The manager of the agency in Louisville, Kentucky, responsible for, among other things, development planning, zoning changes and historic landmarks revealed in November that his headquarters has a "boogers" problem and ordered users of the third-floor men's room to stop hocking them onto the walls adjacent to the urinals. According to an internal memo cited by InsiderLouisville.com, Metro Planning and Design Services manager Joe Reverman called the mucus buildup "a very serious situation" and had his executive administrator post signs instructing restroom users on the basics of proper disposal of "anything that comes out of or off a person's body." [InsiderLouisville.com, 11-18-2015]

-- The 1968 Cy Twombly "blackboard" painting sold for $70.5 million at New York City's Sotheby's auction in November (higher than experts' estimate of $60 million). The painting consists of six horizontal lines of continuous circular swirls (white chalk on a "blackboard") -- perhaps the same swirls that might be made by an extremely bored, aggressive first-grader given a supply of chalk and the absence of the teacher. [Artnet News, 11-11-2015]

-- The Baltimore-based "experimental music" creators Matmos announced the release of their new album, "Ultimate Care II," consisting entirely of "music" made by a Whirlpool washing machine (the Ultimate Care II model). According to a November report in Time magazine, the machine's 38-minute wash cycle will be "sampled and processed" to lighten the original sound. (Matmos previously "played" canisters of helium on stage at Radio City Music Hall and a cow's uterus at the San Francisco Art Institute.) [Time.com, 11-9-2015]

In an enterprise somewhat resembling "American Idol," amateur performers in China become self-supporting online not by soliciting money directly, but through virtual gifts from enthralled fans, with performers getting a cut of each sale. Beijing's YY.com hosts original performances, and two of the site's favorites, Mr. Earth and Ms. Cloud, earned the equivalent of about $160,000 last year from their universe of 1.8 million fans (according to a November Wall Street Journal report). In an ancillary industry (led by 9158.com), hard-core fans can purchase access (think "virtual limousines," shown "arriving" at a "concert"), giving them bragging rights. (A simple "applause" icon after a song costs about a penny.) [Wall Street Journal, 11-11-2015]

The exasperated drug enforcement chief of Indonesia told reporters in November (following confiscation of a massive quantity of methamphetamine from China) that the ordinary death penalty was insufficient for drug runners, who should instead be forced to overdose on their own shipments. Budi Waseso also mused that crocodiles would make better prison guards than humans because crocs can't be bribed and later added tigers and pirhanas to the proposed guard roster. Even so, Waseso's boss reiterated that the government is committed to rehabilitation over punishment. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 11-13-2015][Jakarta Globe, 11-22-2015]

Watch Your Language: (1) Recently added to the list of words and phrases to be officially discouraged on campus, according to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's website: "political correctness." The phrase is said to be a "microaggression" that might make some students feel uncomfortable or unsafe if they hear it or read it. (2) In November, the University of Vermont held a (voluntary) three-day "retreat" open only to students who "self-identify as white," so that they can study the implications of "white privilege" in society (e.g., "what does it mean to be white?" and "how does whiteness impact you?"). [CampusReform.org, 10-21-2015] [CampusReform.org, 11-18-2015]

The Queens (New York) Redbird Tourist Information Center was finally ordered to close in July following an extraordinarily unsuccessful seven-year run in which, possibly, not a single tourist ever walked through the door. The New York Post, interviewing neighbors in Kew Gardens, found no one who ever saw a visitor, and the center's lone staff member said she recalled only lunchtime drop-ins from jury duty at the criminal court building down the block. [New York Post, 7-10-2015]

Marshall University (Huntington, West Virginia), seeking a "star free agent" for its medical faculty, hired neurosurgeon Paul Muizelaar in July despite controversy from his previous work at the University of California, Davis. There, Dr. Muizelaar and colleagues, in a daring experiment, introduced live bowel bacteria into the brain -- on lab rats -- supposedly to stimulate the immune system when other remedies had faltered. However, Dr. Muizelaar, emboldened, also introduced the bacteria into brains of a man and two women who had highly malignant glioblastoma tumors (each patient having consented). However, two died within weeks, and although the third survived more than a year, UC Davis found numerous protocol violations. Dr. Muizelaar's new supervisor told the Associated Press that he nonetheless felt lucky to land him because "not everybody wants to move to Appalachia." [Associated Press via Charleston Gazette-Mail, 7-4-2015]

Deputy sheriff Michael Szeliga of St. Petersburg, Florida, in Fort Lauderdale for a weekend training session in July, was to receive a commendation at the formal banquet, for exemplary DUI enforcement, presented by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. (This is News of the Weird; you've already guessed the outcome.) He, escorted by two fellow deputies, arrived for dinner "staggeringly drunk" (though he did not drive), according to an internal affairs investigation, and he was ordered to go sleep it off. (Szeliga wrote an apology and was transferred out of DUI work. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Szeliga was a good deputy but that the incident was "one of the most ridiculous things" he'd ever heard of.) [WFLA-TV (Tampa), 11-5-2015]

