People advertising for love interests via online dating sites have apparently become picky about how they describe their sexuality. To the usuals (male, female, gay, heterosexual) have been added recently (as reported by NPR in December after surveying OkCupid.com) "asexual," "androgynous," "genderqueer" (evidently not the same as "gay"), "queer" (not quite "gay," either), "questioning," "trans man," "transsexual," "transmasculine," "heteroflexible" and "sapiosexual" (turned on by "intelligence"). Still, some users of the site found the choices inadequate. One young woman described her sexual orientation as "squiggly," and the reporter cited others who thought highly of that term. [NPR, 12-4-2014]

-- Britain's Home Office revealed in November (by releasing archived documents from 1982) that among the contingency suggestions for worst-case nuclear attack on the country was commissioning "psychopaths" to help keep order. They are "very good in crises," an advocate wrote, because "they have no feelings for others, nor moral code, and tend to be very intelligent and logical," and thus could do quite well at containing the vigilante survivalist enclaves that might develop in the event parts of the kingdom became lawless. (After an apparently thoughtful debate, the suggestion was not agreed to.) [The Independent, 11-1-2014]

-- Great Art! At a recent art show at Paris' Palais de Tokyo, Italian artist Sven Sachsalber, for his provocative piece, brought in a large haystack on Nov. 13, dropped a needle into it, and gave himself two days to find it. Late the next day, he picked it up. (Palais de Tokyo calls itself an "anti-museum par excellence.") [Daily Mail (London), 11-14-2014]

-- (1) Three homes on the Pacific Ocean near Grayland, Washington, were washed away by violent rainstorms in early December, but the residents had seen it coming. The longtime local name for the area is "Washaway Beach." Said one, "I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but I had hoped it wasn't this soon." (2) In November, an airline's advertising staff created the catchy slogan (to attract impulse travelers), "Want to go somewhere, but don't know where?" and convinced management to send it, via Twitter, to the airline's thousands of followers. (Spoiler: The airline was Malaysia Airlines, whose Flight 370 still has not been found.) [KOMO-TV (Seattle), 12-11-2014] [Malta Independent, 11-28-2014]

-- Hide the Show Program Inside the Porn: A theatrical producer in Madrid found a way around Spain's recent steep sales tax increase on certain entertainment venues (sports, movies, live theater): It sold back issues of vintage pornographic magazines for the equivalent of $20 -- with a "free" ticket to its latest stage production by noted director Pedro Calderon de la Barca. (A show ticket would carry a 21 percent tax, but a pornographic magazine is still taxed at 4 percent.) [Bloomberg Business Week, 12-1-2014]

-- Creative: Eric Opitz, 45, who was indicted on 13 counts of fraud in Philadelphia in October, had explained that the reason he needed human growth hormone (that he would resell) despite being 6-foot-3, 450 pounds, was that he was really a dwarf and feared he would recede if he stopped the medication. [NJ.com, 10-10-2014]

-- Bungling Cinematograhers: Zak Hardy, 18, and Terrill Stoltz, 41, were arrested recently in separate incidents and charged with photographing women in bathrooms without their permission. Hardy, caught in a public restroom in June in Exeter, England, pointing his phone from one stall to another, explained that he was just trying to see whether his phone was waterproof. Stoltz professed his innocence, as well, claiming the camera he set up in his ex-girlfriend's bathroom in Billings, Montana, was solely to have a photographic record of him when he cleaned his chickens in the bathtub. [Exeter Press and Echo, 10-27-2014] [Billings Gazette, 11-25-2014]

An Oceanside, California, couple was surprised in November to discover that buying a purebred bichon frise on credit meant they were only leasing the dog for 27 months and would have to make a 28th payment to actually "own" Tresor. Furthermore, the lease, under a "repo" threat, required "daily exercise," "regular bathing and grooming" and "immediate" disposal of Tresor's "waste." A spokesperson for the store, Oceanside Puppy (which works with four finance companies), told the San Diego Union- Tribune that the arrangement is fairly standard now for expensive pets. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 11-28-2014]

