(1) A tractor-trailer driver with a load of bottled water tried to make it over a historic bridge in Paoli, Indiana, on Christmas Day, with the obvious outcome when 35 tons of water starts across a limit-6-tons span. The driver told police she saw the 6-ton sign but did not know how that "translated" to pounds. (2) Among the activists denouncing a proposed solar-panel farm at a December Woodland (North Carolina) Town Council meeting were a husband and wife certain that vegetation near the panels would die because the panels would (the husband said) "suck up all the energy from the sun." His wife (described as a "retired science teacher") explained that the solar panels prevent "photosynthesis" (and also, of course, cause cancer). The council voted a moratorium on the panels. [WDRB-TV (Louisville, Ky.), 12-25-2015] [Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald, 12-8-2015]

-- Paul Stenstrom of Tarpon Springs, Florida, is among the most recent Americans to have discovered the brightest side of federal bankruptcy law, having lived in his mortgaged home basically free of charge from 2002 until 2013 by using the law to stave off foreclosure. Even though none of his 15 petitions was ever approved, he followed each one immediately with another petition, and it was not until 2013 that one judge finally declared Stenstrom a "serially abusive filer," barring further petitions for two years -- at which point his bank was able to conclude the foreclosure. Upon expiration of the two-year period in September 2015, Stenstrom quickly filed another bankruptcy petition -- to keep from being evicted from the townhouse on whose rent he is four months behind. [Tampa Bay Times, 11-21-2015]

-- Bright Ideas: In October, once again, police (this time in Liyang in eastern China) arrested a man whom they accused of stealing women's underwear, prolifically, with a device likened to a fishing rod, enabling him to reach into windows and extract goodies. The suspect, 32, admitted to a three-year scheme, and in his van police found 285 bras and 185 panties. [The Guardian (London), 10-24-2015]

-- In December, Carlos Aguilera, 27, became the most recent brain-surgery patient to assist doctors by remaining conscious during the 12-hour operation -- and playing his saxophone to help assure surgeons that their removal of a tumor was not affecting his speech, hearing or movement. The operation, at Spain's Malaga Regional Hospital, was supposedly Europe's first, but News of the Weird has reported two in the United States, including on a guitar- strumming man in 2013 at UCLA Medical Center. [Daily Telegraph (London), 12-17-2015]

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) Nurse's aide Candace McCray, 36, is the most recent theft suspect to have worn some of the purloined jewelry when meeting police detectives investigating the theft. An assisted-living resident in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, had described her missing gems, and McCray was questioned as someone with access to the woman's room. (2) Joshua Jording, 26, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, became the most recent burglary suspect caught on surveillance video during the crime wearing a shirt with his name on it (which was later found in Jording's home, along with a stash from the Dec. 2 burglary). [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-17-2015] [Associated Press via Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12-9-2015]

-- More Core Failings of Carjackers: (1) Albert Luna, 19, was arrested in Coachella, California, in December and charged with swiping the keys while a Federal Express driver was unloading a package. The driver reported that Luna later walked away when he could not figure out how to drive the truck. (Bonus: The arrest report noted that during the entire episode, Luna was naked.) (2) Kyle Blair, 25, was arrested in Surrey, British Columbia, in November when he approached a car at an intersection and attempted to pull the driver out. For one thing, the two men in the car were later described as "big, burly" guys, but more important, they were plainclothes police officers on a stakeout. [The Smoking Gun, 12-9-2015] [Canadian Press, 11-10-2015]

-- Syrian refugees (mostly, Muslims) may pose a humanitarian and political crisis for Germany, but the Virginia Care company of Recklinghausen, Germany, said they are good for its business: sales of fake hymens, for women to convince Muslim grooms to believe they were wedding-night virgins. The non-chaste Virginia Care buyer inserts a packet of two membranes (about $54) that will burst by penetrative sex, releasing blood coloring. (The "blood" is available either in "original" dark brownish red, which parents are said to expect, or "advanced" brighter red, thought to be more satisfying to husbands.) [Daily Mail (London), 12-15-2015]

-- Mendel Epstein (Lakewood, New Jersey) is not the only rabbi suspected of being overaggressive as he helps desperate wives obtain religiously proper divorces, but he will be headed to prison for 10 years after a federal court found that he used beatings, stun guns and, once, an electric cattle prod to convince reluctant husbands they should sign the papers. Orthodox Jewish wives cannot remarry properly without obtaining a "get," and Rabbi Epstein was apparently very "convincing." (According to trial evidence, he used the services of four thugs.) "Over the years," Epstein confessed in court, "I guess I got caught up in my tough-guy image." [WCAU-TV (Philadelphia), 12-15-2015]

