First-term U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida is already among the House's most conservative members, but his Republican primary challenger claims to be even more so -- but with a quixotic, longtime hobby as a costumed, role-playing "gamer." Challenger Jake Rush (in his day job, a lawyer) portrays supernatural characters as a prominent member of the national Mind's Eye Society and Florida's Covenant of the Poisoned Absinthe, including a vampire named "Chazz Darling," who, according to a Yahoo message board, once left an explicit, body-parts-bloodying threat to a role-player with whom he had been feuding. (The Florida political report SaintPetersBlog broke the story -- and was quickly criticized, less by Rush's political defenders than by the indignant "cosplay" community, feeling mocked.) [SaintPetersBlog, 4-1-2014] [MiamiNewTimes.com, 4-1-2014]

-- A scandal erupted in 2013 at Minot (N.D.) Air Force Base when missile-launch specialists were charged with cheating on proficiency tests, but additional documents uncovered by the Associated Press in March 2014 show that the problem was worse than originally reported. The overall missile-launch program, run by "missileers," was judged "substandard" -- the equivalent of an F grade in school -- and "rehabilitated" in the eyes of Air Force officers only because the 91st Missile Wing Command's support staff (cooks, drivers, clerks, etc.) scored very high and brought the command's overall performance to the equivalent of a D. [Associated Press via PBS Newshour, 3-14-2014]

-- The tax software company Vertex reported in March, via the Tax Foundation, that tax-hating American states have somehow organized themselves into nearly 10,000 sales/use-tax jurisdictions with distinct rules, coverages or exemptions. Ironically, states criticized as tax profligates sometimes have the simplest systems (e.g., one set of rules covering the entire state, such as in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.) while states regarded as refuges from intrusive government often have the most complicated (e.g., 310 different jurisdictions in Utah, 587 in Oklahoma, 994 in Iowa and 1,515 in Texas). [TaxFoundation.org, 3-24-2014]

-- Formally asking a sweetheart to "please be my (boyfriend/girlfriend)" is said to be a traditional romantic milestone in Japanese relationships, and the town of Nagareyama in Chiba Prefecture now provides a government document to commemorate that big step (for a filing fee, of course). In fact, according to the news site RocketNews24.com, since only one party need file the document, the town hopes the form will become a strategic step to declare one's love without the need for messy, face-to-face, rejection-risking confrontation (and also become a robust municipal-revenue producer). [RocketNews24, 3-10-2014]

-- British artist Millie Brown, 27, profiled in January in London's Daily Mail, creates Jackson Pollock-style canvases by vomiting on them after ingesting colored soy milk. Brown (whose work hangs in London's Ripley's Believe It or Not! showcase) said she fasts for two days prior to public performances and, as the show starts, times her ingestions so that the proper hues don't prematurely mix in her stomach. Her appearance, at work, in a Lady Gaga music video brought her a somewhat larger audience. Said the understated Brown, "I am able to challenge people's perceptions of beauty." [Daily Mail, 1-31-2014]

-- Paris' Hunting and Wildlife Museum hosted, from April 1 to April 13, artist Abraham Poincheval's real-time demonstration of "birth and rebirth" -- his living completely inside a hollowed-out bear carcass the entire time, eating, drinking, reading, sleeping and relieving himself (down the bear's legs) before a live camera, with a viewing window for spectators. Poincheval, who in a previous installation lived for a while in a hole, likened the experience merely to the cramped quarters of astronauts. [Huffington Post, 4-11-2014]

-- Petty Theft: (1) Although Douglas Lydic, 29, escaped from a patrol car in December in Commodore, Pa., while handcuffed (and was soon re-captured), prosecutors declined to charge him with fleeing since he was merely being "detained" at the time. However, they did charge Lydic with theft of the handcuffs. (2) Petty and Tacky: Dustin Bell, 25, wearing a police officer's badge that had been stolen from the Sand Springs, Okla., department, apparently only casually considered how to wield his newly acquired "authority." He was arrested in April after asking at a Tulsa tanning salon for a law-enforcement discount -- to get a $34 session for $10. [Associated Press via PoliceOne.com, 12-25-2013] [KOTV (Tulsa), 4-6-2014]

-- Misunderstanding: Four Maine State Police troopers rushed to a home in the town of China in January, alarmed by 911 calls about an assault in progress (according to neighbors who reported raucous screaming). Trooper Thomas Bureau found that the suspected "crime scene" was the home of a pig farmer, who showed troopers the pen out back in which a male had been placed with five sows "in heat" and that the squealing (either by the sows or the beleaguered male) was not unusual. [Morning Sentinel (Waterville, Me.), 2-5-2014]

