America's returning warriors continue to experience inexplicable difficulty after putting their lives at risk for their country. It took 13 years for Army Sgt. Maj. Richard Erickson to get his job back from his civilian employer after he took leave in 2000 to serve in the National Guard special forces. The employer soon fired him for taking "excessive military leave." The employer? The U.S. Postal Service, for which Erickson worked as a window clerk (and which was forced to reinstate him after a January 2014 ruling awarding him $2 million in back pay). Erickson had won several interim victories, but USPS fought each one, extending the case, and said in January that it might even appeal the latest ruling. [Los Angeles Times, 1-8-2014]

-- Happy New Year: (1) Once again, celebrants in France marked Jan. 1 by setting fire to 1,067 cars nationwide (down from 1,193 the previous Jan. 1). (2) In the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa, celebrants apparently decided to abandon a 20-year-old tradition and not hurl furniture from high-rise apartments. (The Hillbrow custom was highlighted on one social-networking website, along with the New Year's graveyard gathering of relatives in Chile and Ireland's banging bread on walls to dispel evil spirits.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-1-2014] [Wall Street Journal, 1-2-2014]

-- Holy Mutations: Deformed animals born in developing countries often attract streams of pilgrims, seeking to touch a creature considered divinely blessed. In December, a five-legged cow in Raipur, India, had supposedly "caused" the last 30 women who touched it to give birth to boys. And a day after that report came one from Phuket, Thailand, in which a newborn gecko with six legs and two heads has become a magnet for visitors seeking clues to winning lottery numbers. [Daily Mail (London), 12-25-2013] [Phuket News, 12-26-2013]

-- In November the Journal-News of Hamilton, Ohio, examining various police union contracts in the state, learned that in several jurisdictions, officers are allowed to work their shifts even when less sober than some drivers whom they ticket for DUI. In Lebanon, Ohio, for instance, cops can work with a .04 blood-alcohol reading. In Butler County, a .04 reading triggers legal protections for officers that are unavailable to ordinary drivers. (However, in Lebanon, an officer's right to suck on a breath mint before taking the test was recently removed from the contract.) [Journal-News, 11-17-2013]

-- Judges as Romantics: (1) In December, Italy's top appeals court awarded a new trial to a man, 60, who had been convicted of having sex with an 11-year-old girl. Evidence had been excluded that the pair were having an "amorous relationship" with "feelings of love." (2) Alabama Judge James Woodroof of Limestone County, given two separate chances in December to sentence Austin Clem, 25, to jail time for raping a girl beginning when she was 13, both times opted for probation. (The no-jail sentences perhaps reflected that Clem's family and hers continued to socialize after the rapes.) [Agence France-Presse via Business Insider, 12-31-2013] [Associated Press via New York Times, 12-24-2013]

-- The Continuing British Campaign to Abolish Risks: (1) Britain's Royal Mail announced in December that it would stop delivery to Jeff and Sheila White's cottage in Carnforth because the carrier was frightened of cows. (Mrs. White said he was just lazy, in that when the cows were present, the carrier had to open and close a gate to get to their cottage.) (2) A 65-year-old school crossing guard resigned in October from a job he said he liked because officials at Manadon Vale Primary School had ordered him to stop playfully "high-fiving" students. Guards, the school said, need both arms free to hold signs and make proper signals. [Daily Mail, 12-5-2013] [Plymouth Herald, 10-14-2013]

-- News of the Weird has reported the emerging mainstream treatment (for various bowel disorders) of fecal transplants, in which a healthier relative "donates" via enema supposedly healthier microbes to a sickly patient to normalize intestinal activity. The process, still strange to many patients despite its apparent success, has become so popular that in October Canadian officials felt the need to warn patients not to perform amateur transplants. Said one mother, after successfully having her 10-year-old daughter treated, "I think one day ... we will have fecal-matter banks like (blood banks and sperm banks)." [CTV, 10-4-2013]

-- Unclear on the Concept: In December, after Carmen Reategui, 34, was arrested for DUI in Readington Township, N.J., and was too impaired to drive home, she called Nina Petracca, 23, who arrived at the police station impaired herself (and was arrested for DUI), and both women called Ryan Hogan, 33, to take them home, but he also arrived impaired and was arrested. [Hunterdon County Democrat, 12-20-2013]