(1) NBC's "Today" show reported in December the "heartbreak" parents are feeling when they learn that the supposedly unique name ("wonderful, distinctive, rarely heard") they had given their infant in the last year or two (e.g., "Mason," "Liam," "Lily") actually appeared on BabyCenter's annual list of most popular names of 2014 (6th, 3rd and 8th, respectively). (2) After hearing tenants' complaints, the New York City Council is now considering a regulation requiring landlords to post notices if a common area or amenity is unusable for 24 hours or more -- which applies of course to elevators and laundry rooms, but would also extend to any air hockey or foosball facilities in the building. [NBC News, 12-2-2014] [Crain's New York, 12-8-2014]

Although elephants, rhesus monkeys, cobras, cows and water buffalos are regarded as sacred by many of India's Hindus, the animals most certainly do not live idyllic lives, according to a November BBC News dispatch. As "growing populations are swallowing up habitat," the divine symbols are forced to the cities, where they must dodge traffic, forage garbage for food, and endanger themselves encountering people less certain of their holiness (such as in the November report of the cobra harassing customers at an ATM in Delhi). As representatives of Lord Ganesha, elephants live well only during religious festivals, but otherwise must navigate asphalt and potholes that tear up their hooves. In another November incident, some Hindu leaders protested a drive to kill rats that had infested the Maharaja Yeshwantrao hospital in Indore -- because Ganesha was depicted riding a mouse. [BBC News, 11-15-2014, 11-6-2014]

-- In a 2012 incident in Cleveland (where a white police officer recently shot to death a black teenager holding a toy gun), 13 officers chased two unarmed black homeless drug users at high speeds and fired 137 shots at the pair, killing them. (A car had supposedly backfired, suggesting a gunshot at the cops.) As a result of "communication" failure, the 13 were placed on limited "desk duty" for 16 months and subjected to continuing investigation. Recently, nine of the 13 officers sued the city, charging that non-black officers are historically and illegally disciplined more harshly for mistakes when victims are black. [The Daily Beast, 12-2-2014]

-- Big Crime: (1) Four officers responded in Tayport, Scotland, in July to arrest Irene Clark, 65, who spent 48 hours in jail -- after committing the crime of swatting her husband with a magazine while arguing over TV programs (causing a paper cut). (2) Christopher Saunders, 38, pleaded guilty in North Devon, England, in November to possession of 0.09 grams of marijuana (value: 14 cents). (3) Keith Shannon, 44, was sentenced (two years' probation) in Letterkenny, Ireland, in November for twice being caught swiping "tester" packets of aftershave at a Boots store (value: 2 cents each). [The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 11-24-2014] [North Devon Journal, 11-16-2014] [Highland Radio (Letterkenny), 11-27-2014]

The ear has a "G-spot," explained Santa Clara, California, ear, nose and throat surgeon Todd Dray, and thus the moans of ecstasy that Vietnamese "ear pickers" reportedly elicit from their clients might well be justified. A San Jose Mercury News reporter, dispatched to Ho Chi Minh City in January (2011) to check it out, learned that barber shop technicians could sometimes coax "eargasms" (as they removed wax) by tickling a certain spot next to the ear drum served by multiple nerve endings and tissue paper-thin skin. Said one female client, "Everybody is afraid the first time, but after, it's, 'Oh my God!'" Said one Vietnamese man, returning home after a trip abroad, and who went immediately from the airport to a "hot toc" parlor for a picking, "(This) brings a lot of happiness." [San Jose Mercury News, 1-23-2011]

Thanks This Week to Kev of abroath.blogspot.com, and Christine Van Lenten, 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.)