-- Hard Times Ahead: (1) Ms. Terry Boyd, 52, was ordered to probation in Wausau, Wis., in February on charges of imprisoning two men in a second-story bedroom, leaving them screaming for help from a window. According to police, Boyd had refused to release the men until at least one agreed to have sex with her. (2) After Maria Montanez-Colon, 58, called 911 in February in Punta Gorda, Fla., the responding officer reported that she immediately began fondling him, describing herself as "horny," noting "I haven't been penetrated in years." The officer politely declined and warned her about frivolous 911 calls, but Montanez-Colon was arrested shortly afterward when she called again, asking the second responding officer, "How else am I going to get (to have sex)?" [Wausau Daily Herald via Stevens Point Journal, 2-28-2014] [The Smoking Gun, 2-25-2014]

-- Possibly DUI: (1) Michael Moore, 61, who had left home in a huff on March 4 after his wife accused him of excessive drinking, was arrested later that night in Hobe Sound, Fla., after more drinking at a bar. He suggested to police that he knew he was drunk, but had taken the wheel to try to "drive it off." (2) Bryan Hill, 24, was arrested in Indianapolis in March, passed out in the driver's seat of his car at 4 a.m. wearing only a T-shirt, underwear and one sock. The officer said Hill "did have pants on, but they were on his arms. Both arms were inserted into the legs of his jeans." [WPLG-TV (Miami), 3-7-2014] [The Smoking Gun, 3-24-2014]

(1) Japan's largest, most influential organized-crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, recently launched an extensive anti-drug, humanitarian campaign with a website and folk-song-like ballad extolling the group's civic-mindedness backing up photographs of earnest, joyful men at work in their communities. (2) Italy's former premier, Silvio Berlusconi, booted out by voters last year after he finally embarrassed them (and who is awaiting sentencing for tax evasion and trial for bribery), began a comeback in March -- by becoming the face of a dog-and-cat rescue program. "Dogs and cats," he assured supporters, "will help (the Forza Italia party) win the European elections." [The Guardian (London), 4-2-2014] [The Independent (London), 3-30-2014]

In April, Louisiana state senators rejected Sen. Elbert Guillory's over-the-top campaigning to make "chicken boxing" legitimate, dismissing his proposed bill and leaving the "sport" banned along with cockfighting. The proposed law would still have permitted sharp spurs on fighting roosters' legs, but required promoters to cover them with rubber gloves. Guillory had pleaded with colleagues, "(There would be no) blood ... no knives ... no cruelty ... no abuse," as he futilely held up pairs of the tiny "chicken boxing" gloves. [Times-Picayune, 4-7-2014]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Mr. Yafait Tadesse was sentenced in federal court in March to a year in jail for filing fraudulent tax returns for certain "Wal-Mart employees," from fictitious addresses, for 2012 and 2013. Among the fake returns that Tadesse apparently failed to double-check was that of supposed Georgia Wal-Mart employee "Eric Holder" -- the U.S. attorney general. (2) Ryan Trembly, 29, was charged with trying (futilely) to rob Bubbles Hair Salon in Annapolis, Md., in April. Explained the salon's receptionist, "He was like, 'Give me all your money,' and I said, 'Not today!' Who tries to rob a salon?" Trembly left, to the sound of her laughter, and was picked up at his mother's house. [Fox News, 3-13-2014] [WJZ-TV (Baltimore), 4-10-2014]

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

The billion-dollar deer-farming industry in America produces generations of bucks growing progressively larger racks of antlers mainly for eventual bragging rights by the so-called "hunters" who will pay large fees to kill them in fenced-in fields just so they can hang the grotesque antlers in their dens. Even before the farm-raised deer are stalked (reported The Indianapolis Star in March in its multipart investigation), bucks' necks habitually slump from the weight of the freakish antlers. Most states allow such "hunting," and in some, the activity is lightly regulated, lacking the safety rules and more-humane conditions required by open-forest hunting laws and agriculture protocols. The Indianapolis Star also highlighted several captive-deer diseases that doctors still worry might jump species to humans (as "mad cow" disease did). [Indianapolis Star, 3-27-2014]

-- News of the Weird has several times chronicled the sad saga of India's holy but severely polluted Ganges River, on which millions of Hindus are dependent -- through hands-on worship -- for worldly success and for salvation. Now, recent reports reveal that the second-holiest river, the Yamuna, is suffering the same fate even though the government has invested nearly $1 billion in programs to clean it up. Currently, for example, more than 400 million gallons of untreated sewage, plus various industrial chemicals, enter the river from Delhi, but still, motivated worshippers come to "bathe" for glory. [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-24-2014]

