Beginning in 2011, about three dozen people in Tokyo have been meeting every Sunday morning at 6 a.m. on a mission to scrub down, one by one, the city's grungiest public rest rooms. "By 7:30," according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed an outing in August, the team had left behind a "gleaming public toilet, looking as good as the day it was installed." Explained the hygiene- intense Satoshi Oda (during the week, a computer programmer), the mission is "for our own good" -- work that leader Masayuki Magome compares to the training that Buddhist monks receive to find peace. (In fact, to fulfill the group's motto, "Clean thyself by cleaning cubicles," the scouring must be done with bare hands.) A squad supporter spoke of a sad, growing apprehension that the younger generation no longer shares the Japanese cultural conviction that rest rooms should always be clean and safe. [Associated Press via WTVY-TV (Dothan, Ala.), 8-28-2013]

Colleagues were stunned in May when ABC News editor Don Ennis suddenly appeared at work wearing a little black dress and a red wig and declaring that he had begun hormone therapy and wanted to be called Dawn Ennis. As co-workers accommodated his wishes (which did not seem so unusual in contemporary professional society), Ennis began to have second thoughts, and by July had blamed his conversion on "transient global amnesia," brought on by marital difficulties, and had returned to work as Don. Apparently the primary lingering effect is that he must still deal with Dawn's hormone-induced breasts. [New York Post, 8-6-2013]

-- Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a mirror that makes a person appear happy even when not. A built-in camera tracks facial features in real time, then tweaks the image to turn up the corners of the mouth and to create the beginnings of a smile in the eyes. Of what practical use would such a mirror be? Other Japanese researchers, according to a Slate.com report in August, believe that happy-face mirrors in retail stores would improve shoppers' dispositions and lead to more sales. [Slate.com, 8-7-2013]

-- A home ownership boom in China has led to heavily attended housing fairs, in which builders compete zealously to sell their homes, leading to offbeat schemes to draw attention. Among the latest, according to China Daily, is one that dresses female models in bare-backed evening wear, with sample floor plans and other housing information painted onto their skin, and sends them wandering through the crowds. [News Limited (Sydney), 8-13-2013]

-- SyFy Channel's recent original movie "Sharknado" briefly became a media sensation in July with a storyline involving large schools of oversized sharks lifted from the ocean by waterspouts and deposited, alive (and angry!) on land to wreak havoc. But as the website Mother Nature News subsequently reported, animals actually have been lifted to land in that fashion in the past. Previous documented news reports of the phenomenon include airborne fish (mudfish in the Philippines, perch in Australia); frogs (in Odzaci, Serbia, in 2005); jellyfish (Bath, England, in 1894); worms (Jennings, La., in 2007); and, according to an 1887 New York Times story, eight alligators in Silverton Township, S.C. [MNN.com, 7-28-2013]

-- Two macaques escaped from the Straussberg Adventure Park in eastern Germany in July, apparently on the run from the jealous bullying of "Cornelius," the resident alpha male. When park officials recaptured the two, they reported that (even though everyone seems to be against "bullying" these days) "Fred" and "Richard" would have to be castrated. It was not punishment, the officials explained; it was to calm them and reduce the overall "hormone imbalance" in the park, since males greatly outnumber females. [Spiegel Online, 8-1-2013]

The Costa Rican government announced recently that it would close all its zoos, effective March 2014, and free animals either to the wild or to safe "retirement" shelters. Since the country is known for its expansive biodiversity (500,000 unique organisms, despite occupying barely more than 1/100th of 1 percent of Earth's area), it is time, the environment minister said, to allow the organisms to interact instead of imprisoning them. Costa Rica is also one of only four countries to ban the exploitation of dolphins. [Global Post (Boston), 7-22-2013]

-- In July, following sustained criticism, Thomson Reuters business information company suspended an advance-release service for the crucial monthly "consumer confidence index" that has been known to signal stock markets to abruptly "buy" (driving up prices) or "sell" (sending them lower). The University of Michigan prepares and distributes the index promptly at 10 a.m. Eastern time on its release date, but Thomson Reuters offers two advance peeks. It pays the school about $1 million a year to see the index at 9:55 a.m., to share with its best customers. The suspended program gave an even earlier tip-off -- at 9:54:58 -- and high-frequency trading firms paid $6,000 more a month for those two seconds, which allowed their computer robots to execute hundreds of thousands of trades before other professional traders had access to the index. [New York Times, 7-8-2013]