Social science professor Dr. Jeff Justice resigned from the faculty at Tarleton State University (Stephenville, Texas) in October to head off an investigation into whether he supplied alcohol to students and proselytized at least one to undergo a self-mutilation practice. Justice admitted, post-resignation, that he was a devotee (since age 13) of the "Sundance" ritual, in which he would hang from a tree in his backyard by hooks connected to stakes in his bare chest and that he demonstrated it to some students but apparently interested none. He attributed the incidents to "severe depression." (Bonus: He had won a Faculty Excellence award in 2015.) [Texan NewsService (Tarleton State University), 10-14-2015]

Kaleb Alexander, 25, was shot and killed in October as he emerged from a United Dairy Farmers convenience store in Columbus, Ohio, still with his gun defiantly drawn after he had just then robbed the clerk. A Columbus police SWAT team was waiting outside the store because Alexander had robbed the store the previous two nights, as well, and somehow must have thought that the police would not catch on to his cunning robbery strategy. [Columbus Dispatch, 10-15-2015]

Are We Safe? As News of the Weird chronicled in 2010 and 2011, Iraqi police (either corrupt or sincerely unsophisticated) continued to purchase worthless bomb "detectors" to use at checkpoints in Baghdad, instilling residents with a false sense of security, with the result that hundreds of people died in supposedly safe neighborhoods. Briton James McCormick, the most successful con man/seller, is serving a 10-year sentence for the "ADE 651" (which, somehow, Baghdad police continued to buy long after the U.S. had warned of the scam). Since then, more bogus detectors have been peddled to Thailand and other governments. In November 2015, London's The Independent, in a dispatch from the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh, reports that luxury hotels' security officers are now using similar bogus detectors to reassure tourists frightened by the recent terrorism-suspected Russian plane crash in Egypt. [The Independent, 11-10-2015]

Mental health practitioners, writing in the January (2011) issue of the journal Substance Abuse, described two patients who had recently arrived at a clinic in Ranchi, India, after allowing themselves to be bitten by cobras for recreational highs. Both men had decades-long substance-abuse issues and decided to try what they had heard about on the street. One, age 44, bitten on the foot, experienced "a blackout associated with a sense of well-being, lethargy and sleepiness." The other, 52, reported "dizziness and blurred vision followed by a heightened arousal and a sense of well-being," and apparently was so impressed that he returned to the snake charmer two weeks later for a second bite. [Substance Abuse, January 2011]

Thanks This Week to Christine Van Lenten and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Professional patients now help train would-be doctors, especially in the most delicate and dreaded of exams (gynecological and prostate), where a becalming technique improves outcomes. One "teaching associate" of Eastern Virginia Medical School told The Washington Post in September that the helpers act as "enthusiastic surgical dummies" to 65 medical colleges, guiding rookie fingers through the trainer's own private parts. The prostate associate might helpfully caution, "No need for speed here," especially since he will be bending over for as many as nine probings a day. A gynecological teaching associate, mentoring the nervous speculum-wielder, might wittily congratulate pupils on having a front-row sight line the "GTA" will never witness: an up-close view of her own cervix. [Washington Post, 9-3-2015]

American Sharia: (1) U.S. parents have a right to home-school their kids, but are subject to varying degrees of regulation, with Texas the most lax, and one El Paso family will have a day before the Texas Supreme Court after one of its kids was reported declining to study because education was useless since he was waiting to be "raptured" (as described in the Bible's Book of Revelation). (2) U.S. courts increasingly allow customers to sign away state and federal rights by agreeing to contracts providing private arbitration for disputes rather than access to courts -- even if the contract explicitly requires only religious resolutions rather than secular, constitutional ones. A November New York Times investigation examined contracts ranging from Scientology's requirement that fraud claims by members be resolved only by Scientologists -- to various consumer issues from home repairs to real estate sales limited to dockets of Christian clerics. [Associated Press via Dallas Morning News, 11-1-2015] [New York Times, 11-3-2015]

-- First-World Spending: According to estimates released by the National Retail Federation in September, 157 million Americans "planned to celebrate" Halloween, spending a total of $6.9 billion, of which $2.5 billion would be on costumes, including $350 million dressing up family pets. [National Retail Federation press release, 9-23-2015]

-- At a ceremony in Kabul in November, prominent Afghan developer Khalilullah Frozi signed a $95 million contract to build an 8,800-unit township and was, according to a New York Times dispatch, toasted for his role in the country's economic rebirth. However, at nightfall, Frozi headed back to prison to resume his 15-year sentence for defrauding Kabul Bank of nearly $1 billion in depositors' money. Because he remains one of Afghanistan's elite, arrangements were made for him to work days but spend his nights in prison (in comfortable quarters). Said one Western official, laconically, "(I)f you have stolen enough money, you can get away with it." [New York Times, 11-4-2015]

