Jeff Mizanskey, 61, is a poster child for one well- known criticism of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws -- that nonviolent marijuana users (and small-time sellers) may wind up doing decades of hard time and in fact more time than some sociopathic offenders serve for heinous offenses. Mizanskey is 20 years into a life sentence with no possibility of parole for several violations of Missouri's "prior and persistent drug offender" law, and his only chance for freedom is a clemency plea now under consideration by Gov. Jay Nixon (and still opposed by Mizanskey's prosecutor). [KCTV, 5-29-2014]

-- Unconventional Food Prep: Leaked photographs taken by an undercover health and safety officer at China's Tongcheng Rice Noodle Factory in Dongguan city in June show workers in street clothes casually walking back and forth atop piles of vermicelli noodles about to be packaged for shipment to stores. Some workers were even seen lounging or sleeping on the mountains of noodles. (In 1992, News of the Weird noted that health officials in South Dennis, Massachusetts, had closed the Wing Wah Chinese restaurant for various violations, including the restaurant's habit of draining water from cabbage by putting it in cloth laundry bags, placing the bags between pieces of plywood in the parking lot and driving over them with a van.) [Ninemsn.com (Sydney), 6-12-2014] [Brewster Oracle, 8-21-92]

-- Unclear on the Concept: Werner Purkhart, who has been running a "silent disco" in Salzburg, Austria, for four years, was denied renewal of his business permit in July, supposedly because his parties were too loud. At a silent disco, each dancer wears headphones to hear radio-transmitted music; to those without headphones, the roomful of swaying, swinging dancers is eerily quiet. Salzburg Mayor Heinz Schaden said it was still too loud. "The noise ... is keeping (the neighbors) up." [The Local (Vienna), 7-17-2014]

-- "The Chinese fondness for napping in odd places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that's spawned a popular website and even a book," wrote The Wall Street Journal in a July dispatch. In a recent photo essay, a Getty Images photographer captured a series of shots of customers catching 40 winks in various furniture departments of IKEA stores, which officially does "not see it as a problem," according to a spokesman. Maybe "we can sell an extra mattress or two." [Wall Street Journal, 7-8-2014]

-- Five siblings in a rural Turkish family near the Syrian border were discovered by researchers in 2005 to be natural, fluid quadruped walkers (hands and feet to the ground, rear ends up), which was thought at the time possibly to mark the first known "turnaround" in human evolution. However, the siblings were re-characterized by recent PLOS One journal research as merely accommodating a musculo-skeletal imbalance in the brain. Other members of the family have normal gaits, and the five quadrupeds show additional developmental issues. [Washington Post, 7-17-2014]

-- Also, from the foreign press: (1) Moscow Times reported the arrest of "Tomas" in Moscow in March for allegedly stealing a mobile phone, noting that he was referred to adult court even though family members claim he is only 13. Officials decided he must be at least 16, based on medical examination -- especially "of his genitals." (2) Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News reported in May that a 62-year-old man on an Istanbul TV dating show said he was just "an honest person looking for a new wife" -- while also casually mentioning that he had served two prison terms, one for murdering one wife and the other for murdering a girlfriend. "Bad luck always found me," he said. "This time I'll leave it to God." [Moscow Times, 6-3-2014] [USA Today, 5-8-2014]

Inexplicable: (1) Alonzo Liverman, 29, was arrested in June in a Daytona Beach, Florida, police sting on prostitutes' johns. "I'm hungry," was the female officer's come-on. Responded Liverman, "I got a salad." Even though no salad was found on Liverman, police determined the banter constituted a sufficient offer for paid sex. (2) The robber of a Chase Bank in Tucson, Arizona, in March is still on the loose even though surveillance video has been widely distributed. An additional detail from the video: The man pulled the holdup while carrying a small dog in a basket. [The Smoking Gun, 6-11-2014] [Tucson News Now, 3-28-2014]

-- In the midst of the city of Detroit's water crackdown -- shutting off the spigots of residents delinquent on their bills -- the Council of Canadians has come to the rescue. First, the council pressed the United Nations to label Detroit's program a "human rights" violation (the denial of clean drinking water to the 3,000 homes per week being shut down). Said the council chair, "I've (only) seen this (oppression) in the poorest countries in the world." Second, the council arranged a convoy of "good Canadian, public, clean water" into Detroit in July to modestly help the estimated 79,000 homes in peril. [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 7-3-2014]