-- First-World Problems: Self-indulgent New York City parents have been hiring "play-date" coaches for their preschool youngsters, apparently out of fear that the kids' skill set for just having fun might not impress admissions officers at the city's elite private schools. The CEO of one consulting outfit told the New York Post in July that $400 an hour gets expert monitoring of a 4-year-old in small groups, evaluating, for example, how the child colors in a book, shares the crayons, holds a pencil and follows the rules of Simon Says. [New York Post, 7-19-2013]

-- An unidentified school in the West Coast Conference recently self-reported a violation of controversial NCAA rules that restrict privileges for student-athletes, ordering a member of its women's golf team to pay back $20 after she washed her car using a hose (and water) belonging to the school but which were not available to other students. (A University of Portland coach said he heard about the violation at a conference meeting, and Yahoo Sports, seeking confirmation, reported that an NCAA spokesman soft-pedaled the illegality, calling the school's action a "miscommunication.") [Yahoo Sports, 5-29-2013]

The question in a vandalism case before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in July was whether Ronald Strong's messy bowel movement in a federal courthouse men's room in Portland, Maine, was "willful" or, as Strong claimed, an uncontrollable intestinal event. Three rather genteel judges strained to infer Strong's state of mind from the condition of the facility. A cleaning lady had described scattered feces as "smeared," but Judge Juan Torruella took that to mean not "finger smears," he wrote, but "chunks," "kind of like chunky peanut butter." Two other judges, outvoting Torruella, seemed skeptical that feces could have landed two feet up the wall unless Strong had intended it. (Even so, Judge Torruella was unimpressed, implying that if he were intending to smear feces in a men's room, he surely would sully the mirrors, but that all mirrors were found clean.) [Salon.com, 7-26-2013]

John Anderson, the town administrator of Derry, N.H. (pop. 34,000), was accused by police in August of indecent exposure and lewdness after, naked, inviting a DirecTV salesman into his home and performing unspecified conduct in front of the man. Anderson was previously town manager of Boothbay Harbor, Maine. [Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.), 8-16-2013]

In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers confiscated a live, bejeweled beetle that a woman was wearing as an "accessory" on her sweater as she crossed into Brownsville, Texas, from Mexico. Blue jewels were glued onto the beetle's back, which had been painted gold, and the mobile brooch was tethered by a gold chain attached to a safety pin. Even though the woman orally "declared" the animal, the beetle was confiscated because she had not completed the bureau's PPQ Form 526, which is necessary to bring insects into the country. Reportedly, such jewelry is not that rare in Mexico. A spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was, of course, appalled. [Brownsville Herald, 1-21-10; The Guardian (London), 1-22-10]

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

Loco Parentis: First-time mother Amy Webb proudly notates dozens of data points about her child each day and obsessively tracks their detailed progression by computer on spreadsheets, according to the provocative first-person account she wrote for Slate.com in July. In categories ranging from ordinary vital signs, to the kid's progress in sound-making, to dietary reactions, to quantity and quality of each poop, stats are kept 24/7 (even with a bedside laptop to facilitate nighttime entries). She began tracking her own health during pregnancy, but then decided, "Why stop now?" when her daughter was born. Webb's pediatrician rated the kid's health as "A-minus," but the parents' as "C," adding: "You guys need to relax. Leave the spreadsheets (out)." Webb and her husband remain confident that their extreme tracking optimizes their chances of raising a healthy daughter. [Slate.com, 7-9-2013]

-- Dr. Timothy Sweo said later that he was only trying to make his diagnosis of lumbar lordosis "less technical" for patient Terry Ragland when he described her condition as "ghetto booty." The shape of her spine makes her buttocks stick out more, he said, and he prescribed pain medication as there is no cure, per se. Nonetheless, Ragland felt insulted and filed a complaint against Dr. Sweo with the Tennessee Department of Health in July. Said she, "I couldn't believe he said that." [WREG-TV (Memphis), 7-12-2013]

-- An Anglican parishioner complained in August about the "blasphemous" bumper sticker she saw on the car of Rev. Alice Goodman of Cambridge, England, but Rev. Goodman immediately defended it as not irreligious (although, she conceded, perhaps "vulgar"). The sticker read "WTFWJD?" which is a play on the popular evangelical Christian slogan "WWJD?" -- "What Would Jesus Do?" ("WTF" is a vulgar but omnipresent acronym on the Internet.) Rev. Goodman pointed out that even Dr. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, seemed not to be shocked by her sticker when he saw it. [Daily Telegraph, 8-8-2013]

