Life is good now for British men who "identify" as dogs and puppies, as evidenced by a BBC documentary ("Secret Life of the Human Pups") showing men in body outfits (one a Lycra-suited Dalmatian, "Spot"), exhibiting "sexual" expressions (stomach-rubbing, ear-tickling and nuzzling their "handlers"), eating out of bowls, gnawing on chew toys, wearing collars (so as not to be a "stray"), and jumping in the air for "treats." (However, decency demands that a Pup must only feign urinating against a lamppost.) Said Spot (aka Tom), "It's about being given license to behave in a way that feels natural, even primal." Added "Bootbrush," "(We) are trying to grasp the positive elements of the archetype of the dog." [The Guardian, 5-25-2016]

-- As an alternative to the more costly in vitro fertilization, researchers at a Dresden, Germany, institute announced (in the recent Nano Letters journal) that they had developed a motorized device tiny enough to fit around a sperm's tail and which could be commanded to propel it to "swim" faster toward the target egg, increasing the chances of fertilization. A prototype is still in the works. [rt.com (Moscow), 1-15-2016]

-- The Internet pornography behemoth PornHub recently added to the glut of physical fitness "apps" with one designed to help users tone up sexual muscles. The BangFit's routines include the "squat and thrust," the "missionary press," and other ways to practice what the company describes as the "one activity people are always motivated to do and (for) which they are never too busy." (Imagine, for example, wrote Mashable.com, "quantify(ing) your dry humps.") [Mashable.com, 5-19-2016]

As Libya's central bank struggles to stabilize a halting economy, it could surely use the estimated $184 million in gold and silver coins that Moammar Gadhafi minted but left buried in an underground vault in the coastal city of Beyda, but the treasure is inaccessible because central bank officials don't know the lock's combination (as The Wall Street Journal reported in May). The latest plan is to have a locksmith squeeze through a 16-by-16-inch hole in the outer vault's concrete wall and once inside to try his hand. If unsuccessful, the government's bureaucrats likely cannot get paid, but even if successful, various anti-government factions may go to extremes to snatch the coins. [Wall Street Journal, 5-13-2016]

Argentina's TV channels have many of the same taboos as U.S. broadcasting, including restrictions on women's hands-on demonstration of how precisely to examine themselves for breast cancer. However, as AdWeek reported in March, the agency David Buenos Aires apparently solved the problem with an explicit TV public service announcement featuring a model (facing the camera, topless) showing exactly how such an exam should go, e.g., where to press down, where to squeeze. The secret? The model was an overweight man with generous-sized "manboobs." [AdWeek, 4-20-2016]

-- Video surfaced in May of students at Winston Churchill High School in San Antonio, Texas, actually playing jump rope with the intestines of cats that had been dissected in biology class. Obviously, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was not pleased, but school district officials called the exercise a valid demonstration of the "tensile strength of the organ" and only reluctantly agreed to investigate further. [MySanAntonio.com, 5-17-2016]

-- When Triston Chase, 20, missed his court date in April in Harnett County, North Carolina, on financial fraud charges, it was revealed that his arrest in December had come when he had been found "residing" illegally, as a civilian, in a barracks at Fort Bragg -- in a facility housing the Army's 3rd Special Forces Group. According to a prosecutor, Chase had been posing as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist "for months." The official investigation of Special Forces' barracks "security" was still underway at the time of Chase's court date. [Fayetteville Observer, 4-27-2016]

(1) Efrain Delgado-Rosales was sentenced to five years in prison in March for smuggling noncitizens into the country. (The Border Patrol had caught him 23 times previously, but had declined to file charges.) (2) Sean Pelfrey, 38, told his judge in May that the two assault charges against him in Framingham, Massachusetts, do not make him a "threat to society," even though the current arrest was his 38th. (3) Matthew Freeland, 29, was convicted of several home-invasion offenses in Kingston, Ontario, in May, and the judge, considering a proper sentence, found only two previous probation orders -- but then, looking further, found 59 convictions and sentenced Freeland to more than two years in prison. [CNN, 3-27-2016] [MetroWest Daily News (Framingham), 5-17-2016] [The Whig (Kingston), 5-15-2016]

Among the critters for which life is most difficult are male nursery web spiders that (according to May research in Biology Letters journal) instinctively "court" females with food wrapped in silk -- offerings that (a) increase the males' chances of scoring and (b) decrease, by 84 percent, their chances that the female will spontaneously eat the male. The study also found that males sometimes try to mate using nonfood items wrapped in silk (with mixed results) and also that sometimes unscrupulous females accept food gifts but nevertheless immediately devour the male. [Washington Post, 5-18-2016]