-- Ms. Ajanaffy Njewadda and her husband recently filed a lawsuit against New York City's transit authority (MTA) following her tumble down some stairs at a subway station (which caused a broken ankle, concussion and lingering trauma that has required psychiatric care). The MTA had placed a large ad for the serial-killer TV series "Dexter" on station stairs, positioned to be seen just as visitors left the subway. Ms. Njewadda said she was momentarily terrified by the ad and lost her balance. [New York Post, 6-25-2014]

-- Oh, Dear!: A man whose name was withheld ("D.B.") filed a lawsuit in April against medical clinics and physicians who performed his colonoscopy in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2013, based on what the patient learned from audio his smartphone recorded while he was unconscious. Though he originally intended to record only doctors' instructions, he was dismayed to know that they began "mocking" him the second he went under, making disparaging and untrue statements about his health, feigning disgust at his body ("Oh! Oscar Mike Goss!") (slang for "OMG" -- oh, my God), threatening to "fire a gun up his rectum," "diagnosing" him with syphilis or "tuberculosis in the penis," and threatening to (falsely) note hemorrhoids on his record -- all done amidst gales of laughter. [Fairfax Times, 5-13-2014; Courthouse News, 4-22-2014]

(1) In Turkey, some shepherds have outfitted their sheep-monitoring donkeys with solar panels and battery packs to illuminate nighttime isolated fields in emergencies. Thus, for instance, pregnant animals can be aided during field births and not have to return to the farms. (2) In an interview with Vice.com, the Swiss founder of Eurolactis touts donkey milk as the preferred substitute for cow milk -- since donkeys have only one stomach, as humans have. (Cows, goats and sheep have multiple stomachs to break down their complex milk, but that milk gives humans digestion problems.) On the other hand, as Vice.com pointed out, milk-drinkers, especially, must learn to ignore the A-word nickname for "donkey." [Mother Nature News, 7-22-2014] [Vice.com, 7-25-2014]

The most recent murder suspect to whine about his oppressive jail conditions appears to be Adam Landerman, 21, awaiting trial in the grisly 2013 murders of two people. In July, his patience apparently exhausted, he filed court papers in Joliet, Illinois, complaining that the jail's towels are too small, the jail offers no barber or beautician services or shaving cream, and the food is "monotonous and undiversified," among other inadequacies. [Joliet Patch, 7-15-2014]

At first, Rev. Fred Armfield's arrest for patronizing a prostitute in Greenwood, South Carolina, in January (2010) looked uncontroversial, with Armfield allegedly confessing that he had bargained Melinda "Truck Stop" Robinson down from $10 to $5 for oral sex. Several days later, however, Armfield formally disputed the arrest, calling himself a "descendant of the original Moro-Pithecus Disoch, Kenyapithecus and Afro Pithecus," a "living flesh-and-blood being" who, based on his (high) character and community standing, should not be prosecuted. Also, he said, any payment to Truck Stop with Federal Reserve Notes did not legally constitute a "purchase" since such notes are not lawful money. [Index-Journal (Greenwood), 1-29-10]

Thanks This Week to Perry Levin, Bruce Leiserowitz, Peter Swank, and Barclay Livker, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(Read more weird news at www.WeirdUniverse.net; send items to WeirdNews@earthlink.net, and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)

Facial recognition software, increasingly important to global anti-terrorism operations, is being brought to ... cats. Taiwanese developer Mu-Chi Sung announced in July plans for marketing the software as part of a cat health device so that owners, especially those with multiple cats, can better monitor their cats' eating habits. Sung first had to overcome the problem of how to get the cat to stick its head through a slot in the feeder so the software can start to work. The device, with mobile apps for remote monitoring by the owner, may sell for about $250. [CBS News, 7-22-2014]

-- The Environmental Protection Agency is already a News of the Weird favorite (for example, the secret goofing-off "man cave" of one EPA contractor in July 2013 and, two months later, the fabulist EPA executive who skipped agency work for months by claiming falsely to be on secret CIA missions), but the agency's Denver Regional Office took it to another level in June. In a leaked memo, the Denver deputy director implored employees to end the practice of leaving feces in the office's hallway. The memo referred to "several" incidents. [Government Executive, 6-25-2014]

-- The federal food stamp program, apparently uncontrollably rife with waste, has resorted to giving financial awards to the states that misspend food stamp money the least. In July, the Florida Department of Children and Families, beaming with pride, announced it had won a federal grant of $7 million for having blown only $47 million in food stamp benefits in 2013 (less than 1 percent of its $6 billion in payments). Vermont, the worst-performing state, misspends almost 10 percent of its food stamp benefits. [Fox News, 7-8-2014]

-- The Way the World Works: The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration came down hard in July on West Virginia's Freedom Industries for violations of chemical safety standards in January 2014 that resulted in the 10-day contamination of drinking water for 300,000 residents. OSHA issued two fines to the company -- one for $7,000 and the other for $4,000. [West Virginia Gazette, 7-7-2014]

