breatharian in Seattle, attempted to head off that criticism by installing 24-hour cameras throughout her home for her upcoming four-to-six-month regimen consuming only air and sunlight. However, she called off her project after 47 allegedly pure days (and a 33-pound weight loss) because, she said, she was out of money and because people seemed no less skeptical that she was somehow cheating. (De Lanerolle, interrogated on the TV show, actually confessed to minor cheating but insisted that science's two-month maximum for surviving foodlessly is wrong.) [The Sun (London), 6-27-2013] [Seattle Times, 6-17-2013]

What is believed to be the world's only commercial lounge openly serving cocaine operates in La Paz, Bolivia, though the owners of "Route 36" have to change locations from time to time, depending on the moods of the bribed authorities. An August (2009) dispatch in London's The Guardian reported that a nearly pure gram costs the equivalent of about $14 ($22 for "premium"), served by waiters in an empty CD case, with straws, but bar drinks are also available. Route 36 is well-known to backpacking tourists. Recalled one waiter, "We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. (T)he only time they left was to go to the ATM." [The Guardian, 8-19-09]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.