One of the remaining 116 Guantanamo Bay prisoners (a man suspected of having been close to Osama bin Laden) has a dating profile on Match.com captioned "detained but ready to mingle," the man's lawyer Carlos Warner told Al Jazeera America in September. Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani has relentlessly proclaimed his innocence, and Warner released a series of charming letters from his client intended to humanize him. Al-Afghani commented on Lebron James, Caitlyn Jenner, the Ashley Madison website and, for some reason, South Dakota, but with the recent publicity, Match.com appears to have suspended the account. [Al Jazeera America, 9-11-2015]

-- "Let me get this straight," wrote an incredulous commenter in September. "(T)hose who oversee" the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, Michigan, have the park "populated with snakes that can bite and inflict serious wounds." The remark was in response to a visitor's having been bitten by one of at least 27 rattlesnakes loose (by design) on the grounds. (The Eastern Massasauga rattler is protected by state law.) On the other hand, the park has posted many snake warning signs, and the woman who was bitten had removed her shoes to walk in the lush grass. [Detroit News, 9-15-2015]

-- Aluminum Foil Makes a Comeback: (1) City officials in Tarpon Springs, Florida, scrambled in May to find an ordinance that artist Piotr Janowski might have violated when he covered two palm trees, and then three sides of his rented home, in heavy-duty aluminum foil, to the consternation of neighbors. Janowski is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his work has been shown in that city's Polish Museum of America. (2) National Forest Service officials announced success in fire retardation in August by protectively sealing a remote structure near an Idaho wildfire in multi-ply foil. (3) And then there is Arthur Brown, 78, also "successful" in having kept his house in Hermitage, Pennsylvania, free of "aliens" by sealing it in foil (although neighbors griped in September about falling property values). [Tampa Bay Times, 5-29-2015] [KREM-TV (Spokane), 8-27-2015] [WKBN-TV (Youngstown, Ohio), 9-10-2015]

Officials in Carroll County, Maryland, finally released a woman in August after she had been detained for 67 days -- just for declining to give her name to a traffic patrolman (who had stopped her for a broken taillight). In her idiosyncratic understanding of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment, to "not be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against (herself)" means keeping her identity hidden from police. Eventually, sheriff's deputies captured her fingerprints, and since they matched no outstanding warrants, she was released. [Carroll County Times, 9-1-2015]

-- Adam Partridge Auctioneers in Liverpool announced in September that the equivalent of $10,000 would be the starting bid on a two-pound mass of whale vomit (hardened into a chunk by aging in ocean waters) picked up by a beachcomber in Wales. BBC News reported that a six-pound hunk once sold for the equivalent of $150,000; when aged into "ambergris," the putrid waste product turns waxy and sweet-smelling and proves valuable to "high-end perfume houses." [Washington Post, 9-9-2015]

-- An international property rental service recently found a seven-bedroom castle on 200 acres in Ringuette, France, for the equivalent of $2,925 a month -- which San Francisco's KNTV immediately contrasted with the listing of a 401-square-foot apartment in the city's Lower Haight district, offered at $3,000 per month. Another French castle (six bedrooms, a pool, three-acre garden, "several lawns") rents for the equivalent of $4,940 -- about what a three-bedroom on Collins Street in San Francisco goes for. [KNTV, 9-9-2015]

-- Marie Holmes tearfully disclosed in March how the $88 million Powerball lump sum she had won would allow her to finish college and help her four kids (one with cerebral palsy). Right away, though, her boyfriend, Lamar "Hot Sauce" McDow, was charged with drug trafficking and needed $3 million bail, which she took care of. Then, in August, in Brunswick County, North Carolina, "Hot Sauce" was arrested again, for selling heroin, and reporters surmised that Holmes must have been the one who posted that $6 million bail. (Holmes addressed her critics on Facebook: "What Y'all need to be worried about is Y'all money ....") [New York Daily News, 8-13-2015] [WWAY-TV (Wilmington, N.C.), 8-5-2015]

Military veteran Gary Dixon, 65, has multiple medical issues, the worst of which is stage four lung cancer, which he says he got from Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. He takes from 10 to 15 meds a day, previously supplied by the Veterans hospital in Topeka, Kansas, but for post-traumatic stress and anxiety, he also smokes marijuana when he can get it. (Kansas has not legalized medical marijuana.) A recent policy change by the VA bars pain meds for marijuana users, leading Dixon to fend for himself for the meds (about $400 a month, he said), because he so badly needs the marijuana. [KSNT-TV (Topeka), 9-9-2015]

An ovipositor is the organ that inserts or receives an egg (especially from parasites like bees -- and that thing in "Alien"). A spokesperson from a startup firm called Primal Hardwere (in an August interview with Vice.com) assumes a human market for ovipositors and is now selling two hollowed-tube models at $120 and $130 (along with advice on creating gelatin "eggs" for insertion). The product, acknowledged the Primal Hardwere rep (to the wary interviewer), "can be ... off-putting" to anyone who might not "fantasize about being the willing or unwilling host of alien beings inside them." [Vice.com, 8-13-2015]

More than three-fourths of civil cases filed in the busy Tucson, Arizona, federal court in 2014 -- nearly 3,000 in a courthouse open only about 250 days a year -- were filed by one man, a prisoner named Dale Maisano, who was expressing disappointment with his health care as he serves his 15-year term for aggravated assault. Maisano said in July 2015 he was still getting little help for his valley fever, gallstones, sun sensitivity, leaky bladder and nerve problems in his feet. [Tucson.com, 7-11-2015]

"We will not forget (rape victims). We will not abandon you." So said Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a September self-congratulatory press conference along with Vice President Joe Biden, announcing $78 million in grants for testing rape kits that had been gathering dust for years around the country (surely allowing hundreds of rapists to have escaped punishment and some to re-offend) -- except that these victims have already been "forgotten" and "abandoned" for more than five years. Biden was vice president in 2010 when News of the Weird pointed out that Illinois was violating state law by ignoring 80 percent of its rape kits, and then in 2012 when Houston revealed it was sitting on 6,663 kits (and Detroit 11,000). (News of the Weird's understated 2010 headline: "Things That Shouldn't Get Backlogged"). [Huffington Post, 9-10-2015]

Pamela Downs, 45, was arrested in Kingsport, Tennessee, in July and charged with using a counterfeit $5 bill at a gas station (a bill that was merely two photocopied sides poorly glued together, with one side upside down). Downs explained as she was being cuffed, "(A)ll these other bitches get to print money so I can too." (She told officers later that she had read "online" that "President Obama" had "made a new law" allowing people to print money if they were on a fixed income. [Kingsport Times-News, 7-13-2015]

The city health office in London, Ontario, created an online sex-education game that officials hope will appeal to teenagers in that its messages are delivered by a cast of iconic superheroes. According to a February (2010) report by Canwest News Service, the players are Captain Condom (who wears a "cap"), Wonder Vag (a virgin girl), Power Pap ("sexually active") and Willy the Kid, with each fighting the villain Sperminator, who wears a red wrestling mask and has phalluses for arms. The characters answer sex-knowledge questions and, with correct answers, obtain "protection," but a wrong answer gets the player squirted with sperm. (The game, still online as of April 2010, can be hard to find today, but Captain Condom lives on in Canadian sex education imagery.) [Montreal Gazette-Canwest, 2-12-2010]

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

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).