The bold, shameless leering of David Zaitzeff is legendary around Seattle's parks, and more so since he filed a civil complaint against the city in September challenging its anti-voyeurism law for placing a "chilling effect" on his photography of immodestly dressed women in public. Though he has never been charged with a crime, he roams freely (and apparently joyously) around short- skirted and swimsuit-clad "gals" while himself often wearing only a thong and bearing a "Free Hugs and Kisses" sign. Zaitzeff's websites "extol" public nudity, wrote the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and explain, for example, that a woman who angles her "bod" to offer a view of "side boob" is fair game for his camera. Zaitzeff's complaint -- that the law criminalizes photography of a person's "intimate areas" (clothed or not) without explicit permission -- is distressing him. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer via SFGate.com, 9-17-2015]

Randy Richardson, 42, vying unopposed for the Riceville, Iowa, school board (having agreed to run just because he has two kids in school) failed to get any votes at all -- as even he was too busy on election day (Sept. 8) to make it to the polls (nor were there any write-ins). To resolve the 0-0 result, the other board members simply appointed Richardson to the office. Riceville, near the Minnesota border, is a big-time farming community, and registered voters queried by The Des Moines Register said they just had too much fieldwork to do that day. [Associated Press via U.S. News & World Report, 9-20-2015]

Researchers recently came upon a small community (not named) in the Dominican Republic with an unusual incidence of adolescent boys having spent the first decade or so of their lives as girls because their penises and testes did not appear until puberty. A September BBC News dispatch referred to the boys as "Guevedoces" and credited the community for alerting researchers, who ultimately developed a drug to replace the culprit enzyme whose absence was causing the problem. (The full shot of testosterone that should have been delivered in the mother's womb was not arriving until puberty.) [BBC News, 9-20-2015]

The serpentine queue extended for blocks in September in Lucknow, India, after the state government of Uttar Pradesh announced 368 job openings (almost all menial) -- eventually resulting in about 2.3 million applications, 200,000 from people with advanced degrees (even though the $240/month positions required only a fifth-grade education, according to an Associated Press dispatch). About 13 million young people enter India's job market each year. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 9-18-2015]

-- At a September convention on ethical issues involving computers, a researcher at Britain's De Montfort University decried the development of devices that might permit human-robot sex. Though no human would be "victimized," the researcher warned that such machines (some already in service) will exacerbate existing "power imbalances" between men and women and pave the way for more human exploitation. One critic challenged, offering that such robots would be no more demeaning to women than, say, vibrators. However, the researcher ominously warned that there may someday be robots resembling children, marketed for sex. (A September USA Today dispatch from Tokyo reported that the company SoftBank had banned sex, via its user agreement, with its new 4-foot-tall human-like robot -- even though "Pepper" features nothing resembling genitalia.) [Washington Post , 9-15-2015] [USA Today, 9-29-2015]

-- Thailand's "Last Resort Rehab" at the Wat Thamkrabok Temple about 100 miles north of Bangkok resembles a traditional drug-detox facility (work, relaxation, meditation) -- except for the vomiting. At the "Vomit Temple," Buddhist priests mix a concoction of 120 herbal ingredients that are nasty, according to the temple's methamphetamine addicts interviewed for a recent Australian TV documentary. Said one, of the rehab agenda: "Vomiting is at 3 p.m. every day. Foreigners must vomit for the first five days. The vomiting is intense." [International Business Times (London), 9-29-2015]

-- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a federal lawsuit in California in September on behalf of an endangered crested black macaque that wandered up to an unattended camera on a tripod and clicked a selfie. The camera belonged to photographer David Slater, who claimed copyright to the photo even though "Naturo" actually snapped it. The shot might be valuable to Naturo since it has become viral on the Internet. (Though the photo was taken in Indonesia, Slater's publisher is based in California.) [CNN, 9-23-2015]

-- Jose Banks, now 40, filed a $10 million lawsuit in 2014 against the federal government because jailers at Chicago's high-rise Metropolitan Correctional Center failed to guard him closely enough in 2012, thus enabling him to think he could escape. He and a cellmate had rappelled 17 floors with bed sheets, but Banks was re-arrested a few days later. Still, he claimed that the escape caused him great trauma, in addition to "humiliation and embarrassment" and "damage to his reputation." (In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals turned him down. Wrote the judges, "No one has a personal right to be better guarded.") [Associated Press via Fox News, 9-26-2015]

Many in conservative Jewish communities still practice the tradition of Kaporos on the day of atonement, but the critics were out in force in New York City's Borough Park neighborhood in September to protest the ritual's slaughter there of 50,000 chickens. (A synagogue raises money by "selling" chickens to members, who then have butchers swing the chickens overhead three times, thus transferring the owners' sins to the chickens. Ultimately, the chickens are beheaded, supposedly erasing the humans' sins. Protesters ask why not just donate money.) A judge refused to block the ritual but ordered police to enforce the sanitation laws governing the beheadings. [New York Daily News, 9-18-2015]