Before the terrorist murders gripped Paris, President Francois Hollande and Iran's President Hassan Rouhani had been trying to arrange a formal dinner during Rouhani's planned visit to the city to celebrate the two countries' role in the recent accord limiting Iran's nuclear development. France's RTL radio news reported that "dinner" is apparently more vexing than "nuclear weaponry" -- as Rouhani demanded an alcohol-free meal, which was nixed by Hollande, who insisted that the French never dine without wine. [Washington Times, 11-11-2015]

-- Skeptics feared it was just a matter of time, anyway, until the "political correctness" movement turned its attention to dignity for thieves. San Francisco's SFGate.com reported in November on a discussion in an upscale neighborhood about whether someone committing petty, nonviolent theft should be referred to by the "offensive" term "criminal" (rather than as, for example, "the person who stole my bicycle," since "criminal" implies a harsher level of evil and fails to acknowledge factors that might have caused momentary desperation by a person in severe need). [SFGate.com, 11-2-2015]

-- Reginald Gildersleeve, 55 and free on bond with an extensive rap sheet, was waving a gun as he threatened a clerk and tried to rob a store in Chicago on Halloween night -- until a customer (licensed to carry) drew his own gun and, with multiple shots, killed Gildersleeve. Closer inspection revealed Gildersleeve's weapon to be merely a paintball gun, leading the deceased man's stepson to complain later that "Some people (the licensed shooter) don't actually know how to use guns. They go to firing ranges, but it's not the same ... as a bullet going into flesh. ... Someone's got to answer for that." [USA Today, 11-2-2015]

-- U.S. and European entrepreneurs offer extreme "games" in which liability-waiving "players" volunteer for hours of kidnapping, pain and death threats, but the cult-like, under-the-radar "McKamey Manor" in Southern California (said to have a waiting list of 27,000) is notable for the starkness of its threats of brutality -- and the absence of any "safe word" with which a suddenly reluctant player can beg off. (Only Russ McKamey himself decides if a player has had enough.) The "product" is "100 percent fear," he said. "We're good at it," he told London's The Guardian in an October dispatch from San Diego (whose reporter overheard one of McKamey's thugs promise, "I'm going to tear that girl (player) apart" and "No one is leaving with eyebrows today"). [The Guardian, 10-30-2015]

-- In October, the student newspaper of Toronto's Ryerson University reported a mighty scandal that upset the student body: The school's executive offices' restrooms routinely supply two-ply toilet paper while most other campus buildings offer only one-ply. Following up on the hard-hitting Ryerson Eyeopener's expose, The Canadian Press noted that the universities of Guelph, Ottawa and Toronto comfort all toilet-users' bottoms the same. Ryerson officials defensively noted that older plumbing in many of their buildings cannot handle two-ply paper. [Inside Higher Education, 11-2-2015]

Nicholas Allegretto, 23, was convicted of shoplifting in Cambridge, England, in October (in absentia, because he is still at large). The prosecutor knows Allegretto is his man because, shortly after the February theft, police released a surveillance photo of Allegretto leaving the store with the unpaid-for item, and Allegretto had come to a police station to complain that the suddenly public picture made him look guilty. In fact, he claimed, he intended to pay for the item but had gotten distracted (and besides, he added, his body language often looks somewhat "dodgy," anyway). [Cambridge News, 10-1-2015]

-- Lowering the Bar in Zero Tolerance: The 6-year-old son of Martha Miele was given an automatic three-day out-of-school suspension at Our Lady of Lourdes in Cincinnati in October after, emulating actions of his favorite Power Rangers characters, he pretended to shoot a bow and arrow at another student. Principal Joe Crachiolo was adamant, insisting that he has "no tolerance for any real, pretend or imitated violence." An exasperated Martha Miele confessed she was at a loss about how a 6-year-old boy is supposed to block out the concept of a super-hero fighter (and instead imagine, say, a super-hero counselor?). [WLWT-TV (Cincinnati, 11-2-2015]

-- Cavalcade of Fetishes: (1) Among the approximately 100 arrests Seattle police made in an October drug sting were of a man, 63, and woman, 58, accused only of retail theft of $150,000 worth of goods -- including about 400 pairs of jeans. Police said the couple "ordered" items from shoplifters and seemed to have an "insatiable appetite for denim." (2) In November, police in Bethel, Connecticut, arrested Nelson Montalvo, 50 -- accused of taking about 30 items of underwear from one particular home. Montalvo's motive is being investigated, but police said his modus operandi was to remove items, cut holes in them and return them to the home. [Associated Press via Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10-16-2015] [Connecticut Post, 11-5-2015]

Name in the News: Sought as a suspect in a convenience store killing in Largo, Florida, in December (2010) (and an example of the highly revealing "Three First Names" theory of criminal liability), Mr. Larry Joe Jerry -- who actually has four first names: Larry Joe Jerry Jr. (He was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 42 years in prison.) [St. Petersburg Times, 12-2-2010] [Bay News 9 (St. Petersburg), 7-12-2013]

Thanks This Week to Eric Wainwright, and to the News of the Weird Board 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).

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.