In April, Anton Purisima filed a claim in Federal District Court in New York City that the Lowering The Bar blog calculated was for the largest monetary demand ever made in a lawsuit -- "$2,000 decillion" (or 2 followed by 36 zeroes, which of course is many times more money than exists on planet Earth). Purisima's lawsuit names Au Bon Pain, Carepoint Health, Kmart, the New York City Transit Authority and LaGuardia Airport among the parties allegedly causing him so much distress (by fraud, civil rights violations and even "attempted murder"). Lowering The Bar also noted that "$2,000 decillion" could also have been accurately nominated as "$2 undecillion" or even "two octillion gigadollars." [Purisima v. Au Bon Pain, et al, Case No. 1:14 CV 2755 (SDNY, 4-11-2014) via Lowering The Bar, 5-13-2014]

Only in Florida -- (1) Calvin Rodriguez was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Florida, in May as the man who had been using a shaved key to steal a series of cars from parking lots. His spree came to an abrupt halt as he sped away from police in a stolen Honda Civic only to crash into a huge alligator in the road. (2) On May 1st, a wildlife trapper called to Pine View School in Osprey, Florida, south of Sarasota, removed four alligators (one of which was 8 feet long) from the campus while classes were in session (but without disruption). (3) Beachcombers in the Gulf of Mexico town of Redington Beach, Florida, were treated on May 17th to the sight of a full-grown elephant treading water about 20 yards offshore. (The animal had made its way to the water after being unloaded for a commercial birthday party appearance.) [WPTV (West Palm Beach), 5-15-2014] [Sarasota Herald Tribune, 5-2-2014] [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 5-19-2014]

Democracy in Action -- (1) During a regional session of Spain's parliament in February, a photographer from the newspaper El Diario Montanes captured a shot of legislator Miguel Angel Revilla looking at a picture of a nude woman (in a magazine otherwise concealed inside a folder). (He explained later that he was of course just reading the articles.) (2) In May, U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia of Florida was captured on a C-SPAN camera during a House Judiciary Committee hearing casually eating his earwax. In the sequence, described on a Time magazine blog, he dug into his ear, inspected the results, placed them in mouth, then went "back for seconds." (Rep. Garcia explained later that he was actually dealing with a "hangnail.") [Daily Mail (London), 2-25-2014] [Time.com, 5-14-2014]

-- One of the leading theories as to the cause of a radiation leak at a nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad, New Mexico, in February is the facility's recent, unanticipated switch to "organic" kitty litter. Previously, an inorganic variety had been used to absorb liquid in the waste drums shipped to the facility from bomb-making plants that had been temporarily storing the waste pending creation of a permanent nuclear waste storage site. [Associated Press via SFGate.com (San Francisco), 5-13-2014]� -- First Things First: Trustees of the University of Illinois announced in March that, based on an unreported number of suggestions by students, it would expand the student health insurance plan soon to fix an apparently glaring oversight: the absence of coverage for student sex-change surgery (which, according to the school, would increase students' premiums by only $2 a semester). [Associated Press via Crain's Chicago Business, 3-6-2014]

-- In April, India's Delhi High Court judges declined to halt the local government's program of posting pictures of deities on the walls of buildings in order to discourage public urination (that surely no one would soil his lord). The plaintiffs pointed out that the campaign was so clearly ineffective that perhaps the deities' images were even making the problem worse -- that "evidence" so far shows that confronting the images might even compel some people to relieve the "pressure on the bladder." [India Today, 4-12-2014]

-- An unnamed 60-year-old Buddhist monk was arrested in Nantou County, Taiwan, in April after a convenience-store manager said he was caught red-handed swiping packets of beef jerky. "I don't know why," he told police, "but lately I had this craving for meat." He also had trouble with honesty, initially denying his guilt before finally confessing to the officer that "I have let Lord Buddha down." (Buddhists traditionally are strict vegetarians.) [Taipei Times, 4-13-2014]

-- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in 2013 that it was not necessarily illegal for teachers to send students sexually oriented text messages -- that the state law banning the practice violated "free speech." As a result, in February 2014, prosecutors in Tarrant County dropped their case against a junior-high teacher who had exchanged 688 text messages with a 13-year-old female student over a six-day period in 2012, on topics such as "sexual preferences and fantasies" and whether either of them ever walked naked around the house. The messages would be illegal, the Court had ruled, only if they led to a meeting or an offer of sex. [KTBC-TV (Austin), 2-24-2014]

-- Despite a 1971 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court declaring that governments could not punish people who are merely "annoying," dozens of towns (according to a March Wall Street Journal report) continue to regard the behavior as criminal. (The justices decided the word is too "vague" to give fair warning of which behaviors are illegal, but an Indiana deputy attorney general told the Journal that anyone with "ordinary intelligence" knows what is annoying.) New York has such a law, as do Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Cumberland, Maryland -- among the 5,000 mentions of forms of "to annoy" in a computer search of municipal ordinances. (Britain's House of Lords in January blocked a proposed anti-annoyance law.) [Wall Street Journal, 3-29-2014] [BBC News, 1-8-2014]

-- Among the discretionary punishments authorized to Georgia judges is banishing an offender from the county in which he committed the crime. Complained driver Ricardo Riley (who as of February is barred from Walton County), "I didn't commit no murder, I'm not a sex offender, I'm not a criminal. I just got a speeding ticket." Judge Brad Brownlow, perhaps irritated at Riley's request to reduce the original $250 fine, instead piled on punishments -- including banishment. Walton County is just outside the Atlanta metro area, and Riley, from adjacent Gwinnett County, has friends and co-workers who live in Walton -- but whom he can no longer visit. [WSB-TV (Atlanta), 2-6-2014]

The U.S. Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, in his latest report on agency employee bonuses in April (covering late 2010 through 2012), disclosed that $2.8 million of the high-performance prizes went to employees with discipline problems -- including about 1,150 workers who owe about $1 million in back federal taxes. The inspector general acknowledged that the bonuses "appear to create a conflict" regarding the "integrity" of the program. (The Treasury Department pointed out somewhat proudly that the Department's rate of tax delinquencies is only about one-eighth the delinquency rate of the United States as a whole.) [Associated Press via WTOP Radio (Washington, D.C.), 4-23-2014]

The Asia Pacific branch of the worldwide advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather finally apologized in May for a recent "Bounce Back" ad in India for Kurl-On mattresses (whose general theme proclaims mattresses so comfortable that users "bounce" up after landing on them). Previous versions had lauded Steve Jobs (for "bouncing back" from his mid-career firing by Apple) and Mahatma Gandhi (for "bouncing back" to become a spiritual leader). In the problematic ad, the Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai (who was nearly killed in 2012 by Muslim extremists) is shot in the head in a cartoon but "bounces back" after landing on a Kurl-On mattress. [Yahoo News, 5-15-2014]

-- Ethan Couch, 17, was convicted of DUI manslaughter last year after killing four people, but benefited at sentencing from a counselor's testimony describing him as a victim of "affluenza" -- a condition in which children of wealthy families hopelessly feel "entitlement" and are prone to irresponsibility. In April, the Vernon, Tex., hospital providing Ethan's court-ordered rehabilitation announced that Ethan's "wealthy" parents would nonetheless be billed only for about 6 percent of the cost of treating the "affluenza" -- $1,170 of an anticipated $21,000 monthly tab -- with Texas taxpayers picking up the remainder. [KDFW-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 4-11-2014]

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]