Muslim clerics complain of the commercialization of the holy city of Mecca during the annual hajj pilgrimages, but for Pope Francis' visits to New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia in mid-September, shameless street vendors and entrepreneurs already appear to be eclipsing Mecca's experience. Merchants said they'd be selling, among other tacky items, mozzarella cheese statuettes of the pope ($20), a "pope toaster" to burnish Francis' image on bread, a Philly-themed bobblehead associating the pope with the movie boxer Rocky, local beers Papal Pleasure and YOPO (You Only Pope Once) and T-shirts ("Yo Pontiff!" and "The Pope Is My Homeboy"). The Wall Street Journal quoted a Philadelphia archdiocese spokesman admitting that "you kind of have to take it in stride." [Wall Street Journal, 8-26-2015; Washington Post, 8-24-2015]

In May, suspect David Riffle, charged with trespassing (after shouting "religious proverbs" at patrons of the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida), greeted Broward County judge John "Jay" Hurley at his bail hearing by inquiring, "How you doin', a--hole?" Unfazed, Hurley responded, "I'm doing fine. How are you, sir?" After listening to Riffle on religion a bit longer, Hurley set bond at $100. In August, talking to Judge Hurley from jail via closed circuit TV, arrestee Susan Surrette, 54, "flashed" him as she tried to prove an alleged recent assault. The self-described "escort" and "porn star" ("Kayla Kupcakes") had lifted her shirt to reveal bruises. (Her bond, also, was $100.) [WPLG-TV (Miami), 5-13-2015] [WPTV (West Palm Beach), 8-21-2015]

-- A Chinese woman identified only as Zeng was detained and stabilized at Beijing Capital International Airport in August after being found dazed on the floor at a boarding gate. She had attempted to fly with a bottle of expensive cognac (Remy Martin XO Excellence) in her carry-on -- a violation of Chinese regulations barring liquids over 100 ml (the cognac was 700 ml, selling for about $200 in the United States) and was presented with the ultimatum to give up the bottle or miss the flight. She decided to drink the contents on the spot (but was subsequently declared too drunk to board). [South China Morning Post, 8-24-2015]

-- "And Another Thing, Dad": Michael May, 44, was arrested in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in August after the Pilot Baptist Cemetery near Stanford reported that he had tried to dig up the grave of his dead father "in order to argue with him," according to Lexington's WLEX-TV. May told officers his dad had died about 30 years ago. (Alcohol was involved in the decision to dig.) [WAVE-TV, 8-18-2015]

-- Under a 1981 treaty, at least 50 countries, including the United States, have banned their militaries from employing flamethrowers (as "inhumane"), but entrepreneurs have begun to market the devices domestically for $900 to $1,600 each (based on the distance of the flame, at 25 feet or 50 feet). Federal regulators appear uninterested (as the contraptions are technically neither firearms nor explosives), and only two states prohibit them outright, though a few jurisdictions believe flamethrowers are illegal under fire codes. The Ohio startup Throwflame has sensed the need for marketing savvy and describes flamethrowers as primarily for "entertainment." (Recent news reports indicate a slight run on sales under the suspicion that authorities will soon realize the danger and outlaw them.) [ArsTechnica.com, 8-25-2015; CNN via WTKR-TV (Norfolk, Va.), 8-14-2015]

-- After two women accused Sheffield Village, Ohio, attorney Michael Fine of "hypnotizing" and sex-talking to them during office consultations, police and the county bar association opened an investigation in November 2014. Though Fine was being consulted on a custody matter, he was secretly audio-recorded (according to one woman's lawsuit) touting "powerful whole body orgasms" and suggesting that he was "the world's greatest lover" -- among details the client recalls only vaguely if at all. The bar association later said as many as 25 women may have been victimized. Though no criminal charges have been filed, Fine's lawyer said in August that his client had voluntarily given up his law license and was seeking "medical" help. [Associated Press via Columbus Dispatch, 8-19-2015] [WEWS-TV (Cleveland), 2-3-2015]

-- Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology lecturer Joseph Gibbons was sentenced in July to a year in prison for robbing a New York City Capital One bank in December (while operating a video camera) in a heist that he had insisted all along was merely "performance art." (He had been suspected in a similar robbery in Rhode Island in November.) His biography on the MIT website described him as "blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, self and persona ... with a contradictory impulse to confabulate and dissimulate." The Queens Museum in New York City has offered to screen the footage of the robbery as an art piece. [New York Times, 7-13-2015]

