Marking Japan's latest unfathomable social trend, two paperback photo books -- both consisting only of portraits of the rear ends of hamsters -- have experienced surprising and still-growing printing runs. Japanese society has long seemed easily captured by anything considered "kawaii" (or "cute"), according to a May Wall Street Journal dispatch, and a representative of one book's publisher called his volume "delightfully cute." "I can't stop smiling," he said, "when I see these butts." The two books in print are "Hamuketsu" (hamster buttocks) and "Hamuketsu -- So Cute You Could Faint." A third, "The Original Hamuketsu," was set to debut in June.

-- Another driver died after being unable to dodge his own vehicle. A 58-year-old man was hit by his SUV in New York City in June after he double-parked and was opening the door on the passenger side and realized that the vehicle was still in reverse gear. He tried to jam one foot onto the brake but hit the gas instead, causing the car to jump backward, ejecting him, and pinning him between the SUV and a van parked alongside. The man suffered a heart attack and died as his vehicle broke free and drifted across the busy Manhattan intersection of Madison Avenue and East 49th Street.

-- Dead or just in "deep meditation"? A renowned Hindu guru, Shri Ashutosh Maharaj, in his 70s, passed away in January (so concluded police in Jalandhar, India), but His Holiness' disciples have refused to release the body, keeping it in a commercial freezer, contending that he has merely drifted into the deeper form of the meditation for which he is well-known -- and will return to life when he is ready. (The guru's religious order, not coincidentally, is a real estate powerhouse in the Punjab region and on nearly every continent, and the guru's family is certain the "meditation" is a ruse to allow the Ashram's continued control of the financial empire.)

-- After the U.S. Postal Service finalizes its purchase of "small-arms ammunition," it will become only the most recent federal agency to make a large purchase of bullets for its armed agents (who are perhaps more numerous than the public realizes). In the last year or so, reports have surfaced that the Social Security Administration ordered 174,000 hollow-point bullets, the Department of Agriculture 320,000 rounds, Homeland Security 450 million rounds (for its 135,000 armed agents), the FBI 100 million hollow-points, and even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 46,000 rounds. (In May, the Department of Agriculture added an order of submachine guns and body armor.)

-- Unclear on the Concept: Robert Kiefer, 25, was arrested in Akron, Ohio, in February after losing his composure over an expected check that had not yet arrived in the mail. Rather than complain to the check issuer, Kiefer did as several others have done in News of the Weird's experience -- attack the letter carrier. Kiefer pepper-sprayed the postman (with his own canister that he carries for protection), and in the ensuing struggle, bit the carrier on the leg.

-- Police in Lincoln, Nebraska, tracking down a call about a missing 3-year-old boy downtown, managed to locate him in the type of place where other toddlers have turned up after briefly escaping the sight of their parents: inside a toy vending machine. The boy had crawled up through the toy-release slot of the Bear Claw and was safely, joyously playing among the bin of colorful stuffed animals at Madsen's Bowling & Billiards.

-- In the second such incident reported here in four months, an overenthusiastic police officer handcuffed and detained a firefighter working a 9-1-1 call, ostensibly because the firefighter refused to stop work and go move his fire truck to the officer's satisfaction. Like the earlier incident in California, the unequivocal state law in Louisiana makes it illegal for anyone to interfere with a firefighter on an emergency call, and the officer from the New Roads, La., Police Department in principle faces a stiff fine and possible jail sentence.

-- Orthodox Judaism requires a divorcing spouse to obtain the permission of the other via a document called a "get," leaving much power in the hands of the responding spouse -- and leading to an occasional resort to trickery or violence to persuade an uncooperative spouse. In May, Lakewood, N.J., Rabbi Mendel Epstein, his son and three other men were indicted for scheming to use electric cattle prods on behalf of wives against recalcitrant husbands. (Four other men in the alleged scheme have already pleaded guilty.) According to prosecutors, Rabbi Epstein has been implicated in other over-the-top efforts to obtain gets, in 2009 and 2010, and the indictment charges the 2013 episode also involved kidnapping, surgical blades and a screwdriver.

-- Emergency crews in the U.K. once again came under criticism in June when dozens of police and firefighters, in three trucks and using a cherry-picker, blocked off a busy street in Cheltenham for an hour so they could rescue and release a bird (a "rook") caught in netting on top of a small apartment building. (Bonus irony: The building's owner had installed the keepaway netting for the sole purpose of discouraging rooks from roosting and nesting, as they were soiling neighborhood rooftops.)

