A week before the National Football League held its 2014 Draft Day in May, a large contingent of junior and senior boys staged their own draft day at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, Calif., "dividing up" the available girls to ask to the upcoming prom. As in the NFL, the drafters "scout" the draftees, and a "rule book" notes the draft's boundaries (e.g., this year, sophomore girls are eligible). The girls, of course, can decline the invitation, but the draft, as in the NFL, is designed to discourage a selected girl from being "poached" by "competing" boys. Obviously, many in the community expressed horror at the draft, with the principal denouncing it and urging parents to rein in their sons, but one of the drafted girls wrote that the whole thing was just "fun" and "is not, was never, and will never ever be used to objectify the girls." [Orange County Register, 5-7-2014]

-- The downfall of Russia-sympathizing Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in February (which eventually provoked Vladimir Putin's retaliation against Ukraine) accelerated when his countrymen learned of his startlingly opulent lifestyle (e.g., gold toilets, a private zoo) -- including catching a video glimpse of a nude portrait Yanukovych had commissioned of himself by artist Olga Oleynik. Yanukovych, a not-particularly-buff 63-year-old man, was portrayed reclining and with an undersized male endowment. (Oleynik told Agence France-Presse news service that she had done a similar portrait of Putin -- more generously endowed -- but was "afraid" to show it in public or to disclose whether it was actually commissioned by Putin.) [Agence France-Presse via Global Post, 3-27-2014]

-- Skylar King, 28, filed a lawsuit in Clayton, Mo., in April against dentist Mark Meyers (and his Same Day Dentures clinic) for a 2009 session in which Meyers somehow obtained King's consent to extract all 32 of his teeth and provide dentures, promptly after obtaining $5,235 on King's mother's credit card. King, who was seeking treatment for an abscessed tooth, said Dr. Meyers warned that he was at risk of "fatal blood poisoning" unless all teeth were yanked. Dr. Meyers insisted that King actually requested the procedure, even though X-rays revealed that at least 28 of the teeth were treatable. [Courthouse News Service, 4-23-2014]

-- As of late March, the Sainsbury's supermarket in Basford, England, still had an operational ATM on an outside wall even though its screen and controls were only 15 inches off the ground, forcing customers to bend over or kneel down to get cash. A Sainsbury's spokesman, shown a photo by a reporter of a user squatting "incredibly uncomfortabl(y)," said no one had complained, but that the store would look into moving the machine. The only explanation offered for the placement was that the store is located on a hill. [BBC News, 3-25-2014]

-- Wellma "Tootie" Shafer, 46, was fired as a cashier at the Last Chance Market in Russell, Iowa, after a customer reported her engaging in "sexual" banter at the register. Her boss, Rick Braaksma, explained, "We cannot ... talk about adult situations in front of other customers," and when Shafer sought unemployment compensation, Braaksma challenged her application. However, among the items Last Chance sells are Wake the F--- Up Coffee, The Hottest F---ing Sauce (noted, the label states, for its "ass-burning quality"), and The Hottest F---ing Nuts (all product names using the explicit "F word"), and a state administrative judge granted Shafer benefits, showing (according to an April Des Moines Register report) little sympathy for the store's contradictory policy. [Des Moines Register, 4-24-2014]

-- Refresher Course on Buddhism Needed: An unnamed 40-year-old man was charged in Briec, France, in May for a February incident in which his cat knocked over his statue of Buddha, demolishing it. The man apparently so reveres Buddha that, enraged, he tortured the cat by tossing it into his washing machine and setting it for a cycle at the equivalent of 104 degrees F. [The Local (Paris), 5-7-2014]

-- Brazilian authorities told reporters in April that villagers in remote Ayopaya, needing to recover three motorbikes stolen by two men, tied them to a tree of woe for several days until relatives came up with compensation. The tree was a permanent host for ants that produce a venom with anti-inflammatory properties used to treat arthritis, and though relatives paid up three days later, both men required hospitalization, one with kidney failure. [Associated Press via The Guardian (London), 4-14-2014]

-- Underreported among the 24-hour news saturation in April on the sinking of the South Korean ferry en route from Incheon to the recreational island of Jeju is that a primary attraction on Jeju is "LoveLand," a theme park with bold, uninhibited sexual structures, and a traditional honeymoon destination. Visitors enter through giant spread female legs, and most park mascots are anthropomorphic figures representing the male and female sex organs. The park contains 140 sculptures of humans in sexual positions and of phallus statues and stone labia -- and, reportedly, something called a "hands-on masturbation cycle." [Yahoo News, 6-29-2007]