-- The wife of Valentino Ianetti was found dead in Stanhope, N.J., in 2010 with 47 stab wounds, leading police to immediately suspect her husband, who was at home with her. However, after three years' incarceration, Ianetti, 63, won release in August by finally convincing prosecutors that his wife actually committed suicide. Although the case is still officially "under investigation," the medical examiner concluded that 46 of the wounds were superficial - - "hesitation" cuts perhaps self-inflicted as the wife built up the courage to administer a final thrust. Also, the wife was found with a heavy dose of oxycodone in her system and likely felt little pain from any of the 47 wounds. [Star-Ledger (Newark), 8-16-2013]

-- Germany's center-left Social Democrats posted about 8,000 campaign placards in July that it proudly hailed as "eco-friendly" and biodegradable to attract the support of environment-concerned voters. However, 48 hours later, at the first rainfall, the posters became waterlogged and, indeed, biodegraded. Reported Hamburg's Spiegel Online, "None of the campaign workers could have guessed ... how quickly the environmentally friendly process ... would begin." [Spiegel Online, 8-2-2013]

-- Actually, That's Why She's in Trouble: In August, a federal judge in Seattle sentenced Alicia Cruz, 31, to four years in prison for violating court-ordered drug treatment stemming from a 2011 conviction for stealing the identities of more than 300 people. Cruz had won a second chance (drug treatment, instead of prison) by convincing the judge that she was no longer a crook -- that this time, she would abandon her identity-theft life and go straight. Added Cruz, "I'm a different person now." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8-9-2013]

-- James "Sonny" McCullough, the mayor of the New Jersey shore town of Egg Harbor (pop. 4,240), announced in August that he was selling his waterfront home -- because real estate taxes were too high (more than $31,000 a year) following a recent re-assessment and that he could no longer afford it. The mayor, 71, told The Press of Atlantic City that he had planned to live the rest of his life in the home, but was not even certain he could afford to live anywhere in Egg Harbor. [MyCentralJersey.com (Somerville), 8-21-2013]

A lawyer and former spokesman for the judiciary of Kenya filed a petition in July with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, seeking a retrial of Jesus Christ and naming as defendants the state of Israel, King Herod, various Jewish elders, the former emperor of Rome (Tiberius), and of course Pontius Pilate. Dola Indidis claims that the proceedings before Roman courts did not conform to the rule of law at the time. (Indidis' claim had been dismissed by the High Court in Nairobi, and a spokesperson for the ICJ said the court has no jurisdiction in such a case, for it is not one between governments.) [Jerusalem Post, 7-30-2013]

No Profiling, Please: In August, minutes before a scheduled mixed martial arts fight in Immokalee, Fla., the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation canceled it as "unsanctioned." Contestant Garrett Holeve, 23, who has Down syndrome, was to fight David Steffin, 28, who has cerebral palsy, and both had trained intensively for eight weeks and were outraged by the decision. Said Holeve's father of his son's reaction, "(T)hat hurts his feelings and angers him." "Their decision is pretty arbitrary (and) discriminatory." [WINK-TV (Fort Myers), 8-5-2013]

Researchers can accurately estimate a person's economic status just by learning which environmental toxins are in his body, concluded a University of Exeter (England) research team recently, using U.S. data. Although "both rich and poor Americans are walking waste dumps," wrote the website Quartz, reporting the conclusions, poorer people's typical food leaves lead, cadmium and the banned bisphenol-A, whereas richer people more likely accumulate heavy metals (mercury, arsenic, thallium) from aquatic lean protein (and acquire oxybenzone from the active ingredient in sunscreens). Previous research was thought to show that richer Americans ate healthier (for example, eating fruits and vegetables instead of canned foods), but the Exeter research shows they merely house different toxins. [Quartz (qz.com), 8-5-2013]

In May, a Brazilian cancer-fighting foundation, AAPEC, published a series of photos of its new mascot that it hopes will call attention to the dread of testicular cancer, and the initial worldwide reviews demonstrate that, indeed, people may never, ever forget their first glance at "Mr. Balls." AAPEC described its character as a "friendly snowman in the shape of testicles" -- friendly in the sense of a buck-toothed humanoid with a puffy-cheeked smile and the body of a huge scrotal sac dotted with small curly hairs and rough skin. As photos of the genial "Senhor Testiculo" circulated in June, he was variously described as "disturbing," "horrifying," "terrifying" and "a nightmare." [AAPEC.org.br via Buzzfeed, 5-8-2013]