-- Ms. Milo Moire, a Swiss performance artist, startled (and puzzled) fairgoers at Germany's Art Cologne in April by creating a painting while standing on two ladders, nude and expelling "eggs," filled with paint and ink, from her vagina. Each "PlopEgg" canvas made what she called a powerful feminist statement about women, fertility and creativity. (In June, she attempted to tour Switzerland's Art Basel fair "wearing" only the names of clothing items written on her nude body, e.g., on her leg, the word "pants." Officials told her to go get dressed if she wanted to see the show.) [Huffington Post UK, 4-22-2014]

-- Update: Critics praised bad-girl British artist Tracey Emin's 1998 furniture-and-effects exhibit, "My Bed," supposedly representing a failed romantic relationship, featuring mussed sheets and, littering the room, empty vodka bottles and used condoms. Prominent collector Charles Saatchi turned heads when he bought the piece for the equivalent of about $200,000, and in June, almost 15 years later, he sold "My Bed" at auction for the equivalent of $4,330,000. [BBC News, 7-1-2014]

-- In July, the large cement "Humpty Dumpty" at the Enchanted Forest in Salem, Oregon, created by Roger Tofte in 1970, was destroyed when two intruders tried to climb the wall Humpty was sitting on. However, the wall crumbled and Humpty suffered a great fall, and Tofte said he doubted he could put Humpty back together again, but would try instead to make a new one. [KOIN-TV (Portland, Ore.), 7-5-2014]

-- Sheriff's deputies in Salina, Kansas, arrested Aaron Jansen, 29, but not before he put on quite a show on July 5. Jansen, speeding in a car spray-painted with derogatory comments about law enforcement, refused to pull over and even survived a series of tire-shredding road spikes as he turned into a soybean field, where he revved the engine and drove in circles for 40 minutes. As deputies set up a perimeter, Jansen futilely tossed items from the car (blankets, CDs, anything available) and then (with the car still moving) climbed out the driver's door and briefly "surfed" on the roof. Finally, as deputies closed in, Jansen shouted a barrage of Bible verses before emerging from the car wearing a cowboy hat, boots and a woman's dress. [KAKE-TV (Wichita), 7-7-2014]

-- The surveillance video in evidence in England's Wolverhampton Crown Court in July captured the entire caper of two young men comically failing to open a parking lot's automated cash machine five months earlier. Wearing hoods, they tried to batter the secure machine open, then tried to pull it away (but learned that it was rooted to an underground cable). Plan C involved getting in their Peugeot and ramming the machine, which did knock loose the money-dispensing part -- but also shredded part of the car's body. The dispenser (with the equivalent of $1,500 in coins) fit in the front seat only after some exhaustive pushing and cramming, but finally the men drove off -- with sparks flying as the weight of the coins made the crippled car scrape the pavement. Police arrived on the scene, and a brief chase ended when the car crashed into a wall. Final score: car totaled, money recovered and Wesley Bristow, 25, sentenced to two years in prison. [Express and Star (Wolverhampton, England), 7-5-2014]

(1) Roy Ortiz hired a lawyer in March and said he was considering suing the first responders who rescued him during the historic September 2013 flooding around Broomfield, Colorado -- because they failed to find him fast enough when his car plunged into raging waters. (2) In March, Houston sheriff's deputy Brady Pullen filed a lawsuit against the grieving family of the delusional man he was forced to shoot and kill during a 2012 emergency call -- because Pullen had been injured in the skirmish and believes the family failed to warn him just how dangerous Kemal Yazar was. Also, in Alcona, Ontario, in April, Sharlene Simon, 42, filed a lawsuit against the family of the teenage bicyclist she accidentally ran down, fatally, in 2012 -- claiming that the boy's dangerous joyriding at 1:30 a.m. initiated the events that left her traumatized. [KCNC-TV (Denver), 3-4-2014] [Houston Chronicle, 3-29-2014] [Toronto Sun, 4-25-2014]

In May, News of the Weird mentioned a Floridian with drug charges named Edward Cocaine. In June, in Lake Wales, Florida, Ms. Crystal Metheney, 36, was arrested on a (BB-)gun charge -- but she also has a drug arrest (marijuana) on her record. In July a northern California wildfire investigation turned up suspect Freddie Smoke III, 27. And for less-mature News of the Weird readers, Ryan Smallwood, 26, was arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina, for making obnoxious sexual comments in a restaurant. [The Smoking Gun, 6-12-2014] [Associated Press via The Guardian (London), 7-15-2014] [Rock Hill Herald, 5-12-2014]

