Fort Bragg, North Carolina, declared an emergency on Oct. 30 when one of its soldiers had the bright idea to arrive for a Halloween party on base dressed as a suicide bomber, with realistic-looking canisters in a wired vest. Gates to the post (headquarters of Army special forces and airborne troops) immediately went into extended lockdown, and a bomb-disposal team was called. The soldier's name was not released. [Army Times, 11-2-2015]

-- The Blackhead Whisperer: Upland, California, dermatologist Sandra Lee is a social media cult figure with a massive audience on YouTube, where her cyst- and pimple-popping videos (charmingly, soothingly narrated) have garnered 170 million views. (The "Popping" community, on the Reddit.com site, has more than 60,000 members.) Dr. Lee admits longing for "the perfect blackhead," which to her apparently means one that is photogenic and slides out easily from its snug epidermal home. Several "Popping" fanatics told a Washington Post reporter that watching the videos is therapy for anxiety, but one fan (a "Mr. Wilson") apparently gets his "therapy" by submitting videos of his own -- unsoothing -- oil-laden bursts. [Washington Post, 10-29-2015]

-- While hopeful Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero seeks funding to perform the first ever head "transplant" (with a patient already lined up), Australian doctor Geoff Askin (the country's "godfather of spinal surgery") recently successfully "reattached" the head of a 16-month-old boy who was badly injured in a traffic accident. The toddler's head was described as internally "relocated" and reset onto the vertebra, using wire and rib tissue to graft the head back in place. (Nonetheless, the operation was widely regarded as a "miracle.") [Daily Mail (London), 8-22-2015] [7 News Melbourne via Fox News, 10-3-2015]

"Police Squad!" Lives On: (1) Hugo Castro, 28, wanted for questioning in October in San Jose, California, after his girlfriend was stabbed to death, helpfully presented himself at county jail. The sheriff's deputy listened -- and then suggested Castro go find a San Jose police officer. (Castro did, and the deputy was subsequently reassigned.) (2) New Hampshire state police laid down spiked "stop sticks" in November to slow down a fleeing Joshua Buzza, 37, near Greenland, New Hampshire. Buzza was apprehended, but not before he managed to avoid the sticks while goading the drivers of three squad cars over them (flattening several tires). [SFGate.com (San Francisco), 10-29-2015] [Union Leader (Manchester), 11-2-2015]

Recent Architectural Triumphs: (1) A 33-year-old Frenchman erected a stone table with benches over his mother's grave marker, so that he and friends could enjoy munchies and wine as he "talked" to her. (2) For the annual German Ruhrtriennale Festival in September, Atelier Van Lieshout created a temporary hotel structure that appeared from the street (even to the non-aroused) to be a couple having "doggy style" sex (to make a statement, a reviewer said, about "the power of humanity over the natural world"). (3) A homeowners' association in Winter Haven, Florida, petitioned Steven Chayt to remove the 24-by-12-foot chair he had built in his backyard as an art project -- especially because of the hole in the seat -- making it, said one neighbor, "essentially a toilet." [The Local (Paris), 11-3-2015] [Metro (London), 9-4-2015] [The Ledger (Lakeland), 10-11-2015]

Daniel Darrington was spared a murder conviction in October even after admitting intentionally shooting Rocky Matskassy at point-blank range to "relieve his suffering." The Melbourne, Australia, jury decided that Matskassy, in pain from an earlier accidental shooting, was indeed already dead when Darrington shot him. However, under the law of the state of Victoria, it is still "attempted murder" because Darrington believed that Matskassy was still alive when he pulled the trigger. [The Age (Melbourne), 10-28-2015]

Dealt a Lemon, Make Lemonade: Puerto Rico's murder/voluntary manslaughter rate is four times higher than that in the 50 states, creating a "pool of (organ) donors in the 18-to-30 age range unmatched in the mainland," according to an October Reuters report. Government officials hope creating a thriving transplant industry will bring Puerto Rico out of its economic doldrums by encouraging economy-conscious patients to spend money on hotels, transportation and food during their stay. [Reuters via Daily Mail (London), 10-24-2015]

-- A Liberty, Missouri, sheriff's deputy politely declined to identify the local man who created the sound of rapid gunfire on Oct. 13 when a "controlled" garbage burn escalated. The man decided to try extinguishing the fire by driving back and forth over it in his van, but the tires caught fire, and in addition to the van's having a gas tank, it also carried an undisclosed amount of firearms ammunition. The van was a total loss, but the sheriff's department said it doubted there would be an insurance claim filed. [Kansas City Star, 10-13-2015]

