Apartment buyers in ridiculously expensive Hong Kong are now eagerly paying up to the equivalent of $500,000 (U.S.) for units not much bigger than a U.S. parking space (and typically physically self-measured by the applicant's wing-span). An agent told The Wall Street Journal in June that, for example, standard furniture does not fit the units and that having guests over requires sitting on the window sill. (The Journal pointed out that a typical such "mosquito" apartment unit in Hong Kong is 180 square feet, way smaller than the 304 of a basketball court's "lane" subject to a "3-second" violation.) A government lottery for subsidized units rewards barely one of every 100 applicants. [Wall Street Journal, 6-3-2015]

In May, Texas health officials shut down the flea market sales of sonogram DVDs at Leticia Trujillo's stall at San Antonio's Traders Village. Though the nature of the equipment was not described in news reports, sonograms can be produced only under a doctor's prescription and by licensed personnel, but pregnant flea market customers underwent a procedure ("just like a doctor's office," said Trujillo) that yielded a 12-minute DVD image, along with photos, for $35 -- that Trujillo subsequently defended as for "entertainment" purposes only and for those without health insurance. [San Antonio Express-News, 5-22-2015]

According to Nathan Hoffman's lawsuit, he was prepped for eye surgery that day in May 2014 when the clinic employee handed him a small-lettered liability-limitation form to sign. He was told that the surgery at the LASIK Vision Institute in Lake Oswego, Oregon, could not proceed without a signature, and despite hazy vision, he reluctantly relented, but things went badly. The form limits lawsuit damages to a money-back $2,500, but Hoffman demands at least $7,500 (to cover the so-far two additional surgeries elsewhere to correct LVI's alleged errors). [The Oregonian, 5-15-2015]

Some jihadists who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS have complained recently (according to a Radio Free Europe dispatch) that they cannot secure work as "martyrs" because of discrimination by incumbent fighters. One "pro-ISIS" cleric, speaking for Chechens, said they "are so fed up with the long waiting lists in Syria" that they head to Iraq, where the lists are shorter. Said one, Saudis controlling suicide rosters in the Syrian theater "won't let anyone in." Their "relatives go to the front of the line using (their connections)." [News.com.au (Sydney), 5-22-2015]

-- In April, Judge Marc Kelly in Orange County, California, defied a 25-year-minimum statutory sentence for punishing the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old girl by Kevin Rojano -- cutting the term to 10 years because the man did not "intend to harm" the girl (except that he became "inexplicably" "aroused" when she walked into his garage). "There was no violence or callous disregard for (her) well-being," the judge said. [City News Service via Orange County Register, 4-4-2015]

-- The child-abuse sentence of a sports club official in Buenos Aires was reduced in 2014 to little more than three years, it was recently revealed, because, said the judges, the 6-year-old boy had earlier been sexually molested by his father and had already made a "precocious (sexual) choice" ("apparently a reference to homosexuality," according to a May Associated Press dispatch). [Associated Press via New York Times, 5-19-2015]

-- America (sometimes called a land of "second chances") gave stockbroker Jerry Cicolani Jr., 69 such chances, before he pleaded guilty in May to selling unregistered securities -- setting up his first overt punishment despite a history of 60-some client complaints made to his then-employer, Merrill Lynch, between 1991 and 2010. The stockbrokers' self-regulating arm (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) has finally revoked his license, but issued a statement acknowledging that it needed to improve its monitoring. [New York Times, 5-19-2015]

-- Awkward: Corey Huddleston, 52, apparently having taken a fancy to a teenage girl in Dickson, Tennessee, in May, knocked on her family's front door, according to police, then pushed his way in, asked for cigarettes and beer, "touched himself" inappropriately, asked about the girl, and then reluctantly departed. However, he merely went to a back window of a darkened bedroom, climbed inside, and fondled a sleeping figure in bed, whom he likely assumed was the girl -- but it was the girl's father, who later confessed that he called the police only after resisting the impulse to kill Huddleston. (Police said Huddleston's rap sheet shows more than 100 charges.) [WKRN-TV (Nashville), 5-13-2015]

Among caterpillars' natural defenses against being devoured by birds is their ability to contort themselves into odd shapes for disguise -- perhaps most ingeniously (according to researchers writing in the current Animal Behaviour journal) as bird droppings. The authors created artificial dough-based squiggles that were either straight (resembling the caterpillar) or bent (to resemble poop), and found that birds zeroed in on the straight ones about three times as often. [Science, 5-22-2015]