Recurring Themes: (1) Vade Bradley, 39, was arrested on arson charges in Hayward, Calif., in August after burning down an apartment house carport, totally destroying six vehicles. He was siphoning other people's gasoline in the carport when he decided to light a cigarette. (2) Richard Boudreaux was charged in January with burglarizing Kenney's Seafood (where he previously worked) in Slidell, La., when he became the most recent perp to fail to outflank surveillance cameras. He had thought to wear a bucket over his head as he moved through the store -- except he had waited until well inside (within camera range) before actually putting it on. [Contra Costa Times, 8-2-2013] [Times-Picayune, 1-15-2013]

Computer hardware engineer Toshio Yamamoto, 49, this year (2010) celebrates 15 years' work tasting and cataloguing all the Japanese ramen (instant noodles) he can get his hands on (including the full ingredients list, texture, flavor, price and "star" rating for each), for the massive 4,300-ramen database on his website, expanded recently with "hundreds" of video reviews and with re- reviews of many previously appearing products (in case the taste had changed, he told journalist Lisa Katayama, writing in April (2010) on the popular blog Boing Boing). Yamamoto said he had always eaten ramen for breakfast seven days a week, but cut back recently to five. "I feared that, if I continued at (the seven-day) pace, I would get bored." Thanks This Week to David Swanson and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The conflicted double life of Israeli Orthodox Jew Shadar Hadar, 34, might be as formidable to manage as that of an international spy. Though deeply and defiantly religious, he typically around midnight "trades his knitted white yarmulke" for a "wavy blond wig and pink velvet dress" and takes the stage as a nascent drag queen, according to an August Associated Press dispatch from Jerusalem. His gayness has alienated his ex-wife (who bars him from seeing their daughter, now 11) and is only grudgingly accepted by his parents. As a bridge of sorts in his life, he has rejected the usual raunchy drag queen personas and adopted instead that of a female rabbinic adviser, musing from the stage on optimistic teachings of Breslov Hasidic ultra-Orthodox Judaism. [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 8-1-2013]

-- Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium, whose construction was financed in 1964 by borrowing $25 million (and untold more as part of a subway expansion to service the stadium), was demolished in 2004 and is but a memory to the city's sports fans. However, nine years later, the city is still paying for it (though next year will retire the $25 million bond and nine years from now, the city hopes, will retire the stadium/subway bond). The city's deputy controller told PhillyMag.com in June, profoundly, "When issuing a bond to build a facility, the debt payment on that bond should not outlast the facility." [PhillyMag.com, 6-14-2013]

-- Inexplicable: The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety's solution to its legendary long lines at driver's license stations was to create "In Line Online" registration, which it introduced recently. Online registrants were beside themselves, however, when they arrived on time across the state, only to learn that In Line Online merely entitled them to a reserved place in the line for making future appointments to take their driver's test. A spokesman acknowledged that In Line Online might have some kinks and thus would be closed temporarily. [KFOR-TV, 8-15-2013]

-- Toronto is facing such a crippling backlog of challenges to parking tickets, reported the Toronto Star in August, that more than 73,000 citations from last year were still unresolved and that many cases were proceeding even less hurriedly. Mahmood-Reza Arab, a computer programmer who was ticketed for parking too close to a hydrant in 2005 and who has dutifully met all deadlines for making a proper challenge, was recently scheduled (again) for trial before a judge -- this month (September 2013). A spokesman said the "normal" wait time for a court date is "only" 18 months. [Toronto Star, 8-13-2013]

-- "Rules Are for the Benefit of Us All": Adhering to "federal regulations," the Denver Housing Authority ordered the immediate ejection of the family of Sandra Roskilly (her mother and autistic son) -- because Roskilly had been shot dead in a random homicide in August. The mother, who shared the apartment with Roskilly for 10 years, said she was told that once the head of household is no longer present (no matter the reason), the apartment must be forfeited. Said Roskilly's astonished brother, "(T)here was no question in my mind that my mother would at least be able to finish out the lease." [KMGH-TV, 8-19-2013]