-- For this year's annual April 25 fundraising project, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) sold a 60-second "message," digitally downloadable for a donation of the equivalent of $2.11 -- but consisting only of silence ("prerecorded" silence). A veterans' official told Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, "I was a bit dubious (but) ... I've seen the enthusiasm at which this is being picked up nationally." [ABC News, 4-13-2014]

-- On-the-lam parolee Mark Royal, 51, spotted in his car by sheriff's deputies in Sacramento, California, in March, led officers on a 35-mile chase before coming to a stop in front of the Placer County Jail in Auburn and surrendering. He told the puzzled deputies only that "the food is better here" than in Sacramento's lock-up (but the deputies returned him to Sacramento, anyway). [KCRA-TV (Sacramento), 3-28-2014]

-- John Novak, 48, was taken to a hospital and then arrested after a rough night in May in Buhl, Idaho, in which he threatened his sister with a rifle-bayonet and then tried a home remedy to relieve a snoring problem. With what was later measured as a 0.50 blood-alcohol level (more than six times the state's presumed-impaired limit), he stuck two straws into his nostrils and slammed a door rapidly into his face, attempting to break the nose (and apparently succeeding, although his exact condition was not reported). He said he had been drinking "for a week straight," to dull the anticipated pain he had planned to create. [MagicValley.com (Twin Falls, Idaho), 5-7-2014]

Kidney Disease Patients Not Part of "Diversity": Among the entities rushing to condemn Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in April was the UCLA Medical School, where researchers returned a $425,000 check from the Sterling Foundation to study "structural properties of key proteins in the kidney" to aid development of drugs to treat kidney disease -- and rejected the rest of Sterling's $3 million pledge. A UCLA spokesman said the school must emphasize its "core values" of "diversity, inclusion and respect." [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 4-29-2014]

News of the Weird has previously noticed the extraordinary discomfort some women embrace just to be able to wear a certain pair of designer shoes. However, the number and ingenuity of foot doctors serving such women has grown substantially in recent years. An April New York Times report noted that Beverly Hills podiatrist Ali Sadrieh offers a Perfect 10! procedure (aesthetic toe- shortening), a Model T (toe-lengthening) and Foot Tuck (a foot-padding for high-heel pain). New York's Dr. Oliver Zong treats High Heel Foot (when the foot conforms to the shape of a stiletto) and Hitchhiker's Toe (an abnormally large big toe sticking out like a thumb). Some patients get to the point right away, Dr. Sadrieh said, by bringing in specific cherished shoes and asking which foot-retrofitting procedure would do the job (although Dr. Zong said he turned down one woman who said she would be OK with nine toes if that's what it took). [New York Times, 4-22-2014]

Thanks This Week to Cindy Hildebrand, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle Corp. (and the world's fifth-richest person, according to Forbes magazine) is a big basketball fan and was reported in April to have an interest in purchasing the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team. An Ellison associate told the Wall Street Journal, for example, that Ellison has basketball courts on at least two of his yachts and shoots hoops for relaxation on the open water. To retrieve his errant shots that go overboard, Ellison hires a ballboy in a powerboat to trail the yachts. [Wall Street Journal, 4-30-2014]

-- Speaking on a popular Christian Internet podcast in March (reported by Houston's KHOU-TV), Pastor John Benefiel of Oklahoma City's Church on the Rock described how, in a 2007 blessing, he might have prayed "too hard." He was attempting to help drought-stricken Texas and Oklahoma by using a specific prayer message (the "Baal divorce decree"), but that inadvertently resulted, he said, in "every lake" in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri rising above flood stage, causing thousands of people to lose their homes and 22 to lose their lives. [KHOU-TV, 3-26-2014]

-- In his March 23 sermon (according to Huffington Post), Phoenix, Arizona, pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful World Baptist Church explained in detail why women in the congregation must refrain from speaking during services. Citing 1 Timothy 2:11 and 1 Corinthians 14, Anderson said the woman should learn only "in silence." "Now obviously, before the service begins," he conceded, "there's chatting and talking going on that's perfectly legitimate. (And when) we all sing praises to God, of course the ladies should also lift up their voices. But when it's learning time, it's silence time (for females)." (Also, he said, since the comment "Amen" means "That's true," it would be inappropriate for females to utter it.) [Huffington Post, 3-26-2014]