-- Classics: (1) Jamal Garrett, 29, was arrested in Antioch, Calif., in January after, police said, he tried to rob a Wells Fargo bank, but had fled empty-handed after a teller struggled to read a poorly written holdup note. (She and her manager said they did not even know immediately if it was a holdup or just a note requesting assistance.) (2) Daniel Severn, 27, pleaded guilty to burglary in England's Hull Crown Court in December, for trying to enter a home through the roof but getting trapped, upside down, in the bathroom. He dug his phone out of his pocket, but it fell into the toilet, and he remained hanging for an hour and a half until a resident arrived and found him. [San Jose Mercury News, 1-6-2014] [Daily Telegraph (London), 12-12-2013]

-- Unrelenting, swastika-tattooed New Jersey neo-Nazi Heath Campbell, 40, saw child No. 9 born in November, and once again, the county family welfare office removed it almost immediately. "I'm not allowed to have children because I'm a Nazi," he lamented. Campbell first made headlines in 2008 when a bakery declined to decorate a birthday cake for his son, Adolf Hitler Campbell, leading child welfare officials to investigate, and more seizures followed, now including the November-born Eva (Lynn Patricia) Braun. Campbell told reporters he would continue to fight for offspring. "I'll stop making them when they stop taking them." [New York Daily News, 12-30-2013]

-- News of the Weird informed readers in November that the Snuggle House was about to open in Madison, Wis., promising clients pajama-clad bedmates -- as long as no sex (or foreplay, even) took place. In fact, Snuggle House has yet to open (in part because the Madison assistant city attorney has yet to overcome her belief that cuddling without sex is impossible). However, a December Associated Press report noted that no-sex cuddleries thrive in Rochester, N.Y. (The Snuggery), Boulder, Colo. (Be the Love You Are), and San Francisco (Cuddle Therapy). Snuggle House owner Matthew Hurtado said he is still working with Madison officials on regulations to prevent naughtiness. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 12-8-2013]

-- Among planet Earth's most bizarre local customs is the Christmas tradition in Spain's Catalonia region of decorating Nativity scenes with figurines of famous people squatting and answering nature's calls. News of the Weird has noted that presidents (Bush and Obama) have been "honored" with posterior-baring statuettes, along with Queen Elizabeth. Right on cue this past Christmas, Spanish artists unveiled "caganers" in the images of Pope Francis and Nelson Mandela. (Perhaps the least-illogical explanation for the tradition is that if the manger is fertilized, the coming year's crops will flourish.) [Agence France-Presse via The Local (Rome), 11-16-2013]

-- To build an iron ore smelting plant in Iceland in 2009, Alcoa Inc. was forced to kowtow to the country's national obsession that elves ("hidden people") live underground and that construction projects must assure that the little fellas have had a chance to scatter gracefully to new habitats. Alcoa hired the necessary elf-monitoring "engineers," and eventually the project proceeded. In December 2013, the government announced it was temporarily abandoning a major road project connecting a remote peninsula and the capital of Reykjavik after it was "learned" that the route would disturb an "elf church." The likely outcome, again, according to an Associated Press dispatch, is that the project will resume once the elves have relocated. [Associated Press via San Jose Mercury News, 12-23-2013]

Everyone's Above Average: Ask Americans how they stand compared to their fellow countrymen, and in survey after survey, the vast majority rank themselves "above average" in such areas as driving skill, sexual prowess, and general honesty. A recent study of English prisoners, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, revealed that those miscreants think they, too, are in the upper half. They rate themselves above average (whether compared to Britons in prison or in society at large) in compassion, generosity, dependability, trustworthiness and honesty. In fact, the only trait on the University of Southampton survey on which the criminals failed to rank themselves as better than the typical Brit was "law-abidingness." On that trait, the inmates rated themselves merely as "average." [Pacific Standard magazine, 1-7-2014]

-- Pastor Ray Scott Teets, 66, of Fallen Timbers Community Chapel in Springhill Township, Pa., arrested in November for alleged "inappropriate contact" with an 11-year-old girl (daughter of parishioners) on at least three occasions, denied to police that the meetings were inappropriate. The girl, he said, requested counseling with him and suggested that the sessions take place in the storage shed in back of the chapel. (The girl said there were six meetings, lasting about 15 minutes each, and denied initiating them.) [WTAE-TV (Pittsburgh), 11-22-2013]

-- Robert Bourque, 55, was convicted of DUI in Sarnia, Ontario, in October, but continued to deny the charge. He admitted he had four beers on the day of the traffic stop but said the Breathalyzer result was misleading because he had recently poured alcohol into his ears to test his theory about how Jesus healed the sick. (Bourque was acting as his own lawyer.) Toronto Sun, 10-11-2013]