Notwithstanding the suggestion in movies, stealing a 200-pound floor model safe is a very low-return crime, as the February arrest of three pals in Kingsport, Tennessee, illustrated. After struggling to load the safe into a car's trunk (accidentally shattering the back window), they drove to one's apartment, but police were called when neighbors saw the safe being dragged across a parking lot in the middle of the night. (During the trip, it fell onto one perp's foot.) Police, following gouge marks, visited the apartment and spotted the safe, as yet unopened, in the middle of the kitchen. (Police: Why do you gentlemen have a safe? Perp: We found it in an alley.) Police opened it. It was empty. [Kingsport Times-News, 2-2-2015]

It started in 2008, when one of Tampa Bay's two nastiest radio "shock jocks," Todd Schnitt, sued the other, Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, for defamation. With depositions underway in 2013, according to reporting by the Tampa Bay Times, Schnitt's lawyer, Philip Campbell, unwinding in a bar, was hit on by a perky young paralegal who (unknown to him) worked for Bubba's lawyer's firm. After several drinks, she exaggerated inebriation, angling for Campbell to drive her home. According to charges by the Florida Bar Association, the paralegal's boss called a Tampa cop to trail Campbell -- who, sure enough, witnessed the car weaving, and thus arrested Campbell for DUI. (Bonus: Campbell's work-packed briefcase went missing in the traffic stop.) Bubba himself was not implicated, and the disciplinary charges against the lawyers, pending in June 2015, are creating suspense about which of them might take the fall. [Tampa Bay Times, 5-20-2015]

Kenya's The Standard reported the May proclamation by prominent Nairobi lawyer Felix Kiprono that he had fallen in love (long distance) with Malia Obama (who is, famously, part-Kenyan) and is prepared to offer President Obama 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats in exchange for her hand. "If my request is granted," he said, he would not "resort to the cliche of popping champagne" but rather would "surprise (Malia) with mursik, the traditional Kalenjin sour milk," and affix the "sacred plant," sinendet, queen-like, around her head. [The Standard, 5-25-2015]

The Redneck Chronicles: (1) Timothy Walker, 48, was hospitalized in Burlington, North Carolina, in February (2011) after he fell off of the top of an SUV while holding down two mattresses for the driver, who apparently rounded a curve too fast. (2) Three people were hospitalized in Bellevue, Washington, in January (2011) when their van exploded as the ignition was re-engaged. They were carrying two gallons of gasoline in an open container and had been feeding the carburetor directly, through an opening in the engine housing (between the seats), as the van was in motion. (No explanation was reported.) [WXII-TV (Winston-Salem, 2-18-2011] [Bellevue Reporter, 1-20-2011]

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

Silicon Valley code-writers and engineers work long hours -- with apparently little time for "food" as we know it. Eating is "time wasted," in the words of celebrity inventor Elon Musk, and normal meals a "marketing facade," said another valley bigwig. The New York Times reported in May that techies are eagerly scarfing down generic (but nutrient-laden) liquids like Schmilk and People Chow, largely for ease of preparation, to speed their return to work. The Times food editor described one product as "oat flour" washed down with "the worst glass of milk ever." "Pancake batter," according to a Times reporter. (That supermarket staple Ensure? According to the food editor, it's "fine wine" compared to Schmilk.) [New York Times, 5-25-2015]

Air travelers last year left $675,000 in (obviously) spare change in airport screening bins, reported the Transportation Security Administration in April. Of the cars reported stolen in 2014, 44,828 were with keys left inside them, according to an April National Insurance Crime Bureau release. American credit card holders fail to claim "about $4 billion" in earned "rewards" each year, according to CardHub.com's 2015 Credit Card Rewards Report. [Time magazine, 4-7-2015] [Bloomberg Business, 4-27-2015] [CardHub report (undated except for the year)]

-- (1) Nursing student Jennifer Burbella filed a lawsuit against Misericordia University (near Scranton, Pennsylvania) for not helping her enough to pass a required course that she failed twice. The professional caregiver-to-be complained of stress so severe that she needed a distraction-free room and extra time for the exam, but claims she deserved even more special treatment. (2) Four Columbia University students complained in May that courses in Greek mythology and Roman poetry need "trigger" warnings -- advance notice to super-sensitive students that history may include narratives of "disturbing" events (that have somehow been studied without such warnings for centuries). [Fox News, 5-13-2015] [Washington Post, 5-14-2015]