Like many in society's subgroups, people who work in "death" industries or professions in the U.K. may believe it difficult to reach "like-minded" suitors. Hence, Carla Valentine established Dead Meet earlier this year and told Vice.com in October that she has drawn 5,000 sign-ups among morticians, coroners, embalmers, cemetery workers, taxidermists, etc., who share her chagrin that "normal" people are often grossed out or too indiscreet to respect the dignity of her industry's "clients." We might, said Valentine, need a sensitive companion at the end of the day to discuss a particularly difficult decomposition. Or, she added, perhaps embalmers make better boyfriends because their work with cosmetics helps them understand why "many women take so long to get ready." [Vice.com, 10-28-2014]

-- A passerby shooting video in November outside the Lucky River Chinese restaurant in San Francisco caught an employee banging large slabs of frozen meat on the sidewalk -- which was an attempt, said the manager, to defrost them. A KPIX-TV reporter, visiting the precise sidewalk area on the video, found it covered in "blackened gum, cigarette butts and foot-tracked bacteria," but the manager said the worker had been fired and the meat discarded. (The restaurant's previous health department rating was 88, which qualifies as "adequate.") [KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 12-1-2014]

-- India's Orissa state has established "health camps" to facilitate mass sterilizations to help control the booming population, but procedures were halted in November when Dr. Mahesh Chandra Rout matter-of-factly told BBC News that camps routinely used ordinary bicycle pumps to inflate women's abdomens. Orissa's senior health official immediately ended the practice and ordered sterilizations only in hospitals. (Enlarging the abdomen helps the surgeon to operate, but the proper agent is carbon dioxide.) [BBC News, 12-3-2014]

-- The Food and Veterinary Administration of Denmark shut down the food supplier Nordic Ingredients in November after learning that it used an ordinary cement mixer to prepare gelatin products for nursing home and hospital patients unable to swallow whole food. An FVA official told a reporter: "It was an orange cement mixer just like bricklayers use. There were layers (of crusty remains) from previous uses." As many as 12 facilities, including three hospitals, had food on hand from Nordic Ingredients. [The Local (Copenhagen), 11-28-2014]

-- Questionable Judgment: Assistant Attorney General Karen Straughn of Maryland issued an official warning recently for consumers to watch out for what might be called "the $100 bill on the windshield" scam. (That is, if you notice a $100 bill tucked under your wiper, do not try to retrieve it; it is likely there to trick you into opening your door to a carjacker.) When questioned by WJLA-TV of Washington, D.C., Straughn admitted there were no actual reports of such attempts -- and that the story is a well-known urban legend -- but nonetheless defended the warning. [WJLA-TV (Washington, D.C.) via WABC-TV (New York City), 11-21-2014]

-- Lesson in Civics: North Hempstead, New York, enforces its dog-littering ordinance with steep $250 fines and street-sign warnings displaying the amount. However, insiders have long known that the signs are wrong -- that the written regulation calls for fines of only $25 -- and officials have been discussing how to correct their error while still discouraging littering. According to a November WCBS-TV report, now that residents know the actual amount, the debate is whether to replace the erroneous signs (expensive) or just raise the fine 1,000 percent (to $250) and save money. [WCBS- TV, 11-26-2014]

-- A November order from China's State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television appears to impose a ban on the use of all idioms -- including puns -- as part of the government's crackdown on nonstandard language, especially since that discourages children from learning proper vocabulary and grammar. All mass media outlets must "avoid changing the characters, phrasings and meanings" of words -- even though, according to the Beijing reporter for London's The Guardian, Chinese culture is saturated with puns. [The Guardian, 11-28-2014]

-- As revealed in a spirited public meeting of the Huron Valley (Michigan) Board of Education in November, gun-carriers' freedoms in the state appear complicated, in that a person with training and who submits to state licensing to carry a concealed weapon may carry it even on school grounds (despite the federal Gun-Free Zones Act of 1990). Michigan's lawful exception to the act requires concealed permit-holders to carry the gun unconcealed, which many parents contend frightens younger children. Also, though it is illegal for anyone alcohol-impaired to carry a gun anywhere, the legal threshold for presumed impairment in Michigan is only .02 percent for a licensed permit holder, but probably .08 percent for unlicensed "open"-carriers (who are not covered by the "concealed" law). [Detroit Free Press, 11-8-2014]

