Scott Fistler, twice a loser for electoral office in Phoenix, Arizona, as a Republican, decided in November 2013 that his luck might improve as a Democrat with a name change, and legally became "Cesar Chavez," expecting to poll better in a heavily Hispanic, Democratic congressional district. ("Cesar Chavez" is of course the name of the legendary labor organizer.) Furthermore, according to a June report in the Arizona Capitol Times, "Chavez's" campaign website features photographs of frenzied supporters holding "Chavez" signs, but which are obviously scenes from the streets of Venezuela at rallies for its late president Hugo Chavez. (At press time for News of the Weird, a judge had removed "Chavez" from the ballot, but only because some qualifying signatures were invalid. "Chavez" promised to appeal.) [Arizona Capitol Times, 6-2-2014] [Arizona Republic, 6-17-2014]

-- U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Omaha, Nebraska, trying to be helpful, he said, advised female lawyers appearing in his courtroom to lower their hemlines and cover their cleavage because males, including Judge Kopf himself, are "pigs." Writing in his personal blog in March, he said, "I have been a dirty old man ever since I was a very young man" and that the women in his office are similarly contemptuous of daringly dressed female lawyers. The lifetime-tenured judge later said he regretted any harm to the judiciary that his remarks might have caused. [Slate.com, 3-27-2014]

-- Almond Upton, 60, charged with murder for "intentionally" striking a New York state trooper in May with his pickup truck, denied everything. He told reporters following his first court appearance that he is bewildered by the accusation: "I was (close to) the Connecticut border, and all of a sudden, I'm in Binghamton, New York (about 140 miles from Connecticut), and this cop got killed, I don't know how it happened. It had to be a time warp." [United Press International, 5-30-2014]

-- The National Security Agency admitted in a June court filing that it had disobeyed two judicial orders to stop deleting accusatory evidence in its databases (which judges had ordered preserved to help determine if the NSA was illegally violating privacy laws). The NSA's reasoning for its chutzpah: Its data-gathering systems, it claims, are "too complex" to prevent the automatic deletions routinely programmed into its data, and it cannot reprogram to preserve the data without shutting down its entire intelligence-gathering mission. The challenging party (the Electronic Frontier Foundation) called the NSA's explanation disingenuous and, in fact, further proof that the NSA is incapable of properly managing such massive data-gathering. [The Daily Caller, 6-10-2014]

-- Michael Adrian, 26, was arrested in Lakeville, Minnesota, in June for frightening officials at Lakeville North High School by skateboarding in front of the school, in military dress, face covered by a bandana, with an arrow strapped to his arm, and concealing knives, a box-cutter, a slingshot and pepper spray. Adrian told police he was merely "testing" the school's security system by "looking like an a

-- At an April press conference on a train station platform in Milford, Connecticut, to critique the allegedly shoddy safety record of the Metro-North rail line, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut set up a chart on an easel to illustrate the problem. Suddenly, a train roared through the station and, according to news reports, "nearly" clipped Sen. Blumenthal, who was standing on the yellow platform line that passengers are admonished to stand behind. [WTNH-TV (New Haven), 4-18-2014]

-- In June, a jury in Fresno, California, decided that Bobby Lee Pearson, 37, was guilty of burglary -- but they accidentally signed the "not-guilty" form, instead, and by the time Judge W. Kent Hamlin caught the error, he could not change it (because of "double jeopardy"). Pearson walked out a free man, went to his sister's home, got into a fight hours later, and was stabbed to death by the sister's boyfriend. [Associated Press via OregonLive.com, 6-12-2014]

-- The animosity between Brevard County (Florida) judge John Murphy and public defender Andrew Weinstock festered over the lawyer's refusal to waive his client's right to a speedy trial, but came to a head on June 2, when the judge told Weinstock, "Stop pissing me off. Just sit down." Weinstock persisted: "I have a right to stand and represent my client." The judge responded: "If you want to fight, let's go out back, and I'll just beat your a

-- Robert Wallace, 32, a Houston software developer, filed a lawsuit in May to get back some items after a failed romance. According to Wallace, he had loaned a laptop computer, $2,000 cash and his Harry Potter DVDs to his sweetheart, Ms. Nomi Mims, a local stripper. Wallace said the loans were made only because he thought she was in love with him and that they were "building a future together," but now realizes he was wrong. Mims calls the items "gifts" and noted, "I've given him gifts, too. You know, how do I get my booty back?" [KRIV-TV (Houston), 5-16-2014, 5-19-2014]

-- (1) Authorities somehow could not prevent an inmate serving life at a North Carolina prison from arranging, via a contraband cellphone, to have the 63-year-old father of his prosecutor kidnapped and tortured. (The FBI managed to rescue the man five days after his abduction.) (2) The U.S. State Department somehow cannot arrange safe haven for Afghan interpreters who risked their lives daily serving U.S. combat troops and who face almost certain retaliation by militants once Americans have departed. Even the coordinator of the interpreter program, who applied for a U.S. visa in 2012, has not been approved (according to a March 2014 New York Times dispatch). [New York Post, 4-14-2014] [New York Times, 3-25-2014]

-- The sailing events at the 2016 Summer Olympics will be held on Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, but dire warnings have been issued about the filthy, squalid condition of the bay and the near impossibility of a timely cleanup. A New York Times reporter, in a May dispatch, cited car tires, floating mattresses, dog carcasses, a partly submerged sofa and free-flowing untreated raw sewage. A Brazilian competitive sailor admitted that he had personally seen four human corpses in the bay. (By comparison, for the Beijing Olympics, 1,000 cleanup boats were dispatched just to remove algae from the sailing venue, but only three cleanup boats are operating on Guanabara now, with merely several dozen planned.) [New York Times, 5-19-2014]

-- Arachnophobes (and their snake-fearing cousins, the ophidiophobes) may be in for an interesting 2016 Summer Olympics, in that Brazil seems to be one giant incubator of the scariest insects and vipers on the planet. Chief among them, reported the Wall Street Journal in June, are the Brazilian wandering spider -- the world's most poisonous and, in addition, the size of a dinner plate -- whose venom at least owns the "redeeming" value of momentarily giving bitten men erections. Off the coast of Sao Paulo is the uninhabited (and barred to visitors) Ilha de Queimada Grande, overrun by the super-deadly golden lancehead pit viper (whose population may be as many as five snakes per square meter of land area). [Wall Street Journal, 6-10-2014]

-- (1) A British National Health Service hospital in Stockton, England, apparently failed to learn from a 2012 tragedy at Scarborough Hospital when, in May, a patient caught fire during surgery. (Tip for Next Time: Either no alcohol sterilizers or no electricity-made incisions.) (2) In the latest creative image-enhancer by a municipal sewage plant, Seattle's Brightwater Treatment facility is offering to rent its indoor rooms ($2,000 for eight hours) as a wedding venue. According to an official, there is space for 260 guests, including full kitchen -- and the plant is reputed to be a "zero odor" facility. [BBC News, 5-23-2014] [KIRO-TV (Seattle), 4-9-2014]

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.