-- In March, following the departure of Zayn Malik from the British band One Direction, an executive with the Peninsula employment law firm in Manchester told London's Daily Telegraph that he had received "hundreds" of calls from employers seeking advice about workers who were requesting "compassionate" leave because Malik's resignation had left them distraught. (Also, a spokeswoman for the charity Young Minds told the Telegraph she was concerned about Malik fans self-harming.) [Daily Telegraph, 3-27-2015]

Among recent inventions not expected to draw venture capital interest (reported by Popular Science in June): (1) A Canadian software engineer's machine that unspools toilet paper exactly three squares at a time (but please keep fingers away from the cleaver!). (2) A Japanese shoulder-mounted tomato-feeder that provides nourishment to marathoners without their needing to catch tomatoes provided by supporters. (3) Google software engineer Maurice Bos' whiteboard-mounted clock that writes down the exact time, with a marker, at five-minute intervals (after erasing the previous time). [Popular Science, June 2015]

Britain's Home Office, judging requests for asylum by immigrants threatened with deportation but who fear oppressive treatment if returned to their home countries, recently turned down asylum for Nigerian lesbian activist Aderonke Apata, 47, apparently because the office doubted her orientation. Though Apata had submitted testimonials (and even photographs) "proving" her homosexuality, the Home Office was skeptical because she had children from a previous heterosexual relationship. On the other hand, an immigration court in England ruled in April that a Libyan man, identified only as "HU," could not be deported since he is a career criminal and a chronic drunk who would be so unlikely to reform his drinking that he would surely face a lifetime of prison in Libya. [Daily Telegraph, 3-4-2015] [Daily Telegraph, 4-27-2015]

If Only There Was Somewhere He Could Have Turned for Moral Guidance: Suspended Catholic Monsignor Kevin Wallin, 63, was sentenced in May to more than five years in prison for running a meth distribution ring from Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he also operated a sex shop to launder the drug profits. (Though he faced a 10-year sentence, he had a history of charity work and submitted more than 80 letters of support from high-ranking clergy.) [Associated Press via WTIC-TV (Hartford), 5-7-2015]

Walter Merrick, 66, was charged with aggravated assault in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey, Louisiana, in March after an altercation with neighbor Clarence Sturdivant, 64, over the comparative merits of Busch and Budweiser beers. Bud-man Sturdivant fired the only shot, but a sheriff's deputy said Merrick was the aggressor -- since he had offered Sturdivant only a Busch. (In Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April, police found two blood-splattered men in an apartment parking lot at 1 a.m., the result of a dual stabbing spree with broken beer bottles -- over whether Android phones are superior to iPhones.) [Reuters, 5-13-2015] [KTUL-TV (Tulsa), 4-17-2015]

Holly Solomon, 31, pleaded guilty in April to aggravated assault with her Jeep -- against her then-husband -- and has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. The crime occurred in a suburb of Phoenix in November 2012, days after President Obama's re-election, as Solomon ran down her spouse because she was angry that he had neglected to vote for Mitt Romney as expected. However, his no-show did not affect the outcome, as Romney easily won the state's 11 electoral votes without him. [Reuters, 5-21-2015]

Short-Attention-Span Thieves: (1) Alvaro Ortega, 34, was arrested for taking a uniformed police officer's cellphone in the East Coast Catering deli in Bayonne, New Jersey, on May 18. The sleuthing was easy, in that Ortega was the only other person in the deli at the time and sheepishly admitted the theft. (2) Seattle's KIRO-TV reported in May that a Seattle couple holding a Powerball ticket worth $1 million still has it, despite being theft victims. Someone smashed open a window in their car on May 14 and stole, among other items, a pair of sunglasses that was resting atop the lottery ticket, but left it undisturbed. [The Jersey Journal, 5-21-2015] [KIRO-TV, 5-27-2015]

Footnotes: (1) Rusty Sills, 56, previously an "underwear bandit" in West Des Moines, Iowa, was arrested in Pinellas Park, Florida, in March and charged with stealing women's shoes -- sometimes "replacing" them with shoes he no longer fancied. (Police found about 100 pairs in his van.) (2) James Dowdy, 43, on parole for an earlier sock theft, was arrested once again in Belleville, Illinois, after police received reports of socks missing in burglaries. Authorities said Dowdy had been involved in "other types of sock-related incidents (and) using socks in an inappropriate and obscene manner," but details were not reported. (Found in a search of Dowdy's home were notebooks of children's names, ages and types of socks worn.) [WFTS-TV (Tampa), 3-16-2015] [Belleville News-Democrat, 5-20-2015]