-- Another Way to Tell If You're Really, Really Drunk: Her passengers had run away, leaving Elena Bartman-Wallman, 23, behind the wheel but oblivious on a December afternoon in Aleknagik, Alaska, and her car's tires had started to smoke. She had lodged her foot against the accelerator, facing the wrong way on the road, with her wheels spinning continuously, and by the time police arrived (to discover Bartman-Wallman passed out), the front tires had melted down to the rims. [Alaska Dispatch News, 12-28-2015]

-- Though New York City's waiting list for subsidized housing stands at over 300,000, the agency still has only nominal ability to evict a tenant who once qualified but subsequently became wealthier, and the latest "beneficiary" of those rules, according to a November WPIX-TV report, is a household that reported earning $497,911 in a recent year. Initially, one housing authority official declared it beneficial that such a mixture of income levels occupy subsidized housing -- so that struggling families would not have only other struggling families for neighbors -- but public pressure has made the authority reconsider. [WPIX-TV, 11-25-2015]

-- Almost No Longer Weird: (1) When a woman leaped to her death on Dec. 12 from an apartment building in New York City, she of course landed on top of another woman, 71, who was left in critical condition. (2) In December, Russia's independent RT news site, culling a story from the country's rural far eastern coast, reported the most recent case of a "declared dead" man awakening in a morgue. After a harrowing few hours, the man returned to the site of the party -- to find his friends "still drinking but (by) this time commemorating him." [New York Post, 12-13-2015] [Khasanskiye Vesti via RT.com (Moscow), 12-31-2015]

-- London's Metropolitan Police called it the biggest case of voyeurism they had ever seen after a judge sent George Thomas, 38, to prison for four years in December for his six-year spree of furtively photographing women. Thomas, a former manager for the Ernst & Young accounting firm, filmed more than 3,500 people, including children and even babies, with cameras in his and others' homes and the restrooms of coffee shops and workplaces. (And, of course, sooner or later, amidst the recovered stash, police found at least one shot of Thomas' face, inadvertently captured as he was setting up one of the cameras.) [The Independent, 12-22-2015]

Enterprising reporters get stories by earning the trust of their sources, which Simon Eroro of the Post-Courier (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea) obviously did. At a banquet in November (2011), the News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch's empire) awarded Eroro its "Scoop of the Year" honor for reporting on militant tribal fighters of the Free West Papua movement -- a scoop he had to earn by (to prove his sincerity) undergoing a ritual circumcision, with bamboo sticks. (Some of the rebels still wear penis gourds whose size varies with the status of the wearer.) [Daily Telegraph, 11-7-2011]

In December, Canada's supportive organization The Transgender Project released a biographical video of the former Paul Wolscht, 46 and the father of seven children with his ex-wife, Marie, describing his new life as not only a female but a 6-year-old female, Stephoknee Wolscht. She told the Daily Xtra (gay and lesbian news site) that not acting her real age (even while doing "adult" things like working a job and driving a car) enables her to escape "depression and suicidal thoughts." Among the trans-age's favorite activities are (coloring-book) coloring, creating a play-like "kingdom," and wearing "really pretty clothes." Stephoknee now lives with the couple who adopted her. [The Independent (London), 12-16-2015]

Thee, Not Me: American "millennials" (those aged 18 to 29) continue a "long-standing tradition," The Washington Post wrote in December, describing a Harvard Institute of Politics poll on their views on war. Following the recent Paris terrorist attacks, about 60 percent of U.S. millennials said additional American troops would be needed to fight the Islamic State, but 85 percent answered, in the next question, that no, they themselves were "probably" or "definitely" not joining the military. [Washington Post, 12-10-2015]

(1) Police in St. Petersburg reported the December arrest of a 12-year-old boy whose rap sheet listed "more than 20" arrests since age 9. He, on a bicycle, had told an 89-year-old driver at a gas station that the man's tire was low, and when the man got out to check, the boy hopped in the car and took off. (2) A driver accidentally plowed through two small businesses in Pensacola in December, creating such destruction that the manager of one said it looked like a bomb had hit (forcing both -- a tax service and a casket company -- to relocate). The driver told police he was attempting to "travel through time." [WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 12-15-2015] [WEAR-TV (Pensacola), 12-23-2015]

(1) Breen Peck, 52, an air traffic controller who has been having career troubles in recent years, was arrested during a traffic stop on New York's Long Island in December when officers found illegal drugs in his car. "That's meth," he said. "I'm an air traffic controller." "I smoke it to stay awake." (2) In a "she-said/he-said" case, wealthy Saudi businessman Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was acquitted of rape in December in England's Southwark Crown Court, apparently persuading jurors of "reasonable doubt" about his DNA found in the alleged victim's vagina. Perhaps, his lawyer said, Abdulaziz was still aroused after sex with the other woman in the apartment and accidentally fell directly upon the alleged victim lying on a sofa. [New York Post, 12-11-2015] [The Independent, 12-16-2015]

-- Christopher Manney was fired from the Milwaukee Police Department in 2014 after shooting a black suspect to death in a case bearing some similarity to 2015 shootings that produced "Black Lives Matter" protests -- not fired for the shooting (adjudged "not excessive force") but for improper actions that preceded the shooting (not announcing a valid reason for a pat down and conducting a not-by-the-book pat down). Two days before the firing, he had filed a disability claim for post-traumatic stress disorder from the shooting and aftermath, and in November 2015 the city's Annuity and Pension Board, following city law, approved the claim. Thus, Manney, despite having been subsequently fired, retired with full disability, with basically the same take-home pay he was receiving when fired. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11-5-2015; WITI-TV (Milwaukee), 10-16-2015]

-- In November, as anti-Muslim tensions arose in several U.S. cities following the Paris terrorist attack, two chapters of the Satanic Temple church (San Jose, California, and Minneapolis) offered to protect Muslims who feared a backlash. The Minneapolis group offered "just big dudes walking you to where you need to be," for example, grocery shopping -- an offer "of genuine compassion for our fellow human beings." (The offer was subsequently rescinded by the Minneapolis church's executive ministry, reasoning that they are "not a personal security service.") [City Pages (Minneapolis), 12-22-2015]

In November, a 62-year-old customer at Ancient City Shooting Range in St. Augustine, Florida, was hit in the lower abdomen area by another shooter, 71, because the victim was standing behind the target ("for some reason," was all a fire-rescue spokesman would say). The shooter thought the man was elsewhere on the property. [Jacksonville.com, 11-27-2015]

Oops! (1) Jasper Harrison, 47, working inside the storage unit in Edgewater, Florida, where he grows his marijuana, heard a helicopter overhead on Dec. 9, panicked, and called 911 to turn himself in to pre-empt what he presumed was a SWAT raid. Actually, the helicopter belonged to a local news station headed elsewhere, but police later arrested Harrison based on the 911 call. (2) Lloyd Franklin, 34 and suspected in a North Carolina double murder, fatally shot himself in a Bensalem, Pennsylvania, motel room in November when police knocked on the door. However, cops actually had come to arrest another man in the room on a parole violation. [Orlando Sentinel, 12-10-2015] [KYW-TV (Philadelphia), 11-8-2015]

-- Elaine Williams, 47, was arrested in December in North Forsyth, Georgia, and charged with trying to buy a baby for her daughter, 14, via an ad on Craigslist. Williams said her daughter said she "wanted a baby and would get one with or without (my) help." (Bonus: Williams lives near Jot Em Down Road.) [Forsyth County News, 12-7-2015]

-- Easily Disrespected: Two foreign students at the liberal arts Oberlin College complained in a recent school publication that the cafeteria selections -- supposedly "inclusive" of world cultures -- were actually denigrating other cultures by offering inferior versions of national dishes. Vietnamese student Diep Nguyen wrote that the correct "banh mi" sandwich should be a "crispy baguette with grilled pork, pate, pickled vegetables and fresh herbs" and not, he complained, "ciabatta bread, pulled pork and coleslaw." Said Japanese student Tomoyo Joshi, sushi with "undercooked rice and lack of fresh fish is disrespectful." (Cafeteria managers told The Washington Post they were proud of their commitments to other cultures, to local farming, sustainable foods and animal-treatment concerns.) [Oberlin Review, 11-6-2015] [Washington Post, 12-21-2015]

(1) A customer had to be dragged from a burning sex shop by firefighters in the notorious Reeperbahn "sin" section of Hamburg, Germany, in November when he refused orders to evacuate. He had shut himself inside a private booth to watch a film ("Throbbin Hood") and was heard complaining (while coughing from smoke inhalation), "I haven't finished yet." (2) Police in Richmond, Virginia, announced in December that high school math teacher Kenneth Johnson III turned himself in for several recent residential shoe thefts. Each time, the shoes taken from homes were returned to their owners but with "bodily fluids" added. [Daily Mail (London), 11-25-2015] [WTVR-TV (Richmond, 12-5-2015]

Road to Nowhere: The "Bridge to Nowhere" played an outsize role in politics a decade ago as an example of uncontrolled government spending (before Congress killed it). (Ketchikan, Alaska, planned a sleek international airport on nearby, uninhabited Gravina Island, but needed a sleek $450 million bridge to get there.) These days, reported Alaska Dispatch News in November, the original 3.2-mile, $28 million access road on Gravina Island, built to access the bridge, now just ends in a "scrub forest." One optimistic state official said the road gets "more use all the time" -- boaters come for "hunting and fishing, berry picking, things like that. It's actually a nice road." [Alaska Dispatch News, 11-16-2015]

A prison guard is "the greatest entry-level job in California," according to an April (2011) Wall Street Journal report highlighting its benefits over those of a typical job resulting from a Harvard University education. Starting pay is comparable; loans are not necessary (since the guard "academy" actually pays the student); and vacation time is more generous (seven weeks, five paid). One downside: The prison system is more selective: While Harvard accepts 6.2 percent of applicants, the guard service takes fewer than 1 percent of its 120,000 applicants). [Wall Street Journal, 4-30-2011]

Thanks This Week to Rich Heiden, Rachael Bock, and Stuart Worthington, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

According to the flabbergasted sheriff of rural Chesterfield County, South Carolina, "This has completely changed our definition of (what constitutes) an 'ass-load' of guns." Brent Nicholson, 51, had been storing more than 7,000 firearms (most of them likely stolen) in his home and a storage building on his property. Every room of the house was stacked with weapons, and it took four tractor-trailer trips to haul everything away, with help of 100 law-enforcement officers. Nicholson also had 500 chainsaws, at least 250 taxidermied deer, elk, and alligator heads, and more. No motive was obvious to deputies. (Nicholson would still be living in the shadows today if he hadn't run that stop sign on Oct. 21 with bogus license plates on his truck.) [WSOC-TV (Charlotte, N.C.), 11-11-2015] [Headlines & Global News (New York), 12-5-2015]

-- The Human Fanny Pack: Brandon Wilson, 26, was arrested in November in Cedar Rapids, Iowa -- his second bust of 2015 in which a substantial number of crack cocaine "baggies" were found in his rectum. Fifty-one were recovered this time (counting the ones with marijuana), down from the 109 discovered in his February arrest. Police in November also found $1,700 cash on him (but just in his pocket). [KCRG-TV (Cedar Rapids), 12-1-2015]

-- Following the release of Apple's yearly financials in October (and based on sales of its iPhone 6), the company announced that, apart from other assets, it was sitting on $206 billion in cash -- about like owning the entire gross domestic product of Venezuela, but all in cash. Another way of expressing it: Using only its cash, Apple could buy every single NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL team, plus the 20 most valuable international soccer teams -- and still have plenty left. Or, as the BGR.com blog also pointed out, it could instead simply give every man, woman and child in America $646 (coincidentally, about what a new iPhone 6 sells for). [BGR.com, 11-3-2015]

-- Even if Armageddon doesn't happen, the CEO of the massive online retailer Overstock.com believes there is a "10 to 20 percent" chance of a world financial meltdown in the next few years, and he is arranging to be back in business in the aftermath. Patrick Byrnes told the New York Post in November he has stashed away enough food in a well-fortified facility in Utah's Granite Mountain to serve his 2,000 employees for "30 to 60 days," along with several thousand other emergency preparations and $10 million in gold. But, he insisted, he's not a gun-toting "prepper"; the plan is only about tiding employees over until the Internet and banking systems are back up and running. [New York Post, 11-15-2015]

-- In November in Harare, Zimbabwe, Mison Sere, 42, was judged winner of the 4th annual "Mister Ugly" contest after showcasing his seemingly random dental arrangement (some teeth there, some not) and "wide range of grotesque facial expressions," according to an Associated Press dispatch. However, many in the crowd thought their favorite was even uglier and threatened to riot. "I am naturally ugly," said a jealous (former winner) William Masvinu; "He (Sere) is ugly only when he opens his mouth." [BBC News, 11-23-2015]

-- Cool Moms? (1) Jennifer Terry, 44, was charged with driving her daughter and several other minors around Riverdale, Utah, in August to facilitate their tossing eggs at 10 to 20 homes. Some damage was reported, but so far, Terry is the only one charged. (2) Mandy Wells, 32, told police that she thought "for a minute" that it was a bad idea, "but did it anyway" -- she invited 10 kids (aged 12 to 14) to her home for a party and served beer and marijuana. Wells, of Springtown, Texas, said her daughter, 14, smokes marijuana because the girl (go figure!) suffers from depression. [Ogden Standard examiner, 12-1-2015] [The Smoking Gun, 11-25-2015]

Kuala Lumpur International Airport took out ads in two Malaysian daily newspapers in December to find the owners of three Boeing 747-200Fs parked there for months (one for at least a year) and threatening to auction them off in 14 days if not claimed. Two are white, and one is "off-white" (if the reader is checking his inventory). The planes' last listed owner said it sold them in 2008. [CNN, 12-8-2015]

-- Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky, 31, has devoted his career to getting on the government's nerves and succeeded once again in November. (News of the Weird last mentioned him in 2013 when he nailed his scrotum to the floor in Moscow's Red Square to protest police oppression.) In his latest event, he set fire to the front door of the headquarters of Russia's security service (the FSB, formerly KGB) and has been detained -- though from his cell, he demanded his charge of "vandalism" be changed to "terrorism." A member of the Russian band Pussy Riot called the door fire "the most important work of contemporary art of recent years." Pavlensky once sewed his lips together protesting arrests of Pussy Riot. [Global Post (Boston), 12-3-2015]

-- Following prosperous news reported here (from New York, the Czech Republic and Massachusetts), the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster of New Zealand announced on Dec. 10 that the country's official records now recognize the Church as a legal sanctioner of marriages. The Church must now nominate an "official marriage celebrant" (who will be known as "His Noodly Honour"). [Stuff.co.nz (Wellington), 12-15-2015]

-- Matthew Riggins had told his girlfriend earlier that he and a pal were planning to burglarize some homes around Barefoot Bay in Brevard County, Florida, and was apparently on that mission on Nov. 23 when an alert resident called 911, and the men scrambled. The accomplice was caught several days later, but Riggins himself did not survive the night -- having taken refuge in nearby woods and drowning trying to outswim an apparently hungry 11-foot alligator. [WFTV (Orlando), 12-8-2015]

-- According to police, Ryan Liskow, 36, badly violating the crime-novel "rule" about not returning to the scene of the crime, is now awaiting trial for robbing the Sterling State Bank in Rochester, Minnesota, on Dec. 14 --and 15. An on-scene reporter for KIMT-TV was on the air on the 15th describing the first robbery, unaware that Liskow was inside robbing it again, and as Liskow emerged on foot with a bank employee in pursuit, reporter Adam Sallet helped point out Liskow, who was soon arrested. [KIMT- TV (Mason City, Iowa), 12-15-2015, 12-16-2015]

Arrested for burglary, in Porthcawl, Wales, November: Christopher Badman. Charged in two shootings in Medina County, Texas, November: Shane Outlaw. Arrested for allegedly having sex with a child, in Springfield, Massachusetts, December: Mr. Long Dinh Duong. Arrested for trespassing at a Budweiser brewery in St. Louis, Missouri, December: Mr. Bud Weisser, 19. Credited with rescuing two women from a man who was terrifying strangers on the street in Toronto on Nov. 22: the local professional clown Doo Doo (Shane Faberman). (Bonus: Doo Doo was in costume when he made the rescue.) (Also in the news was a "Vietnamese man" supposedly named Phuc Dat Bich, who had trouble getting Facebook to register his name. Despite having several mainstream-media outlets gullibly cover his complaint in mid-November, he admitted a week later that the name is bogus.) Badman: [BBC News, 11-10-2015] Outlaw: [MySanAntonio.com, 11-22-2015] Duong: [The Republican (Springfield), 12-5-2015] Weisser: [KTVI-TV (St. Louis), 12-4-2015] Doo Doo: [Washington Post, 11-24-2015] Bich: [CNN, 11-25-2015]

Parents of the 450 pupils (aged 3-11) at Applecroft primary school in Welwyn Garden City, England, were given individualized yearbooks recently (2010) with all the children's faces obscured by black bars over the eyes (except for photos of the recipient's own children, which had no obstructions). The precautions (described by one parent as "creepy," like kids were "prisoners") were ordered by headmistress Vicky Parsley, who feared that clear photos of children would inevitably wind up in child pornography. The year before, Parsley had prohibited parents from taking photographs during school plays -- of their kids or any others -- for the same fear. [Daily Mail, 11-27-2010]