"London Zoo Monkey-Keeper and Meerkat-Keeper 'Fought Over Llama-Keeper'" (a British human love triangle, September, The Guardian). "Man Suffering From Constipation for 10 Years Has 11-Pound Stool Removed" (Chengdu, China, August, Central European News). "Naked Spanish Clowns Anger Palestinians" (a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jerusalem backfired, September, YNet News). "Swedish Porn Star Jumps Into Spanish Bullfighting Ring to Comfort Dying Bull" (Malaga, Spain, September, The Local). [The Guardian (London), 9-25-2015] [Central European News via Fox News, 8-31-2015] [YNet News (Tel Aviv), 9-17-2015] [The Local (Stockholm) via Fox News Latino, 9-22-2015]

(1) In August, Che Hearn, 25, who police said had just shoplifted electronics items from the Wal-Mart in Round Lake Beach, Illinois, was picked up while on foot near the store. Police found that Hearn had actually driven his car to the Wal-Mart but that while he was inside shoplifting, a repo agent (who had followed him to the store) had confiscated it. (2) Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (the sixth man to walk on the moon) told a reporter in August that "my own experience talking to people" has made it clear that extraterrestrials are trying "to keep us from going to war" with Russia and that U.S. military officers have told him that their test missiles are "frequently" shot down "by alien spacecraft." [Lake County News-Sun, 8-7-2015] [Fox News, 8-15-2015]

Peter Frederiksen, 63, a gun shop owner in Bloemfontein, South Africa, was detained by police in September pending formal charges after his wife discovered 21 packages labeled as female genitals in their home freezer. There was no official explanation, but one officer called them the result of "mutilation of private parts of a woman, cut out and kept as trophies." One was marked with the name of a woman, "2010," and "Lesotho" (a kingdom within South Africa). [Associated Press via Huffington Post UK, 9-22-2015]

New Zealand's Waikato National Contemporary Art Award in September (2009) (worth the equivalent of $11,000) went to Dane Mitchell, whose installation consisted merely of the discarded packaging materials he had gathered from all the other exhibits vying for the prize. Mitchell named his pile "Collateral." (Announcement of the winner was poorly received by the other contestants.) [Waikato Times, 9-8-2009]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Maria Nilles, Dave Kanofsky, Robin Daley, Chuck Hamilton, and Gary Goldberg, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

PlayStations and Xboxes, However, State-of-the-Art: A New York University Center for Justice study released in September warned that, unless major upgrades are made quickly, 43 states will conduct 2016 elections on electronic voting machines at least 10 years old and woefully suspect. Those states use machines no longer made or poorly supported, and those in 14 states are more than 15 years old. There are apprehensions over antiquated security (risking miscounts, potential for hacking), but also fear of election-day breakdowns causing long lines at the polls, depressing turnout and dampening confidence in the overall fairness of the process. The NYU center estimated the costs of upgrading at greater than $1 billion. [Politico, 9-15-2015]

-- In a "manifesto" to celebrate "personal choice and expression" in the standard of beauty "in a society that already places too many harmful standards on women," according to a July New York Times report, some now are dyeing their armpit hair. At the Free Your Pits website, and events like "pit-ins" in Seattle and Pensacola, Florida, envelope-pushing women offer justifications ranging from political resistance to, according to one, "want(ing) to freak out (her) in-laws." Preferred colors are turquoise, hot pink, purple and neon yellow. [New York Times, 7-16-2015]

-- Actress Melissa Gilbert (a star of TV's "Little House on the Prairie"), 51, announced in August that she would run for Congress from Michigan's 8th Congressional District -- even though she is currently on the hook to the IRS and California for back taxes totaling $470,000. Gilbert, a former president of the Screen Actors Guild and member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, promised that she (and her actor-husband) would pay off her tax bill -- by the year 2024. [Detroit Free Press, 8-12-2015]

-- Update: Five years after News of the Weird mentioned it, Japan's Love Plus virtual-girlfriend app is more popular than ever, serving a growing segment of the country's lonely males -- those beyond peak marital years and resigned to artificial "relationships." Love Plus models (Rinko, Manaka and Nene) are chosen mostly (and surprisingly) not for physical attributes, but for flirting and companionship. One user described his "girlfriend" (in a September Time magazine dispatch) as "someone to say good morning to in the morning and ... goodnight to at night." Said a Swedish observer, "You wouldn't see (this phenomenon) in Europe or America." One problem: Men can get stuck in a "love loop" waiting for the next app update -- with, they hope, more "features." [Time.com, 9-15-2015]

