The Project Theater Board at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, decided in January to cancel its upcoming annual presentation of the feminist classic "Vagina Monologues." The all-women's college recently declared it would admit males who lived and "identified" as female (regardless of genitalia), and the basis for cancellation of "Vagina Monologues" was that the unmodifiable script is not "inclusive" of those females -- that it covers only experiences of females who actually have vaginas. [MassLive.com (Springfield), 1-16-2015, citing CampusReform.org, 1-15-2015]

-- Kathi Fedden filed a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit in December against Suffolk County, New York, police after her 29-year-old son, driving drunk in 2013, fatally crashed into an office. She reasons that the son's death is the fault of the police officer who stopped him earlier that evening and who must have noticed he was already drunk but did not arrest him. The officer, who knew the son as the owner of a popular-with-police local delicatessen, merely gave the son a lift home, but the son later drove off in his mother's car, in which he had the fatal crash. [WNBC-TV (New York City), 12-18-2014]

-- A generous resident (name withheld by KDKA-TV) of South Oakland, Pennsylvania, in seasonal spirit the week before Christmas, invited a pregnant, homeless woman she had met at a Rite Aid store home with her for a hot shower, a change of clothes and a warm bed for the night. The resident was forced to call police, though, when she went to check up on her guest and discovered her engaging in sexual activity with the resident's pit bull. The guest, enraged at being caught, vandalized the home before officers arrived to arrest her. [KDKA-TV, 1-6-2015]

The website/smartphone app Airbnb, launched in 2008, connects travelers seeking lodging with individuals offering private facilities at certain prices. About a year ago, entrepreneur Travis Laurendine launched a similar smartphone app, "Airpnp," to connect people walking around select cities and needing access to a toilet, listing residents who make their utilities available, with description and price. Laurendine told the New York Post in January that New York City is a promising market (though his two best cities are New Orleans and Antwerp, Belgium). The prices vary from free to $20, and the facilities range from a sweet-smelling room stocked with reading material to a barely maintained toilet (with no lavatory), but, said one supplier, sometimes people "really need to go, and this will have to do." [New York Post, 1-18-2015]

-- Kentucky, one of America's financially worse-off states, annually spends $2 million of taxpayer money on salaries and expenses for 41 "jailers" who have no jails to manage. Research by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting in January noted that Kentucky's constitution requires "elected" jailers, notwithstanding that 41 counties have shut down their jails and house detainees elsewhere via contracts with sheriffs. (Though the jailers may be called upon to transport prisoners from time to time, the 41 counties are mostly small ones with few detainees.) Several jailers have full-time "side" jobs, and one jail-less jailer employs five deputies while another has 11 part-timers. [Courier-Journal (Louisville), 1-2-2015]

-- A.K. Verma was an "assistant executive engineer" working for India's central public works department in 1990 with 10 years on the job when he went on leave -- and had still not returned by the end of 2014, when the government finally fired him. He had submitted numerous requests for extensions during the ensuing 24 years, but all were denied, though no agency or court managed to force him back to work. (India's bureaucracy is generally acknowledged to be among the most dysfunctional in Asia.) [The Guardian (London), 1-8-2015]

-- Timothy DeFoggi, 56, was sentenced in January to 25 years in prison on child pornography charges -- unable to keep his illicit online transactions hidden from law-enforcement authorities. Before his conviction, he was acting director for cyber security in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and, one would assume (wrongly), an accomplished user of security software. [Washington Post, 1-6-2015]

-- After a heavy snowstorm in Frankfort, Kentucky (the state capital), in November, with many absences reported, the state labor policy agency (called the Labor Cabinet) was among the agencies needing snow removal at its headquarters more promptly than overworked cleanup crews could provide. A call was circulated for volunteers to go outside and shovel snow, but that job was apparently too laborious for the labor agency; there was only one taker. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 11-21-2014]

-- The Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times), reeling financially as many newspapers are, pledged several properties it owns (including its downtown headquarters) to borrow $30 million last year from a distressed-property lender and now announces an intention to pay back that loan by selling the properties. As reported by the local St. Petersblog website, the sore-thumb loan was almost exactly the amount the Times paid in 2002 for "naming rights" to the Tampa concert-and-hockey venue, the Ice Palace (which became the St. Petersburg Times Forum and is now Amalie Arena). Thus, St. Petersblog wrote, "do the math," concluding that the Tampa Bay Times was pressured to sell its own headquarters building in order to pay for the 12-year privilege of being able to name someone else's building. [Tampa Bay Times, 1-16-2015; SaintPetersblog, 1-15-2015]

