In September, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery concluded that records of an investigation need not be released to the Memphis City Council -- because there was no comma. The law requires the records' release "only in compliance with a subpoena or an order of a court." Slatery said if there had been a comma after "subpoena," a council subpoena would get the records, but without the comma, only court subpoenas. And in July, Andrea Cammelleri prevailed on her parking ticket challenge because there was no comma. A West Jefferson, Ohio, ordinance banned parking of any "motor vehicle camper, trailer." A state appeals judge ruled that, with a comma after "vehicle," Cammelleri's truck would have been banned, but without it, only campers and trailers were. [The Tennessean, 9-3-2015] [WSYX-TV (Columbus), 7-3-2015]

In April, the City Council of Columbia, Missouri, rigged a specially drawn "Community Improvement District" to pass a sales tax increase. Under the law, if the District had no "residents" to vote, the "election" would be decided by the tax-friendly business owners. However, the Council somehow missed that college student Jen Henderson, 23, actually lived there and had registered to vote, meaning the business owners could not vote and that the tax increase would be decided by ... Henderson. (In late August, the Council "postponed" the election and at press time were in a quandary, as Henderson said she's against higher taxes.) [Columbia Tribune, 8-25-2015, 8-31-2015]

Spike's Tactical of Apopka, Florida, introduced its version of the AR-15 assault rifle this summer "designed to never be used by Muslim terrorists." Laser-etched on one side is a symbol of the Christian Crusades and on the other, language from Psalm 144. Spike's Tactical CEO Angela Register predicted brisk sales: "Men like to accessorize their guns more than women like to accessorize their outfits." [Orlando Sentinel, 9-2-2015]

A teenage girl in Wyandotte, Michigan, using $9.95 tools from a website called FakeABaby.com, pretended for months to be pregnant (with abdomen extenders and ultrasound photos of her "triplets"). She received gifts, had a baby shower, joined expectant mother groups and even frightened her 16-year-old boyfriend enough that he began looking for full-time work to feed the soon-due "babies." However (obviously), the ruse fell apart in the 10th month (in August), drawing community outrage, but according to the sheriff, none of the "victims" who were fooled have come forward to press fraud charges. [WJBK-TV (Detroit), 9-1- 2015]

-- While "Deep South" states' courts are notorious for death sentences, the "epicenter" of capital punishment in recent years has shifted to Southern California, according to a September Slate.com analysis. While neither Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, nor Virginia has issued a death sentence this year, Riverside County, California, has recorded seven, and since 2010, Riverside and Los Angeles County have led the nation in death-row assignments. (Ironically, of course, California rarely actually executes anyone; its death row has 748 residents, and no one has walked the last mile since 2006.) [Slate.com, 9-7-2015]

-- Egypt's notorious corruption apparently reached a new level of victimizing in the summer as Mariam Malak, one of the top-performing high school students in the entire country, not only failed all six of her final exams but received scores of "zero" in each. Her family, and a legion of supporters on social media, have demanded that the prime minister investigate, especially whether another student had paid to acquire Mariam's scores or whether Mariam was failed intentionally because she is of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company AOBiome believes we have dangerously stripped "good bacteria" from our skins via "excessive cleaning" and has introduced for sale "Mother Dirt" spray to add it back. Chemical engineer and co-founder Dave Whitlock told WBZ-TV in September that he personally has "not taken a shower in over 12 years," but instead uses his odorless bacteria-restoring mist twice a day to cover himself with helpful "dirt" that activates the "good" bacteria. The company will soon begin clinical trials to demonstrate whether Mother Dirt (which also comes in shampoo form) can additionally improve certain skin conditions. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 9-4-2015]

Cormega Copening, 17, and his girlfriend Brianna Denson, 16, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, are old enough to have sex ("adults," according to state law) but apparently too young to exchange nude photos. Copening was charged with five counts of "sexual exploitation" -- for receiving "sexts" from Denson and having nude photos of himself on his phone (i.e., "exploiting" himself). Denson accepted a lesser sentence and is serving a tedious, restrictive probation; she had also been charged with self-exploiting. After much criticism for threatening felony charges and sex-offender registration, prosecutors offered Copening a similar tedious, restrictive probation in September. [Fayetteville Observer, 9-12-2015; WRAL-TV, 9-11-2015]

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands homeless in New Orleans and neighboring Gulf states, many of the 120,000 hastily constructed box-type trailers ordered up -- and later condemned for concentrations of carcinogenic formaldehyde -- by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are still being used in the U.S., though most living in them have no clue about the risk. The most recent users were oilfield workers in North Dakota boomtowns, but shady entrepreneurs had also bought trailers at FEMA auctions and sold them for tornado and flood victims -- after removing FEMA's "Not For Human Habitation" stickers, according to a major investigation by Grist.org, released in August. [Grist.org, 8-27-2015]

