A miles-long traffic jam on Interstate 20 near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Jan. 25 and on into the next morning was caused by an 18-wheeler that jackknifed and overturned when the 57-year-old driver took his hands off the wheel to pull out a tooth with his fingers. Efforts to haul the truck from the roadside required an hours-long detour of traffic off of the interstate. (The driver's mission was successful; he had the tooth in his pocket when rescued.) [AL.com, 1-30-2015]

-- Luis Moreno Jr., 26, was pursued by police in Fort Lee, New Jersey, after he entered the carpool lane approaching the George Washington Bridge in January because he appeared to be alone in his SUV. After ignoring several signals to pull over, he finally stopped and, when informed of his offense, told the officer, "I have two passengers in the back" and rolled down a window to show them (in the vehicle's third row), apparently satisfying the officer. However, as Moreno pulled away, one passenger began screaming and banging on the back door. Moreno sped off with his hostages, but was subsequently stopped again and charged with kidnapping and criminal restraint (but no HOV violation!). [New York Daily News, 1-25-2015]

-- Mike Montemayor, until recently a county commissioner in Laredo, Texas, pleaded guilty to bribery charges in June and had argued in January 2015 that he should get a light sentence because, after all, he had subsequently helped FBI agents in a sting against three other officials accused of bribery. However, the prosecutor immediately countered that Montemayor had in fact tried to steal the recording devices and Apple computer the FBI had furnished him to do the undercover work. (He got six years in prison and a $109,000 fine.) [Laredo Morning Times, 1-27-2015]

-- Lame: (1) Briton Roberto Collins, 51, was sentenced to 13 months in jail by Manchester Crown Court in January after being caught standing on a ladies' room toilet and peering into the next stall. He told police he stood up only to better scratch an itch and was in the ladies' room only because, wearing faulty glasses, he thought it was the men's room. (2) Scotsman Dean Gilmartin, 25, actually persuaded a judge at Perth Sheriff Court in January of his "innocence" -- that he might not have been masturbating at the front window of his home. He admitted he was nude (changing clothes), but pointed out that he plays musical instruments and was probably just picking out tunes on his ukulele (rather than "holding" his genitals and moving "side to side," as a neighbor had charged). [Manchester Evening News, 1-26-2015] [STV (Glasgow), 1-13-2015]

-- Explanation for Child-Porn Possession Never Before Heard: Poet Les Merton, 70, denied in January that he had ever abused children, but had a more difficult time explaining why a child-porn website had his credit card information. Merton holds the appointed title of Cornish bard in Cornwall, England, and is the author of the Official Encyclopedia of the Cornish Pasty -- and explained in Truro Crown Court that he must have mindlessly entered his credit card information while researching the 19th-century Russian figure Rasputin. [BBC News, 1-15-2015]

"Entomologists are not like other people," Wired.com reported in January, revealing that two of them had "proudly" issued "birth" announcements for the "Human bot fly" whose larvae one had let gestate beneath his skin for two months. Scientist Piotr Naskrecki and photographer Gil Wizen had been inadvertently bitten while on assignment in Belize and decided the egg-laying "attack" on a human was an important opportunity for research. After all, Naskrecki said, he had never seen an adult bot fly "crawl out" of its host. [Wired.com, 1-13-2015] [TheSmallerMajority.com, 1-9-2015]

-- Last year in Middle East school markets, the worldwide publishing giant HarperCollins was selling a popular atlas whose maps pretended there was no such country as Israel. The space that is Israel was merged into Jordan, Syria and Gaza. The company said it was merely honoring "local preferences" of potential atlas purchasers, whom HarperCollins presumed were Arabs wishing that Israel did not exist. (In January 2015, the company finally changed course, publicly "regretted" its decision and recalled all existing stock.) [Washington Post, 1-2-2015]

-- Montanan John Abarr told the Great Falls Tribune in November that his Rocky Mountain Knights of the Ku Klux Klan opposes the "new world order" pushing a "one government" system on the planet -- but also stands against discrimination based on race, religion or sexual orientation. "White supremacy is the old Klan," he said. "This is the new Klan" (except that, he said, robes and hoods will still be required, along with "secret rituals"). [Great Falls Tribune, 11-3-2014]

-- The New Normal: In January, Mittens the kitten and Charcoal the Chihuahua mix made news as hermaphrodites whose veterinarians had recommended which gender the since-adopted strays should retain. Mittens, of the town of Heart's Desire, Newfoundland, was scheduled for "gender assignment" surgery to become solely male, and Charcoal, of Boise, Idaho, is recovering from mid-January surgery to leave her exclusively female. News reports did not disclose why "male" was chosen for Mittens, but the doctor said correcting Charcoal's pre-surgery problem, urination, would be less stressful as a female. [CBC News, 1-21-2015] [KIVI-TV (Nampa, Id.), 1-20-2015]

The Supreme Court of Canada turned down Joel Ifergan's appeal in January, leaving his winning-number lottery ticket from 2008 worthless. He had bought two tickets seconds before the 9 p.m. deadline on May 23 of that year, and the tickets had started to print on the store's machine, but only the first one carried that day's date. By the time the second one -- with winning numbers for the $27 million jackpot -- had gone through the lottery's central computer system and back to the store's printer, the program had already kicked over to the following day and to the next week's drawing. [Toronto Sun, 1-29-2015]

(1) Police in Seville, Spain, reported in November that a 23-year-old medical student visiting from Poland accidentally fell to her death at the famous Puente de Triana bridge when she maneuvered herself into position on a ledge to take a "selfie." It was the third "selfie" death on the Iberian peninsula in five months; in August a tourist couple (both also from Poland) fell to their deaths while posing for their photo at Cabo de Roca, Portugal. (2) In January, a tourist visiting the Spanish island of Ibiza with her boyfriend jumped up joyously as he proposed marriage to her, lost her balance and fell 65 feet off a cliff to her death. [Daily Mail (London), 11-5-2014] [Daily Mail (London), 1-30-2015]

Ultra-Expensive Trysts: The ones reported previously in News of the Weird involved celebrities ultimately nailed for high-ticket child support payments based on a single encounter (e.g., tennis star Boris Becker, who admitted conceiving a child in a restaurant closet rendezvous). British tourist Peter Cousins, 55, is now dealing with a medical bill of $250,000 after deciding that the middle of a Nevada desert was a good place to have sex -- which provoked a heart attack, leading to emergency rescue and a five-day hospital stay (and, eventually, breakup with his then-girlfriend). [Daily Mail (London), 1-19-2015]

Urban Legend Come to Life: Too-good-to-be-true stories have circulated for years about men who accidentally fell, posterior first, onto compressed-air nozzles and "self-inflated," to resemble "dough boys," usually with fatal results. However, in May (2011) in Opotiki, New Zealand, trucker Steven McCormack found himself in similar circumstances, and had it not been for quick-thinking colleagues who pulled him away, he would have been killed -- not as a "dough boy" but as the air, puncturing his anal cavity, began separating his body's tissue from muscle. McCormack was hospitalized in severe pain, but the air gradually seeped from his body (according to a doctor, in the way air "usually" seeps from a body). [BBC News, 5-25-2011]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks and Doug Brickett and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.