-- The mother and other relatives of William Medina, 24, said they felt hurt by the public's comments suggesting that Medina and his partner in the November Reading, Pa., armed robbery were "thugs." William was a "family man" -- "no big hard criminal," his mother said. The two robbers, armed and wearing masks, were gunned down by a Krick's Korner customer who said he feared the worst when he saw the robbers leading a store employee at gunpoint into a back room. A Medina cousin said he deplored people's taking the law into their own hands. [WFMZ-TV (Allentown, Pa.), 11-5-2013]

-- Celebrity Ironies: (1) In December, a California appeals court endorsed actor Tippi Hedren's victory suing the lawyer who had earlier failed to win compensation for her from a 2006 studio accident. In Hedren's most famous movie role, she was attacked by birds in Alfred Hitchcock's iconic film, and in 2006 had been clobbered by falling scenery caused by birds nesting in an attic over a stage. (2) A man who won a Hollywood raffle to watch the finale of "Breaking Bad" with cast members was arrested in Fort Myers, Fla., in January and faces his own intent-to-sell drug charges. Two weeks earlier, unrelated to the show or the raffle, a man with the same name as the show's protagonist (Walter White) was sentenced in Billings, Mont., to 12 years in prison on drug charges. [Hollywood Reporter, 12-16-2013] [Naples Daily News, 1-1-2014] [Billings Gazette, 12-16-2013]

-- Too Much Information: Arvind Kejriwal, fresh from his electoral victory as chief minister of the state of New Delhi, India, was to report to work on Monday, Dec. 30th, to begin fulfilling his anti-corruption administration -- one that promised unprecedented "transparency" to make government visible to constituents. However, the transparency of his first public announcement was perhaps over-the-top -- that he was taking the day off because of a bout of diarrhea. Said a colleague, "When the chief minister gives you a minute-by-minute update on his bowel movements, hail democracy." [Agence France-Presse via South China Morning Post, 12-30-2013]

-- Officials in Taiji, Japan, announced in October they would build a tourist attraction to publicize a nearby annual dolphin cull in which thousands are killed. Park planners hope to attract visitors to swim and cavort in pools among the lovable, captured dolphins -- and also to dine on dolphin meat (and rare whale meat) scored from the culls. Conservationists are of course disgusted by the project. [Japan Daily Press, 10-7-2013]

-- Michael Robertson, 31, argued via a lawyer before Massachusetts's highest court in November that his arrest for taking "upskirt" photographs of a woman on the subway should be tossed out -- asserting that he has a constitutional right to take pictures of anything that is not covered up in public. Said his lawyer (a woman), noting that the victim's skirt provided only partial covering, "If a clothed person reveals a body part whether it was intentional or unintentional, he or she cannot expect privacy." (Robertson's case had been suspended at the trial court while he seeks a ruling on his legal interpretation.) [Eagle Tribune (North Andover, Mass.), 11-4-2013]

-- Legislation, Not the Constitution, Is the Supreme Law of the Land: The December federal court decision, by Judge William Pauley, dismissing a challenge to the National Security Agency's phone surveillance program, suggested that even if a citizen might prove that his constitutional right to privacy was being violated, that person could never know it in the first place and thus never challenge, because Congress purposely made the NSA program secret. In fact, wrote Judge Pauley, the alleged constitutional violation that created the current lawsuit only came to light because of the unauthorized leaks by Edward Snowden. Therefore, if Congress never amends its secret laws, citizens will never get to find out whether their rights are being violated. [Washington Post, 12-27-2013]

For nearly 30 years, until 2007, the U.S. national symbol, the bald eagle, was endangered and protected, but officially they (along with golden eagles) are now so insignificant that the government is willing to endure dozens of them being chopped to death annually in the blades of "clean energy" wind turbines. An Associated Press investigation in December revealed that the federal government is purposely ignoring the eagles' attrition out of fear that outraged conservationists' campaigns will hinder development of wind power as an alternative to coal-produced electricity. (Another recent AP investigation revealed a similar painful choice in the continued commitment to ethanol as a cleaner alternative fuel even though that cleanliness is being increasingly questioned, and even though ethanol production requires the massive diversion of corn that could inexpensively feed millions of hungry people worldwide.) [Associated Press via Philly.com, 12-6-2013]