-- Wait, What? Even though Darren Paden, 52, confessed almost immediately upon his 2013 arrest for a 10-year, 200-plus-episode pattern of sexual abuse of a girl that began when she was 4, many Dearborn, Missouri, townspeople, astonishingly, turned on her and not him. Paden, volunteer fire chief in the 500-person town, is apparently a beloved neighbor with a lifetime of good deeds, leaving the victim, now 18, largely "ostracized" and called a liar, according to an October Kansas City Star report. Even some who accept that crimes were committed fear excessively punishing a "good man" (who, in one example offered by a neighbor, saved a man from being stomped to death by a cow). Nonetheless, in October, the judge sentenced Paden to 50 years in prison. [Kansas City Star, 10-30-2015]

Recurring Theme: In October, Rezwan Hussain, 29, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the illegal drugs enterprise he ran from his mother's basement in Rochdale, England. He had apparently avoided detection until March, when the Greater Manchester police arrived to question his brother. Hussain said his brother wasn't home, and they left, but a frightened Hussain ran upstairs and began tossing 500 pounds of drugs out the window in preparation for his getaway. However, police had not yet driven away, and the first bag of a nearly $5 million stash happened to land right beside their car. [Manchester Evening News, 10-23-2015]

Members of the New Orleans Vampire Association are not, of course, like Dracula or those "Twilight" characters, but rather people who are convinced that consuming other people's blood prevents illness or provides energy -- and thus seek "donors" to sit for regular or occasional slicings or pin pricks for friendship, or money or sex. Though some members have gone full-gothic in dress and lifestyle (as described in an October Washington Post report), an academic researcher studying the community has concluded that the vampires generally exhibit no signs of mental illness. [Washington Post, 10-26-2015]

Another human was shot by his dog -- this time in October in Kosciusko County, Indiana. Allie Carter's pooch had wandered over to Carter's shotgun on the ground and stepped on it, firing one round into Carter's left foot. (Bonus: Carter's dog's name is Trigger.) The next day, a Washington Post reporter, searching news archives, found 12 more "dog shoots human" stories reported just since 2004 (all but two from the gun-intensive United States). [Indianapolis Star, 10-27-2015] [Washington Post, 10-27-2015]

Cliches Come to Life: (1) In December (2010), Mr. Alkis Gerd'son moved out of student housing at Canada's University of Victoria, which had been his home since 1991 (even though he had not taken a class in 13 years). Gerd'son claims various stress disorders (over, perhaps, finding a job?) and had until then stymied efforts to evict him by filing claims before human rights tribunals. (2) Ricardo West, a professional Michael Jackson impersonator ("Michael Lives! The Michael Jackson Tribute Concert") was charged in August (2010) in Allen Park, Michigan, with 12 counts of child molestation. [Vancouver Sun, 12-3-2010] [The News-Herald (Southgate, Mich.), 8-17-2010]

Thanks This Week to Steven Bird, Glenn Gordon, Jim Weber, Scott Brame, Chris & Denise Meek, Woody Thomas, and Andrew Bolstridge, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

A 2015 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court has created a puzzle for drunk driver enforcement. In Georgia (and other states), blood alcohol tests are "voluntary" (to bypass the issue of whether drivers can be forced, or even pressured, to endure a test that ultimately helps to convict them), but the Georgia court has ruled, against custom, that a "consenting" driver might be "too" drunk to appreciate the consent -- in which case, the test results would be inadmissible in court. Equally awkwardly, prosecutors would be forced to argue that the drunk driver -- too drunk to handle a motor vehicle -- was still sober enough to give knowledgeable consent. Atlanta's WSB-TV reported in October that judges statewide are grappling with the issue. [WSB-TV, 10-29-2015]

-- Funerals and burials, in the United States and elsewhere, are no longer always so staid. Most famously, one man was, per his instructions, lowered to the ground inside his beloved Cadillac; dressing corpses in fanciful outfits (such as the Green Lantern) is not unheard of. In October, after Mr. Jomar Aguayo Collazo, 23, was killed in a shootout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the family outfitted his body in his favorite blue tracksuit and propped him up at a table in his mother's tavern ("playing" dominoes and holding a drink and a condom) -- as friends and relatives passed by to pay their respects. [Fox News Latino, 10-21-2015]