As young professionals have embraced urban neighborhoods, locally grown produce has proliferated in community (and even backyard) gardens and is thought to be healthier than pesticide-laden commercial produce. However, the New York Post revealed in November (based on state Health Department data) that such gardens in construction-dense New York City are vulnerable to astonishingly high levels of lead and other toxic metals. One community garden in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, for example, showed levels of lead nearly 20 times the safe level. [New York Post, 11-16-2014]

In November, a clothing store on Yabao Road in Beijing came under criticism for posting a sign, "Chinese Not Admitted," on its door. An employee told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper that no one should believe that "we Chinese look down upon ourselves. But some Chinese customers are too annoying." (A legal scholar told the newspaper that China, except for Hong Kong, has no law against racial or ethnic discrimination.) [South China Morning News (Hong Kong), 11-26-2014]

(1) Unclear on the Concept: A 34-year-old man was arrested at a Tesco supermarket in Bar Hill, England, on Nov. 12 when he entered the store and threatened employees -- by showing them a photograph of a gun. (2) Recurring Theme: Two men were arrested easily in Silver City, New Mexico, in December. Thieves had broken into Javalina Coffee House downtown and dragged away the ATM behind their truck. With the help of a witness -- and especially the gouge marks in the street running from the Javalina directly to the nearby residence of the men -- police nabbed the two and were still searching for a third. [Cambridge News, 12-19-2014] [Albuquerque Journal, 12-2-2014]

Won't Make That Mistake Again: (1) Ralik Hansen, 28, suspected in a dramatic New York City jewelry robbery, heard a knock at the door of a Brooklyn home in October, squeezed down under a couch and accidentally shot himself to death. (He thought he was hiding from police; it was a delivery man.) (2) Dennis Emery, 57, according to neighbors a frequent gun-brandisher at home in Pinellas Park, Florida, accidentally mishandled one during a November domestic argument and fatally shot himself in the face. (3) A 26-year-old woman in St. Louis, who had recently purchased a handgun to protect against potential violence in Ferguson, was waving it around while riding in a car with a friend, causing him to grab for it, and a shot fatally struck her. (However, police still have not closed that case.) [WCBS-TV, 11-14-2014] [TBO.com (Tampa), 11-25-2014] [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11-28-2014]

Two hundred boredom "activists" gathered in London in December (2010) at James Ward's annual banal-apalooza conference, "Boring 2010," to listen to ennui-stricken speakers glorify all things dreary, including a demonstration of milk-tasting (in wine glasses, describing flavor and smoothness), charts breaking down the characteristics of a man's sneezes for three years, and a PowerPoint presentation on the color distribution and materials of a man's necktie collection from one year to the next. Another speaker's "My Relationship With Bus Routes" seemed well-received also. Observed one attendee, to a Wall Street Journal reporter: "We're all overstimulated. I think it's important to stop all that for a while and see what several hours of being bored really feels like." [Wall Street Journal, 12-29-2010]

Thanks This Week to Bear Albrecht and Melanie Farley, 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.)

LEAD STORY -- TMI

Kansas lawyer Dennis Hawver was disbarred in November for his comically bad (24 separate deficiencies) defense of double-murder suspect Phillip Cheatham in 2005 (which led to a new trial for Cheatham). Hawver had admitted to the jury that his client was a "shooter of people" (a previous manslaughter conviction) who, as an "experience(d)" criminal would never have left that third victim alive with multiple gunshot wounds. A confident Hawver had virtually invited the jury to execute "whoever" the killer was. (At a September hearing to keep his license, he dressed as Thomas Jefferson, banging the lectern and shouting, as reverse psychology, "I am incompetent!" -- leading the blog Lowering the Bar to muse that by then, the argument was wholly unnecessary.) Cheatham told the Topeka Capital-Journal that Hawver is "a good dude (but) just in over his head." [Topeka Capital-Journal, 11-14-2014] [Lowering the Bar, 9-18-2014]

Arrested in October for burglary of a Kohl's department store in Alhambra, California: Ms. Josephine Crook, 49. Passed away on Oct. 15 in Marietta, Georgia: Ms. Ida Gbye, 81. Arrested in October and charged with stabbing two men in Regina, Saskatchewan: Ms. Danielle Knife, 24. Charged in Mississauga, Ontario, in October with sexually assaulting three male patients: psychologist Dr. Vincent Hung Lo. Arrested in November in Gainesville, Florida, on sexual assault charges but then exonerated three days later when accuser Jeremy Foster was caught lying: Mr. Phuc Kieu, 58. [KNBC-TV (Los Angeles), 10-26-2014] [Marietta Daily Journal, 10-23-2014] [CTV News (Regina), 10-16-2014] [The Star (Toronto), 10-7-2014] [First Coast News (Jacksonville), 11-26-2014]

-- The Creative Class: To spark interest in the new leisure center opening in spring 2015 in Selby in North Yorkshire, England, the management company WLCT sponsored a contest to name the center, with the prize a year's free membership. On Nov. 5, General Manager Paul Hirst announced that Steve Wadsworth was the winner, proclaiming, "Well done to Steve on winning the competition." The winning entry: "Selby Leisure Centre." [Selby District Council press release, 11-5-2014]

-- A German woman who identifies herself only as "Anna Konda" described to Vice Media in October her Female Fight Club in Berlin, now three years old, for women to test themselves in all-out wrestling matches. While some are fetish-motivated dominants, others display no particular sexuality -- like Anna herself, who, she admits, simply likes to "crush" men's and women's skulls between her massive thighs. Anna says she is a product of East Germany's cliched development of tough, muscular female athletes. [Vice.com, 10-20-2014]

-- Those Frightening Alabama Schools: (1) In October, a mother charged that officials at E.R. Dickson School in Mobile, Alabama, first detained her daughter, 5, for pointing a crayon at another student as if it were a gun, and then pressured the girl to sign a paper promising not to kill anyone or commit suicide. "What is suicide, Mommy?" the girl asked when her parents arrived. (2) In a 2010 incident at Sparkman Middle School near Huntsville, Alabama, an administrator coaxed a special-needs girl, 14, into a boys' bathroom to "bait" a 16-year-old boy who had previous sexual misconduct issues into committing a prosecutable offense -- and then failed to protect the girl. (The girl's family sued and won a summary judgment, but the school board appealed, and in September 2014 the U.S. Justice Department formally endorsed the family's lawsuit.) [WPMI-TV (Mobile), 10-10-2014] [Al.com (Huntsville), 9-18-2014]

-- The West Briton newspaper reported in October that a darts team composed of blind men was ready for its inaugural match at an inn in Grampound, England, sponsored by the St. Austell Bay Rotary Club. The inn's landlord acknowledged that the game-room door would be closed "just in case" a dart strays off course. (The blind darters would be aided by string attached to the bull's eye that they could feel for guidance.) [West Briton (Truro), 10-21-2014]

Twice in September, police in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, reported that women had complained of a motorist who would stop female strangers on the street to tell them jokes about blond women. The jokes were not sexual, but still made the women "uncomfortable." A high school girl told her mother of a similar episode. Based on a license plate number, police visited the man at home, and he agreed to stop. [Patch.com (North Kingstown), 9-12-2014]

-- In some developing countries, a sex "strike" organized by women is often the only hopeful tactic for convincing husbands and lovers to take grievances seriously. However, in November, Mr. Nderitu Njoka, head of a Global Men Empowerment Network in Nairobi, Kenya, announced that his organization would commence a "sex boycott" for five days, denying men's "services" to their wives -- to protest "tyrannical" female domination. According to Njoka, hundreds of Kenyan men are physically assaulted by females every year (including at least 100 whose wives vengefully castrate them). (Referring to a notorious U.S. incident, Njoka offered support to the singer Jay Z after he was punched by his sister-in-law Solange Knowles.) [Washington Post, 11-14-2014]