Love the One You're With: (1) Lydell Coleman, 36, was charged with felony indecent exposure in Seattle in December. He had allegedly dropped his pants outside the Sub Shop at Westwood Village and begun "humping" the front window. (2) Edwin Tobergta, 34, was sentenced to 11 months in prison in November after his earlier guilty plea in Hamilton, Ohio, to "having sex," naked, with a rubber pool float, in front of children. (3) An inebriated Andrew Davidson, 25, was arrested in July on a train between Aberdeen, Scotland, and Glasgow after foisting himself on a beverage cart and "humping" it, shouting "I want to kiss you, I want to (have sex with) you." [KOMO-TV, 12-25-2013] [WXIX-TV (Cincinnati) via WMC-TV (Memphis), 11-5-2013] [Metro (London), 1-7-2014]

According to a police report, Tevin Monroe, 31, walked into a McDonald's in Norfolk, Va., in December to inquire about a job, asked a manager for an application, and was told that the form was available online and that he should go download it. The manager's response left Monroe dissatisfied, and he lifted his shirt to show the manager the gun in his waistband. The manager quickly located a paper application for Monroe (but also discreetly summoned police, who arrived and arrested Monroe while he was still filling out the form). [WVEC-TV (Norfolk), 12-17-2013]

University of Alabama football fan Adrian Briskey, 28, was charged in December with the fatal shooting of a 36-year-old woman (also a Bama fan) at a postgame gathering in Hoover, Ala., to commiserate over the team's last-second loss to arch-rival Auburn. According to the victim's sister, Briskey was angry at the woman because she was insufficiently distraught at the game's outcome. [WBRC-TV (Birmingham), 12-9-2013]

A veteran University of Colorado administrator is on forced leave after her sideline made news in December. Resa Cooper-Morning, 54, "cultural diversity coordinator" in the ethnic studies department at CU Denver, also ran a phone-sex business for which she took calls ($1.49 a minute, "phone sex that will rock every part of your body," according to her website) during hours she worked for the university. Said her daughter-in-law: "I've been in her office, and she's said, 'Oh, let me be right back, I have a phone call.' She takes them very discreetly, shuts her door." A KCNC-TV investigation found that the phone-sex hours listed on the website had recently been cut back, from "7:30 a.m. until late at night" to "weekdays after 3 p.m." [KCNC-TV, 12-12-2013]

-- Florida's second-most populous county, Broward, announced in December it was removing the agricultural tax break for 127 properties because it appeared their "farming" work was a sham. Broward's property appraiser estimated the county had lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" over the years granting the bogus reductions -- as landowners were blatantly housing just a few cows (in some cases, merely renting them) to graze and calling that "agricultural." The appraiser's office, after auditing only a few of the exemptions, found, for example, that land occupied by a government-contract prison was "agricultural" (with a rent-a-cow arrangement). [WPLG-TV (Miami), 12-17-2013]

-- The Ontario College of Trades ministry, finally implementing a long-ago reclassification of about 300,000 professionals, announced in November that barbers would immediately face fines if they had not acquired new licenses demonstrating proficiency with perms and highlighting and other aspects of women's hairstyling. Even barbers who had cut men's hair for decades and with no desire to accept female customers would probably need a costly study program for the upgrade, which one barber estimated at 2,000 hours and $5,000 or more. Said one exasperated old-timer, "We're barbers, not neurosurgeons." [CBC News, 11-2-2013]

-- Suspicion Confirmed: A September report from the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that almost 9 percent of all federal government spending occurred during the last week of the government's fiscal year, as agencies scrambled to buy things they previously had not needed but suddenly did -- because the money would otherwise disappear. Further, the report found that contracts made during that perhaps-frenzied final week were from double to more than five times as likely to be poorly executed as contracts made earlier in the fiscal year. [Foreign Policy (December 2013) via Chicago Tribune, 12-18-2013; Social Science Research Network, 9-22-2013]

-- The Army Corps of Engineers said in December that it "continuously strives to implement lessons learned from its work in the extremely challenging Afghan environment" -- apparently its primary response to an inspector general's report that it wasted $5.4 million on trash incinerators for a forward operating base that were late, in disrepair, dysfunctional even if working properly, health hazards for troops, and ultimately abandoned on site, unused. The project was termed "a complete waste," but the corps pointed out that money was actually saved by not repairing expensive equipment that would not have worked anyway. [Fox News, 12-16-2013]