-- The list of all-time extreme body modifiers would start with the late Dennis "Stalking Cat" Avner (who incrementally cut, chipped, tattooed, pierced and implanted his body to make himself a human feline) and the similarly obsessive Erik "Lizardman" Sprague, who at one time toured with the Jim Rose Circus. Newer to the scene is Britain's Ted Richards, 57, working to become a human parrot. With 110 colorful tattoos, 50 piercings and a split tongue, he currently seeks a surgeon to turn his nose into a beak. Even without the beak, though, Richard says becoming parrotlike "is the best thing that has happened to me." (London's Daily Telegraph, publishing astonishing photos of Richards, asked, rhetorically, whether we've reached "peak plastic surgery.") [Daily Telegraph, 10-16-2015]

-- In October, a 20-year-old man in Macomb Township, Michigan, became the most recent alleged drunk driver to reveal himself in the most awkward of ways: by accidentally swerving into the midst of a sheriff's deputies' roadside stop -- of another alleged drunk driver. (Coincidentally, both arrestees are 20 and registered matching 0.17 blood-alcohol readings.) [ClickonDetroit, 10-14-2015]

-- College "Inclusiveness" to the Next Level: "Service" animals (mostly guide dogs) are ones that have been specially trained to provide help for people with disabilities, but untrained "comfort" animals are also privileged for those diagnosed with panic attacks or depression. In an October report on college students hoping to keep their pets in no-animal dorms, The New York Times noted that school officials have entertained student requests for the "comfort" of (besides dogs and cats) lizards, potbellied pigs, tarantulas, ferrets, guinea pigs and "sugar gliders" (nocturnal, flying, six-ounce Australian marsupials). Informal Justice Department guidelines rule out only animals that are aggressive or destructive or that trigger other students' allergies. [New York Times, 10-5-2015]

-- Raised Right -- or Snitch-in-Training? In September, Audrey McColm, 25, traffic-stopped in Randolph County, Indiana, for driving "erratic(ally)," became the latest parent ratted out by her child. When Mom denied having been drinking, her daughter, 7, blurted out, "Yes, you have, Mom." McColm registered 0.237, had nearly hit another officer's car head-on, and was so hammered that she "urged" a different officer to "shoot her in the head." [Indianapolis Star, 9-18-2015]

-- A chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals undertook one of its favorite consciousness-raising tactics in August, demanding that Pennsylvania officials erect a roadside grave marker near Lancaster at the spot where a tractor-trailer hauling 80 pigs overturned, killing several of them. The "terrified animals" that suffered traumatic deaths should be memorialized by the community, PETA said. The pigs, of course, would have eventually found their way to a slaughterhouse, and it is possible that the ones euthanized as a result of the accident passed more peacefully than the "survivors." [Lancaster Online, 8-24-2015]

-- In October, The Washington Post and the New York Post separately reported recent episodes of government agencies keeping high-earning employees on the payroll for more than a year, with no job assignment, because the agencies were unable to adjudicate their misconduct cases. Almost 100 shelved Homeland Security employees turned up in a Washington Post Freedom of Information Act request, and one information technology analyst warehoused by the New York City employee pension fund said she had earned $1.3 million over 10 years doing absolutely no work for the city. "I watched movies," said Niki Murphy. "I crocheted -- right in front of (supervisors)." [Washington Post, 10-22-2015] [New York Post, 10-25-2015]

-- Drivers who blindly follow their vehicle's satellite navigation with disastrous results are almost No Longer Weird, but a truck driver's mishap in Ashton, England, in October still seemed worthy of reporting -- in that he was working for a company called Dachser Intelligent Logistics when his tractor-trailer got stuck in a narrow alley (directed there by the sat-nav, in violation of all common sense). (Bonus: It was not the first time sat-nav had misdirected a vehicle into the same alley; the town had even placed a formal traffic sign at the approach to the alley: "Do Not Follow Sat Nav Next Left.") [Manchester Evening News, 10-19-2015]

-- In October, the federal government finally unloaded the two New Hampshire properties it seized in 2007 from dentist Elaine Brown and her husband (after a nine-month standoff following their vow to die rather than pay their back taxes to the IRS). Their 100-acre "compound" became a magnet at the time for an array of "sovereigns" and tax-resisters, who were rumored to have booby-trapped the property to ward off law enforcement -- and the 2015 auction only partially guaranteed that the property was free of hidden explosives. (News of the Weird's 2007 story included Dr. Brown as one of three U.S. dentists who, independent of each other, had become obsessed about federal taxes. The Browns are serving 30-year prison terms.) [WCVB-TV (Boston), 10-22-2015]