-- First, Do Harm: In November, according to the deputy police commissioner in Calcutta, India, a group of student doctors at Nilratan Sarkar Medical College cornered, beat, maimed and eventually killed a man they suspected of rummaging through their belongings and stealing their mobile phones. The incident followed a series of phone and laptop thefts, and some of the enraged medical students slashed the man's genitals before leaving him to die. [Agence France-Presse via BBC News, 11-17-2014]

Despite a 70-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision to the contrary, six states still have laws exempting parents from homicide charges when they deny a child life-saving medical care because they trust no remedy except prayer. Even among those states, all of the deaths since 1994 under those circumstances have occurred in Idaho, where (according to a November report by Vocativ.com) no prosecutor seems willing to put a trust-in-God parent before a jury. Children in Idaho have died when simple medical treatments were available (e.g., insulin and fluids for Type I diabetes). Neighboring Oregon, by contrast, now vigorously prosecutes parents who let their children die, including a 13-year-old girl's parents convicted in November in Albany, Oregon. [Vocativ.com, 11-17-2014]

Police in Murfreesboro, North Carolina, announced in November that they had intercepted a shipment of 30 pounds of marijuana that had been loosely packaged and shipped from California by U.S. Mail, and an investigation was underway with arrests expected. Police Chief Darrell Rowe told WTKR-TV that the scent of the packages was so vivid that, even though he had summoned the department's K-9 unit, "the dog kind of looked at us (as if to say), 'Do you really need me for this?'" [WTKR-TV (Hampton Roads, Va.), 11-11-2014]

(1) Most recent drunk driver to hit a pedestrian with the victim's body then lodging in the windshield -- and the driver's traveling on, seemingly oblivious: Marcos Ortega, 33, in Ocean Township, New Jersey, in November (whose 66-year-old victim did not survive). (2) Most recent report of birds in the wild consuming fermenting berries -- and then comically crashing into trees and making goofy-looking landings: Bohemian waxwings in Canada's Yukon, in November (where the Environment Yukon organization set up an "avian drunk tank"). [WPVI-TV (Philadelphia), 11-12-2014] [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 11-17-2014]

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Jason Wayne Autry, Holladay, Tennessee (April); Dennis Wayne Brooks, Robertsville, Missouri (November); Jimmy Wayne Estes, Charlotte, North Carolina (June); Jestin Wayne Hooker, Lubbock, Texas (July); Walter Wayne Howard, Portland, Oregon (November, for 1988 cold case); John Wayne Mackay, James City County, Virginia (indicted January); Thomas Wayne Martin, Huntsville, Alabama (indicted November). Convicted of murder: Allen Wayne Densen Morgan, Munford, Alabama (June); Darrell Wayne Frederick, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma (November). Sentenced for murder: Gregory Wayne Hill, Sydney, Australia (June); Stephen Wayne Jamieson, Sydney, Australia (November); Christopher Wayne Robin, Beaumont, Texas (March). Execution for murder imminent, pending clemency hearing: Robert Wayne Holsey, Baldwin County, Georgia (November). [Autry: The Tennessean, 4-30-2014] [Brooks: Sullivan Independent News (Sullivan, Mo.), 11-25-2014] [Estes: Charlotte Observer, 6-17-2014] [Hooker: KJTV (Lubbock), 8-26-2014] [Howard: KOIN-TV (Portland, Ore.), 11-13-2014] [Mackay: [Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, 1-16-2014] [Martin: Al.com (Huntsville), 11-7-2014] [Morgan: CBS News, 4-15-2014] [Frederick: The Oklahoman, 11-12-2014] [Hill: Sydney Morning Herald, 7-31-2014] [Jamieson: The Age (Melbourne), 11-25-2014] [Robin: Beaumont Enterprise, 3-19-2014] [Holsey: WMGT-TV (Atlanta), 11-25-2014]

Thanks This Week to Harry Thompson, Chris Krehbiel, Charles Congre, Chuck Hamilton, Jane Meadus and Scott McDaniel, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Bob McCabe, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Sandy Pearlman, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Peter Smagorinsky, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley and Jerry Whittle).

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