Eva Tiamat Medusa, 55, of the Phoenix area, has almost completed her journey (she calls it "transspecieism") to become a "mythical beast" -- like a dragon video-game character -- through purposeful facial scarring, surgical implants and even removal of both ears. "Tiamat" was born Richard Hernandez before becoming female and now sports such features as reptilian-style skin "scales," green-colored "whites" of the eyes, "horns" on her forehead and, of course, breasts. (However, she is perhaps so far satisfied with one part, as she is still a "pre-op" transsexual.) [Daily Mail (London), 4-5-2016]

-- The Pentagon admitted recently that it has no way to know how many parts or devices are in its equipment inventory -- except by going through its estimated 30 million contracts (on the text-unsearchable electronic database) one by one. For a recent Freedom of Information request from a software developer (for the Pentagon's number of "HotPlug" power-extenders for computers), it quoted a retrieval price of $660 million to cover 15 million hours of work. [Center for Public Integrity via Slate.com, 3-18-2016]

-- Wait, What? (1) The most recent problem with the Defense Department's prospective, ultra-modern F-35 fighter jet, revealed in March, is that its "radar control" sometimes malfunctions and that system updates will not be ready until 2020. In the interim, an Air Force official advised that, as a workaround, the radar could be turned off and then back on again (similar to restarting a glitchy computer). (2) Michael Ford, 36, a U.S. Embassy staff member in London, was sentenced in March to 57 months in prison for having run a "sextortion" email scheme preying on young girls -- from his heavily monitored embassy computer workstation, operating undetected for two years. (One workday last April, for example, he sent 800 emails from his desk "phishing" for gullible social media users.) [The Guardian (London), 3-8-2016] [Washington Times, 3-23-2016]

Ms. Charli Jones Parker, a teacher and girls' basketball coach at the Pickens Academy (Pickens County, Alabama) was arrested on March 28 and charged with having sex with an underage male student. Her husband, James Parker, a math teacher and coach at Pickens, was arrested two days later and charged with having sex with an underage female former student. The district attorney said the incidents were unrelated and resulted from separate investigations. [AL.com, 3-31-2016]

-- Inequality on Parade: (1) The city council in Palo Alto, California, trying to retain some of its Silicon Valley non-millionaires, proposed a subsidy plan in March to help with steep housing costs. In a town where tiny homes sell for $2 million (and are immediately knocked down and rebuilt), subsidies will be available even to families earning $250,000 a year. (2) In February, a family court in England reduced the child-support payments from hedge fund financier Christopher Rokos to the mother of his 7-year-old son from the equivalent of about $17,000 a month to about $11,300 -- though that amount includes more than $1,200 a month for "wine" (perhaps, in case the kid is a handful). [KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 3-22-2016] [Bloomberg Business, 3-11-2016]

-- The giant HSBC Bank, which was let off the hook in 2012 for its money-laundering by paying a $1.9 billion settlement and promising to vigilantly guard against future money laundering, was revealed in March to be regressing. HSBC's monitor said that the bank somehow failed to stop transactions by a company whose professed business included exporting miniskirts to Iran (which would be against international sanctions but also not exactly smart business). In another incident, a 19-year-old Mexican man in the drug-cartel-intensive Sinaloa state was allowed to open a private-wealth account with just a bagful of cash, claiming to be a "shrimp farmer." [Wall Street Journal, 3-29-2016]

In March, Kingdom Church, in the south London district of Camberwell, was fined the equivalent of about $10,900 by the Southwark Council for its amplified music and incessant "loud preaching," ritually performed "almost daily" at around 3 a.m. A spokesperson told the London Evening Standard that the timing was necessary because that is when evil spirits are most likely to be present. [London Evening Standard, 3-18-2016]

Downloads and Uploads: (1) A new weight-loss device being tested in the U.S. ("AspireAssist") is billed as a less-expensive alternative to bariatric surgery, with the ability to evacuate up to 30 percent of recently eaten food from the stomach before digestion. A tube, through a port in the stomach, sucks ("aspirates") the food. (2) Researchers at HRL Laboratories in California, in a recent journal article, reported that test subjects without airplane-pilot knowledge nonetheless performed flight simulations 33 percent better than a control group after the researchers uploaded electrical signals to certain piloting-helpful areas of their brains. [CTV News (Toronto), 2-28-2016] [Frontiers in Human Neuroscience via Daily Mirror (London), 3-23-2016]

