A Swedish TV show, "Biss och Kajs," found itself in the spotlight in November -- in Russia, where government-run television apparently used it to send a political message to Ukraine by highlighting the program's theme of teaching children about bodily functions. The episode Russia chose featured three bulkily-costumed actors sitting around talking -- with one dressed in yellow, one in brown, and the other unmistakably as a large, nude human posterior. ("Biss och Kajs" is highly regarded in Sweden; "biss" and "kajs" refer, respectively to the yellow and brown functions.) Ukraine (against Russia's wishes) is considering a trade agreement with the European Union, and, the Russian station director said, pointedly, "There you have European values in all their glory." [BBC News, 12-3-2013]

-- The Bank of England, arguing before the U.K.'s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in October, warned against limiting the bonuses that bankers have come to expect from their lucrative deals -- because that might encroach on their "human rights." The Bank suggested it is a human rights violation even to ask senior executives to demonstrate that they tried hard to comply with banking laws (because it is the government's job to prove violations). [Huffington Post U.K., 10-8-2013]

-- (1) A young woman, accosted by a robber on Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill in October, told the man she was a low-paid intern -- but an intern for the National Security Agency, and that within minutes of robbing her, the man would be tracked down by ubiquitous NSA surveillance. She said, later (reported the Washington Examiner), the man just "looked at me and ran away (empty-handed)." (2) A 29-year-old cafeteria worker at Sullivan East High School in Blountville, Tenn., swore to police on the scene in October that she was not the one who took money from a co-worker's purse, and she voluntarily stripped to near-nakedness to demonstrate her innocence. "See? I don't have it," she said. Moments later, an officer found the missing $27 stuffed in the woman's shoe. [Washington Examiner, 10-15-2013] [Associated Press via Times Free Press (Chattanooga), 10-19-2013]

-- Katarzyna Dryden-Chouen and her husband Clive, busted in a London police raid last year with a marijuana grow operation that had netted an estimated (equivalent) of $450,000, insisted to a jury in October that their massive haul was not for sale but for "personal" use -- in that they worship the Hindu god Shiva, and truly believed that the world would end soon and that they needed a sizable offering to burn. (Actually, the jury bought it. "Distribution" charges were dismissed, but the couple still faces jail for their cultivation activity.) [The Citizen (Gloucester, England, 10-23-2013] [Daily Mail, 11-11-2013]

-- The Seattle City Council voted in October to seize a waterfront parking lot by eminent domain from the 103-year-old owner after negotiations to buy the property on the open market broke down. The state is funding a six-year tunnel-digging project in the area, and the city has decided it needs the property for not-yet-specified uses --except that in one part of the property, the city said it plans to operate a parking lot. [KCPQ-TV (Seattle), 10-22-2013]

-- (1) Larry Poulos was stopped on an Arlington, Tex., street in September, bleeding from a head wound and complaining that he had just been robbed by two men. A friend of Poulos later corroborated that, but police also learned that the money Poulos had been carrying was the proceeds of his having robbed a credit union earlier that evening. He was treated for his wounds and then arrested. (2) At least 44 health workers were struck with a suspected norovirus in September at a Creative Health Care Management convention in Huron, Ohio. (Noroviruses are sometimes called the "Norwalk" virus, named after one notable outbreak in 1968 in Norwalk, Ohio, about 12 miles from Huron.) [Dallas Morning News, 9-5-2013] [Sandusky Register, 9-18-2013]

-- "Masculine" Values: Breakaway former officials of the Boy Scouts of America met in Nashville, Tenn., in September to establish a Scouts-type organization that can freely discourage homosexuality, with one leader promising Fox News that the result would be "a more masculine" program. Another prominent attendee, also quoted in the Fox News dispatch, described his sorrow at the BSA's embrace of gay boys. Since this issue broke, he said, "I've cried a river." [Fox News, 9-8-2013]

-- In November, Sweden's National Housing Board, in charge of building codes, ordered the country's famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi (built anew annually out of fresh ice blocks) to install fire alarms. "We were a little surprised when we found out," said a spokeswoman (who acknowledged that the hotel's mattresses and pillows could catch fire). [The Local (Stockholm), 11-14-2013]

-- Conscience-Cleansing: Greg Gulbransen of Oyster Bay, N.Y., announced in September that he was about to sue the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for dragging its feet in implementing the Gulbransen-inspired 2007 federal legislation that he said would save lives, especially those of toddlers. The unimplemented law would force car manufacturers to install rear-facing cameras as standard equipment, a cause Gulbransen embraced after accidentally, fatally, backing over his own toddler in the family's BMW SUV. [OpposingViews.com, 9-25-2013]