-- Stories That Never Get Old: Dayton, Ohio, bus driver Rickey Wagoner, 49, survived a three-bullet shooting in February that, police said, was probably a gang initiation that randomly targeted him as he worked on his bus's engine. A police sergeant told the Dayton Daily News that Wagoner "should probably not be here" and survived the attack only because two of the bullets were blocked by a copy of "The Message" (a contemporary version of the Bible) in Wagoner's shirt pocket. [Dayton Daily News, 2-24-2014]

-- The most recent "monument" offered by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would be its proposed 10-foot tombstone along U.S. 129 in Gainesville, Ga., to honor the "several" chickens that were killed when a truck overturned in January. No humans were hurt in the collision, and had the chickens survived, they would have shortly been slaughtered. (The Georgia Department of Transportation rejected the proposal.) [Yahoo News, 2-27-2014]

-- Allowing dogs as "witnesses" in court cases in France has become "something of a recent trend," reported the Paris edition of the European news site The Local in April. A 9-year-old Labrador retriever (Tango) took the witness stand in the city of Tours so the judge could observe how he reacted to the defendant, on trial for killing the dog's owner. (For due process of law, a second dog, Norman, took the stand later, as a "control group.") Ultimately, the judge said he learned nothing from the dogs and dismissed them. [The Local, 4-3-2014]

-- "Zero Tolerance": Yet another questionable school suspension was handed down in March, in Virginia Beach, Va., when the sixth-grader who had prevented a classmate from intentionally harming himself was punished for her altruism. Adrionna Harris had convinced a boy to hand over the razor blade he was threatening himself with, and she immediately discarded it. According to the principal, that transaction meant Harris "possessed" a "dangerous weapon," albeit for a brief time, and she was suspended for 10 days, according to school policy. (After WAVY-TV's "On Your Side" reporters got involved, the school relented, and Harris returned to class.) [WAVY-TV, 3-21-2014]

-- "Arranged" Bride Fights Back: Ms. Fatima Mangre, 8, was granted a divorce from her husband, Arjun Bakridi, 14, in India's Uttar Pradesh state in November, becoming the youngest divorcee in the country's recorded history. Bakridi, then age 10, had married Mangre, then age 4, but his father promised that the couple would not cohabit until she turned 18. When Bakridi tried to move up the date, Mangre's dad filed divorce papers for his daughter. The legal age for marriage in the state is 18, but a United Nations agency said the law is still widely ignored. [Daily Mail (London), 11-19-2013]

-- Not an Urban Legend: (1) A county official in Portland, Ore., said his office gets "20 to 30 calls" about rats in toilets every year, like the one Daniel Powers reported in March when he spotted the "little guy with beady eyes" looking up at him. (2) The problem is more severe in India, where an emergency crew rushed to the Mumbai-area home of Vipul Desai in February to remove a 6-foot-long cobra from the toilet (but not before it "repeatedly" popped its head out of the commode, terrorizing Desai's wife and daughter). A team from a wildlife rescue association flooded the toilet, grabbed the snake and released it in the forest. [KGW-TV (Portland), 3-21-2014] [Mumbai Mirror, 2-26-2014]

-- People sometimes stage ruses to avoid unpleasant tasks, such as the student who calls in a bomb threat when he's unprepared for an exam, but Dwayne Yeager's motivation was simply laziness. Yeager, 31, called police in Brandon, Fla., in March, reporting a "burglary" at his home, but after questioning, officers charged him with making up the "crime" just so he could stay home from work that day. (Coincidentally, in Kittery, Maine, three days earlier, the U.S. Navy formally decommissioned its nuclear submarine USS Miami, which had suffered irreparable fire damage in 2012 caused by a shipyard worker. The worker started what he wrongly believed would be a small blaze -- so that he could get off work for the day -- a decision now costing him 17 years in federal prison.) [BayNews9 (St. Petersburg), 4-1-2014] [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 3-28-2014]

-- In December, at a Home Depot in Banks County, Ga., yet another prankster put glue on a restroom toilet seat, trapping an unwary shopper seeking to relieve herself. Twelve days after the incident, the victim told WSB-TV that she was still in pain. Paramedics had unstuck her with a liberal application of WD-40, but she believes an emergency room would have been more appropriate. [WSB-TV (Atlanta), 12-11-2013]