-- "Odette Delacroix," 25, of North Hollywood, California, is a petite (86 pounds) model who runs an adult fetish website in which people (i.e., men) pay to watch her tumble around, bikini-clad, with "plus-size" models, up to five at a time, squashing and nearly suffocating her in "pigpiles." "Odette" told London's edition of Cosmopolitan that her PetiteVsPlump website has so far earned her about $100,000. [Cosmopolitan UK, 5-27-2015]

Scientists at North Carolina State and Wake Forest universities have developed a machine that vomits, realistically, enabling the study of "aerosolization" of dangerous norovirus. "Vomiting Larry" can replicate the process of retching, including the pressure at which particles are expelled (which, along with volume and "other vomit metrics," can teach the extent of the virus' threat in large populations). The researchers must use a harmless stand-in "bacteriophage" for the studies -- because norovirus is highly infectious even in the laboratory. [NPR, 8-19-2015]

Relentless Wannabes: (1) Authorities in Winter Haven, Florida, arrested James Garfield, 28, with the typical faux-police set-up -- Ford Crown Victoria with police lights, uniform with gold-star badge, video camera, Taser, and business cards printed with "law enforcement." (Explained Garfield lamely, the "law enforcement" was just a "printing mistake.") (2) In nearby Frostproof, Florida, Thomas Hook, 48, was also arrested in September, his 14th law-enforcement-impersonator arrest since 1992. His paraphernalia included the Crown Vic with a prisoner cage, scanner, spotlight, "private investigator" and "fugitive recovery" badges, and an equally bogus card identifying him as a retired Marine Corps major. Hook's one other connection to law enforcement: He is a registered sex offender. [Bright House News (Orlando), 9-21-2015][Tampa Tribune, 9-11-2015]

(1) Police in Scotland's Highlands were called in September when a Buddhist retreat participant, Raymond Storrie, became riled up that another, Robert Jenner, had boiling water for his tea, but not Storrie's. After Storrie vengefully snatched Jenner's own hot water, Jenner punched him twice in the head, leading Storrie to threaten to kill Jenner (but also asking, plaintively, "Is this how you practice dharma?"). (2) A Buddhist monk from Louisiana, Khang Nguyen Le, was arrested in New York City in September and accused of embezzling nearly $400,000 from his temple to fuel his gambling habit (blackjack, mostly at a Lake Charles, Louisiana, casino). [The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 9-22-2015] [New York Daily News, 9-15-2015]

-- An official of the Missouri Republican Party apologized in September for the "thoughtless" act of using an original Thomas Hart Benton mural in the state Capitol as a writing surface. Valinda Freed and a man were exchanging business cards, and Freed, needing to jot down information on the card, placed it directly on the mural to backstop her writing. [Associated Press via ABC News, 9-21-2015]

-- During a break in a murder trial in Lima, Ohio, in September, a jailer apparently absentmindedly locked inmate-witness Steven Upham in the same cell with the accused murderer he was about to testify against (Markelus Carter, 46). Upham was set to squeal that Carter had confessed the murder to him. Deputies soon rushed to the cell to break up Carter's attempt, with his fists, to change Upham's mind. (At press time, the jury was still deliberating.) [Lima News, 9-17-2015]

Police in South Union Township, Pennsylvania, say David Lee, 46, is the one who swiped a Straight Talk cellphone from a Wal-mart shelf on Sept. 15 (but wound up in the hospital). After snatching the phone, Lee went to a different section of the store and tried to open the packaging with a knife, but mishandled it and slashed his arm so severely that he had to be medevaced to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh (and a hazmat crew had to be summoned to clean up all of the blood Lee had splattered). [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 9-15-2015]

Stories that were formerly weird, but which now occur with such frequency that they must be permanently retired from circulation: (1) Once again, in July, despite being handcuffed (by a King County, Washington, sheriff's deputy) and placed in the back seat of a squad car, the prisoner managed to drive off alone. Teddy Bell, 26, was apprehended a while later with the help of K-9 officers. (2) And once again (in July in Bergen, Norway) the accused was convicted of murder based on a telltale Internet-search history. Police discovered about 250 computer queries such as "How do you poison someone without getting caught?" (Ultimately, the woman confessed that she killed her husband by lighting a charcoal grill in his bedroom while he slept.) [KOMO-TV (Seattle), 7-25-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 7-9-2015]

Life Imitates the Three Stooges: In January (2009), inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand's North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings District Court, dashed out of the building and ran for their freedom. However, when they encountered a street lamp in front of the courthouse, one man went to the right of it and the other to the left, and they slammed into each other, allowing jailers to catch up and re-arrest them. (A courthouse surveillance camera captured the moment, and the grainy video was a worldwide sensation.) [Fox News, 1-29-2009]

Thanks This Week to Richard Player, Richard Judkins, Duane Knight, and Scott Lichtenberg, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.