-- An exhaustive American Civil Liberties Union report in November showed that more than 3,200 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. for non-violent offenses (about 80 percent for drug crimes). Most were sentenced under "three-strikes"-type laws in which the final straw might be for trivial drug possession, for instance, or for a petty theft such as the $159-jacket shoplifting in Louisiana, or the two-jersey theft from a Foot Locker. Said the jacket thief, Timothy Jackson, "I know that for my crime I had to do some time but . . . I have met people here whose crimes are a lot badder with way less time." Added his sister, "You can take a life and get 15 or 16 years," but her brother "will stay in jail forever. He didn't kill the jacket!" [The Guardian (London), 11-13-2013]

-- (1) Douglas Yim, 33, was convicted in September of murdering a 25-year-old man in Oakland, Calif., in 2011 after an evening of teasing by the man, who mocked Yim's certainty about the existence of God. (2) A 27-year-old yoga fanatic in St. Austell, England, drowned in a pit in May during a well-publicized attempt to create an "out-of-body experience" to get as close to death as possible but without going over the line. [San Francisco Examiner, 9-4-2013] [Cornish Guardian (Cornwall), 10-30-2013]

-- Recurring Themes: (1) Lawrence Briggs, 18, was arrested in Marshalltown, Iowa, in November after he walked out of a Sports Page store with $153 worth of merchandise he did not pay for. Moments earlier, he had filled out an application to work at Sports Page, and when surveillance cameras exposed him, managers called him in for an "interview," and police made the arrest. (2) Troy Mitchell, 47, was arrested after allegedly robbing the Valley First Credit Union in Modesto, Calif., on May 14th. While he was standing at the teller's window, another employee of Valley First saluted him ("Hi, Troy") because he remembered Mitchell from April 3rd, when he had applied for a car loan. [Times Republican (Marshalltown), 11-5-2013] [The Record (Stockton, Calif.), 10-23-2013]

-- Australian Marcus Einfeld (a prominent lawyer, federal judge, and Jewish community leader) was once so revered that one organization named him a "living treasure," but he fell into total disrepute in 2006 by deciding to fight a simple speeding ticket. By March 2009, Einfeld had been sentenced to two years in prison for perjury and obstructing justice for lying in four elaborate detailed schemes to "prove" that he was not driving that day. His original defense (that he had loaned the car to a friend who then passed away) was accepted by the judge, but dogged reporting by Sydney's Daily Telegraph revealed that Einfeld lied, and lied to cover up each successive lie. Encouraged, reporters went on to uncover Einfeld's bogus college degrees and awards and a double-billing fraud against the government. (The speeding ticket would have cost about $80.) [The Australian, 3-20-2009]

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

Is the signature smell of Texas A&M University more "Italian lemon, bergamot and iced pineapple" (that open into "a body of vivid florals, raw nutmeg and cinnamon") or more "bat feces" and "chilifest stink"? The two commentaries were contrasted in a November Wall Street Journal report on the introduction of Masik Collegiate Fragrances' Texas A&M cologne (one of 17 Masik college clients) at around $40 for a 1.7-ounce bottle. Louisiana State University's scent conjures up, insisted one grad, the campus's oak trees, but so far has pulled in only $5,500 for the school. (To a football rival of LSU, the school's classic smell is less oak tree than "corn dog.") The apparent gold standard of fan fragrance is New York Yankees cologne, which earned the team nearly $10 million in 2012. [Wall Street Journal, 11-9-2013]

-- Among America's most prolific "fathers" (in this case, perhaps better considered "egg-fertilizers") are Nathaniel Smith, age 39, who claimed on TV's "Divorce Court" in September that he is the father of 27, and the late Samuel Whitney, whose grown stepdaughter Lexie Woods learned that he claimed 54 before he died in July at age 87. Smith (known in Dayton, Ohio, as "Hustle Simmons") insisted that he is a fine father (doesn't smoke or drink, keeps contact with most of the kids, has "only" 21 child-support orders out), and besides, he told WHIO-TV, "I know of people who have even more than me." (Among Whitney's belongings, said Woods, were a "pile" of birth certificates and a stash of maximum-strength Viagra. "He was a likable man, a ladies' man.") [WHIO-TV, 9-10-2013] [Arizona Republic, 8-24-2013; New York Daily News, 8-27-2013]