South Carolina Chutzpah! (1) James Kinley III, 27, was charged in York County, South Carolina, in May with dealing marijuana. He apparently had the (unfounded) belief that York County deputies do not monitor Craigslist -- because that is where Kinley advertised ("I Sell Weed"), in a notice with his photo, address and price ($200). (2) Grady Carlson, 58, went to the Carolina Title Loans office in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on May 25 to apply for a high-interest "payday" loan -- and nervously paced while answering questions. The Carolina employee asked if anything was wrong, and Carlson allegedly disclosed that he needed money -- fast! -- to purchase methamphetamine. A subsequent police search turned up a glass container and drugs. [WIS-TV (Columbia), 5-19-2016] [The Smoking Gun, 5-26-2016]

-- For years, India has been concerned about the gas-release problem posed by its nearly 300 million cows (and 200 million more gas-intensive animals), but researchers in Kerala state revealed a promising breeding answer in May: dwarf cows (about one-fourth the size, producing somewhat less milk but one-seventh the manure and one-10th the methane). (Pound for pound, methane traps 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.) (Bonus: The New York Times Style Book apparently now accepts the word "farting" in formal copy -- while reporting that "belching" is the far more serious methane problem.) [New York Times, 5-5-2016]

-- In the early years of News of the Weird, urban readers learned of the custom of various Western locales' charity cow-patty "bingo" games in which cows are fed and turned loose on a field of wagered-upon squares. (In fact, in 1997 Canada's Nova Scotia Gaming Control Commission temporarily banned the game while it investigated whether it could be "fixed" by training the cow to favor certain relief spots.) The event lives on, but a charity fundraiser in Great Falls, Montana, in May was halted when the cow jumped over a fence and had to be chased down. Rather than await the now-nervous (or perhaps constipated) cow, the contest winner was selected by random draw. [KTVQ-TV (Billings), 5-19-2016]

All U.S. states have forms of no-fault divorce, but England still requires that couples prove adultery, abandonment or "unreasonable behavior," which leads to strange claims, according to an April (2012) New York Times dispatch from London. For instance, one divorcing woman's petition blamed her husband's insistence that she speak only in Klingon. Other examples of "unreasonable" behavior (gathered by the Times of London): a husband's objecting to the "malicious" preparation of his hated tuna casserole, another's 15-year silence (except for writing him Post-It Notes), a husband's distorting the fit of his wife's outfits by frequently wearing them, and one's insistence that a pet tarantula reside in a glass case beside the marital bed. [New York Times, 4-7-2012]

By 2009, when Zimbabwe's central bank gave up on controlling inflation, its largest currency was the 100 trillion-dollar bill -- barely enough for bus fare in Harare and not even worth the paper needed to print it. However, that 100 trillion-dollar note (that's "1" plus 14 zeros) has turned out to be a great investment for several astute traders in London and New Zealand, who bought thousands of them at pennies on the trillion and now report brisk sales to collectors on eBay at US$30 to $40 a note -- a six-year return on investment, according to a May report in London's The Guardian, of nearly 1,500 percent. [The Guardian, 5-14-2016]

-- Long-divorced Henry Peisch, 56, has seven children, but only one is still living with his ex-wife (who had originally been awarded $581 monthly support for all seven). (Three children are now independent, and three others successfully petitioned courts to live with Henry.) The resultant hardship (the $581 remains in effect) caused Henry to ask the Bergen County, New Jersey, Family Court several times for a "hardship" hearing, which the court denied (thus even defying the New Jersey Supreme Court). On April 8, Family Court judge Gary Wilcox, noting Peisch's appearance on a related matter, spontaneously "granted" him his "ability to pay" hearing (with thus no opportunity for witnesses or evidence-gathering) -- and summarily jailed him for missing some $581 payments (because, the judge concluded, he did not "believe" Peisch's hardship claims). [Bergen Dispatch, 4-28-2016]

-- Magician and professional gambler Brian Zembic, 55, finally consulted surgeons recently about removing his historic C-cup breast implants, which he bore on a $100,000 bet in 1996 (with a rider of $10,000 annually for retaining them). (He also won a companion game of backgammon to determine who would pay for the original surgery.) He told news sources in May that he had intended to have them removed early on, but that they had "grown on" him and become "a normal part of my life." [Huffington Post, 5-18-2016]

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, in a May publication deriding the value of certain federally funded research, highlighted several recent National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation projects, such as the $13 million for exploring musical preferences of monkeys and chimpanzees; the $1.1 million judging whether cheerleaders are more attractive seen as a squad than individually; the $390,000 to determine how many shakes a wet dog needs to feel dry; and the $5 million to learn whether drunk birds slur when they sing. (Also strangely included was the actually valuable study by Michael Smith of Cornell University ranking where on the human body a bee sting was most painful. He found, from personal testing, that "on the penis" was only the third worst -- research that brought Smith a prestigious Ig Nobel prize last year.) [Fox News, 5-10-2016] [Sen. Jeff Flake, "Twenty Questions," May 2016]