-- High school principal George Kenney believes he has a gift to aid students' concentration abilities -- hypnotism -- and practiced it extensively at North Port High in Sarasota, Florida, until 2011, when three of his students died in separate incidents (two by suicide). While Kenney enjoys retirement in North Carolina, the Sarasota school board did not close the chapter until October 2015 when it granted $200,000 settlements to the families of the three students. The lawsuits complained of Kenney's unlicensed "medical procedure," which altered the "underdeveloped" teenage brain -- but Kenney had also pointed to improvements in studying by other students. [Herald-Tribune, 10-6-2015]

-- White supremacist Craig Cobb has not given up. News of the Weird noted in 2013 that he was attempting to buy property in Leith, North Dakota (pop. 16), to turn the town into a deluxe Caucasian enclave, but there was local resistance -- and Cobb was revealed by a TV program's DNA test to himself be 14 percent "sub-Saharan African." Cobb has not yet disproved the result, but has moved his target to (according to recent reports) either Red Cloud, Nebraska (pop. 978), or Antler, North Dakota (pop. 28) (which is seeking crowdsourced funding online to preventively buy the vacant property Cobb has his eyes on). [Gizmodo.com, 10-6-2015; The Guardian (London), 10-7-2015]

It's a simple recipe, said New York City A-list chef Daniel Angerer: a cheese derived from the breast milk of his wife, who (in March 2010) was nursing the couple's 3-month-old daughter. As a chef, he said, "you look out for something new and what you can do with it," and what Angerer could do is make about two quarts of "flavor(ful)" cheese out of two gallons of mother's milk. "(T)astes just like really sweet cow's milk." He posted the recipe, "My Spouse's Mommy Milk Cheese," but reminded experimenters to "consider cheese aging time." [New York magazine, 3-2-2010]

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

Among those struggling with psychological issues in modern America are the rich "one-percenters" (especially the mega-rich "one-percent of one-percenters"), according to counselors specializing in assuaging guilt and moderating class hatred. London's The Guardian, reporting from New York, found three such counselors, including two who barely stopped short of comparing the plight of the rich-rich with the struggles of "people of color" or out-of-closet gays. Sample worries: isolation (so few rich-rich); stress, caused by political hubbub over "inequality"; and insecurity (is my "friend" really just a friend of my money?). [The Guardian, 10-17-2015]

Stories surface regularly about a hospital patient declared dead but who then revives briefly before once again dying. However, Tammy Cleveland's recent lawsuit against doctors and DeGraff Memorial Hospital near Buffalo, New York, reveals an incident more startling. She alleges that her late husband Michael displayed multiple signs of life (breathing, eyes open, legs kicking, attempted hugs, struggles against the tube in his throat) for nearly two hours, but with two doctors all the while assuring her that he was gone. (The coroner came and went twice, concluding that calling him had been premature.) The lawsuit alleges that only upon the fourth examination did the doctor exclaim, "My God, he has a pulse!" Michael Cleveland died shortly after that -- of a punctured lung from CPR following his initial heart attack -- an injury for which he could have been treated. [Democrat & Chronicle (Rochester, New York), 10-13-2015]

-- For an October report, Vice Media located the half-dozen most-dedicated collectors of those AOL giveaway CDs from the Internet's dial-up years ("50 Hours Free!"). Sparky Haufle wrote a definitive AOL-CD collector's guide; Lydia Sloan Cline has 4,000 unique disks; Bustam Halim at one point had 20,000 total, before weeding to 3,000. (The AOL connoisseurs file disks by color, by the hundreds of packaging styles, by number of free hours, and especially by the co-brands -- the rare pearls, like AOL's deals with Frisbee and Spider Man. Their collections, said both Halim and Brian Larkin, are simply "beautiful." [Vice.com, 10-7-2015]

-- In 20th-century Chicago, according to legend, one did not have to be among the living to vote on election day, and a 2013 policy of the city's community colleges has seemingly extended rights of the dead -- to receive unearned degrees. City Colleges of Chicago, aiming to increase graduation numbers, has awarded a slew of posthumous degrees to former students who died with at least three-fourths of the necessary credits to graduate. (The policy also now automatically awards degrees by "reverse transfer" of credits to students who went on to four-year colleges, where they added enough credits, hypothetically, to meet City Colleges' standards.) [Crain's Chicago Business, 10-17-2015]