Not Well-Thought-Out: (1) Shane Lindsey, 32, allegedly robbed the Citizens Bank in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, on Jan. 14 and ran off down the street, but was arrested about 15 minutes later a few blocks away, having stopped off at Eazer's Restaurant and Deli to order chicken and biscuits. (2) Jeffrey Wood, 19, was arrested in the act of robbing a 7-Eleven in Northeast Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10 -- because two plainclothes detectives were in the store at the time (though the police badge of one was hanging from a chain around her neck). As soon as the man announced, "This is a stickup," the detective drew her gun and yelled, "Stop playing. I got 17" (meaning a gun with 17 bullets). [Pittsburgh Tribune-Gazette, 1-14-2015] [Washington Post, 1-12-2015]

-- In weird-news (and medical) literature, the rectum is a place for storage of contraband (and, occasionally, for getting things undesirably lodged). In what a National Post of Canada reporter believes is a brand-new example of the former, a gastroenterologist at Vancouver's St. Paul's hospital found a vial of urine inside a man who reported to the ER with abdominal pains. According to the doctor's medical journal case description, the rectum was chosen in order to keep the urine at body temperature for an imminent methadone clinic drug test, which, if the urine passed "clean," would have entitled the man to the privilege of "take-home" methadone that he could either bank for later use or sell on the street. (He feared the loss of privilege, though, if the urine tested at room temperature.) [National Post, 1-1-2015]

-- Rose Ann Bolasny, 60, of Great Neck, New York, last year created a trust fund for her 3-year-old Maltese (dog), Bella Mia, that will allow spending $100,000 a year on fashions and spa treatments so that Bolasny can pamper "the daughter I never had." Bella Mia reportedly has 1,000 outfits in her custom-made walk-in closet, including ball gowns, along with diamond and pearl jewelry, and she sleeps on her own double bed. Previous News of the Weird reports of ridiculously rich dogs involved inheritances, but Bolasny still lives with her husband and has two adult sons (who are said to be fine with their mother's intention to will Bella Mia a house in Florida if she outlives Bolasny and her 82-year-old husband). (By the way, the average annual income for a human being in Bangladesh is the equivalent of about $380.) [Daily Mail (London), 1-16-2015]

On May 21 (2011), Jesse Robinson either established or tied the unofficial world record for unluckiest underage drinker of all time when he was booked into the Hamilton County, Ohio, jail for underage consumption. According to booking records, Robinson's date of birth is May 22, 1990. [HamiltonCountyJails.info, 5-23-2011]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Fourteen employees of a Framingham, Massachusetts, pharmacy were indicted in December for defrauding the federal government by filling bogus prescriptions (despite an owner's explicit instructions to staff that the fake customers' names "must resemble real names," with "no obviously false names" that might tip off law enforcement). Among the names later found on the customer list of the New England Compounding Center were: Baby Jesus, Hugh Jass, L.L. Bean, Filet O'Fish, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Harry Potter, Coco Puff, Mary Lamb, all of the Baldwin brother actors, and a grouping of Bud Weiser, Richard Coors, Raymond Rollingrock and, of course, Samuel Adams. The indictments were part of an investigation of a 2012 meningitis outbreak in which 64 people died. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 12-17-2014]

Two recent innovations to the generations-old Middle East sport of camel racing boosted its profile. First, to cleanse the sport of a sour period in which children from Bangladesh were trafficked to use as jockeys, owners have begun using "robot" jockeys -- electronic dummies that respond to trainers tracking the races with walkie-talkies (growling encouragement directly into camels' ears) and joysticks (that trigger a whip at an appropriate time). Second, the firm Al Shibla Middle East of United Arab Emirates has introduced lycra-style, whole-body camel coverings that are believed to enhance blood circulation and, perhaps, racing speed (although the fashions are now used only in training and transportation, to lessen camels' "stress"). Ultimately, of course, the coverings may carry advertising. [New York Times, 12-26-2014] [7 Days in Dubai, 12-31-2014]

-- "It's not fair! There is not justice in this country!" shouted the mother of Franklin Reyes, 17, in a New York City courtroom in January after a judge ordered the son tried for manslaughter as an adult. Reyes, an unlicensed driver fleeing a police traffic stop, had plowed into a 4-year-old girl, killing her, but had initially convinced the judge to treat him as a "youthful offender." Reyes' mom was so enraged at the judge's switch that she had to be escorted from the room. (After the judge's generous youthful offender ruling, Reyes had violated his bail conditions by getting arrested three more times.) [New York Post, 1-15-2015]