-- Latest Collateral Damage: (1) In October, a 28-year-old man, reeling from a domestic argument in Port Richey, Fla., put a gun to his head and, against his girlfriend's pleas, fired. As a neighbor across the street stood on her porch, the suicide bullet left the victim's head and made three wounds on the neighbor's leg, sending her to the hospital. (2) About a week later, on the Norwegian island of Vesteroy, a moose hunter missed his target but hit an obscured cottage in the distance, wounding a man in his 70s as he answered nature's call. He was airlifted to Ullevaal University Hospital in Oslo. [Tampa Bay Times, 10-17-2013] [NewsInEnglish.no (Oslo), 10-25-2013]

-- In November, barely two weeks after a small plane carrying 10 skydivers left no survivors when it crashed on the way to an exhibition near Brussels, Belgium, nine skydivers were able to dive for safety when two planes headed for a tandem jump collided near Superior, Wis. News stories did not address how experienced skydivers escaped one plane but not the other. [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis), 11-2-2013; CNN, 10-19-2013]

-- Animal Sacrifice -- in America: In September, Orthodox Jewish communities once again staged traditional kaparot, in which chickens are killed in a prescribed way for the purpose of "transferring" a believer's latest sins over to the chicken (whose death banishes the sins). (In many such ceremonies, the chickens are donated for food, but protesters in Los Angeles criticized rogue practitioners who simply tossed carcasses into the trash.) In November, Miami-Dade County animal services found a severely injured chicken with a family's 4-by-6 photograph protruding from its chest, having been haphazardly "implanted," along with a note containing several hand-written names, apparently a casualty of local Santeria services. [Los Angeles Times, 9-11-2013] [WSVN-TV (Miami), 11-18-2013]

-- Some Americans still believe that stock market sales are typically made human-to-human, but the vast majority of buys and sells now are made automatically by computers, running pattern-detecting programs designed to execute millions of trades, in some cases, less than one second before rival computer programs attempt the same trades. In September, a Federal Reserve Board crisis involved, at most, seven milliseconds' time. The Fed releases market-crucial news typically at exactly 2 p.m. Washington, D.C., time, tightly controlled, transmitted by designated news agents via fiber optic cable. On Sept. 18, somehow, traders in Chicago reportedly beat traders elsewhere to deal an estimated $600 million worth of assets -- when theoretically, access to the Fed's news should have been random. (In other words, the drive to shave milliseconds off the "speed of light" has become quite profitable.) [CNBC, 9-24-2013; Mother Jones, 9-24-2013]

-- Toilets are always a favorite protest symbol, most recently employed by David Labbe, disputing a zoning decision by officials in Augusta, Maine, preventing the sale of his house to Dunkin' Donuts (for, he said, three times what he paid), and he has begun lining his property with discarded toilets. Augusta-native Labbe says he has given up on his city and his neighbors (who fear traffic problems if a Dunkin Donuts opens). (On the same day, coincidentally, toilets made news in Los Angeles, where YoYo Li was about to open the city's first toilet-themed restaurant, patterned after several in Taiwan in which diners squat at tables and eat off commode-shaped serving vessels.) [Portland Press Herald, 10-14-2013] [Los Angeles Times, 10-14-2013]

-- In November, Michael Brown, 19, became the most recent person with poor decision-making skills forced to report to a police station (this, in College Station, Texas) in the middle of the night to ask that officers please remove the handcuffs he had been playing around with. (Following the officers' mandatory records check, it was learned that Brown had an arrest warrant for criminal mischief, and following a mandatory search, that he also had two ounces of marijuana in his pocket.) [The Eagle (Bryan-College Station), 11-14-2013]

-- Can't Possibly Be True: Twice again, in November, men wrongfully convicted of major, chilling crimes, who were finally freed after serving long sentences, claimed upon release that they were -- somehow -- not bitter. Ryan Ferguson was released in Missouri after serving almost 10 years for a murder he surely knew nothing about (convicted because a prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence). Derrick Deacon was freed in New York after nearly 25 years -- served because the eyewitness (who finally recanted) had identified Deacon out of fear of retaliation by the Jamaican gang member she actually saw. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11-13-2013] [New York Post, 11-21-2013]

-- It was Linda Ducharme's turn in the spotlight in November as one of a seemingly increasing number of people who commit to bethrothing themselves to inanimate objects ("objectophiles," "mechaphiles"). The Gibsonton, Fla., woman's spouse is a Ferris wheel called the Sky Diva, and their relationship was chronicled on the Logo TV channel's show "What!?" (Most famously, Erika La Tour Eiffel of San Francisco staged her 2008 wedding to the Eiffel Tower.) [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg, Fla.), 11-13-2013] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-4-2008]