-- Latest Behavior Standards: (1) The town council in Bracebridge, Ontario, approved a new municipal bylaw in March ending existing prohibitions on people engaging in "yelling, shouting, hooting or similar noises." (Other noise controls, such as on audio devices, or by humans between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., remain in effect.) (2) Also in March, the city council in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was considering a proposed anti-bullying bylaw prohibiting gossip or (according to the National Post) "rumor- mongering, name-calling, taunting, mocking and ostracizing" -- not only in the streets and parks but in "public" places such as bars and restaurants. [Toronto Star, 3-23-2016] [National Post, 3-19-2016]

Veterinarian Tristan Rich, in Melbourne, Australia, was credited in March with saving the life of a 9-year-old goldfish ("Bubbles") by removing its brain tumor. Dr. Rich had to first figure out how to keep Bubbles out of water long enough to operate, but finally rigged a contraption to continually splash water over the gills. This was Dr. Rich's second heroic goldfish surgery. (Bubbles' breed was not reported; ordinary goldfish can be purchased for less than $1.) [Yahoo News Australia, 4-1-2016]

Bad enough that Alfonso Mobley Jr., 26, is a "sovereign citizen," self-proclaimed as exempt from obeying laws or paying taxes, but on April 5 he also lost both hands -- when a bomb he was working on exploded in Columbus, Ohio. The bomb was made of the same material as that in the November terrorist attacks in Paris. A 2010 FBI report labeled sovereign citizens a domestic terrorist group, but Mobley's associate (who was not hurt) told police the bomb was to be simply a diversion for their planned bank or armored-car robbery. [Columbus Dispatch, 4-6-2016]

(1) First it was "Pastafarians" of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster insisting on wearing colanders for driver's license photos. Then, in Portland, Oregon, last year, a man who goes by "Bishop" insisted on his own driver's license "religious covering" -- a "fox" hat to honor his "seven drums" religion. The DMV turned him down, but in March 2016, he won his appeal. (2) In the latest episode of an over-the-top obsessive cat, Sarah Nathan's "Brigit," age 6, had her cover blown in March when she collected a dozen boxer briefs and about 60 socks -- all apparently klepto-lifted from neighbors in Hamilton, New Zealand. Nathan admitted that she may ultimately have to stash some underwear around her farm just to keep Brigit stimulated. [KATU-TV (Portland), 3-12-2016] [Stuff.co.nz, 3-21-2016]

The varsity girls' basketball teams at predominantly white Kenmore East High School near Buffalo, New York, have, for several years (until 2011), psyched themselves up in a pre-game locker room ritual by chanting, inexplicably, "One, Two, Three, (n-word (plural))!" before running out onto the court. Although the white players called use of the word a "tradition" (passed down from year to year), and not a racial "label," the team's only black player not surprisingly had a problem with it and reported it to school officials. According to a December (2011) Buffalo News report, it was always a players-only tradition, and no adult was aware of the chant, but upon learning of it, officials immediately banned it. [Buffalo News, 12-12-2011]

Department of Veterans Affairs employee Elizabeth Rivera Rivera, 39, was fired after her arrest (followed by a February guilty plea) for armed robbery, but when she was sentenced only to probation, an arbitrator ordered the VA to rehire her -- and give her back pay she "earned" while sitting in jail awaiting trial. (She had been the driver for a man arrested for a street robbery in San Juan, Puerto Rico.) Rivera's union had demanded the reinstatement without salary penalty -- for "fairness" -- because the same Puerto Rico VA office had earlier hired a convicted sex offender, and the office's hospital director, recently charged with DUI and drug possession, avoided VA discipline because of technicalities about the traffic stop. [Daily Caller, 3-22-2016]

Turmoil in Selma, Alabama, March 1965: The historic "Bloody Sunday" at the Edmund Pettus Bridge ultimately became a turning point in the battle for voting rights. Turmoil in Selma, Alabama, March 2016: The town is riven by demands for stricter enforcement of the ordinance requiring horses on the street to be wearing diapers -- a campaign led by Ward 8's Councilman Michael Johnson (an African-American): "I'm tired of it because there's other things I could be doing than dealing with horses." [Selma Times Journal, 3-23-2016]