It would be exhaustive to chronicle the many ways that the woman born Carolyn Clay, 82, of Chattooga County, Georgia, is different from us. For starters, she was once arrested for stripping nude to protest a quixotic issue before the city council in Rome, Georgia; for another, her driver's license identifies her as Ms. Serpentfoot Serpentfoot. In October, she filed to change that name -- to one with 69 words, 68 hyphens, an ellipsis and the infinity sign. One judge has already turned her down on the ground that she cannot recite the name (though she promised to shorten it on legal papers to "Nofoot Allfoot Serpentfoot"). [Times Free Press (Chattanooga, Tennessee.), 10-12-2015]

Hinton Sheryn, 68, on trial at England's Plymouth Crown Court in September, denied he was the "indecent exposer" charged with 18 incidents against children dating back to 1973 -- that he would never do such a thing because he would not want anyone to see his unusually small penis. In response, the prosecutor brought in a prostitute known to have serviced Sheryn, to testify that his penis is of normal size. Sheryn was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison. [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-17-2015] [Plymouth Herald, 10-5-2015]

-- A Jacksonville, Florida, sheriff's SWAT team surrounded a mobile home on Oct. 14 to arrest Ryan Bautista, 34, and Leanne Hunn, 30, on armed burglary and other charges, but since two other women were being held inside, officers remained in a stand-off. Hunn subsequently announced by phone that the couple would surrender -- after having sex one final time. Deputies entered the home around 4 a.m. on the 15th and made the post-coital arrest without incident. [Florida Times-Union, 10-15-2015]

-- A 27-year-old owner of the Hookah House in Akron, Ohio, was fatally shot by an Akron narcotics officer during an October raid for suspected drugs. The man had his arms raised, according to the police report, but dropped one hand behind him, provoking an officer to shoot. Only afterward did they learn that the man was unarmed; they concluded that he was reaching only to secure or to push back the packet of heroin he felt was oozing out of its hiding place in his buttocks. [Akron Beacon Journal, 9-22-2015]

In September, village officials in Uzbekistan's town of Shahartepeppa, alarmed that Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev would drive through and notice barren fields (since the cotton crop had already been harvested), ordered about 500 people into the fields to attach cotton capsules onto the front-row stalks to impress Mirziyoyev with the village's prosperity. [RFE/RL via The Guardian (London), 11-16-2015]

(1) The naked bodies of a man and a woman, both aged 30, were found in August 40 feet beneath a balcony -- in the moat surrounding the Vauban Fort castle on an island in the English Channel. Police speculated that the couple had fallen during exciting sex "gone wrong." (2) A woman was killed in an accidental head-on collision in Houston on June 18 as she was racing after another car. She was angrily chasing her estranged husband, who was with another woman, but neither of those two was hurt. (The driver of the crashed-into SUV was severely injured.) [The Independent (London), 8-22-2015] [KHOU-TV, 6-18-2015]

Jorge Vasconcelos, 25, was traffic-stopped in El Reno, Oklahoma, in October because he was reportedly weaving on the road, but deputies detected no impairment except possibly for a lack of sleep. Then, "out of nowhere," according to a KFOR-TV report, Vasconcelos, instead of quietly driving off, insisted that he was doing nothing wrong and that deputies could check his truck if they thought otherwise. They did -- and found an elaborately rigged metal box in the engine, containing 17 pounds of heroin, worth over $3 million. He was charged with aggravated trafficking.

(1) Norway's notorious 77-murder terrorist Anders Breivik (serving only 21 years because that is Norway's maximum sentence) complained in September that he was feeling so oppressed behind bars that if conditions didn't improve, he would go on a hunger strike and starve himself. (2) In July, artist Hilde Krohn Huse, shooting a video alone in a forest near Aukra, accidentally got hung upside down naked in a tree for nearly four hours. (3) In October, hunters who had shot two elk near Narvik were informed that they had inadvertently wandered into an area of the Polar Park zoo (and that, thanks to them, the zoo's elk population was now down to three). [The Local (Oslo), 9-29-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 7-15-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 10-15-2015]

In the midst of (2010) World Cup fever, readers might have missed Germany's win over host Barbados in June for the Woz Challenge Cup, following an eight-team polo tournament with players not on horses, but Segways. The sport is said to have been created by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, whose nerd-populated Silicon Valley Aftershocks competed again (in 2010) in Barbados (but last won the Cup in 2007). Wozniak lamented that his own polo skills are fading, but the San Jose Mercury News reported that Woz's fearlessness on the Segway seems hardly diminished. [San Jose Mercury News, 5-18-2010; ESPN.com, 6-18-2010]

Thanks This Week to Elaine Weiss, Gerald Sacks, Ivan Katz, Chuck Hamilton, Ruth Sewell, and Kathryn Wood, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisers.