"Selfie fever" has begun to sully the sacred Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca, according to scholars who complained to Arab News in September. What for centuries has been a hallowed journey intended to renew the spirit of Islam (that all Muslims are called upon to experience at least once) has come, for some in the so-called "Facebook era," to resemble a trip to Disneyland, with visitors to the Sacred Mosque texting friends the "evidence" of their piety. (Another scholar complained in a New York Times opinion piece in October that Mecca is often experienced more as a tour packaged by marketers and centered around Mecca's upscale shopping malls rather than religious structures.) [Arab News, 9-30-2014; New York Times, 10-1-2014]

-- Just in time for California's new law requiring explicit consent for students' sexual activities is the free iPhone/Google app Good2Go, which developer Lee Ann Allman promises will simplify the consent process (and even document it). As described in a September Slate.com report, Good2Go requires the initiator to send the prospective partner to at least four smartphone screens, wait for a text message, provide phone numbers (unless he/she is a multiple-user with an "account") and choose accurately one's sobriety level -- all before "the mood" evaporates (ending the app's usefulness). It took the tech-savvy Slate writer four minutes to navigate the process -- and she was still unclear which sexual activities had been consented to, since those specifics aren't referenced. (The app has since been pulled from the market.) [Slate.com, 9-29-2014]

-- New York Giants tight end Larry Donnell manages his own fantasy league team by "drafting" NFL players for virtual competitions based on their real-life statistics of the previous weekend. Donnell lamented to New Jersey's The Record in October that he had benched virtual "Larry Donnell" on his fantasy team the week before because he thought his other tight end ("Vernon Davis") would do better. In reality, real Donnell had a career-high game, with his three touchdowns leading the real Giants to a 45-14 victory. However, Donnell's fantasy team lost badly because virtual Larry Donnell (and his weekend statistical bonanza) was on Donnell's bench. [WCBS-TV, 10-2-2014]

In August, the Tampa Bay Times reported a dispute in Dunedin, Florida, between 12-year-old lemonade-stand operator T.J. Guerrero and the adult neighbor (Doug Wilkey) trying to close him down as an unlicensed entrepreneur, despite T.J.'s business plan for assisting his favorite animal shelter. Of course, T.J. was quickly inundated with donations, media praise and more lemonade sales. Wilkey, however, is under investigation by the city after a tipster revealed that Wilkey himself might operate a home-based financial services business not properly licensed. [Tampa Bay Times, 8-28-2014]

"My Friends, I Am a Man of Action!": Roger Weber, running for a Minnesota House seat in November, is now being sued by a neighbor over a property-line dispute near Nashwauk. Rather than working with an arbitrator or mediator, or letting the legal process run its course, Weber in 2013 took a chain saw and sliced completely in half the large, two-car garage that Weber says sat half on his property and half on the neighbor's. [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9-22-2014]

(1) Lianne and Brian Kowiak of Waterbury, Vermont, complained to Ben & Jerry's in September that its new ice cream flavor, "Hazed & Confused," was "shock(ing)" and "upset(ting)" and should be changed immediately. Though most customers recognize the name only as a play on the 1993 cult movie "Dazed & Confused," the Kowiaks insist that they never be reminded that their 19-year-old son died in a college hazing incident. (2) In Winooski, Vermont, in August, the local eatery Sneakers Bistro earned public advertising space by beautifying one of the city's flower beds, and managers used it for the quixotic ad, "Yield for Sneakers Bacon." After one woman complained that the sign disrespected those who do not consume pork, Sneakers took it down. [WCAX-TV (Burlington), 9-22-2014] [WPTZ-TV (Plattsburgh, N.Y.), 8-25-2014]

-- Medical Marvels: (1) In October, workers at a clinic in Honda, Colombia, reported helping a 22-year-old woman who came in several days earlier with vegetation growing from her vagina. She said her mother had told her that inserting a potato (now sprouting) was effective contraception. (2) An 18-year-old woman was admitted to Bishkek Hospital in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, in September with severe stomach pains, which doctors discovered was due to her long-standing habit of chewing both discarded hair and her own. Doctors removed a hairball that weighed 8.8 pounds (and a Yahoo News report had a photo). [United Press International, 10-2-2014] [Yahoo UK News, 9-29-2014]

-- The family of Kai Halvorsen of Lillestrom, Norway, planning a holiday in Thailand, feared that their bulldog, Igor, would be traumatized, having never been left alone. Halvorsen and a friend arranged with Labben Kennel to make a replica of the family living room to calm Igor's anxiety. The two men painted the walls the same shade of gray, brought in the family couch, built a replica coffee table, and moved in Igor's bed, carpet, pillows and blankets. (However, according to the friend, Igor spent much of the holiday cavorting outside with his new friend, Helga, the St. Bernard.) [United Press International, 9-8-2014]

Prosecutors in Killeen, Texas, are seeking the death penalty for Marvin Guy, who in May shot one SWAT officer to death and wounded three as they conducted an unannounced ("no-knock") drug raid on his home at 5:30 a.m. -- leading Guy to believe hoodlums were breaking in and thus provoking him to grab his gun and start firing. (The tip given to police was bogus; no drugs were found.) However, in December, 90 miles away in another Texas county, mistaken SWAT-raid victim Henry Magee also killed an officer under similar circumstances (except that Magee actually had some marijuana), but was cleared in the shooting by a grand jury's acceptance of self-defense. Guy is black; Magee is white. [Killeen Daily Herald, 9-22-2014] [KBTX-TV (Bryan-College Station), 2-7-2014]

Harmonic Convergence of Perversions: (1) Palm Beach County, Florida, sheriff's deputies searching the home of child-pornography suspect Douglas Wescott, 55, stumbled upon about 50 dead cats stored in four freezers. Wescott's computers were seized, along with another 30 to 35 live cats. (2) In September, following a months-long trial in Canada's Nunavut territory, defrocked Catholic priest Eric Dejaeger, 67, was found guilty of 31 counts of raping children and one of raping a sled dog. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9-10-2014] [Agence France-Presse via Yahoo News, 9-12-2014]

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) William Dixon, 21, was arrested in Brentwood, Tennessee, in August fleeing a Best Buy store after arousing suspicion. According to the police report, Dixon, on foot, ran across all lanes of Interstate 65, but the chase ended when he collided with a tree. (2) In October, a man unnamed in news reports snatched a bottle of wine from the shelf of a Sainsbury's supermarket in East Grinstead, England, and dashed for the door. However, he ran into a shelving unit and knocked himself unconscious. [BrentwoodHomePage.com, 8-21-2014] [East Grinstead Courier, 10-9-2014]

-- Walter Morrison, 20, a United Parcel Service baggage agent at Phoenix's Sky Harbor airport, apparently intended only to swipe random parcels, but inadvertently came upon, in one package, a diamond (later found to be worth about $160,000). Police charging him in September said he traded the diamond to a friend for a gram of marijuana (around $20, retail). [The Smoking Gun, 9-26-2014]

Surreal Estate: Sixty-two percent of the 12 million people of Mumbai, India, live in slums, but the city is also home to Mukesh Ambani's 27-story private residence (60,000 square feet, 600 employees serving a family of five), reported to cost about $1 billion. According to an October (2010) New York Times dispatch, there are "four-story hanging gardens," "airborne swimming pools" and a room where "artificial weather" can be created. Ambani and his brother inherited their father's textile-exporting juggernaut, but notoriously spend much of their time in intra-family feuding. A domestic-worker neighbor told the Times that she makes the equivalent of about $90 a month. [New York Times, 10-29-10]

Thanks This Week to Steven Lobejko and Ken Wilkens, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Police in Japan's Kyoto Prefecture raided a shoe manufacturer in July and commandeered a list of about 1,500 purchasers of the company's signature "tosatsu shoes" -- shoes with built-in cameras. Investigators have begun visiting the purchasers at home to ask that they hand in the shoes (but, out of fairness, said they would not cause trouble for customers who could produce a legitimate reason for needing to take photographs and video by pointing their shoe at something). The seller was charged with "aiding voyeurism" and fined the equivalent of about $4,500 under a nuisance-prevention law. [United Press International, 9-23-2014]

-- Doris Carvalho of Tampa, Florida, is raising venture capital to expand her hobby of crafting high-end handbags from groomed, recycled dog hair (two pounds' worth for each bag). With investors, she could lower her costs and the $1,000 price tag, since it now takes 50 hours' labor to make the yarn for her haute couture accessory. [BayNews9.com (St. Petersburg), 9-9-2014]

-- Among the suggestions of the Brisbane, Australia, company Pets Eternal for honoring a deceased pet (made to a reporter in September): keeping a whisker or tooth or lock of hair, or having the remains made into jewelry or mixed with ink to make a tattoo. Overlooked was a new project by the Houston space-flight company Celestis, known for blasting human ashes into orbit (most famously those of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry). Celestis, working with a California company, will soon offer to shoot pets' remains into orbit ($995) or perhaps even to the moon ($12,000). [News.com.au (Sydney), 9-23-2014] [Associated Press via KRLD-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 7-30-2014]

-- Ontario's top court rejected Bryan Teskey's complaint in August over how Roman Catholics continue to be discriminated against by the laws of British royal succession. Even though Ontario (along with many Commonwealth countries) recently removed some aspects of bias (ending the ban on the royal family's marrying Catholics), Teskey pointed out that Canadian Catholics still do not have a fair shot at becoming king or queen (although Teskey did not claim that he, personally, had been a candidate). [Canadian Press, 8-27-2014]

-- Names in the News: (1) One of the three suspects in an August arrest for making fraudulent purchases at a Jupiter, Florida, shop: Ms. Cherries Waffles Tennis, 19. (2) The president of the Alabama Public Service Commission (who invoked prayer in July as the most effective way to fight federal restrictions on coal-fired power plants): Ms. Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh. (3) The investigator for the Ohio state auditor's office who was ordered by his supervisor in July to end a romantic relationship with another government official: Jim Longerbone. [Palm Beach Post, 8-21-2014] [Al.com (Birmingham), 7-28-2014] [Columbus Dispatch, 7-30-2014]

-- Venezuela, already in a recession, suffered a particularly cruel blow (according to a September Associated Press dispatch from Caracas) with the recent shortage in availability of breast implants for its beauty-obsessed senoritas. Restrictive currency controls are limiting enhancement surgeries from the 85,000 performed last year and, according to a local joke, will force Venezuelan women to start developing their personalities. (However, according to leading surgeon Dr. Daniel Slobodianik, when potential patients are told their preferred size implant is back-ordered, many merely choose the next-largest available size.) [Associated Press via CTV News (Toronto), 9-15-2014]

-- But It's About "Safety," Not "Money": On the same day in September, Washington, D.C., and New York City made traffic-camera announcements, with Washington declaring a revenue crisis and New York revealing that just one speed camera in Brooklyn had earned the city $77,550 in a single day. The District of Columbia had projected $93 million in annual camera income, but estimated it would collect only $26 million, while New York City, which has many fewer cameras, was marveling at the 1,551 tickets the Brooklyn camera zapped on July 7. [Washington Post, 9-29-2014]

(1) Staci Anne Spence, 42, was hauled to jail for assault in Sandpoint, Idaho, in September, but when the squad car arrived at the station, officers learned that during the ride, she had completely gnawed through the back seat -- foam padding and seat cover. (2) A 38-year-old man was taken, unconscious, to St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, in August. After allegedly choking his mother-in-law and refusing to cooperate with police, who used a stun gun and chemical spray on him to no effect, he dramatically KO'd himself with an empty beer bottle. [KXLY-TV (Spokane, Wash.), 9-23-2014] [Post Bulletin (Rochester), 8-25-2014]

An August West Virginia Board of Medicine report accused Martinsburg doctor Tressie Montene Duffy, age 44 and owner of a "weight and wellness" clinic, of over-prescribing drugs and repeatedly exposing herself to co-workers -- including forcing one employee to "motor boat" Duffy's surgically enhanced breasts. [Charleston Daily Mail, 8-12-2014]

Leonard Decides Whether You Can Be Nervous or Not: Leonard Embody marched up and down a sidewalk in September in front of Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tennessee, in military clothing and with a rifle on his back and a GoPro camcorder attached to his chest -- just his latest street demonstration supporting Tennessee's "open carry" gun law. According to a WSMV-TV report, this episode made even some supporters edgy because of the school setting, but Embody failed to see the problem. "Other people may think I look terrifying," he acknowledged, but he doesn't think he does, and if you disagree, he suggests psychological counseling. (Tennessee bans guns on school property, but a few inches away, on the sidewalk, Embody has decided that there is no problem.) [WSMV-TV, 9-19-2014]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Police in West Valley City, Utah, searched for an exceptionally unintimidating man in August after reports that the man tried to rob a Subway sandwich shop and a Family Dollar. In each episode, an employee told the man to wait while the employee went to a back room, but then simply failed to return, leading the "robber," eventually, to walk away empty-handed. (2) In Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in August, Kevin Clarence, 20, was arrested for an inept attempt to rob a supermarket. He entered the store, and only then, according to witnesses, put a plastic garbage bag over his head and decided to wait in line for his opportunity to address a cashier. He quickly got tired of waiting and said, "I'll be back," but was caught by police minutes after leaving the store. [KSTU-TV (Salt Lake City), 8-30-2014] [BBC News, 8-14-2014]