Recurring Themes: (1) Moshood Itabiyi, 22, was arrested in a traffic stop in July shortly after allegedly robbing the Northview Bank in Barnum, Minnesota. His dream of a quick getaway had vanished when he discovered that he had locked his keys in the car, and he was forced eventually to burglarize a nearby house for a hammer to smash a window open and get going. (2) Three teens, ages 13, 14 and 15, were charged with attempted burglary in St. Petersburg, Florida, in July when, as they were serial-testing parked cars' doors to find an unlocked one, they happened to inattentively open the door of an unmarked police car with a detective inside. [KBJR-TV (Duluth), 7-11-2014] [Associated Press via WCTV (Tallahassee), 7-17-2014]

The Fragrance of Love: First, farmer Dick Kleis of Zwingle in eastern Iowa, composing a birthday note to his wife, arranged more than 60 tons of manure in a pasture to spell out "Happy Birthday, Love You" in shorthand. Then, for Valentine's Day (2010), farmer Bruce Andersland created a half-mile-wide, arrow-pierced heart from plowed manure at his farm near the town of Albert Lea, Minnesota. "Now," said wife Beth, viewing the aerial image, "I've got my valentine!" [WTTG-TV (Washington, D.C.), 1-5-10] [Albert Lea Tribune, 2-11-10]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Mel Birge, Bruce Leiserowitz, and Cindy Hildebrand, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The leader of the devout Sunni jihadist group Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, making a rare, solemn appearance in July, wore a flashy silver wristwatch that various video analysts described as either a Rolex or an Omega Seafarer or a feature-laden Saudi Arabian-made timepiece that sells for only about $560. A week earlier, a Syrian anti-government rebel leader was shown in a video exhorting his troops from notes he had made in his "Hello Kitty" notebook. And a week after that, a shopkeeper in North Waziristan, lamenting the loss of business when local Taliban fighters abruptly left the area, told a BBC reporter that the jihadists obsessively bought Dove soap, Head & Shoulders shampoo, white underwear ("briefs or Y-fronts"), and "Secret Love" and "Blue Lady" perfumes. [CNN, 7-10-2014] [The Independent (London), 7-4-2014] [BBC News, 7-12-2014]

-- Clinton Tucker, who is black, sued Benjamin Moore paints in Essex County, New Jersey, in June for wrongful firing -- after, he said, he had tolerated years of workplace racial insults. In fact, Tucker said the company had introduced two new paint shades shortly after he was hired in 2011 -- "Tucker Chocolate" and "Clinton Brown," provoking on-the-job ridicule. [Courthouse News Service, 6-27-2014]

-- The African hippopotamus is not found in South America -- except for the estimated 50-some that, confusingly to natives, roam the Colombian countryside between Bogota and Medellin. The animals are the progeny of the four smuggled in 30 years ago by cocaine king Pablo Escobar, who generously established a grand, exotic zoo for his neighbors' enjoyment after his drug business took off (and before he was gunned down in 1993). However, as BBC News reported in June, hippo meat is inedible, and without their African natural enemies, they breed with astonishing prolificness -- thus creating a "time bomb" for Colombia. [BBC News, 6-25-2014]

-- Awesome Thievery: (1) A former city official in Ridgewood, New Jersey, pleaded guilty in July to stealing nearly 2 million quarters collected from parking meters with no one noticing for two years. Under a plea deal, Thomas Rica will likely be spared jail provided he repays half of what he stole. (2) In July, New York City prosecutors accused a former pharmacist at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital of stealing nearly 200,000 oxycodone-strength pain pills over five years, despite his increasingly far-fetched explanations. Anthony D'Alessandro even boldly swiped 1,500 pills the day after investigators first challenged him. [The Record (Hackensack), 7-9-2014] [Associated Press via The Republic (Columbus, Ind.), 7-8-2014]

-- British lawyer Gary Stocker, 30, was headed to the top of the profession with an Oxford education and a six-figure salary -- when he decided instead to become a circus's human cannonball. He is now The Great Herrmann in Chaplin's Circus under a 1,400-seat tent in the city of St. Albans. Stocker told the Daily Mail in May, "Being in a circus is what I was destined for" and that "Perhaps I only went to Oxford to please my mum." Chaplin's show tells the story of a failing circus revived by the invention of the first "human cannon." [Daily Mail (London), 5-22-2014]