Faced with a government fee accepted by most real estate investors who view it as a routine cost of doing business, wealthy Arizona investor Wayne Howard balked. Instead of the ordinary filing-fee rate of $50 for registering a property deed, he demanded that all 2,922 of his deeds be recorded for $500, and when the Pinal County treasurer turned him down, he told the official he would simply use his pull in the legislature to change the law and get his 99.6 percent discount that way. (He almost succeeded. The bill passed the state Senate and was favored in the House, but after the Arizona Republic newspaper exposed Howard's imperial move, it failed, 30-28.) [Arizona Republic, 3-18-2015]

Tombstone, Arizona, which was the site of the legendary 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (commemorated in a 1957 movie), is about 70 miles from the Tucson shopping center where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others were shot in January (2011). A Los Angeles Times dispatch later that month noted that the "Wild West" of 1881 Tombstone had far stricter gun control than 2011 Arizona. The historic gunfight occurred when the marshal (Virgil Earp, brother of Wyatt) tried to enforce the town's no-carry law against local thugs. Today, however, with few restrictions and no licenses required, virtually any Arizonan 18 or older can carry a handgun openly. [Los Angeles Times, 1-23-2011]

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

When officials in Richmond, California, learned in 2009 that 70 percent of the city's murders and firearms assaults were directly linked to 17 people, they decided on a bold program: to pay off those 17 to behave themselves. For a budget of about $1.2 million a year, the program offers individual coaching, health care coverage and several hundred dollars a month in stipends to former thugs who stick to their "life map" of personal goals and conflict-resolution training. According to an April report on National Public Radio's "This American Life," Richmond is no longer among the most dangerous towns in America, with the murder rate in fact having fallen from its all-time yearly high of 62 to 11 last year. [WBEZ Radio (Chicago) via News.com.au (Sydney, Australia), 4-30-2015]

-- One might believe that a 6th-grader, suspended for a whole year after school officials found a "marijuana" leaf in his backpack, might be immediately un-suspended if authorities (after three field tests) found the leaf was neither marijuana nor anything else illegal. Not, however, at Bedford Middle School in Roanoke, Virginia, whose officials said they had acted on gossip that students called the leaf "marijuana," and therefore under the state schools' "look-alike-drug" policy, the 6th-grader was just as guilty as if the leaf were real. Formerly a high-achiever student, he has, since last September, suffered panic attacks and is under the care of a pediatric psychiatrist, and his parents filed a federal lawsuit in February. [Roanoke Times, 3-14-2015]

-- Biologist Regine Gries of Canada's Simon Fraser University devotes every Saturday to letting about 5,000 bedbugs suck blood from her arm -- part of research by Gries and her biologist-husband Gerhard to develop a pheromone-based "trap" that can lure the bugs from infested habitats like bedding. (She estimates having been bitten 200,000 times since the research began, according to a May Wired magazine report.) Regine holds each mesh-topped jar of bugs against her arm for about 10 minutes each (which Gerhard cannot do because he is allergic) -- leading, of course, to hours of itchiness and swelling in the name of progress. [Wired, May 2015]

The three gentle grammar pedants (one an environmental lawyer calling himself "Agente Punto Final," i.e., "Agent Period") devoted to ridding Quito, Ecuador, of poorly written street graffiti, have been patrolling the capital since November 2014, identifying misplaced commas and other atrocities and making sneaky corrective raids with spray paint. Punto Final told The Washington Post in March that he acts out of "moral obligation" -- that "punctuation matters, commas matter, accents matter." As police take vandalism seriously in Quito, the three must act stealthily, in hoodies and ski masks, with one always standing lookout. [Washington Post, 3-6-2015]

-- Almost half of the DNA collected from a broad swath of the New York City subway system matched no known organism, and less than 1 percent was human. Weill Cornell Medical College researchers announced in February that they had identified much DNA by swabbing passenger car and station surfaces, finding abundant matches to beetles and flies (and even traces of inactive anthrax and bubonic plague) but that since so few organisms have been fully DNA-"sequenced," there was no cause for alarm. The lead researcher fondly compared the bacteria-teeming subway to a "rain forest," deserving "awe and wonder" that "there are all these species" that so far cause humans relatively little harm. [New York Times, 2-5-2015]