-- Artist John Knuth creates "broad swaths of color that appear to be meticulous impressionistic abstractions," reported a Gizmodo.com writer in July, but in a video made for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Knuth revealed that he makes colors with paint harvested from the vomit of about 200,000 houseflies. Knuth raises the flies from maggots, then feeds them sugar mixed with watercolor pigments, then coaxes the flies to regurgitate -- and then captures and uses the result. Of Knuth's accompanying high-minded explanations of his purpose, Gizmodo wrote, "Once you decide to make paintings from fly barf, you pretty much forfeit any other subtext you'd like your audience to appreciate." [Gizmodo.com, 7-15-2013]

-- Suspicion Confirmed: A British "art critic" created the "Colne Valley Sculpture Trail" in West Yorkshire by inviting patrons to walk a 3-mile path past derelict buildings and discarded objects that the critic suggested, in a formal leaflet, were purposeful art objects designed to be provocative. (In reality, they were random junk.) An abandoned bathtub (titled "Wash Behind the Ears") evoked "contradictory concepts of filth and cleanliness ... in a countryside setting," the critic wrote. A collapsed wall was built by fictitious artist Karen Braithwaite, who then destroyed it "with some sense of violence," "suggest(ing) a sense of bereavement, the turf above almost seeming to weep." The author spoke to BBC News in July but insisted on remaining anonymous. [BBC News, 7-28-2013]

-- Notwithstanding the city of Detroit's various problems, residents still expect its police force to behave sensibly, but in July, a police commander's office blundered, releasing to all officers a document concerning an order of form-fitting bulletproof vests. Each individual officer's height and weight were on the email, but so were female officers' bra cup sizes (which were initially necessary to assure body-armor fit so as not to restrict mobility -- but obviously were no one else's business). [WJBK-TV (Detroit), 8-12-2013]

-- In August, prosecutors in Broward County, Fla., accused two Lauderhill police officers of an improper 2012 traffic stop, charging both patrolmen in the squad car with demanding favors from two female motorists. Officer Franklin Hartley allegedly demanded oral sex from the passenger, and his partner, Thomas Merenda, according to the charge, "asked the victim to punch him in the 'nuts,' meaning genital area." Said Merenda's lawyer, of the charge: "outrageous, outlandish and absurd." [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-9-2013]

America's military veterans, whom the country supposedly champions wholeheartedly and insists should be properly compensated for their service and the disruption to their lives, must navigate as many as 613 government forms from 18 different agencies to receive what they are due by law, according to a July study released by the American Action Forum. The principal agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, purports to have been making great progress over the last few years, but earlier this year acknowledged that, still, about 70 percent of claims (covering 600,000 veterans) have been waiting longer than 125 days for yes-or-no decisions. [Fox News, 7-2-2013]

Finding an aberrant sexual behavior not previously mentioned in News of the Weird is an exhausting task, but British psychologist Mark Griffiths, of Nottingham Trent University, has succeeded: the eproctophile (a person sexually aroused by the passing of gas). Griffiths told LiveScience.com in July that he plans to study other rare "paraphilic disorders," including "fire fetish, a blindness fetish and dacryphilia, or arousal by tears, weeping or sobbing." [LiveScience.com, 7-31-2013]

A computer virus called "Ransomware" has been freezing computers since 2012, the FBI acknowledged, making much work for tech support, but likely never causing the victim to be arrested until Jay Matthew Riley, 21, of Woodbridge, Va., came along. The virus tricks people into thinking the FBI has discovered that they had inadvertently viewed child pornography and locks their computer, but since the viewing was probably accidental, "allows" them to avoid arrest by paying a $300 fine to unfreeze the computer. Riley apparently did have child porn (inadvertently gathered or not) on his computer and, frightened by the virus, gratuitously inquired at a local police station whether there were warrants for his arrest. No, they said, but in the course of conversation, he consented to a search and was arrested. [Washington Post, 7-25-2013]

Creative Alternate-Site Surgery: Doctors from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington announced in September 2010 that they could just as well handle certain brain surgeries by access not in the traditional way through the top of the skull, but by drilling holes in the nose and, more recently, the eye socket. (Since classic brain surgery requires that the top of the skull be temporarily removed, the breakthroughs mean fewer complications.) These innovations follow on the inroads in recent years in performing kidney-removal and gall-bladder surgery not by traditional abdominal incisions but through, respectively, the vagina and the anus. [Science Daily, 9-29-2010]

Thanks This Week to Peter Smagorinsky, Kevin Leaptrot, Sandy Pearlman, and Gary DaSilva, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.