-- Many men have fallen for underage-sex stings (tricked by NBC's "To Catch a Predator" or by law enforcement nationwide), but perhaps Cliff Oshman, 64, of Daytona Beach is the first to have brought his wife and young daughter along to meet the girl he was seducing. Oshman was arrested in October, and as usual, the "victim" did not exist except as the persona of an undercover cop. [Orlando Sentinel, 10-5-2013]

-- Dwarfs formerly could volunteer to be playfully treated in American nightclubs, but such venues now appear limited to Europe. (1) A club in the German coastal town of Cuxhaven might be in trouble following a September incident in which a 42-year-old dwarf accidentally fell off of a podium before engaging in the club's contest, "Lilliputian Action," in which customers chase an elusive dwarf. (2) London's Hippodrome Casino has reportedly run a series of ads seeking dwarfs (maximum height: 4 feet, 9 inches) for a special crew of bouncers and door guards to be unveiled in December. [The Local (Berlin), 9-24-2013] [Heart Radio (London), 11-19-2013]

A formal investigation into the strange death of British intelligence code-breaker Gareth Williams concluded in November with a police judgment that the death was an accident, despite the body's having been discovered inside a zippered and padlocked garment bag in an otherwise unused bathtub in his London apartment. An earlier inquest into the 2010 death had unsatisfactorily failed to rule out foul play, setting up the police examination, but two facts stood out, according to the officer in charge: The key to the padlock was found within easy reach of the bag, and, according to experts, even though no usable fingerprints or DNA was found in the apartment, it had not been "deep-cleaned" (as might be expected in a death with intel-op implications). [New York Times, 11-14-2013]

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

The Marvels of Science: The notorious white separatist Craig Cobb is currently soliciting like-skinned people to move to his tiny town of Leith, N.D. (pop. 16), to create a deluxe Caucasian enclave, but at the urging of a black TV host submitted to a DNA test in November to "prove" his lineage -- and turned up 14 percent black ("Sub-Saharan African"). He has vowed to try other DNA tests before confirming those results. Bobby Harper, previously Leith's only black resident, was gleeful: "I knew there was one other black person in town." (In mid-November, Cobb was charged, along with an associate, with seven counts of terrorism for walking menacingly through Leith wielding a long gun.) [Bismarck Tribune, 11-11-2013; Los Angeles Times, 11-19-2013]

-- Recurring Theme: The Environmental Protection Agency, already revealed in June to have allowed a contractor to maintain taxpayer-funded "man caves" (TVs, appliances, couches, videos, etc.) hidden away in a Washington, D.C.-area warehouse, made the news again during the government shutdown in October when soup with a 1997 expiration date was found during the shutdown in an EPA employees' refrigerator. Furthermore, in September, former high-level EPA executive John Beale pleaded guilty to defrauding the agency of $900,000 in salary, expenses and bonuses dating back to the 1990s by claiming work orders (including secret projects for the CIA) that no one at EPA appears ever to have tried to verify. [Washington Post, 10-17-2013] [Washington Post, 9-27-2013]

-- In October, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro created a "Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness" to coordinate the welfare programs begun by the late President Hugo Chavez. Critics charged, however, that there is much to be unhappy about, given the country's annual rate of inflation (near 50 percent), and an Associated Press dispatch quoted one critic who said she would be happy enough if only stores were not constantly out of milk and toilet paper. (Another skeptic said he looked forward to maybe a Vice Ministry of Beer). [Associated Press via The Telegraph, 10-26-2013]

-- The U.S. government has engaged in some legendarily wasteful projects, but leaders in China's Yungai village (pop. 3,683), in Hunan province, have surely raised the bar for epic squander after borrowing the equivalent of $2.4 million and building an impressive seven-story government headquarters -- but with 96 still-unlooked-out front windows because there is no activity beyond the first floor. According to an October London Daily Telegraph report, the only occupants are the village government's eight employees. [Daily Telegraph (London), 10-24-2013]

-- Though many people might agree with blind musician Stevie Wonder that it is "crazy" to let people like him carry guns, federal and state laws seem ambiguous, according to a lengthy analysis of Iowa's supplied by the Des Moines Register in September. Some Iowa sheriffs believe that federal anti-discrimination law limits their discretion (though they can deny permits for lack of physical or mental ability to handle the gun). The National Federation of the Blind generally trusts its members never to use guns recklessly, a spokesman said, and blind Iowa activist Michael Barber emphasized his right. "(Y)ou take it out and point and shoot," he said, "and I don't necessarily think eyesight is necessary. ... For me, the inspiration is just to see if I run into any difficulties." [Des Moines Register, 9-8-2013]