-- An historic, decades-old snit ended in May in the state of Tabasco, Mexico, where two men (now in their 70s) who were the very last living speakers of their village's Ayapaneco language resumed talking to each other, and through the efforts of Stanford University anthropologist James Fox, their language may now be sufficiently recorded for a preserved historical record. The cause of their falling out was not reported.

-- If tiny Iceland has a worldly cultural showcase, it is the Icelandic Phallological Museum, founded in Reykjavik in 1997 and housing 300 penises and penile parts from 93 different animals. So far, however, it lacks an exhibition-worthy human penis. That omission is about to be remedied, as Mr. Jonah Falcon, a New York City D-list celebrity with an organ that measures 13 1/2 inches, has accepted an invitation to donate (presumably not in the flesh until he dies). Falcon notably refuses to appear in pornography, but said he regards this mission, for what Huffington Post called the Louvre of penises, as a higher calling.

-- Former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle, 30, was convicted in 2013 of conspiring to kidnap and torture -- and then cook and eat the corpses of -- an unspecified number of women he had listed on a website called DarkFetishNet.com, even though he insists that he was merely a harmless fantasy storyteller. Now, as he awaits sentencing at a New York City prison, officials have allowed him to train as a chef, preparing breakfast and lunch for inmates and guards. Although his wife divorced him and took their one child, other family members and friends support him, according to a May report in New York Daily News (including fellow prisoners, who joke with Valle about the irony). Said his mother, "The only thing he's guilty of is being stupid enough to be on that website."

-- Winston-Salem, N.C., surgeon Stuart Meloy and associates recently won their patent for an "orgasm machine" (first mentioned in News of the Weird in 2001), allowing patient trials to begin soon by a Minnesota company. The often-described birth of the device came as Dr. Meloy was treating a woman for excruciating back pain by running electrodes to the spinal column when he "accidentally" brushed the nerve apparently responsible for the female orgasm. Eventually, Dr. Meloy developed a pacemaker-type device to be implanted in a buttock, with a push-button "pain reliever" that the woman uses to charge the electrodes. (He emphasizes that the surgery is so invasive as to be improper for all except women with "serious" orgasmic dysfunction.)

Thanks This Week to Gary DaSilva, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Thirty thousand spiders, led by members of the British Tarantula Society, gathered in Coventry on May 18 for the annual BTS exhibition, with a Socotra Island blue baboon spider taking Best in Show for first-time entrant Mike Dawkins. According to news reports, judges ignore spiders' personalities and make their selections by objectifying the body -- seeking "shiny coats, correct proportions, an active demeanor and proper stance" (which means that "all eight legs should be upright and perfectly poised"). Veteran judge Ryan Hale said winning does not necessarily make a spider more valuable, but is likely to enhance the keeper's reputation in the tarantula-training community.

-- Susan Coppinger, 47, was promoted by the city of Boston in January to a job paying $38,800 in the Inspectional Services Department -- even though a month earlier she had been arrested for bank robbery. In fact, police said it was her second robbery of the same Santander Bank in nearby Quincy. Apparently, the city's human resources office does not monitor mugshots on MassMostWanted.com, but in April, the city finally secured Coppinger's resignation.

-- For panicking drivers headed in an emergency to University Hospital in Tamarac, Florida, ready to turn left into the ER because of bleeding, shortness of breath, etc., the city still requires patiently waiting for the traffic light to turn green -- no matter what -- and has a $158-per violation red-light camera perfectly aimed, according to a WPLG-TV investigation reported in March. The station noted that the traffic magistrate handling appeals serves at the pleasure of the city and so far has not relented on tickets involving even provable emergencies.

-- Alarmed that its internal rating system revealed that some employees actually perform better than others, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced in May that it was scrapping the system. Agency director Richard Cordray expressed dismay that the system failed to reveal worker disparities that matched up on the basis of age, race, union status and longevity with the agency, and said that until they find a system that proves, for example, that union members work just as well (or badly) as non-members, all employees will be paid as if they were doing excellent work.

-- Weird Japan: When Ayano Tsukimi, 64, moved from Osaka back to her home village of Nagoro, she found a population of only 37 people and set out to "replace" those who had died or moved away -- by creating life-size stuffed dolls, with unsettling facial features, which she positions around town as if to suggest a larger population. Tsukimi estimates that she has created about 350 "inhabitants," and, reported Global Post in May, "imagines a future where she's outlived all her neighbors and only dolls remain."