-- Urges: (1) Ms. Ashton Barton, 33, charged with shoplifting a vibrating sex toy from a CVS pharmacy in Largo, Florida, in February, tried for police sympathy by explaining that she was in a troubled marriage. "My husband doesn't want to touch me anymore," and "I would rather do this than be unfaithful." (2) Neighbors of a loudly frisky couple in a Stockholm, Sweden, apartment building were so frustrated by the noise that they reached out to the country's health minister, Gabriel Wikstrom -- who took the side of the randy couple (according to a translation by Stockholm's The Local): "Sounds nice for them, I think. Good for their wellbeing and thus public health as well." [The Smoking Gun, 2-29-2016] [The Local, 3-11-2016]

-- Nice Tries: (1) Benjamin Grafius, 39, charged with several instances of indecent exposure to Amish people near New Holland, Pennsylvania, told police that he targeted them because he knew they would not use phones to call police (March). (2) Valerie Godbout, 33, visiting Orlando from Montreal and charged with drug possession after alerting police with erratic driving, told the officer that she was on the wrong side of the road because that's the way traffic works in Canada. (It's not.) (March). (3) Emily Davis, 21, caught by police displaying her recently deceased grandmother's handicap-parking badge, explained that she was merely "using it in her honor." (Portsmouth, England, February). [Associated Press via KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 3-22-2016] [Orlando Sentinel, 3-16-2016] [Metro News (London), 2-26-2016]

-- German researchers, publishing in March, revealed that female burying beetles uniquely discourage their mates from pestering them for sex after birth -- thus explaining how the male of this species is observed actually helping with child care. The females apparently release a chemical "anti-aphrodisiac" to the father's antennae. Said the lead researcher (a woman), "They are a very modern family." Said another biology professor (also female), "Burying beetles are supercool." [New York Times, 3-23-2016]

-- Science magazine called the "butthole" "one of the finest innovations in the past 540 million years of animal evolution" -- in that, until it developed, animals' only channel of waste removal was through the same opening used for food intake. However, the recent discovery, announced at a March conference by a University of Miami biologist, that gelatinous sea creatures called comb jellies can excrete via other pores, was labeled by the magazine as "stunn(ing)." [Science, 3-23-2016]

-- The Emerging American "Right" of Rejecting Science: In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that measles had been eliminated in the United States, but by 2014 Americans had resurrected it (677 reported cases), and researchers from Emory University and Johns Hopkins set out to learn how -- and recently found the dominant reason to be the purposeful decision by some Americans to refuse or delay widely available vaccinations (especially for their children). (The researchers found similar, but less-strong conclusions about whooping cough.) [Slate.com, 3-25-2016]

(1) An 86-year-old woman died in February in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, when she tripped and got her medical alert necklace caught on her walker, strangling herself. (2) A 25-year-old off-duty New York City police officer was killed on a highway near Elizabeth, New Jersey, in March. According to the police report, the officer had rear-ended another car and had gotten out to "discuss" the matter, then suddenly pulled his service revolver and threatened the driver using road rage-type language. As the officer backed up while pointing the gun, a passing driver accidentally, fatally struck him. [Associated Press via WNEW-TV (New York), 3-2-2016] [WABC-TV (New York City), 3-2-2016]

Joe Vandusen said he has had no contact whatsoever with his estranged wife for "16 or 17 years" and that both moved long ago to other relationships (Joe currently living with a woman, raising both his two children and her two, as well). Nonetheless, Vandusen's "real" wife recently gave birth, from another father, and, without claiming Vandusen as the father, filed in February for child support from him. In the Vandusens' home state of Iowa (like the law in many states), he must pay, irrespective of any DNA test (unless he gets an expensive court order to "de-establish paternity." [WQAD-TV (Davenport, Iowa), 3-23-2016]

(1) Ervin Brinker, 68, pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud as CEO of the Summit Pointe health care provider in Michigan and was sentenced in January to 32 months in prison. He had embezzled $510,000 in "mental health" payments and apparently spent it all on a Florida fortune teller. (2) Two of the three candidates for the Republican nomination for county property appraiser in Erwin, Tennessee, in November died before the election, leaving Rocky McInturff the only survivor. However, he is ineligible for the nomination because he lost badly on election day by one of the two dead candidates. [Associated Press via Daily Mail (London), 1-13-2016] [WCYB-TV (Bristol, Tenn.), 3-2-2016]

Albuquerque police encountered Leonard Lopez, 26, inside a Chevy Cobalt car (that was not his) just after midnight on March 30 after neighbors reported a man screaming inside, flashing the car's headlights. A panicked Lopez was upside down, with his feet on the dashboard and his head and shoulders wedged under the steering wheel, hands and arms tucked inside his sweatshirt. He was charged with burglary, and police guessed he was probably going through opiate withdrawal. [Albuquerque Journal, 3-30- 2016]

(1) Yet Another Way to Tell If You're DUI: Maryann Christy, 54, was arrested in Roselle, Illinois, in January when police spotted her driving through town with a 15-foot-tall tree firmly lodged in the grille of her car, sticking straight up. She was apparently too intoxicated to recall where she "acquired" the tree or how many minutes earlier that was. (2) Peak Truck-Spill Karma: On March 23 on Interstate 95 near Melbourne, Florida, two tractor-trailers collided, spilling their contents on the road. One truck was carrying Busch beer and the other various Frito-Lay products. [Chicago Tribune, 3-7-2016] [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 3-23-2016]

Anti-Theft ID Breakthrough: For people who become stressed when asked to prove their identities by biometric scans of fingerprints, hand prints or eyeballs, Japan's Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology has developed a chair frame that authenticates merely by sitting down: a butt-scanner. Professor Shigeomi Koshimizu's device produces a map of the user's unique derriere shape, featuring 256 degrees of pressure at 360 different points and could be used not only to protect vehicles from theft, but also, when connected to a computer, to prevent log-ons by those with unauthorized posteriors. [TechCrunch blog via PhysOrg.com, 12-26-2011]

Bill Bailey (a former nine-year employee of the water-irrigation network near Grand Junction, Colorado) was awarded unemployment benefits in December for being wrongfully fired. The company claimed Bailey was insubordinate and that any complaints he had were merely because he is "too sensitive" to workplace "fun" and unable to "forgive and forget" his supervisors' team-building spirit. According to an administrative law judge, the "fun" included, among other things, detonating unannounced, ear-splitting PVC "potato guns" (using golf balls and other items) on the job and Bailey's boss's placing his own feces in a bag inside Bailey's lunch pail. (At one point in the hearing, during the boss's mirthful, carefree descriptions of the "fun," the judge felt the need to advise him of his Fifth Amendment right.) (Following the judge's decision, Bailey's two supervisors resigned.) [Grand Junction Sentinel, 1-28-2016, 2-16-2016]

The Agony and Tediousness of "Peeling": The Canadian supermarket chain Sobeys has recently been selling pre-cut avocado halves, sealed in plastic packages. Said a spokesman, the product "eliminates the guesswork ... if you are not familiar with peeling and seeding a fresh avocado." Also, recently, Whole Foods began selling peeled mandarin oranges, sealed in "recyclable" plastic, at $5.99 a pound (but withdrew the product in March, with an apology and promise to sell the oranges only in their "natural packaging: the peel"). [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 3-17-2016] [LAist.com, 3-3-2016]

-- The Most "Florida" Story: State officials have notified retired pro wrestler Mary Thorn of Lakeland that, according to the law, her pet alligator ("Rambo"), age 15, having grown to 6 feet in length, may no longer be kept at home unless she provides at least 2 1/2 acres of roaming space. She made a public plea in March, warning that confiscating Rambo would kill him, as he is super- sensitive to sunlight (having been raised inside her home) and must wear clothes and sunscreen when outside (though Thorn pointed out that he is "potty-trained" and wags his tail when needing to answer nature's call). (At press time, the investigation of Rambo was still ongoing.) [The Ledger (Lakeland), 3-16-2016]

-- The Most "Georgia" Story: David Presley (of Walton County, about 40 miles from Atlanta), 32, for some reason attempted to blow up his riding lawn mower in March -- by placing three pounds of the chemical mixture Tannerite in it and then shooting the mower with a semiautomatic rifle. Although he was standing 30 yards away, shrapnel still hit him, severing his leg just below the knee. [Athens Banner-Herald, 3-23-2016]

-- The Most "Canada" Story: Ms. Philicity Lafrenier, 25, was charged with several break-and-enter and theft crimes in March in Prince George, British Columbia, after leading police on a half-mile chase as she made her getaway on an ice floe on the Nechako River. When police caught up, she attempted to dispose of items she had stolen (even though still on the ice) by burning them in a small fire, but an officer and a police dog jumped in the water to subdue her.) [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 3-15-2016]

-- "Wall of Sound," Updated: Police, finally armed with a warrant after months of neighbors' complaints about loud music, raided Michael Baker's small one-bedroom apartment in Croydon, England, in March and confiscated 34 loudspeakers that allegedly Baker had been using at high volume at "all hours." After entering the home with the aid of a locksmith, police left Baker with only a CD player and a pair of earphones. [Croydon.gov.uk, 3-8-2016]

-- Nicholas Ragin finally got his conviction overturned in March, but it took 10 years before the U.S. Court of Appeals declared that his "right to counsel" had been violated because his lawyer slept during various parts of Ragin's conspiracy and racketeering trial. (His sentence had 20 more years to run.) One juror later recalled that lawyer Nikita Mackey slept "almost every day, morning and evening" for "30 minutes at least." Once, according to court documents, after the trial judge called Mackey's name loudly, only belatedly getting a response, Mackey "jumped up and sort of looked around and was licking his lips ... and looked sort of confused and looked around the room." (The prosecutor said she intends to retry Ragin.) [WYFF-TV (Geenville, S.C.), 3-14-2016] [The Independent (London), 3-13-2016]

In March, Foreign Policy magazine noted that someone had created a "hot male migrants" account on the photo-sharing application Instagram: "Someone is going through photos of migrants and refugees, saving ones of men thought of as hot." (Many of the men, of course, have survived harrowing journeys and even lost friends and family members while fleeing Syria and other war-torn lands. Wrote one Instagram user, of a man who had turned her head, "He's gorgeous. Am I going to hell for thinking that?") [Foreign Policy, 3-11-2016]

-- North Carolina State University scientists, in a "proof of concept" study published in March, claim they have found a promising alternative for eliminating certain infections -- even when no known antibiotic will work. The solution, the researchers write, is to genetically modify maggots (which are well-known to feed naturally off of infected tissue) to gobble up the infections and release, as "waste," human growth hormone (as they showed in the study could be done with a strain of green bottle fly maggots). [Science Daily, 3-23-2016]

-- Felicia Burl, 33, who crashed her car (killing her passenger) after running a red light, fled on foot and later tried to foil DNA evidence against her to avoid charges. While in lockup, Burl, with a 29-conviction rap sheet, knew a mouth swab was upcoming and tried to contaminate it by -- as police later learned -- having two other women spit into her mouth just before the test. She was convicted anyway, and a court in Stamford, Connecticut, is expected to order a 10-year sentence at Burl's next hearing. [Stamford Advocate, 3-15-2016]

Massachusetts state troopers initially found a few drug items in a search of the vehicle of Carrie Tutsock, 24, at a traffic stop in March along Interstate 91 near Hatfield, Massachusetts, but Tutsock and her two companions proceeded to worsen the situation. The troopers seemed satisfied with finding three drug pipes, a couple of syringes and several baggies of drugs, and began to write their report as a "possession" case, but en route to the state police barracks, a trooper said he overheard one suspect whisper to another, "I don't think they found all the stuff in the car." The police searched it again and this time found three digital scales with white residue, along with another 230 baggies of heroin, and the charges were upped to "intent to distribute." [MassLive.com, 3-17-2016]

(1) Convicted triple-murder inmate Kon Georgiou, housed in Australia's Goulburn Jail, was charged in February with hiding a cellphone in his rectum, but managed to hold out for 12 days (almost 300 hours) before finally "releasing" the evidence. Guards, certain it was a phone on the X-ray (and not the residue from recent surgery that Georgiou claimed), had confidently resisted "going in" after it. (2) At an estate sale in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in February, a couple in Wilmington bid successfully on Delaware license plate number "14," which went for $325,000. According to WCAU-TV's report, paying exorbitant sums for low license plate numbers "is a Delaware thing" (and has been mentioned in News of the Weird previously). [The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 2-24- 2016] [Wilmington News Journal, 2-16-2016]

An official release of San Francisco's Department of the Environment in July (2010) apparently cleared up a matter of controversy (according to a report in SF Weekly): Human semen is one "organic waste product" not required to be disposed of in special "compost" bags under the city's mandatory composting law. (However, "snot" must be properly bagged.) [SF Weekly, 7-16-2010]