(1) Yahoo News Australia reported (with photos) a man in Tallebudgera Creek on the country's Gold Coast swimming with his pet snake. The man, standing chest-deep in water, would toss the snake (apparently a carpet python) a few feet and, according to the videos, the snake would swim back to him each time. (In the man's other hand, of course: beer.) (2) In April, police in Broome (in Australia's far northwest) on traffic patrol stopped a 27-year-old man whose "several" children, including one infant, were unrestrained in his car while "cartons of beer" were "buckled into car seats," according to an Australian Broadcasting Corp. report. He faces several charges, including driving on a suspended license. [Yahoo News Australia, 3-1-2016] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 4-7-2016]

Transgender Blues: Ms. Jai Dara Latto, 23, won the title Miss Transgender UK last September in London, but in February organizers stripped her of the title as being insufficiently trans, passing the crown to Ms. Daisy Bell. Officials had spotted Latto (who has worked as a "drag queen") in a BBC documentary wearing boxer shorts, and since switching underwear is usually such a crucial step for transgenders, officials concluded that Latto must not yet have made a sufficient-enough commitment to qualify for the title. [The Herald (Glasgow), 2-20-2016]

In a recent book, biologist Jennifer Ackerman noted the extraordinary intelligence of birds -- attributed to the dense packing of neurons in their equivalent of humans' cerebral cortex (according to an April Wall Street Journal review of Ackerman's "The Genius of Birds"). For example, the New Caledonia crow, among others, knows how to make and use hooked tools to hide food (and retrieve it from tricky-to-reach places), and the blue jay and others, which store many thousands of seeds during autumn, also steal seeds from less-vigilant birds -- and they even return to re-hide food if they sense they have been spotted storing it earlier. Additionally, of course, the birds' equivalent of the human larynx is so finely tuned as to be regarded as the most sophisticated sound in all of nature. [Wall Street Journal, 4-23-2016]

The president of the New England Organ Bank told U.S. News & World Report recently that she attributes the enormous upsurge in donations in recent years to the opiod "epidemic" that has produced a similarly enormous upsurge in fatal overdoses. Now, one out of every 11 donated organs comes as a result of the overdosing that in 2014 claimed over 47,000 lives. (An organ-sharing organization's chief medical officer reminds that all organ donations are carefully screened, especially those acquired from overdose deaths.) [Washington Post, 5-9-2016]

(1) Nicole Bjanes, casually zipping along Interstate 4 in Volusia County around noon on May 9, saw a red-eared slider turtle come sailing through the air and crash into her windshield, sending her car off the road. The Florida Highway Patrol said the turtle had become airborne after being hit by another car. (It was apparently unhurt and swam away when a firefighter released it into a nearby pond.) (2) On May 10, police in Key West responded to a caller at the scene of a giant banyan tree (common to Florida and featuring vertical roots that thicken, spread and become entangled with the central trunk). A woman had attempted to climb the tree but had fallen among the vertical roots, making her barely visible. Said a proud police spokesperson, "They popped her out like a cork." [WFLA-TV, 5-13-2016] [WPLG-TV (Miami), 5-10-2016]

Prolancia Turner, 26, was arrested on May 13 at Vero Beach (Florida) Outlets mall after she allegedly walked out of a Claire's store with unpaid-for earrings tucked into her waistband. Police reported her "crying and angry" and complaining that, "Everyone steals from this store. Why are you picking on me?" [The Smoking Gun, 5-19-2016]

In 2006, a court in Preston, England, apparently weary of Akinwale Arobieke's repeatedly, unconsensually "touching" men's biceps in public, issued a Sexual Offenses Prevention Order making any such future contact automatic offenses. Arobieke admitted a longtime fascination with buffed-up physiques and continued from time to time to find biceps irresistible, but in May 2016 he convinced a Manchester Crown Court judge to lift the SOPO based on his assurance that he wanted a "fresh start" and would behave himself. The judge seemed not quite sure, but noted that police could still arrest him under other sexual or assault statutes. [Manchester Evening News, 5-5-2016]

At the 10th Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait in March (2012), as medals were presented and winners' national anthems were played, officials were apparently ill-prepared for medalist Maria Dmitrienko of Kazakhstan. Consequently, they cluelessly played, as her national anthem, the humorous ditty from the movie "Borat." (Instead of such lyrics as "sky of golden sun" and "legend of courage," the audience heard "Greatest country in the world/All other countries are run by little girls" and "Filtration system a marvel to behold/It removes 80 percent of human solid waste.") Dmitrienko reportedly kept a mostly straight face, although Kazakhstan later received an official apology. [BBC News, 3-23-2012]