-- Among the $43 million worth of "renovations" that the former German "Bishop of Bling," Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, ordered spent on his home and office before he was forcibly retired by Pope Francis in March: a 6-foot-deep fish tank filled with Koi carp, costing $300,000; a $917,000 garden (the "Garden of Silence"); solid-bronze window frames all around ($2.38 million); and LED lights built into floors, walls, steps, window frames and handrails ($894,000). One expense did prove too extravagant for the bishop, according to The Washington Post: employees. (He had reduced his staff during his tenure.) [Washington Post, 3-28-2014]

-- The news site MedPageToday.com is keeping tabs on the eventual unveiling of new, obscure, minutely detailed billing codes for doctors to report diagnoses and treatments to insurance companies, and among the latest finds ready to be part of the medical landscape are separate codes for injuries occurring from a "balloon collision" or during "knitting and crocheting" or for injuries during "gardening and landscaping" (though not merely caused by "digging, shoveling and raking," which seems to require a different code). Distinct codes are necessary if an injury occurred at an opera house or if the patient is injured by walking into a lamppost (with separate codes for the first such lamppost collision and for repeat collisions). [MedPageToday.com, 3-24-2014]

-- "Jane Doe," the second of two victims of reckless, anal-oriented medical and law-enforcement drug searches reported in News of the Weird in January, has now filed her lawsuit to be compensated for the repeated, nonconsensual probes and tests ordered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who had selected her for a random search and refused to believe, despite one negative test after another, that she was not carrying drugs. (None were ever found.) The lawsuit includes University Medical Center of El Paso, Texas, whose personnel seemed super-willing to cooperate with CBP and audaciously even sent the victim a $5,000 bill for the procedures (subsequently withdrawn). (The other victim, David Eckert, treated similarly by New Mexico law enforcement and doctors, who also never found drugs, has settled his lawsuit with county and city police for $1.6 million, with the portion against medical authorities still pending.) [Huffington Post, 3-6-2014] [Associated Press via Las Cruces Sun-News, 1-13-2014]

Thanks This Week to Candy Clouston and Gerald Sacks, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The Formula One circuit is generally thought to attract fans as a showcase of motorcar technology and racing skill, but organizers of the Australian Grand Prix (the first of the 19 races on the annual circuit) threatened a lawsuit in March against Formula One management because the races should also be showcases of noise. Formula One has softened cars' power this year in order to make breakthrough achievements in fuel efficiency, but that also tamped down Formula One's "trademark ear-shattering roar," according to a Business Insider report. Fans are less likely to buy tickets, the organizers fear, if they lose the deafening, 100-decibel vroom that is a "visceral element of the fan experience." [BusinessInsider.com, 3-20-2014]

-- Amelia Boomker, 36, of Bolingbrook, Ill., celebrated her acceptance into the Guinness Book of World Records in March, recognized for donating more than 127 gallons of her own breast milk to critically needy babies in the Midwest. The donations came on top of supplying breast milk for her own four sons, three of whom were born during the 2008-2013 period in which she pumped out her excess for the Indiana Mothers' Milk Bank. [Chicago Tribune, 3-20-2014]

-- Most Commandments Violated: James Chatten, 46, pleaded guilty in January to several Commandment violations stemming from a July incident at the Christian Horizons church in Peterborough, Ontario. Chatten brought a prostitute inside the church, for sex, after hours, and stole money to pay her from a church drawer, then lied to police about being forced to raid the drawer. [Toronto Sun, 1-24-2014]

-- Prodigious Criminality: (1) John Bidmead, 65, was convicted in November at Britain's Exeter Crown Court of possession of child pornography images that totaled, according to police count, 600,000 files -- a low number because detectives said they got tired of counting and that the final number was easily over a million. The prosecutor called it "certainly the largest find in this part of the world." (2) Jason Bourcier, 33, reached a deal with the Virginia Department of Transportation in November to eventually pay down the $200,000 in highway tolls he had ignored for more than three years. He told a judge that, originally, a friend had told him that traveling the Dulles Toll Road to Washington, D.C., was free if the toll collectors had gone home for the evening (not true). (Bourcier told the judge he is now working as a "financial consultant" -- surely after rehabilitating his attention to detail.) [BBC News, 11-25-2013] [WRC-TV (Washington, D.C.), 11-24-2013]

In some cultures, and now in Florida, apparently, the act of urination carries no special modesty protection. A judge ruled in March that video of Justin Bieber expelling for a urine test following his January drag-racing arrest in Miami Beach was a "public record" and had to be released to the press under Florida law. (A perhaps overly generous black box was edited into the video to make it somewhat less explicit.) In the video, only one officer is present, observing, based on protocol that respects the suspect's "privacy" -- though the Florida judge in essence invited the entire world to watch Bieber urinate, as the video quickly made the Internet. [WFOR-TV (Miami), 3-6-2014; WTVJ (Miami), 1-24-2014]