(1) Maurice Stewart, 22, on the lam since November while wanted for armed robbery in Cleveland, Ohio, was arrested in August when police spotted a man matching his description -- notably, his one-of-a-kind tattoo of a semiautomatic rifle just below his right eye. (2) Nearly every courthouse forces visitors to walk through a metal detector after leaving pocket contents (wallets, keys, etc.) in bins. Isaac Phillips, 24, faced several charges from a courthouse visit in August in Cincinnati because, among the items he had to remove from his pocket were a drug scale and a razor blade. After a short chase (and a Tasering), he was arrested. [New York Daily News, 9-1- 2015]

According to a divorce petition filed by Carole Mundy (and reported in the New York Post in August), her estranged husband Jeffrey Stein (a "top administrator" for New York's Nassau County District Attorney) drove her to post-traumatic stress disorder with his "lifestyle." According to the petition, Stein sometimes wore a chastity belt to work and, during sex, wore diapers and "a horse tail" (with an anal plug) and "gallop(ed)" around their home, used a litter box, had his wife "walk" him on a leash, dressed like a "sissy maid" named "Jessica," and wanted to be fed and diapered like a baby. Said Mundy's lawyer, it was "a bedroom nightmare." [New York Post, 8-31-2015]

The New Waterboarding: In April, the district attorney in Vilas County, Wisconsin, announced that he was seeking volunteers for a forensic test to help his case against Douglas Plude, 42, who is scheduled to stand trial (in 2009) for the death of his wife. The volunteers must be female, about 5 feet 8 inches tall and 140 pounds, and will have to stick their heads into a toilet bowl and flush. Plude is charged with drowning his wife in a commode, but his version (which the prosecutor believes improbable) is that his wife committed suicide by flushing herself. (Plude ultimately pleaded guilty to reckless homicide.) [USA Today-AP, 4-12-2009; WSAW-TV (Wausau, Wis.), 9-17-2010]

Thanks This Week to Rich Heiden, Jane Skeene, Dan Bohlen and Michelle Jensen, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently granted (likely for the first time ever) an application to fly a paper airplane. Prominent drone advocate Peter Sachs had applied to conduct commercial aerial photography with his "aircraft" (a Tailor Toys model with a tiny propeller and maximum range of 180 feet), and the agency, concerned with air traffic safety, accommodated by treating the request (unironically?) under the rules for manned flights (that, among other restrictions, Sachs must not exceed 100 mph and must engage a licensed airplane pilot to fly it). "With this grant," said the "victorious" Sachs, "the FAA has abandoned all logic and sensibility." [Forbes.com, 8-27-2015; Popular Science, 8-31-2015]

-- Because temperatures were in the high 90s the last weekend in August, tourists visiting the historical Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland were greeted by the outdoor sprinkler system dousing them near the gates. It was intended as relief, said operators, to keep guests from fainting, but, as one Israeli visitor said, "It was a punch to the gut" -- too reminiscent of Auschwitz's gas chamber. (Jewish prisoners had been marched calmly to their deaths under the pretense that they were only being taken for showers.) [Ynet News (Tel Aviv), 8-31-2015]

-- DIY dentistry seemed off-limits -- until amateur orthodontia got a boost from a 2012 YouTube video in which Shalom DeSota, now 17, praised rubber bands for teeth-straightening. DeSota's family lacked dental insurance at the time, so the would-be actress experimented by looping rubber bands around two front teeth she wanted to draw together. Many painful days later, she succeeded. The American Association of Orthodontists expressed alarm in August at the video's recent popularity. So much could go wrong -- infection, gum-tearing, detachment between tooth and gums -- that DeSota, the organization said, had simply been lucky. [Today.com, 8-17-2015]

Digital World: (1) The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction announced in July that it would be experimenting with online phys ed courses for high schoolers. Students would watch videos on certain activities, then engage in them, and later self-report their (as the agency calls it) "mastery." (2) British police warned in August of a brand-new sex crime based on the iPhone app AirDrop. The app sends text or photos instantly to nearby AirDrop users (who choose to receive from "contacts" or from "everyone"). Thus, perverts can "flash" strangers by posting nude pictures of themselves to reach AirDrop users set carelessly (or purposely!) to "everyone." [Charlotte Observer, 7-21-2015] [BBC News, 8-13-2015]