-- At one Hindu temple in India's Kerala state, the religious gift of choice -- both for offerings to the deity Lord Muruga and for distribution from the deity to devotees -- is the chocolate candy bar, which visitors bring in cartons, according to a March report by the Press Trust of India. (Muruga is the son of the lord Shiva and was originally worshiped as a child, leading to speculation that he would respond to chocolates.) [Press Trust of India via NDTV, 3-11-2014]

-- Details! After convicted murderer Loren Larson Jr. filed a federal lawsuit in Anchorage, Alaska, claiming that his prison wristband ID "defil(ed)" him religiously because it was a "mark of the devil," a Goose Creek Correctional Center official lectured him on the Book of Revelation. Actually, wrote the official, we would be commanding the "mark of the beast" only if we ordered the ID either "in the right hand" or "in the forehead," and neither is required by current wristband policy. (Hence, the double-murderer, serving 198 years, still qualifies to avoid hell.) [Anchorage Press, 3-20-2014]

-- An unnamed British inmate published a letter in a prison newspaper in April alleging continuous religious discrimination against him by guards and officials. The man claims he is a practicing Jedi (and of course cannot reveal his name because he fears retaliation "from the dark side") and complains that Jedi-ism, though officially recognized as a religion in the UK (the 7th-most popular, according to the census, with more than 175,000 adherents) is nonetheless unacknowledged by the National Offender Management Service. [The Guardian (London), 4-17-2014]

-- Denmark's Copenhagen Zoo aroused worldwide ire in February when it slaughtered and publicly dismembered a healthy young giraffe ("Marius") in order to feed a hungry lion. Then, in March, the Zoo killed four healthy lions to make room for a new male. By contrast, reported Vice.com in April, Denmark has no law against humans having sex with animals (unless it amounts to torture). Animal rights campaigners have recently expressed alarm that Denmark will become a destination for "animal sex tourism" attracting horny "zoophiles" from around the world. [Agence France-Presse via The Guardian (London), 3-25-2014] [Vice.com, 4-2-2014]

-- Manhattan's New York Sushi Ko is only the most recent sophisticated restaurant to feature creative dishes made with Hormel Spam, and foodies and hipsters in fashionable neighborhoods have flocked to the foods. Spam is a well-known delicacy in Hawaii, and the New York facilities offer the island's musubi (fried Spam, rice, seaweed) and other Spam fried rice bowls with seared ahi and flourishes of fresh pineapple, according to an April report on Gothamist.com. Sushi Ko's chef playfully acknowledges that his contents are fresh -- "fresh from the can" and sourced locally -- "from the nearest bodega." [Gothamist.com, 4-1-2014]

-- O Canada! Skylar Murphy, 18, happened to show up at Alberta's Edmonton International Airport in September 2013 with a black-powder-loaded pipe bomb in his carry-on, ready to board an international flight. Agents confiscated the bomb but allowed Murphy to continue on his trip, and in fact police were not notified, nor were possible "terrorism" ties examined, until four days later. (Canada's version of the Transportation Security Administration is not allowed to apprehend or detain passengers.) In December, the harsh hammer of justice finally slammed down on Murphy. He was fined $100 and sentenced to a year of probation. [CTV News (Toronto), 1-15-2014]

-- Unclear on the Concept: Britain's most-tattooed man (the former Mathew Whelan, 34, now "King of Ink Land Body Art The Extreme Ink-Ite"), whose body is 90-percent ink-covered, finally acknowledged in March that he needed to undergo laser removal to clear up his skin. However, "Body Art," as he is known, then explained that he was spending the equivalent of about $10,000 on removal just so he could start over with new tattoos. [New York Daily News, 3-29-2014]

-- (1) In February, East Detroit High School swim instructor Johnathan Sails, 24, sitting poolside, dived in to help a drowning student -- but only after first going to the locker room to change from his street clothes. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter when the student died. (2) When a 6-year-old girl had her finger severed by a closing door in school in December, administrators at the Dickinson School District near Houston merely called her parents to come take the girl to the hospital. The principal denied it was an "emergency," since the girl's finger, after all, had already been bagged in ice. (3) When a fire alarm sounded in February at Como Park High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, one girl was in the school swimming pool, and the outside temperature was minus 5 F, but several faculty members insisted (by protocol) that she leave the building dressed as she was (barring her, even, from waiting in a teacher's car because it is against the rules). [WJBK (Detroit), 2-11-2014] [KRIV-TV (Houston), 12-11-2013] [WCCO-TV, 2-28-2014]