In 1993, News of the Weird introduced readers to Kopi Luwak coffee -- whose beans had first passed through the digestive tracts of Asian civet cats (to give them, supposedly, a certain tartness, as well as a certain hipster price tag). Canadian entrepreneur Blake Dinkin, 44, believes his Black Ivory Coffee tastes even better because his pre-digested beans are recovered from elephant dung in Thailand -- and are less bitter, in that the pachyderms, unlike civets, are herbivores. Dung-farming labor in Thailand may be inexpensive, but it takes 33 pounds of Arabica beans to achieve the precise blend Dinkin demands, and he told NPR in August that he anticipated sales only to upscale resorts in the Middle East (and to one elephant-themed store in Comfort, Texas). [NPR, 8-20-2014]

Donald Denney and his father (also named Donald Denney) concocted a plan on the telephone for Dad to smuggle a ball of black-tar heroin into the son's Colorado prison during visiting hours, to be passed by mouth via kiss from a female visitor. However, Dad failed to find a woman with a clean-enough rap sheet to be admitted as a visitor. Still enamored of the plan, however, the father decided to be the carrier himself, and inserted the "package" into his rectum for later transferral to his mouth (though the eventual messy kiss of the son would be awkward). Neither Denney realized, despite audio warnings, that all phone calls were monitored, and in September (2010), prison officials were waiting for the father, with a body-cavity search warrant, as he arrived. [TheSmokingGun.com, 9-21-10]

Thanks This Week to George Bayrd, Chuck Hamilton, Bruce Leiserowitz, Steve Dunn, and Sam Scrutchins, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The job of determining stress levels in whales is itself apparently stressful. The most reliable information about tension lies in hormones most accurately measured by researchers' boarding a boat, sidling up to a whale and waiting until it blasts snot out of its blowhole. By catching enough of it (or wiping it off of their raincoats), scientists can run the gunk through chemical tests. However, a team of engineering researchers at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, told The Boston Globe in September that they were on the verge of creating a radio- controlled, mucus-trapping drone that would bring greater civility to the researchers' job (and reduce the add-on stress the whales must feel at being stalked by motorboats). [Boston Globe, 9-10-2014]

(1) The newly inaugurated "Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" (a project of Osama bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri) failed spectacularly in its maiden mission in September when it attempted to commandeer an American "aircraft carrier" in port in Karachi, Pakistan. Actually, the ship was a misidentified Pakistani naval vessel that did not even vaguely resemble an aircraft carrier, and Pakistani forces killed or captured all 10 jihadists. (2) A September raid on an ISIS safe house in Syria turned up, among other items (according to Foreign Policy magazine), a Dell laptop owned by Tunisian jihadist "Muhammed S.," containing (not unexpectedly) recipes for bubonic plague and ricin, and (less likely) a recipe for banana mousse and a variety of songs by Celine Dion. [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-12-2014] [Foreign Policy, 9-9-2014]

-- In September, the Seattle-based Mars Hill megachurch announced it would close several branches as founding preacher Mark Driscoll takes personal leave to contemplate over-the-top messages he's made in the past about women. Among the most striking statements (as gathered by the "Wenatchee the Hatchet" blog in Wenatchee, Washington) were those expressing certainty that women exist solely to support men. A man's penis "is not your (personal) penis," he told men. "Ultimately, God created you, and it is his penis." "Knowing that his penis would need a home ... God created a woman (who) makes a very nice home." Driscoll added, helpfully, "But, though you may believe your hand is shaped like a home, it is not." [Salon.com, 9-8-2014]

-- Catholic priest Gerald Robinson passed away in July, and many around the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio, were shocked to learn that his body was buried with full priestly rights. Wrote the diocese, Father Robinson "was a baptized member of the body of Christ, and he was, and remains, an ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church." In 2006, Robinson was convicted of murdering Sister Margaret Ann Pahl years earlier. [WNWO-TV (Toledo), 7-11-2014]

-- Recurring Theme: Another rogue Muslim cleric enraged mainstream Islamic scholars recently. Egyptian Salafist preacher Osama al-Qusi proclaimed via fatwa in August that men could properly spy on women bathing, but only if they have "pure intentions." For example, he wrote, if a man intended to marry the woman, he might learn some things otherwise unrevealed before the ceremony. Egypt's minister for religious affairs, Mohamed Mokhtar, has already banned "tens of thousands" of "unlicensed" preachers from working in Egypt's mosques because of their embarrassing fatwas. [The Guardian (London), 8-22-2014]