-- "I'm doing what God wants," Mike Holpin, 56, told British TV's Channel 5 in April. "In the Bible, God says go forth and multiply," said the unemployed former carny who claims to have fathered at least 40 children (now aged from 3 to 37) by 20 different women. Holpin has been married three times, and lives with his fiancee Diane and two kids in the Welsh town of Cwm. "I (will) never stop," Holpin said. "I'm as fertile as sin..." [Daily Telegraph, 4-1-2015]

(1) A 21-year-old man in Hefei, China, collapsed in May after 14 straight days of Internet gaming, yet when paramedics revived him, the man begged them to leave and put him back in front of the screen. (2) Then, two weeks later in Nanchang, China, a 24-year-old female gamer took only a minutes-long break at an Internet cafe‚ at 4 a.m., to head to a rest room and give birth -- returning with her blood-covered baby in her arms to resume her place at the mouse pad. (London's Daily Telegraph, reporting from Beijing in May, estimated that China has 24 million Internet "addicts.") [Anhui Business Review via Daily Telegraph (London), 5-4-2015] [People's Daily Online via Daily Mail (London), 5-15-2015]

-- It takes only four of the U.S. Supreme Court justices to accept a case for review, but it takes five to stay an execution. On January 23, the Court accepted the case challenging Oklahoma's death penalty chemicals, but the lead challenger, Charles Warner, lacking that fifth "stay" vote, had been executed eight days earlier (using the challenged chemicals), during the time the justices were deliberating. (The case, Warner vs. Gross, was immediately renamed Glossip V. Gross, but Richard Glossip himself was scheduled to die on January 28. Then, without explanation, at least one other justice supplied Glossip's missing fifth vote, and, with one day to spare, his execution was stayed until the challenge to the chemicals is resolved.) [New York Times, 1-26-2015]

-- Only 17 states have specific laws to protect against "revenge porn" (exposing ex-lovers' intimate images online as retaliation for a break-up), but a possible solution in the other states, reported CNN in April, is for the victim to file a "takedown" demand under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which would subject the avenger to penalties for not removing the images. However, to prove copyright, the victim must file copies of the bawdy images with the U.S. Copyright Office, increasing the victim's trauma (though an office spokesman told CNN that only the copyright examiner would see them). [CNN Wire via WTKR-TV (Hampton Roads, Va.), 4-27-2015]

Drivers Hit With Their Own Cars Recently: (1) A 64-year-old woman was knocked down by her in-gear minivan in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, as she got out to retrieve something from her house (March). (2) A man in South Centre Township, Pennsylvania, was hospitalized after leaving his idling car to adjust something under the hood and apparently adjusted the wrong thing, sending the car thrusting forward (February). (3) Jamie Vandegraaf, 23, was slammed by his own car as he leaped from the driver's side (not far enough to clear the door, apparently) to avoid South Portland, Maine, police and U.S. Marshals pursuing him concerning the robbery of a Shaw's supermarket (April). [Associated Press via KARE-TV (Minneapolis), 3-13-2015] [WNEP-TV (Moosic, Pa.), 2-22-2015] [Bangor Daily News, 4-3-2015]

-- Mohamed Nafiu was arrested in Lagos, Nigeria, in April and charged with robbery after he and his pet baboon intercepted a pedestrian leaving a bank and frightened him into fleeing, leaving his money behind. Police said the versatile baboon had also previously snatched victims' valuables. [Information Nigeria (Lagos), 3-28-2015]

-- Police in eastern South Africa were searching in May for the three women who accosted a man in Kwazakhele Township, near Port Elizabeth, raped him in the back seat of a black BMW, collected his semen in a cooler, and sped away without him. Constable Mncedi Mbombo told the Sowetan Live website, "This is really confusing to us because we have never heard of such a thing before." [Sowetan Live (Johannesburg), 5-7-2015]

The Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard near Cherokee, Alabama, is reserved as hallowed ground for burial of genuine coon dogs, which must be judged authentic before their carcasses can be accepted, according to a December (2010) report in the Birmingham News. The Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association must attest to the dog's having had the ability "to tree a raccoon." (In March 2010, a funeral for one coon dog at Key Underwood drew 200 mourners.) [Birmingham News, 12-30-2010]

Thanks This Week to Mark Wojahn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.