-- Artist Anish Kapoor initially denied that his 400 to 500 tons of stones, called "Dirty Corner," were "problematic," but later conceded that they might have "multiple interpretive possibilities." The installation, which ran through the summer at France's Palace of Versailles with five other large sculptures, was arranged in the form of a huge vulva, and represented, he said, "the vagina of a queen who is taking power." [Washington Post, 6-8-2015]

(1) A Pig Flies: On Aug. 20, a 250-pound pig was knocked free of a trailer traveling at 65 mph on Interstate 25 near Fort Collins, Colorado -- thus briefly, at least, sailing. It was not badly hurt. (2) In July, Mexican customs officers detained an American and a Mexican on the bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, with 13 pounds of marijuana the two allegedly were smuggling into Mexico to sell. (The month before, Juarez officials arrested another El Paso woman with a kilo of crystal meth allegedly destined for Mexican sale.) [Coloradoan (Fort Collins), 8-20-2015] [El Paso Times, 7-23-2015]

-- Short-Term Rehab: Heath Franklin, 44, was arrested on Aug. 20 at the Wal-Mart in Dalton, Georgia, charged with taking "upskirt" photos of female shoppers. Franklin, a registered sex offender, had been released on Aug. 19 from Central State Prison, where he was serving a term for sexual offenses (including taking unlawful photos). [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 8-21-2015]

-- "Excessive" (I): Three weeks ago, News of the Weird mentioned that a federal judge had officially declared 29 years as an excessive amount of time for the Bureau of Land Management to have sat on a natural gas permit, but four years' waiting is apparently an acceptable period for a judge to sit on a decision whether to fire a New York City schoolteacher. Edward Morrissey, charged with pushing and shoving a student at PS 109 in Brooklyn in 2009, had his administrative hearing in 2011 and since then has been drawing full pay and benefits (including seniority raises) while reporting to a no-duties "job" (termed a "rubber room") every school day. In May 2015, he was finally found guilty. [New York Post, 8-23-2015]

-- "Excessive" (II): In August the independent Police Foundation declared it "excessive" that cops in Stockton, California, had fired 600 gunshots trying to apprehend robbers of a Bank of the West branch in July 2014. None of the robbers was hit, but one hostage was -- fatally, hit by 10 police bullets. According to the report, "a few" of the officers engaged in "sympathetic fire," shooting merely because their colleagues were shooting (and since the sequence was chaotic, sympathetic fire occurred even though other colleagues were actually positioned in front of shooters). [Los Angeles Times, 8-17-2015]

In Ogden, Utah, in October (2009), Adam Manning, 30, accompanied his pregnant girlfriend to the McKay-Dee Hospital emergency room as she was going into labor. According to witnesses, as a nurse attended to the woman, Manning began flirting with her, complimenting the nurse's looks and giving her neck rubs. When Manning then allegedly groped the nurse's breast, she called for security, and Manning was eventually arrested and taken to jail, thus missing the birth of his child. [Salt Lake Tribune, 10-10-2009]

Thanks This Week to Rosie Martinez and Paul Peterson, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

British director Missouri Williams brought an adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear" to the London Courtyard art facility in August for a one-week run, centered on a human actor struggling to stage the play using only sheep. The pivotal character, Lear's daughter Cordelia, famously withholds flattering Lear (thus forgoing inheriting the kingdom), and her silence forever tortures Lear -- and of course silence is something sheep pull off well. Actor Alasdair Saksena admitted there is an "element of unpredictability with the sheep," but lauded their punctuality, calmness and lack of fee demands. Williams promised another Courtyard run for "King Lear With Sheep" in the fall. [New York Times, 8-11-2015; Islington Gazette, 8-12-2015]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, has an award-winning "telework" program allowing patent examiners flexible schedules, leading half of the 8,300 to work at home full-time -- despite a 2014 Washington Post report on employees gaming the system. In August, the agency's inspector general exposed several of the most ridiculous cases of slacking off, including one examiner who was paid for at least 18 weeks' work last year that he did not perform and that his manager did not notice. (The examiner, who had been issued nine poor-performance warnings since 2012 and who had flaunted his carefree "workday" to co-workers for years, abruptly resigned two hours before a meeting on the charge and thus left with a "clean" personnel record.) Wrote the Post, "It's a startling example of a culture that's maddening." [Washington Post, 8-21-2015]