-- Food trucks are ubiquitous in many urban areas, bringing ethnic foods to street corners, and now in the New York City neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Soho, art impresarios bring stage presentations to the insides of 24-foot trucks parked on the street. Typically, ticket-holders (fewer than 20) climb in for a 30-minute play, followed by a 15-minute "intermission" a few steps away at a neighborhood bar, and then it's back in the truck for another half-hour. One art-truck producer blamed outlandish New York City real estate prices for the turn to mobile sites.

-- China's pre-eminent (and perhaps most terrifying) performance artist, He Yunchang, 48, acknowledged to Agence France-Presse in May that he will do "anything" to advance "art" -- as long as it does not kill him. Mr. He most famously removed part of a rib on opening day of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 (on the "lucky" date of 8-8-08) and in 2010 assembled 25 people to vote on whether he should be slashed from collarbone to knee and left bloody on a bed. (Cutting won, 12-10, with three abstentions, and a doctor reluctantly made the incision.) A gallery owner in Australia told AFP that He's "pain" and "discomfort" "have a transcendent quality" and are "silent rebukes" to Chinese people who endure hardship just for money -- ironically believing money will protect them from suffering.

-- The Itella postal service of Finland announced in April that it would soon sell stamps featuring 33 designs honoring the late Finnish homoerotic artist Touko Laaksonen, better known as "Tom of Finland." None were to be "hardcore" images, although a more-explicit companion exhibit will open soon at Finland's Postal Museum. (Finland, however, is not among Europe's leaders in progressive treatment of gays.)

Dan Greding, working on contract with the city of Santa Barbara, California, was busy at work one February day installing signs on street lamps warning that only "75 Minute Parking" was permitted. On one block, three signs were called for, but the last one required Greding to drill into concrete, insert screws and wait for the concrete to dry -- which apparently took more than 75 minutes, and a passing police officer ticketed his truck. Greding's first appeal of the citation was denied, but a second appeal was pending at press time.

The 9-1-1 call at 1:50 a.m. on May 29 came from a man who said he was lost on Deen Still Road near Polk City, Florida, and being chased by wild hogs. A sheriff's deputy fairly easily "rescued" Andrew Joffe, 24, but then discovered that Joffe (a) had an active arrest warrant and (b) was in possession of a GPS device that he admitted stealing from a car that evening. The Polk County sheriff told reporters that it was "unusual" for an absconding thief, with a warrant, to bring himself to deputies' attention like that, but acknowledged with a wink that "it does get pretty dark out on Deen Still Road in the middle of the night."

(1) Gregory Schwartz, 40, was arrested in Clairemont, California, in March and charged with crawling under a ladies' restroom stall door at a Big Lots store to molest a shopper. (Schwartz was dressed as a Barbie doll.) (2) Jeremy Grinnell, 42, pleaded guilty in May in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to having propped up a ladder under a couple's bedroom window in November and climbed up to watch them having sex. (At the time, Grinnell was a local pastor and assistant professor at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.) (3) Police in Ypsilanti, Michigan, identified a suspect in May to end a six-months'-long reign of disgust in which someone frequently defecated on the same slide in Prospect Park -- even, amazingly, on the coldest days of the season.

(1) A 51-year-old man drowned in Adelaide, Australia, in February, the latest person to inadvisedly jump into the water to retrieve a low-price belonging -- this time, his toy boat that had gone awry. (2) A man and woman, both age 40, died in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in February -- discovered in their car in a closed garage where the engine had been running, but the car had run out of gasoline. Thus, the partially clad couple appeared to be the most recent to have suffocated in that manner while having sex.

In April, police in Ottawa, Ontario, arrested a 62-year-old man as the one who had been indecently exposing himself to visitors in Mooney's Bay Park. Detained was Donald Popadick, whose family name (according to diligent journalism by the National Post) is present in only three Canadian households and is perhaps derived from the Serbian name Popadic. (Popadick's arrest was made by Sgt. Iain Pidcock.)

Thanks This Week to Wayne Saddler, David Swanson, David MacDonald, Andrew Hastie, Lynn Marshall, Steve Dunn, Rick Sabadka, Peter Trobridge, and Paul Baez, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.