(1) Kentucky state Rep. Leslie Combs, unloading her .380 semi-automatic handgun in her Capitol office in Frankfort in January, accidentally fired a shot into her furniture. Said Combs, "I'm a gun owner. It happens." In fact, she praised herself for being "particularly careful" to point the gun away from people while "unloading" it. (2) In March, an unnamed man was rescued by bystanders who heard screaming from a maze-like storm drain, which runs 12 feet below the street in Lawton, Okla. The man had accidentally dropped a $20 bill through a grate and climbed in after it, wandering underground for two days searching for his way out. (He never found the $20.) [Courier-Journal (Louisville), 1-8-2014] [KSWO-TV (Lawton), 3-6-2014]

The Lakemaid brewery based in Stevens Point, Wis., acknowledged in January that it has been testing drone technology, with an eye to eventually delivering beer to isolated ice fishermen on Lake Waconia, Minn. The brewery reportedly found that a six-bladed drone would be necessary to carry a 12-pack for up to a half-mile. (The Federal Aviation Administration bans commercial drones, but is thought to be reconsidering the rule -- though not just yet, as it quickly ordered Lakemaid to cease the flights.) [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis), 1-31-2014]

As Microsoft founder and current world-class philanthropist Bill Gates prepared for a speech in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March, a circumcision dissident prepared to protest. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $160 million on circumcision programs in developing countries based on overwhelming medical evidence ("as clear as you really can get in medical research," said a University of British Columbia professor) that the procedure makes transmission of HIV much more difficult. Dedicated, intense-pleasure-seeking men (in this case, the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project) insist that the surgical snipping, especially of babies, denies males the benefit of heightened penile sensitivity. [QMI Agency via CNews, 3-17-2014]

Richard Wright of Canada's Prince Edward Island was busy in March handing out $50 and $100 bills to strangers during a visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia, urging the recipients to "thank God" for the gift and to pass it along to others if they could not use it themselves. Wright's spree was soon broken up as Mounted Police detained him for a "wellness check," which led to his transfer to a mental-health facility. Wright's daughter Chelsea told reporters that her dad worked hard for his money, had no mental-health issues and simply wanted to help people, and a friend described him as a "generous individual wrapped up in the acts of kindness." However, at press time, Wright was still hospitalized. [Yahoo News, 3-24-2014]

-- Yo No Quiero: The Phoenix suburb of Maryvale was "overrun," according to February reports, with several "packs" of up to 15 Chihuahuas each, roaming neighborhoods, frightening schoolchildren. Coincidentally, two months earlier, in Hobart, Australia, the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals announced that it was overwhelmed by massive recent donations of Chihuahuas, most from one couple. Said a spokesman, "We were up to our knees in little Chihuahuas." [KSAZ-TV (Phoenix), 2-13-2014] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 12-19-2014]

-- Pennywise: England's Manchester Evening News reported in March that local police had handled 19 cases of "clown-related" crimes in the area in 2013, ranging from a clown in the town of Bury peering into the windows of at least two homes, to a boy's report in Rochdale that a clown holding balloons had tried to grab him on the street. The secretary of Clowns International lamented the "stupid people" who damage the reputation of the clowning "profession." [Manchester Evening News, 3-9-2014]

Classic Recurring Themes: (1) Travis Rice, 21, and an accomplice were seen on surveillance video breaking into Arion Motors in Plantation, Fla., in March -- video that revealed Rice, at a key moment, yanking something from his pocket and not noticing that a card had fallen to the floor. The card, of course, was his state identification card, and further "investigation" revealed Rice's Facebook bragging about the break-in and theft of license plates and car keys. (2) Carlos Ruiz, 42, was arrested in Haddon Township, N.J., in February after he violated a cardinal rule by returning to the scene of the crime. He had stolen valuables including a sound system from a home, and had gotten away, but was captured a half-hour later when he returned for the sound system's remote control. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3-18-2014] [NJ.com (Newark), 2-20-2014]

Christopher Miller, 40, was arrested in March a few blocks from a Stride Rite shoe store in Ocean County, N.J., minutes after it had been robbed by a man resembling Miller. Police said Miller had just been released from New Jersey's South Woods State Prison after serving 15 years for robbing the same Stride Rite store and apparently had taken a bus from the prison directly to the store in order to rob it again. [WBFF-TV (Baltimore) via KBOI-TV (Boise, Id.), 3-25-2014]

Thanks This Week to Perry Levin, Mark D'Amelio, Jan Wolitzky, Kelly Egnitz, Alissa Grosso, and Teri Darcy, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.