Only China and Iran execute more prisoners, but Saudi Arabia also has a soft side -- for jihadists. Saudis who defy a ban on leaving the country to fight (usually against the common enemy, Syria's Bashar al-Assad) are, if they return, imprisoned at a maximum-security facility in Riyadh, but with liberal short "vacations" at "Family House," hotel-quality quarters with good food, playgrounds for children and other privileges (monitored through guest-satisfaction surveys). Returning jihadists also have access to education and psychologists and receive the equivalent of $530 a month with ATM privileges. The purpose is to persuade the warriors not to return to the battlefield once released, and officials estimate that the program is about 85 percent effective. [Bloomberg Business, 7-8-2015]

-- Impersonating a police officer in a traffic stop is not uncommon, but Logan Shaulis, 19, was apparently so judgment-impaired on May 30 that he set up his own elaborate "DUI checkpoint" on route 601 near Somerset, Pennsylvania, complete with road flares, demanding "license, registration and insurance" from driver after driver. The irony of the inebriated Shaulis judging motorists' sobriety was short-lived, as real troopers soon arrived and arrested him (on DUI, among other charges). [Associated Press via WGN-TV (Chicago), 6-2-2015]

-- A woman identified only as Zeng, age 39, was finally imprisoned in August in Urumqi, China -- 10 years after she was convicted of corruption. Availing herself of a traditional "probation" option in Chinese law for expectant mothers, Zeng had remained free by getting herself pregnant (and proving it) 14 times during the 10 years (although only some of the fetuses were carried to term). [People's Daily Online via Daily Mail (London), 8-13-2015]

-- The president of the University of New Hampshire publicly complained in July about the "bias-free language guide" posted on the school's website -- since, he said, it denounces use of such words as "Americans" (as insensitive to South Americans), "seniors" (better, "people of advanced age"), "rich" (should be "person of material wealth") and "poor" (change to "person who lacks advantages that others have"). (One state senator mockingly suggested changing the state's "Live Free or Die" motto to "Live Free But Upset No One.") [WMUR-TV (Manchester), 7-29-2015]

-- Tough Love: Sexual assault is certainly punishable in New Hampshire by prison time, but pending legislation assumes prison is not enough. By House Bill 212, anyone who commits sexual assault while out hunting or fishing will also have his hunting or fishing license revoked. [House Bill 212, 6-11-2015]

After five students drowned while swimming in a reservoir in China's Yunnan province, parents of two of them sued the reservoir's management company, complaining that it should have posted signs or barricades or, even better, guards to keep kids from frolicking in the dangerous waters. According to an August report, the management company has now countersued the parents, demanding compensation for the additional water-treatment measures it was forced to undertake because the reservoir had been "polluted" by their children's corpses. [The Shanghaiist, 8-20-2015]

(1) A female Yangtze giant softshell turtle, believed to be the last female of her species, was artificially inseminated in May at Suzhou Zoo in China through the efforts of animal fertility experts from around the world. She is thought to be more than 100 years old (as was the last male to "romance" her, although their courtship produced only unfertilized eggs). (2) The Times of London reported in July that Briton Pamela Horner, seeking her "escaped" tortoise Boris (even though, as they say, he couldn't have gone far), found "tortoise porn" on YouTube (mostly, mating sounds) to play in the yard and lure him back. A tortoise expert told The Times: "They make quite a lot of noise. We can hear them groaning for miles." [San Diego Zoo press release, 5-24-2015] [The Times of London, 7-9-2015]

(1) Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Late one night in July, police in Phoenix were chasing a speeding truck whose driver eventually lost control and careened into a house near Mulberry Drive. As officers were checking for victims (it turned out no one was home), they discovered a large quantity of suspected marijuana -- and opened an investigation of the super-unlucky residents. (2) Right Place, Right Time: Shane Peters' cherished 2004 Dodge Durango broke down on the road in Livingston, Texas, in June, but before he could return to tow it, a thief hauled it away. About a month later, Peters' wife spotted the familiar Durango in town and with the help of police got it back -- with (courtesy of the thief) a newly repaired drive shaft and three new wheels (and the thief's drug supply, but police seized that). [KPHO-TV, 7-10-2015] [KHOU-TV (Houston), 7-13-2015]