-- In Phoenix in early 2014, Kevin (last name withheld), age 5, was viciously mauled by Mickey, a pit bull, necessitating multiple surgeries, leaving him with lingering pain and disfiguring facial scars, and he still requires extensive care. While Kevin's trauma makes him live in gloom, Mickey has become a Phoenix celebrity after an outpouring of support from 75,000 people kept him from being euthanized for the assault. He lives now in a "no-kill" shelter, where his many supporters can track him on a 24-hour Internet "Mickey cam." KSAZ-TV reported in December that Kevin's mom had to quit her job to care for him and struggles to pay medical bills. [KSAZ-TV (Phoenix), 12-11-2014]

-- In October, vandals in Paris destroyed the large, inflatable "Tree" by U.S. artist Paul McCarthy in the city's Place Vendome square, but not before it became widely characterized as a gigantic green "plug" of the type used for anal sexual stimulation. Paris' news website The Local reported in December that the controversy has been a boon to the city's sex shops. "We used to sell around 50 (plugs) a month," said one wholesaler. "Since the controversy, we've moved more than a thousand" (at the equivalent of $23 to $45, in materials ranging from glass to stainless steel to silicone). [The Local (Paris), 12-2-2014]

-- Overthinking It: It was billed as the first-ever art exhibition expressly for nonhuman appreciation -- specifically, for examination by octopuses. England's Brighton Sea Life Center featured the five-tank shared display in November (including a bunch of grapes, a piece of Swiss cheese and a plate of spaghetti -- exhibits made of ceramic, plastic, wood and rope) that the center's curator promised would, according to an ITV report, "stimulate an octopus's natural curiosity about color, shape and texture." [Independent Television (London), 11-5-2014]

-- The Territorial Seed Co. of Cottage Grove, Oregon, introduced a plant in 2014 that sprouts both tomatoes and potatoes, the aptly named "Ketchup 'n' Fries" plant. Grafting (rather than genetic modification) splices the tomato onto potato plants (to create single plants capable of harvests of 500 red cherry tomatoes and 4.5 pounds of potatoes each). [The Oregonian (Portland), 12-30-2014]

-- Jihadist Toddlers: Britain's Home Office directed in January that the U.K.'s nursery school staffs report pupils "at risk of becoming terrorists," but gave little guidance on what teachers and managers should look for. According to a description of the directive in the Daily Telegraph, staffs must "have training that gives them the knowledge and confidence to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and challenge extremist ideas." [Daily Telegraph, 1-4-2015]

"All I'm looking for is what's rightfully owed to me under the (corrections department) contract," said Westchester County (New York) corrections officer Jesus Encarnacion, after having drawn $1.2 million in disability salary for the last 17 years as a result of slipping on a leaf of lettuce on a stairway. When he fell, he jammed his wrist and several surgeries ensued, and when he was finally ready for "light duty" a few years ago, he re-injured the wrist on the first day and never returned. Encarnacion now seeks a full disability retirement from the state, but officials maintain that "disability retirement" is for injuries resulting only from the rigors of the job. [New York Post, 1-5-2015]

When a dump truck and a municipal bus collided around 1 p.m. on Jan. 5 in downtown Phoenix, it of course drew the attention of the passengers, bystanders, motorists and nearby construction workers. According to a report in the Arizona Republic, an unidentified man then immediately seized the moment, ran out from some bushes to the center of the commotion and flashed the crowd before running away. [Arizona Republic, 1-5-2015]

Not Quite Clever Enough: (1) Police quickly tracking two assault suspects in Holland Township, Michigan, in December arrived at a residence at just the moment that suspect Codi Antoniello, 19, was starting to shave his head to alter his appearance. Antoniello's now-Internet-famous mugshot shows him with a full head of hair, minus the perhaps one-fourth on top shorn by electric clippers (shown at http://goo.gl/ofDFQR). (2) When the wife of James Rivers, 57, of Kent, Washington, was about to bust him for his alleged child-porn collection in October, he shipped his laptop to a technician to have the hard drive erased -- but with explicit instructions that if the techie encounters a "hidden" file, he must not look at the photos "under any circumstances." (The techie, of course, found the file, looked and notified authorities, and Rivers was arrested.) [WOOD-TV (Grand Rapids, Mich.), 12-19-2014] [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10-16-2014]

(1) The most recent incident of a fire breaking out on the grounds of a crematorium occurred in December at the Innisvale Cemetery and Crematorium in Innisfil, Ontario. Firefighters put out the blaze and "rescued" the 15 dead bodies that were awaiting cremation. (2) When a small plane over Lake Taupo in New Zealand developed engine trouble in January, the pilot ordered evacuation. Fortunately, the six passengers were skydivers on a training mission and landed safely, even rigging the plane's crew members to the divers' own parachutes so that there were no casualties (except the plane). (Working skydivers also survived a November 2013 crash of two planes over Wisconsin by making an "unscheduled" jump.) [Toronto Star, 12-24-2015] [BBC News, 1-7-2015]

The Belly Button Biodiversity project at North Carolina State University has begun examining the "faunal differences" in the microbial ecosystems of our navels, to foster understanding of the "tens of thousands" of organisms crawling around inside (almost all benign or even helpful). An 85-year-old man in North Carolina may have "very different navel life" than a 7-year-old girl in France, according to a May Raleigh News & Observer report. So far, only the organisms themselves and the host's demographics have been studied; other issues, such as variations by hairiness of navel, remain. [News & Observer, 5-9-2011]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Among the breakthroughs demonstrated by the computer chip company Intel's RealSense system is a cocktail dress from Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht that not only senses the wearer's "mood," but also acts to repel (or encourage) strangers who might approach the wearer. Sensors (including small LED monitors) measure respiration and 11 other profiles, and if the wearer is "stressed," artistic spider-leg epaulets extend menacingly from the shoulder to suggest that "intruders" keep their distance (in which case the dress resembles something from the movie "Aliens") -- or, if the wearer feels relaxed, the legs wave invitingly. The experimental "spider dress" was showcased at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. [Daily Mail (London), 1-7-2015]

-- Because Congress and presidents often change their minds, NASA recently continued to build on a $349 million rocket testing tower in Mississippi for a "moon" project that had been canceled back in 2010. The now-idle tower sits down the road from a second rocket testing tower being built for its "replacement" mission -- an "asteroid" project. Critics, according to a December Washington Post examination, blame senators who believe it smarter to keep contractors at work (even though useless) because, Congress and the president might change their minds yet again. Said a high-profile critic, "We have to decide ... whether we want a jobs program or a space program." NASA's inspector general in 2013 identified six similar "mothballed" projects that taxpayers continue to maintain. [Washington Post, 12-15-2014]

-- Un-Government: About 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts claim their SWAT and other specialty operations are not "government" services, but rather not-for-profit corporate activities and are thus entitled to avoid certain government obligations. Even though their officers have the power to carry weapons, arrest people and break down doors during raids, these "law enforcement councils" refuse to comply with government open-records laws for civilian monitoring of SWAT activities. The latest refusal, by the 58 police agencies of the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, was filed in state Superior Court in December. [Daily News of Newburyport, 12-13-2014; Washington Post, 6-26-2014]

-- DIY Policing in Seattle: A Seattle Times columnist suffered a "smash-and-grab" break-in of his car in October, but was brushed off by the Seattle Police Department and told simply to go file an insurance claim. However, he and his energetic 14-year-old daughter located the perpetrators themselves by GPS and called for police help, only to be chastised by the dispatcher, warning that they could get hurt. Only when a local crime-fighting TV show adopted the case, along with the suburban Sammamish, Washington, police department, was the gang of thieves finally pursued and apprehended (resulting in charges for "hundreds" of smash-and-grab thefts). (Bonus: One alleged perpetrator was quoted as saying the thefts were undertaken "because we knew the police wouldn't do anything.") [Seattle Times, 10-31-2014, 11-7-2014]

-- Ms. Connie Lay passed away in Aurora, Indiana, in November, leaving a last will and testament that calls for her German shepherd, Bela, to be promptly buried with her -- even though Bela is still alive and peppy. Ms. Lay preferred sending Bela to a certain shelter in Utah, but if that "is not possible" or involves "too much expense" (judgments to be decided by a close friend, not publicly named), Bela is to be euthanized. At press time, the friend still had not decided. [WCPO-TV (Cincinnati), 12-17-2014]

-- Mother of All Surgeries: After 15 months of faulty diagnoses, Pam Pope, 65, finally got the (bad) news: a rare, slow-moving cancer of the appendix, "pseudomyxoma peritonei." The malignancy was so advanced that her only hope was the removal of all organs that she could possibly do without. In a six-surgeon, 13-hour operation in May 2014 at Hampshire Clinic in Basingstoke, England, Pope parted with her appendix, large bowel, gall bladder, spleen, womb, ovaries, fallopian tubes, cervix and most of her small bowel. She has endured massive chemotherapy, is on a nightly drip for hydration, and still remains frail, according to a December report in London's Daily Mail. [Daily Mail, 12-15-2014]

-- When someone swiped the iPhone of Adam Wisneski, 31, on Jan. 2, he rode his bicycle to Chicago's Shakespeare District police station to file a stolen-property report. He parked the bike inside the door, filled out the form, prepared to leave -- and noticed the bike was missing. He told an amused officer he needed another form. (Officers on duty said perhaps a homeless man who was in the station took it and are "making an effort," said Wisneski, to find it.) [WBBM-TV (Chicago), 1-5-2015]

-- The natural enemy of the "hawkmoth" (for 65 million years) is the bat, but thanks to a recent study by biologists at Boise State University and the University of Florida, we know the reason why so many hawkmoths are able to avoid their predator: They signal each other by rubbing their genitals on their abdomens, which somehow mimics bats' own high-frequency sounds, thus jamming the bats' aural ability to detect the hawkmoths' locations. Professors Jesse Barber and Akito Kawahara, working in Malaysia, tethered a hawkmoth to a wire and then tracked a bat, using slow-motion cameras and high-definition microphones, painstakingly examining the results for a 2014 journal article. [Daily Mail (London), 12-11-2014]

-- Bringing the Total Number of Cow Sounds to Three: A team from Britain's University of Nottingham and Queen Mary University of London found (according to a December BBC News report) that cows make two "distinctly different" call sounds to their calves, depending on whether the calves are nearby (low-frequency mooing, with mouth closed) or separated (higher frequency). The team said it spent 10 months digitally recording cow noises, then a year analyzing them by computer. [BBC News, 12-16-2014]

Not Nearly Ready for Prime Time: (1) A potential robber was turned away from a store on East Harry Street in Wichita, Kansas, on Dec. 11 after he demanded cash, explaining to the clerk that he "had six children and needed the money." The clerk told the man he had too many kids. The man, apparently chastened, fled the store empty-handed. (2) A masked man approached a clerk at Sam's Mart in New Haven, Connecticut, on Nov. 29 and passed a note demanding money while pointing his finger at the clerk (perhaps an inept attempt to feign having a gun in his pocket). According to police, the clerk grabbed the finger and threatened to break it, sending the man fleeing into the night. [Wichita Eagle, 12-12-2014] [New Haven Independent, 12-1-2014]

In a joint operation in December, police in Beijing and three provinces broke up two prostitution rings that specialized in supplying young lactating mothers to Chinese men who pay to be breastfed. Police said that women who provide sex with the "meal" earn higher fees. The women had either stopped breastfeeding their babies or cut back to favor their clients. Critics, according to the South China Morning Post, said this "lactophilia" showed "the moral degradation of China's rich." [International Business Times (London), 12-29-2014]

Jared Walter, 27, returns to News of the Weird after a four-year hiatus, charged with snipping a woman's hair while in line behind her in December at a Dollar Tree store in Oregon City, Oregon. In 2010, he was imprisoned for cutting the hair of three female passengers on municipal buses in the Portland area, and after being released in 2011, sentenced again for a similar incident. (Walter's inexplicable history with female hair actually extends back to grade school, reported Portland's The Oregonian.) [The Oregonian, 12-31-2014]

A 53-year-old man with failing eyesight who had recently undergone intestinal surgery told Sonoma, California, police that on Sunday afternoon, May 1 (2011), a woman had come to his home and instructed him to drop his pants and get face-down on the bed so that she could administer an enema. He said he assumed his doctor had sent her and thus complied; it was over in two minutes, and she was gone. The doctor later said he had no idea who the woman was. (In the 1970s, in the Champaign, Illinois, area, Michael Kenyon famously operated as the "Illinois Enema Bandit" -- and inspired the late Frank Zappa's song "Illinois Enema Bandit Blues.") [Sonoma News, 5-11-2011]

Thanks This Week to Jim Weber and Ivan Katz, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.