(1) All Sherri Smith wanted was copies of background emails about her son (who has a disability) in the files of the Goodrich, Michigan, school system, but the superintendent informed her in June that the Freedom of Information request would cost her $77,780 (4,500 hours of searching -- taking two years to complete). (Michigan's FOI law was somewhat liberalized on July 1, and Smith said she may refile.) (2) After a McKinney, Texas, police officer was filmed pointing his gun at unarmed black teenagers at a pool party in June, the online Gawker Media filed a Public Information Act request for the officer's records and any emails about his conduct. The city estimated that request's cost at $79,229 (hiring a programmer, for 2,231 hours' searching -- plus "computer time"). Gawker said it would appeal. [WNEM-TV (Saginaw, Mich.), 7-1-2015] [Gawker.com, 6-29-2015]

The streets of Jackson, Mississippi, apparently have potholes that rival the worst in the country, but without adequate budget to fix them, according to Mayor Tony Yarber. His remedy, offered earnestly to constituents in August: prayer. "I believe we can pray potholes away." (Yarber, elected in 2014, was pastor of the Relevant Empowerment Church.) [Times-Picayune, 8-21-2015]

Charged with choking and punching his fiancee: Mr. Daniel Gentleman, 28 (Prescott, Arizona, May). Charged with killing her husband and burying his body in a manure pile on their farm: Ms. Charlene Mess, 48 (Attica, New York, April). Charged with sexual assault: Mr. Huckleberry Finn (Keene, New Hampshire, July). And prominent in the news (confusingly so) when the Food and Drug Administration approved the so-called "female Viagra" drug Addyi in August: FDA spokesperson Dr. Janet Woodcock. [Prescott Daily Courier, 5-19-2015] [Associated Press via KCCI-TV (Des Moines, Iowa), 4-21-2015] [Union Leader (Manchester), 7-29-2015] [New York Times, 8-19-2015]

"Selfies" continue to take their devastating toll on Americans. On Aug. 30 in Orient, Maine, driver Jordan Toner, 29, attempting to lean into a seven-person selfie among his passengers, crashed into a tree, causing numerous injuries. On Aug. 24, Alex Gomez, 36, of Lake Elsinore, California, tried to take one after draping an angry 4-foot-long rattlesnake around his neck. The predictable bite was damaging but not fatal. On Sept. 1 in Houston, a 19-year-old man taking selfies while clumsily fondling his handgun is no longer with us. [WCSH-TV (Portland, Maine), 8-30-2015] [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 8-25-2015] [KPRC-TV (Houston), 9-2-2015]

-- In June, News of the Weird mentioned a drug dealer in Marseille, France, who was distributing loyalty cards to his best customers (fill 10 squares, get a discount). In August, a small-time cannabis dealer in the central France town of Villeurbanne pushed the envelope further by taping 1-gram samples to hand-lettered leaflets (offering home delivery for 100-euro orders, along with his first name and phone number). The man was of course arrested, with the local police superintendent musing about the man's "very special" business model. [The Local (Paris), 8-28-2015]

-- More "Slow TV": Norwegian TV viewers have somehow given strong ratings to a series of seemingly interminable programs (a continuous camera on a salmon-fishing vessel, 12 hours of live log-burning with commentary, five hours of knitters spinning their way to a world record, 100 straight hours of chess-playing, a five-day stretch from a cruise ship), and in August were presented another such gift. The Norwegian caviar company Mills said it would live stream, on a YouTube channel, nearly 11 months of fish eggs aging 24/7 in barrels -- 7,392 hours of "programming." [United Press International, 8-21-2015]

-- People With Issues: Alexander Carlsson, 25, was jailed in Sanford, Florida, in August on federal child pornography charges, but also told agents that he is a "clopper," which identifies him, he said, as one who masturbates while gazing at figurines and pictures depicting Hasbro's My Little Pony toys. [Orlando Sentinel, 8-6-2015]

A thief grabbed the purse of an elderly woman shopping with her husband at a Fred Meyer store in Spokane, Washington, on July 23 and fled through a parking lot. They had no chance to catch the man, but he happened to run right by hospital nurse Heidi Muat, 42, who surmised the situation and started after him. The thief quickly saw that Muat could outrun him, and he gave up the purse, which Muat returned to the couple. Muat later revealed her alter ego: On her Spokannibals Roller Derby team, she is known as Ms. "Ida B. ChoAzz." [KXLY-TV (Spokane), 7-27-2015] [New York Daily News, 8-7-2015]

Though India is recognized as a world leader in promoting the health benefits of urine, its dominance will be assured by the end of the year (2009) when a cow-urine-based soft drink comes to market. Om Prakash, chief of the Cow Protection Department of the RSS organization (India's largest Hindu nationalist group), trying to reassure a Times of London reporter in February, promised, "It won't smell like urine and will be tasty, too," noting that medicinal herbs would be added and toxins removed. In addition to improved health, he said, India needs a domestic (and especially Hindu) beverage to compete with the foreign influence of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. [The Times (London), 2-11-2009]

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

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.