The Michigan legislature and the state Court of Appeals (as News of the Weird reported in December) have, for some reason, given its concealed-carry gun licensees the additional right of openly carrying weapons on school grounds, and in August, a judge in Genesee County upheld that interpretation. Asked a lawyer preparing to appeal the decision, "If I'm a principal" and see someone "walking up to my building with a gun, what am I supposed to do?" He should, he said, "declare a lockdown ... call the police." However, the open-carry parent who had been denied access to the school said the court ruling in his favor was just "common sense." [Detroit Free Press, 8-11-2015]

No. 1 in the News: Fukuoka Prefectural Police arrested two officials at a video company in June, along with three "actresses," in the making of videos of the three seated on the floor of trains of the Nishi-Nippon Railroad and urinating. Police said they were acting on complaints of DVD customers (who, after all, had selected the disks from the video company's "inappropriate urination" category, but nonetheless complained to the railroad). [Tokyo Reporter, 6-23-2015]

The human brain's 100 billion neurons may have such specific functions that a few electrically charge only upon recognition of a single celebrity, such as Oprah Winfrey or Bill Clinton. UCLA researchers, studying the healthy cells of pre-op epilepsy patients, inadvertently discovered this property, which apparently varies with individuals but remains internally consistent (recognizing the celebrity's name, picture or sound). Patients were presented "hundreds of stimuli," one researcher told The Wall Street Journal in October (2009), but "the neuron would respond to only one or two." For example, neurons were found that reacted only to Jennifer Aniston, only to Mother Teresa, only to characters on "The Simpsons." [Wall Street Journal, 10-9-2009]

Thanks This Week to Jim Moir and Edward Hess, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The distress across the Western world in July over the big-game killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe was apparently misdirected, according to veteran "animal communicator" Karen Anderson of Elk, Washington, who told Facebook and Internet visitors (www.AnimalCommunicating.com) that Cecil and she had discussed his demise and that he was over it. Also, Cecil apparently speaks in formal, graceful English, as Anderson quoted him (according to London's The Independent): "Let not the actions of these few men defeat us," said Cecil, "or allow darkness to enter our hearts." "I am," he added, "grander than before as no one can take our purity, our truth or our soul." (Anderson's usual fee to speak with deceased pets is $75 for 15 minutes, but she did not disclose whether she had a client for Cecil's tab.) [The Independent, 7-31-2015]

-- In May, three Santa Ana, California, police officers who had just raided the unlicensed Sky High Holistic medical marijuana dispensary were caught on the facility's surveillance video eating supposedly seized cannabis-infused chocolate bars, and an "internal affairs" investigation was opened. However, in August, the Orange County Register reported that the cops went to court to have the video suppressed. Their familiar legal argument is that the video violates their right to privacy -- in that they had purposely disabled the cameras before they began munching the contraband and thus had the requisite "expectation of privacy" that triggers the right. (Possibly, they had missed a camera.) [Orange County Register, 8-3-2015]

-- The mother of three children in Grandview, Missouri, suspected that Dameion McBride, 22, had sexually molested her two daughters (ages 4 and 8) and son (age 3), but McBride indignantly denied it, claiming that he is a child-abuse survivor himself, and booked himself on the national "Steve Wilkos" TV show in May to take a lie detector test to clear his name. However, he failed the test as to each child and was subsequently arrested. (The Associated Press reported that McBride insisted on a police lie detector test -- and failed that, too.) [WDAF-TV (Kansas City), 7-15-2015]

On Aug. 1, one of the world's weirdest border disputes came to an end, as India and Bangladesh exchanged more than 160 "enclaves" -- sovereign territory completely surrounded by the other country's sovereign territory (in principle, making travel out of the enclaves impossible unless the enclave had an embassy or another office that issues visas). In fact, there was one Indian enclave (Dahala Khagrabari) completely within a Bangladeshi enclave that is completely inside an Indian enclave inside Bangladesh. [Washington Post, 8-1-2015]

-- The estate of Dr. Rajan Verma filed a lawsuit in July against the Tralf Music Hall in Buffalo, New York, after Dr. Verma fell to his death following a concert when he lost his balance sliding down the banister. The estate claims that there must have been a sticky substance on the railing. The estate's lawyers said that since alcohol was served at the concert, the promoters should have known to take extra safety precautions for banister-riders. [Courthouse News, 7-21-2015]

-- Who gets badly hurt playing musical chairs? Robin Earnest, 46, told an Arkansas claims hearing that she broke two fingers and was forced into "years" of surgery and physical therapy over a game that was part of a class at the College of the Ouachitas in 2011 and demanded at least $75,000 from the state. The July hearing was dominated by a discussion of the proper way to play musical chairs because the instructor had ordered three students to contest one chair -- with Earnest asserting that everyone knows it would be two chairs for three people. [Arkansas Online, 7-10-2015]