Leandro Granato, 27, said that he discovered, as a kid in Argentina, that liquids sucked up through his nose could then be squirted out of his eye -- and an art career was born. News sites reported in October that Granato's "eye paintings" of ink colors, splattered out as tears on canvas in various motifs (from up to 1 1/2 pints of ink each), are offered for sale at a top-end price of the equivalent of $2,400 each. (Huffington Post's story also reminded readers that Chilean artist Carina Ubeda is another who uses her body functions as a medium -- specifically, her menstrual blood, which she employed in the form of 90 used sanitary napkins arranged in a hoop featuring an apple, symbolizing ovulation. Her June show ran in Quillota, Chile.) [Huffington Post, 10-3-2013; 6-26-2013]

-- Informal Georgia Sobriety Tests: Rachel Gossett blew a .216 alcohol reading in Loganville, Ga., in November, but that was probably a formality after an officer witnessed her attempt to put a cheeseburger from a Waffle Shop onto her foot as if it were a shoe. And Rashad Williams, 38, was charged with DUI in Atlanta in October after he crashed through the front of a Walgreens drugstore and then, according to a witness, calmly exited his vehicle (which was sticking halfway into the building) and resumed drinking next door at the Anchor Bar. [Huffington Post, 11-7-2013] [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10-18-2013]

-- Round Up the Usual Suspect: Indicted for rape in August in Hamilton County, Tenn.: Mr. John Allan Raper, 19. (Other recent miscreants were Mr. Batman Suparman, 23, convicted in Singapore in November of housebreaking and theft, and Mr. Bamboo Flute Blanchard, 18, who was arrested in June in Gainesville, Fla., and accused of trying to stab his father for an unreported provocation -- although one possible motive suggests itself.) [Times Free Press (Chattanooga), 9-17-2013] [The Straits Times (Singapore), 11-11-2013] [Gainesville Sun, 6-26-2013]

-- Chutzpah!: Sheriff's deputy Darrell Mathis of Newton County, Ga. (30 miles east of Atlanta), a five-year veteran, was arrested in September and charged with selling marijuana locally -- from his squad car, in uniform, and apparently without inhibition. A confidential informant, unnerved by Mathis' alleged brazenness, convinced FBI agents in April 2013 to do a by-the-book sting (with which Mathis, of course, naively cooperated, according to bureau affidavits). (In their final meeting before the arrest, for example, Mathis took pains to assure the agents: "Don't worry. I'm on your side." He was reportedly enthusiastic about the sting's plan to run marijuana and cocaine from Alabama to North Carolina.) [CNN, 9-23-2013]

-- When Franco Scaramuzza witnessed two men pepper-spraying a couple in a shopping center parking lot in Nashville, Tenn., in September, he bravely responded in the only way he knew. Scaramuzza, who teaches the art of fencing, drew his fencing sword ("epee") and challenged the men. With his epee held high and aimed, and chanting fencing-type yells, he charged at the men. As he said later, "They completely panicked and dropped everything ... and really took off." Michael Butt and Zachary Johnson were arrested nearby and charged with robbery. [WSMV-TV (Nashville) via KIDK-TV (Idaho Falls), 9-30-2013]

-- In a courthouse lobby in Kelso, Wash., in October, a woman brought a cake in with her through security. Robert Fredrickson, a stranger, was also in the building on business. Without warning, Fredrickson attacked -- the cake, not the woman -- feeding himself with his hands before washing them off at a drinking fountain. "(S)tand right there. Don't move," yelled a deputy, attempting to bring Fredrickson to justice. As soon as the officer looked away, however, Fredrickson returned to clawing at the cake and stuffing his mouth. Finally, several deputies arrived to subdue Fredrickson and charge him with theft and resisting arrest. [KATU-TV (Portland, Ore.), 10-3-2013]

Not Ready for Prime Time: Derek Codd, 19, apparently left his cellphone, by accident, at the house in Lake Worth, Fla., that he had burglarized in November, and just as investigating officers were arriving and noticed it, the phone rang. ("Who is this?" an officer asked. The caller answered innocently, "Derek Codd's mother." Derek was arrested a short time later.) [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 11-4-2013]

Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December (2008) Wall Street Journal roundup was "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder," in which a person, when startled, would "jump, twitch, flail their limbs, and obey commands given suddenly, even if it means hurting themselves or a loved one." It was first observed in 1878 among lumberjacks in Maine, but has been reported also among factory workers in Malaysia and Siberia. It is believed to result from a genetic mutation that blocks the calming of the central nervous system (but could be merely psychological, from the stress of working in close quarters). [Wall Street Journal, 12-30-2008]

Thanks This Week to Jay Caplan, Steve Dunn, John McGaw, David Swanson, and Bruce Leiserowitz, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.