Kimberly Williams, 46, was convicted in April in Will County, Illinois, of beating dominatrix Theresa Washington with a baseball bat. Williams conceded to the judge that she had hired Washington, but only because she wanted a "slave" to take pictures of her naked while she did housework. Instead, she said, Washington became aggressive, declared herself a "master" and dragged Williams around by the hair. Furthermore, according to Williams, Washington's transformation happened abruptly after a phone call Washington made to "someone she met on the dating site Christian Mingle." [New Lenox Patch, 4-30-2014]

Update: U.S. obesity continues to grow -- for pets as well as people -- and exercise innovations for humans seem to trickle down to dogs. A July Associated Press report noted that fat Labradors and poodles now have Pilates ("pawlates") and yoga ("doga") and even play "Barko Polo" in the pool, while Morris Animal Inn offers five-day fitness camps for dogs ($249) in Morristown, New Jersey. (More cats than dogs are overweight, but getting cats to the gym is perhaps beyond human capability.) [Associated Press, 7-2-2014]

-- Since high-rise residents value their privacy, Lisa Pleiss of Seattle said she was frightened on June 22 when she saw a drone hovering outside her 26th-floor window: "You don't expect to be walking around indecent in your apartment and then have this thing potentially recording you." According to police, the drone was legal -- helping a developer photograph downtown Seattle -- but would not have been if the camera had been pointed at Pleiss' window. (Drones are becoming so widespread that, for instance, the University of South Florida library owns several, for student check-out on certain research projects.) [Los Angeles Times, 6-25-2014] [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 6-21-2014]

-- In June, as Elizabeth Neufeld, 85, was backing her car out of her driveway in Bel Air, California, it tipped on a curve and rolled onto its side. Elizabeth was not hurt, but was trapped inside while her husband, Benjamin, 87, got out on his own. As they awaited firefighters, she reportedly handed a cellphone to a passerby so that the Neufelds would have a "selfie" (which made the Internet, with Elizabeth having righted herself in the driver's seat and Benjamin standing sheepishly alongside). (Dr. Elizabeth Neufeld, retired, is one of the world's most prominent genetics researchers, having won numerous awards during stints at the National Institutes of Health, University of California, Berkeley and UCLA.) [ABC News, 6-26-2014]

Failed to Keep a Low Profile: Jacob Close, 25, wanted after jumping bail in New York on a drug charge, but recently on Bloomsburg (Pennsylvania) University police's radar screen after he was rumored to be in the area, was arrested by the campus cops in June. Close's name and photograph had appeared in the Bloomsburg Press Enterprise's "Your Opinion" feature. He apparently could not resist when a street reporter asked him the newspaper's "question of the week" -- whether the Washington Redskins football team should choose another nickname. (His vitally important opinion? No.) [New York Daily News, 7-9-2014]

-- By now, many in the United Kingdom have such exaggerated concern for "health and safety" that they are sensitive to even the tiniest, most far-fetched risks. In June, organizers of a dog show in Keswick drew up a list of 25 tests for dogs to perform in competition, but two had to be scrapped (supposedly for fear of lawsuits): biscuit-catching by the dog (canceled unless sponsors can be assured that dogs will try to catch biscuits only while seated) and Frisbee-catching (canceled outright for fear that dogs could injure their backs). (Indeed, in a previous U.K. dog show, an out-of-shape dog did hurt its back leaping for a Frisbee.) [News & Star (Workington, England), 6-18-2014]

-- District of Columbia government services have improved markedly since the 1990s when News of the Weird reported frequent misadventures as the "District of Calamity." Still, things happen. Rose Preston called 911 on March 15, fearing a stroke because of a left-side numbness, and a crew arrived promptly and administered oxygen. However, the two crew members began "bickering" while Preston, in the ambulance, waited to get going. Finally she became so frustrated that she got out, walked to a Metro station and took a train to the VA hospital. [WRC-TV (Washington, D.C.), 3-24-2014]

(1) Bill Hillmann, 32, expert on Spain's bull-running events and author of a chapter in "How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona" (the most famous festival), was hospitalized in July after being gored during the run, with the horn passing through one thigh, missing his femoral artery by a centimeter. He told the Chicago Tribune from his hospital bed that he would be back for the next one. (2) In June, an unnamed American exchange student visiting Tubingen University in Germany, exploring a large marble sculpture outside the school's institute for microbiology and virology, was trapped inside and had to be rescued by firefighters. The sculpture was a giant vulva, and 22 responders arrived in five fire trucks to pull the man out of the "vagina." [Chicago Tribune, 7-9-2014] [The Guardian (London), 6-23-2014]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Candy Clouston, Chuck Hamilton, Peter Swank, Milford Sprecher, Bob Andelman, Caroline Lawler, and Sam Scrutchins, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.