-- "Green-fingered residents" can show off their hard work each year at the Quedgeley Show in Gloucestershire, England, entering arrangements of colorful, plump garden-grown vegetables. However, attendance has been off in recent years, reported the Western Daily Press, leaving the show's future in doubt -- until organizers announced that this year, to increase the number of entries, supermarket-bought vegetables could be submitted. [Western Daily Press, 7-24-2015]

-- "Number Two, Turn to the Right and Growl": Magistrates in Ceredigion, Wales, fined Edward Davies the equivalent of about $1,130 in June, finding that it was his dog that bit a teenage girl last October, sending her to a hospital with swelling and bruising. Aberystwyth authorities had set up a formal police lineup of dogs from the neighborhood, and the girl had made a positive ID of Davies' dog as the perp. [Wales Online, 6-4-2015]

Judge Roger Barto, of Waterloo (New York) Village Court, was convicted in August of staging a fake assault on himself to convince doctors to prescribe him pain medication. Officers arriving at the scene found Barto lying on the ground with a shattered porcelain toilet tank lid nearby from (he said) being smacked on the head by a mugger. However, doctors found an apparent flaw in Barto's ruse: He had forgotten to actually hurt himself during the "attack" -- as medical personnel had found no mark, cut or bruise anywhere on him. [Syracuse.com, 8-10-2015]

-- Once again during a police raid of a suspected drug house (this time, in Wood River, Illinois, in July), with cops swarming the home and yard, confiscating evidence and arresting occupants, officers had to stop briefly from time to time to answer the front door (10 times during a 90-minute period) -- as the dealer's regular (oblivious) customers continually arrived to buy more heroin. [KTVI-TV (St. Louis), 7-29-2015]

-- In the face of a declining military budget, the Defense Ministry of the Netherlands issued confidential instructions to commanders in July that during training exercises, to preserve dwindling ammunition, soldiers should simply shout "Bang, Bang!" instead of firing their weapons. Said a soldiers' advocate, "Even if you have no bullets, you (still) have to train with your weapon." [Reuters via RT.com (Moscow), 8-3-2015]

-- Thinning the Herd: (1) When two men who had been drinking in the apartment of Brandon Thomas, 30, in Conyers, Georgia, on July 23 wanted to leave, Mr. Thomas objected. "If y'all are going to drink my alcohol, y'all are going to play my game," he said, announcing that his "game" was Russian roulette. Minutes later, after spinning the revolver's cylinder, Mr. Thomas lost the game. (2) Three days later in rural Bell County, Kentucky, John Brock, 60, asked the Lord once again to certify his righteousness by allowing him to safely handle a rattlesnake during services at Mossy Simpson Pentecostal Church. However exemplary Mr. Brock's faith had been previously, on that day, apparently, it was found wanting, and he is no longer with us. [Rockdale News, 7-23-2015] [WKYT-TV (Lexington, Ky.), 7-28-2015]

(1) Wallace Berg, 81, was charged with public indecency in Stratford, Connecticut, in July after a neighbor showed police a video he had made of Berg, naked and (according to an Associated Press report) "performing a sex act with some shrubbery." (2) "Where the sun don't shine" is now a standard hiding place for contraband, including for Matthew Smith, 36, arrested in Greendale, Indiana, in July. After he drew attention with a long restroom session at a Shell station, police confronted him about the white powder on his nose, and Smith sheepishly handed over the minutes-ago-removed pills and cocaine -- but he had also extracted, inexplicably, a fishing bobber, a screwdriver and an "open tire plug kit." [Associated Press via Hartford Courant, 7-29-2015] [EagleCountryOnline, 7-22-2015]

Louis Woodcock, 23, testified at his Toronto trial in March (2010) that he was not involved in the 2005 shooting of a woman, despite being seen on surveillance video approaching the woman with his hand inside his jacket until gunshots rang out. He said his hand was not on a gun but that he often kept his hand inside his jacket to keep from sucking his thumb, which is a habit he picked up in childhood and which did not go over well on the street. (The jury, apparently not seeing him as the thumb-sucking type, convicted him of manslaughter.) [CTV (Toronto), 3-9-2010]

Thanks This Week to Dan Bohlen, Dan Wasserman, Bryce Jackson, and Charles Smaistrla, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.