-- Televangelist Jim Bakker no longer runs the Praise The Lord ministry, but still operates a church near Branson, Missouri, with a website selling a staggering array of consumer goods denominated as "love gifts" for worshippers who donate at certain levels via the website's shopping cart. Featured are clothing, jewelry (some "Tiffany-like"), bulk foods, "Superfood" legacy seeds, fuel-efficient generators (and a "foldable solar panel"), vitamins and supplements, "Jim's Favorite" foods (like ketchup), "survival" equipment and supplies, water filtration products, and a strong commitment to the supposed benefits of "Silver Solution" gels and liquids ($25 for a 4-ounce tube), even though the FDA has long refused to call colloidal silver "safe and effective". Of course, books, CDs and DVDs (and a digital download) of Bakker's inspirational and prophetic messages are also available. [Daily Mail (London), 9-15-2014] [JimBakkerShow.com]

(1) Ten parking spaces (of 150 to 200 square feet each) one flight below the street at the apartment building at 42 Crosby St. in New York City have been offered for sale by the developer for $1 million each -- nearly five times the median U.S. price for an entire home. (2) New York City plastic surgeon Dr. Matthew Schulman told ABC News in September of an uptick in women's calf liposuction procedures -- because of ladies' frustration at not being able to squeeze into the latest must-have boots. (The surgery is tricky because of the lack of calf fat, and recovery time of up to 10 months means surgery now will not help the fashion plates until next fall.) [New York Times, 9-10-2014] [ABC News, 9-17-2014]

Order in the Court: Signs went up in August in the York, Pennsylvania, courtroom of District Judge Ronald Haskell Jr. addressing two unconventional problems. First, "Pajamas are not (underlining 'not') appropriate attire for District Court." Second, "Money from undergarments will not be accepted in this office." Another judge, Scott Laird, told the York Daily Record that he'd probably take the skivvy-stored money anyway. "The bottom line is, if someone's there to pay a fine, I don't see how you can turn that away." [York Daily Record, 8-13-2014]

-- Habitual petty offender Todd Bontrager, 47, charged with trespassing for probing various locked doors at a church in Broward County, Florida, in August, admitted skirting the law a few times, but said it was only "to study." "Incarceration improves your concentration abilities," he told skeptical Judge John "Jay" Hurley, who promptly ordered him jailed to, he said, help him "further concentrate." [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-8-2014]

-- American Matthew Miller, 24, told the Associated Press that he had a "wild ambition" when he entered North Korea in April that he wanted to experience prison life there in order to secretly investigate the country's human rights stance. In September, he was convicted of espionage in a 90-minute trial and will be conducting his investigation amidst hard labor over a six-year period, beginning immediately. [Associated Press, 9-14-2014]

The Miracle of Meth: Three terrified people screaming out of an upper-story window at a house outside Dothan, Alabama, on Aug. 24 drew police in a hurry. They were trapped, they yelled -- unable to escape because intruders were still inside, shooting at them. One "victim" said she had been stabbed -- and the blade broken off inside her. With their own shotgun, the three had blown out several windows and walls defending themselves. They had even ripped out an upstairs toilet and sink and dropped them on an intruder outside. Police calmed the situation and later told reporters that there never were intruders -- that the "hostages" had imagined the whole thing, except for the estimated $10,000 damage and the woman's superficial, "defensive" stab wounds. (The home's methamphetamine lab apparently remained intact.) [Dothan Eagle, 8-25-2014]

(1) Mr. Roma Sims, 35, of Westerville, Ohio, was sentenced to just over eight years in prison in August for stealing the identities of more than 500 people between 2009 and 2013 -- before he was done in by having misspelled the names of several cities in various documents while working the scheme. (For example, the largest city in Kentucky is not "Louieville.") (2) In Sebastopol, California, Dylan Stables, 20, already on probation, was arrested again mid-morning on July 22 when, with stolen credit cards in his possession, he decided to drive his car, even with transmission problems. Police noticed him as he slowly drove through town in reverse gear. [Columbus Dispatch, 8-22-2014] [Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, 7-23-2014]

(1) Charged in August with growing marijuana at their home in Corvallis, Montana: Rodney Stoner, 57, and his son, Adam Stoner, 24. Arrested for performing "sexually lewd acts" in front of drivers at a truck stop in Kirkwood, New York, in September: 56-year-old Calvin Wank. [The Missoulian, 8-2-2014] [Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton), 9-22-2014]

Thanks This Week to Willis Craig and Alison Powell, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.