Vanellope, Rydder, Jceion and Burklee head the latest annual list of the most common baby names on the Social Security Administration register of first-time-appearing names. There were 63 Vanellopes (girls), but only 10 each for Rydder and Jceion, the most popular debut names for boys. Other notables were Hatch (eight times) and Psalms (seven). (In other "name" news, among the finalists in April's "Name of the Year" contest sponsored by Deadspin.com were the actual monikers Curvaceous Bass, (Dr.) Eve Gruntfest, Chillie Poon and the winner -- Shamus Beaglehole. [Nameberry via MSN.com, 5-15-2014] [NameoftheYear.com]

To celebrate today's 25th anniversary of the weekly distribution of News of the Weird by Universal Uclick, Chuck Shepherd recalls a few of his favorite stories (among the more than 25,000 covered).

-- (1989) In the mid-1980s, convicted South Carolina murderer Michael Godwin won his appeal to avoid the electric chair and serve only life imprisonment. In March, while sitting naked on a metal prison toilet, attempting to fix a TV set, the 28-year-old Godwin bit into a wire and was electrocuted. [Orlando Sentinel, 3-8-89]

-- (1991) Dee Dee Jonrowe, leading the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in January in northern Minnesota, took a wrong turn and went 300 yards before recognizing her error. The mistake cost her team only a few minutes, but stopping to calculate her location allowed the dogs an unsupervised rest, and by the time she was ready to go, two of her dogs had begun to copulate. She was forced to wait on them for 25 minutes and lost the lead. [Duluth News Tribune, 1-17-91]

-- (1991) In March, Florence Schreiber Powers, 44, a Ewing, New Jersey, administrative judge on trial for shoplifting two watches, called her psychiatrist to testify that Powers was under stress at the time of the incidents. The doctor said Powers was unaware of her actions "from one minute to the next," for the following 20 reasons: a recent auto accident, a traffic ticket, a new-car purchase, overwork, husband's kidney stones, husband's asthma (and breathing machine that occupies their bedroom), menopausal hot flashes, an "ungodly" vaginal itch, a bad rash, fear of breast and anal cancer, fear of dental surgery, son's need for an asthma breathing machine, mother's and aunt's illnesses, need to organize her parents' 50th wedding anniversary, need to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 20 relatives, purchase of 200 gifts for Christmas and Chanukah, attempt to sell her house without a real estate agent, lawsuit against wallpaper cleaners, purchase of furniture that had to be returned, and a toilet in her house that was constantly running. She was convicted anyway. [Trentonian, 3-27-91]

-- (1991 and before) Gary Arthur Medrow, 47, was arrested in March in Milwaukee (the latest of his then-30-plus arrests over 23 years) for once again causing mischief by telephoning a woman and trying to persuade her to physically pick up another person and carry her around a room. In the latest incident, after repeatedly calling, he told her another woman had been impersonating her, had been in an accident, and had been seen carrying someone away (and that Medrow needed evidence that she could or could not do that). He had previously talked cheerleaders, motel workers and business executives into lifting and carrying. [Milwaukee Sentinel, 3-18-91]

-- (1992) A 38-year-old man, unidentified in news reports, was hospitalized in Princeton, West Virginia, in October with gunshot wounds. He had been drinking beer and cleaning his three guns -- and had accidentally shot himself with each one. He said the first shot didn't hurt, the second "stung a little," and the third "really hurt," prompting him to call for help. [Associated Press via Newsday, 10-11-92]

-- (1994) In Toronto in March, Sajid Rhatti, 23, and his 20-year-old wife brawled over whether Katey Sagal, who plays Peg Bundy on "Married With Children," is prettier than Christina Applegate, who plays her daughter. First, the wife slashed Rhatti in the groin with a wine bottle as they scuffled, but she dressed his wounds and the couple sat down again to watch another episode of the show. Moments later, the brawl erupted again, and Rhatti, who suffered a broken arm and shoulder, stabbed his wife in the chest, back and legs before they begged neighbors to call an ambulance. [Canadian Press via Edmonton Journal, 3-18-94]

-- (1995) From the Riley County police blotter in the Kansas State University newspaper, Sept. 2: 1:33 p.m., disturbance involving Marcus Miles; 2:14 p.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" (police jargon for acquaintance who wouldn't leave) in the home, Marcus Miles told to leave; 4:08 p.m. (different address), Marcus Miles accused of harassment; 6:10 p.m., "unwanted subject" call against Marcus Miles. Nov. 14: 6:47 p.m., "unwanted subject" in the home, Marcus Miles told to leave; 7:36 p.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" call against Marcus Miles. Nov. 20: 2:05 a.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" charge against Marcus Miles; 2:55 a.m. (different address), disturbance involving Marcus Miles; 3:07 a.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" charge against Marcus Miles; 4:11 a.m. (different address), "unwanted subject" report made against Marcus Miles. [K State Collegian, 9-7-95; 11-14-95, 11-20-95]

-- (1996) A pre-trial hearing was scheduled in Lamar, Missouri, on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit against the county for injuries from a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed damage to nearly everything in her body. According to her petition: "All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, ligaments ... discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed, dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abrased, lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained, inflamed and infected." [Carthage Press, 1-9-96]

-- (1999) From a May police report in The Messenger (Madisonville, Kentucky), concerning two trucks being driven curiously on a rural road: A man would drive a truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so on, into the evening. He did it, he told police, because his brother was passed out drunk in one of the trucks, and he was trying to drive both trucks home, at more or less the same time. (Not surprisingly, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be impaired.) [The Messenger, 5-7-99]

-- (2002) The Lane brothers of New York, Mr. Winner Lane, 44, and Mr. Loser Lane, 41 (their actual birth names), were profiled in a July Newsday report, made more interesting by the fact that Loser is successful (a police detective in South Bronx) and Winner is not (a history of petty crimes). A sister said she believes her parents selected "Winner" because their late father was a big baseball fan and chose "Loser" just to complete the pairing. [Newsday, 7-22-02]

-- (2004) The New York Times reported in February on a Washington, D.C., man whose love of music led him, in the 1960s, to meticulously hand-make and hand-paint facsimilie record album covers of his fantasized music, complete with imagined lyric sheets and liner notes (with some "albums" even shrink-wrapped), and even more incredibly, to hand-make cardboard fascimilies of actual grooved discs to put inside them. "Mingering Mike," whom a reporter and two hobbyists tracked down (but who declined to be identified in print) also made real music, on tapes, using his and friends' voices to simulate instruments. His 38 imagined "albums" were discovered at a flea market after Mike defaulted on storage-locker fees, and the hobbyists who found them said they were so exactingly done that a major museum would soon feature them. [New York Times, 2-2-04]

-- (1988) And finally, there was ol' Hal Warden, the Tennessee 16-year-old who was married at 15 and granted a divorce from his wife, 13. Hal had previously been married at age 12 to a 14-year-old (and fathered children with both), but the first wife divorced Hal because, she told the judge, "He was acting like a 10-year-old." [The precise citation is inaccessible, but various marital reports on the Wardens are available, e.g., Associated Press, 2-21-1987]

Thanks, as usual, to the past and present members of the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.