-- At a press conference in April, as Houston police officers announced they were after two burglars who had broken into Katz's lingerie boutique, surveillance video showed two armed men cautiously creeping through the store until one accidentally bumped the other, apparently startling the bumped man, who turned and fired -- causing the first man to fire back. Officers counted nearly a dozen bullet holes in the store. Said the Houston press briefer, these are "by far some of the clumsiest crooks that I've seen in a long time." [KHOU-TV, 4-30-2014]

-- In a popular April "viral" Internet news story, three young men were spotted on late-night surveillance video at a drinking-water reservoir near Portland, Ore., with one of them relieving himself into the 38-million-gallon facility. Utility officials initially decided to flush the entire contents rather than endure complaints by customers (most of whom were likely unaware that the same reservoir routinely tolerates wild-animal urination, long ago declared no health risk). Dallas Jeffrey Delynn, 18, was charged with trespassing and unlawful urination and might receive a sentence similar to that of Portland's last reservoir urinater (merely 24 hours' community service). By contrast, a week later in San Antonio, Texas, Daniel Athens, 23, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his own late-night tinkle. Athens had pleaded guilty to urinating against an outside wall of The Alamo (of course a sacred Texas monument). [The Oregonian (Portland), 4-17-2014] [The Smoking Gun, 4-15-2014]

"Whoever said, 'Money can't buy you friends' clearly hasn't been on the Internet recently," wrote The New York Times in April, pointing to various social media support services that create online superstars by augmenting one's Facebook "friends," Twitter "followers" and Instagram "likes." The reporter described how, by paying a company $5, for example, he immediately acquired 4,000 "friends," and had he splurged for $3,700, could have had a million on his Instagram photo account. Such services have been around for two years, but earlier, cruder versions (sometimes, just unmonitored email addresses) are now sophisticated "bots" -- groups of computer code created on algorithm farms in India and elsewhere -- that "behave" on social media with original messaging (often "drivel," wrote the Times) as if they were real people. [New York Times, 4-21-2014]

-- We All Scream: (1) In April, Haagen-Dazs announced it will introduce two new ice creams (thankfully, only in Japan): carrot orange (with bits of pulp and peel) and tomato cherry (made from tomato paste). (2) A South Wales ice cream maker ("Lick Me I'm Delicious") announced in April that it has perfected an ice cream containing about 25mg of Viagra per scoop (though it is not yet generally available). [Los Angeles Times, 4-21-2014] [Daily Mail (London), 4-11-2014]

-- Marketing Challenges: (1) In January, London's Daily Telegraph found three British companies in competition to sell deodorant supposedly made especially for women's breasts. According to one, Fresh Body, "We're replacing 'swoobs' -- dreaded boob sweat -- with smiles." (2) Owner Christian Ingber recently opened a sandwich shop in Gothenburg, Sweden, named "A F

Medical Marvels: (1) China's Chengdu Commercial Daily reported in March that Liu Yougang, 23, finally had surgery to remove that whistle he had swallowed when he was 9. He had been experiencing worsened breathing -- and had been making "shrill whistle sounds" nightly after falling asleep. (2) London's Daily Star featured Sarah Beal, 43, of Arley, Warwickshire, England, in a March story demonstrating her skin condition in which writing words on her skin makes it puff up for about an hour before it recedes. It is referred to by doctors as the "Etch A Sketch condition" (formally, dermatographia), and despite occasional pain, she described it as "cool" and a "party trick." [Chengdu Commercial Daily via Global Times (Beijing), 3-6-2014] [Daily Star, 3-6-2014]

-- The Job of the Researcher: Cornell University graduate student Michael Smith, disappointed at the paucity of research on the pain of honeybee stings, decided to evaluate the stings himself (but in line with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 on safe self-experimentation). Smith's protocols required five stings a day on various body locations for 38 days -- at least three on each of 25 body areas. The worst, according to his pain index, were the nostril (9.0) and the upper lip (8.7). [National Geographic blogs, 4-3-2014]

-- North Carolina's Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is already well known to News of the Weird readers for creating functional organs in the lab (most notably, perhaps, growing a human bladder and a rabbit's penis). In an April article in the Lancet, the program announced that it had implanted artificial vaginas in four women in the U.S. A functioning vagina, the director told BBC News, "is a very important thing." [BBC News, 4-10-2014]