-- South Africa, still transitioning to freedom after apartheid, has been slow to embrace the "performance art" that is a staple of American and European popular culture, but artist Anthea Moys is creating her own space, according to a December Wall Street Journal dispatch from Johannesburg. Recently she played an exhibition soccer game -- alone against an 11-player lineup. Her "team" quickly fell behind, but sympathetic spectators wandered onto the pitch to help her, and she managed to lose by only 12-0. Before that, she had entered a 60-mile bicycle race in Johannesburg and, dressed properly in helmet and Spandex, she mounted a stationary bike at the starting line and began pedaling furiously as the other cyclists took off. "I'm not very competitive," she said. "I'm interested in the joy of games and how people view them." [Wall Street Journal, 12-27-2013]

-- Australian performance artist Casey Jenkins admits that her signature engagement is "confining" and "slightly uncomfortable," but that "Casting Off My Womb" is nonetheless an important work. Jenkins spends 28-day cycles knitting cloth from wool that has been inserted into her vagina -- symbolizing the creation of "life" emerging from the natural female cycle. The output, she said, records a female life in all its natural states. (Jenkins' work is perhaps borrowed from classic performance work by the artists Carolee Schneeman, in 1975's "Interior Scroll," and Yoko Ono, in 1965's "Cut Piece.") [The Independent (London), 12-17-2013]

-- From the Homer (Alaska) Tribune: On Nov. 11, police were called at 2 a.m. by Robert Tech, 47 (better known as "Turkey Joe"), who said he was assaulted by Charles Young, 61 ("known in town" as "Yukon Charlie"). Joe was talking too much, Charlie told officers, and he had to keep hitting Joe because he would not shut up. Joe, whom officers found inside the bus he has been living in, said he declined to fight back because "I've been a leader of men all my life." Charlie was arrested. [Homer Tribune, 11-19-2013]

-- Low-Tech Thief: Kevin Cook, 25, told police that he was mugged in New York City's Central Park on Dec. 28, but that the thief had grabbed only his cellphone. Since it was a flip phone, the thief took a bemused look at it, asked, "What the (expletive) is this," threw it back to Cook and walked away empty-handed. Cook, perhaps a bit defensive, pointed out that it was a new-style flip phone. [New York Post, 11-29-2013]

-- Disability or Disguise? Police in Denver said the same man (still on the loose), in his 50s and about 5-foot-8, robbed three banks in the area in December and faces up to 60 years in prison if caught. Either he employs a finely detailed disguise, or he is robbing banks under a significant disability, for in each job he wears a "medical mask" and lugs around a portable oxygen supply. [KMGH-TV (Denver), 12-31-2013]

Medics and excessively confident law enforcement officers are facing federal lawsuits after, first, David Eckert, in New Mexico, and then a 54-year-old woman in El Paso, Texas, were repeatedly anally examined in ultimately fruitless searches for ingested drugs. Search of Eckert began when a traffic officer thought he was "clenching" his buttocks during a stop; search of the woman began at the Mexico border when she was selected randomly for "additional screening" and a police dog gestured toward her. Both victims endured hours of detention and bodily invasions, as officers and medics, continually finding nothing, used different tests to justify their initial suspicion. (Eckert received three enemas and a colonoscopy.) Not a single trace of drugs was found on either victim, and both have sued for the trauma and because both medical centers, in Silver City, N.M., and El Paso, billed the victims personally for the forced procedures. [KOB-TV (Albuquerque), 11-5-2013] [Reason, 12-19-2013]

-- Two men broke into a home in the Lincoln Heights section of Los Angeles in December, unaware that the resident had moments earlier called 911 after glimpsing them on his surveillance camera. When police arrived outside, the perps asked the resident to tie all three of them up so that all would appear to be "victims" of the invaders, who had supposedly fled. The resident complied, but when police entered the home, the resident of course immediately squealed on the tied-up perps, ensuring their arrest. Two associates, who were outside standing lookout, were also arrested. Said one officer, "That's what you call felony stupid." [Los Angeles Times, 12-28-2013]

-- From the Nov. 11 weekly report of the Dakota County (Minn.) Sheriff came word from the Hastings Police Department that a sergeant arriving to investigate a fight in a store's parking lot in fact encountered only a single car with several young men inside. The sergeant said he strolled up to the car to ask about a fight, but was pre-empted when one of the men said, "I know why you're here," and pulled three pairs of pants, shoplifted from the store, from inside his shirt. He was arrested. [Dakota County Sheriff Report, 11-11-2013]

Thanks This Week to Mark Dubbin, Robert Jay, Craig Cryer, and Kent Harris, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.