-- While Medicare continues to be among the most costly federal services, and U.S. doctors continue to drop out of the program because of paltry fees for some procedures, other specialists are rewarded with such outsized compensation that almost 4,000 physicians were paid $1 million or more for 2012 and about 350 of those totaled nearly $1.5 billion, according to Medicare records released in April 2014. Ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen of West Palm Beach, Fla., took in more than $20 million and treated 645 Medicare patients with a total of 37,000 injectable doses of Lucentis (a much more expensive drug than the popularly regarded equivalent, Avastin), according to Business Insider. (In fact, taxpayers could have saved more than $11 million with Avastin on Melgen's billings alone, according to an April Washington Post analysis.) [Washington Post, 4-9-2014; Business Insider, 4-9-2014]

-- Visitors to the New York City office of Clear Channel radio station group chairman Bob Pittman are greeted exotically as they step off the elevator by a "tunnel" of "fine mist." However, a spokeswoman told a New York Post reporter in March that it "isn't for cooling or humidifying," but to impress advertisers, in that Clear Channel knows how to project the advertiser's logo against the mist. (Clear Channel, the Post reported, is $21 billion in debt and has laid off "thousands" of employees.) [New York Post, 3-19-2014]

Par-tee! (1) In a springtime rite in Narcisse, Manitoba, tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes slithered out of pits in March so that writhing males could hook up with "pheromone-spewing" females. London's Daily Mail called it the largest gathering of snakes on the planet -- with balls of males wrapped around females. (2) Once again this year, the Toads on Roads charity in Sleaford, England, called for volunteers in February to police a highway where post-hibernating female toads carry horny males on their backs across a road to mate in marshes. Without help, said the charity, up to two-thirds of the amorous toads would not survive oncoming cars. [Daily Mail, 3-12-2014] [BBC News, 2-26-2014]

Charged with exposing himself indecently to teenage girls in Durham, Ontario, in February: Mr. Chad Freake, 33. Arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in April and charged with illegal drug possession: Mr. Edward Cocaine, 34 (nope -- possession of Xanax!). [DurhamRegion.com, 2-7-2014] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 4-16-2014]

Universal Knowledge Allah, 36, charged with stealing a Stradivarius violin from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster (February); Theodore Edward Bear (aka Ted E. Bear), 29, charged with attempted murder, Great Falls, Montana (December); Ms. Cameo Crispi, 31, arrested for arson in Uintah County, Utah, charged with purposely leaving a pound of bacon frying on the stove to set her ex-boyfriend's kitchen afire (March); Mr. Bai Ting, 28, charged with biting a police officer in Singapore (April). Ms. Sue Yoo, an Asian-American lawyer mentioned in a BBC News magazine story on whether one's name is destiny (April). [New York Times, 2-6-2014] [KRTV (Great Falls), 12-23-2013] [KSL-TV (Salt Lake City), 3-26-2014] [The Independent (London), 4-9-2014] [BBC News, 4-1-2014]

The maximum penalty a drunk driver can serve in Missouri for causing another's death is 15 years in prison -- which is the same penalty handed down last year by Circuit Judge Kenneth Pratte to a brother and sister whose crime was getting caught with 20 marijuana plants (12 mature, eight sprouts), which they insisted were for personal needs. In fact, David and Natalie DePriest had not even taken the case to trial -- but had pleaded guilty, expecting, of course, minimum jail time (normally maxing out at about 120 days in prison, according to Missouri Department of Corrections statistics cited by Huffington Post). (David DePriest, though a licensed gunsmith, received seven more years jail time for having a rifle a quarter-inch shorter than permitted in Missouri.) [Huffington Post, 4-15-2014]

Recurring Theme: An unnamed "gangland" bomber was killed in March in Dublin, Ireland, when the payload exploded prematurely. The detonation occurred on the morning of March 30, which marked the daylight saving time change in Ireland, and police concluded that, most likely, the bomber had forgotten to set the timer ahead that morning, which would have given him up to 60 more minutes to plant the bomb and leave. (In 1999, two Palestinians, operating on West Bank time, but carrying bombs to the Israeli cities Haifa and Tiberius, which had already advanced their clocks that morning, were blown up -- along with only one bystander instead of the dozens or hundreds planned for.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 4-2-2014]

Thanks This Week to Andrew Hastie, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Bob McCabe, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Sandy Pearlman, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Peter Smagorinsky, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).