Ms. Pixee Fox reported in May that she was recovering nicely from cosmetic rib-removal surgery, performed by one of the few doctors in the world who offers it (Dr. Barry Eppley of Carmel, Indiana). Though she has had more than a dozen "beautifying" procedures, she had trouble finding a surgeon who would agree to take out six "free-floating" ribs (ones not attached to the sternum). Born in Sweden, she gave up a career as a trained electrician to come to the United States to pursue her goal of looking "like a cartoon character" -- which she has surely achieved with her now-16-inch waist. [WRTV (Indianapolis), 5-19-2016]

Triple Crown winner American Pharoah earned an estimated $8.6 million racing but, now retired, could earn as much as $35 million just by having sex. Stallions reportedly can breed into their 20s, and the horse, now barely age 4, will have 175 conquests by the end of this summer, according to a May report by CNBC. One industry worker said Pharoah has put on weight, spends his spare time peaceably eating grass, and "looks more like a relaxed horse." A spokesman for the Kentucky farm now housing Pharoah said he "has proven to be very professional in the breeding shed." [CNBC, 5-2-2016]

The Keystone Fellowship Church in North Wales, Pennsylvania, has a tradition of congregants reserving pew seats by leaving Bibles in place, but worshipper Robert Braxton, 27, was having none of that on April 24 and took a saved seat anyway. Witnesses told Philadelphia's WCAU-TV that when one church member gently tapped Braxton on the shoulder to inform him of the tradition, Braxton snapped at him and became disruptive. Congregant Mark Storms, 46, flashed a gun and confronted Braxton, who punched Storms, adding, "That's not a real gun" and "What are you going to do, shoot me?" Storms, contending that he felt threatened, fired two shots, killing Braxton, and was charged with voluntary manslaughter. [Philly.com, 4-30-2016]

-- The Moscow Times reported in May that bailiffs in Russia's Perm region, employing originality as yet unseen in America in attempting to collect an overdue debt, arrested the debtor's cat. The bailiffs listed the feline's value at the equivalent of $23, and the man came up with that sum the next day and took the cat home. The Federal Bailiffs Service explained that all the other "property" in the apartment was in other people's names. [Moscow Times, 5-6-2016]

-- Shannon Egeland, 41, already convicted in 2014 of running a mortgage-fraud operation during the 2004-2008 real-estate boom, pleaded guilty in May 2016 to the subsequent crime of deliberately having himself shot to gain his judge's sympathy (and to collect on disability insurance he had purchased the week before). Egeland, scheduled to start a 10-year sentence for the 2014 conviction, told the judge he had been assaulted by gunfire when he stopped in traffic to help a pregnant woman, but in reality he had ordered his teenage son to shoot him in the legs with a 20-gauge shotgun. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 5-11-2016]

(1) German soldiers participating in a four-week NATO exercise in Norway earlier this year apparently had to abort their efforts days earlier than other countries -- because Germany's defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, had imposed strict rules on overtime pay. Soldiers are to work no more than 41 hours a week, she said, according to revelations by London's Daily Telegraph. (2) Britain's venerable Oxford University issued a formal suggestion to law lecturers recently that they give "trigger warnings" (and allow classroom absences) if the class subject matter might be unpleasant to some students. Complained one frustrated lecturer, "We can't remove sexual offences from the criminal law syllabus -- obviously." [Daily Telegraph, 4-10-2016] [The Independent (London), 5-10-2016]

-- This correction appeared in The New York Times print edition of May 10: "Because of an editing error, an article on Monday (May 9) about a theological battle being fought by Muslim imams and scholars in the West against the Islamic State misstated the Snapchat handle used by Suhaib Webb, one of the Muslim leaders speaking out. It is imamsuhaibwebb, not Pimpin4Paradise786." [New York Times, 5-10-2016]

-- Amateurs: Government agencies trying, legally or not, to hide details from public inquiries under freedom-of-information demands usually resort to indelibly blackening out what they do not want revealed, but the Public Health Agency of Canada recently tried a unique method, according to an Associated Press correspondent. The AP had requested files on the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and, revealed reporter Raphael Satter, the documents finally arrived from the PHA with parts carefully "redacted" -- using "Scotch tape and paper." Satter reported that he got everything the AP had asked for by merely peeling the tape back. (A Dallas Morning News reporter, commenting on Satter's experience, wrote, "Canadians are so nice.") [Toronto Star, 5-17-2016]

King Cove, Alaska, population 923, lies between two massive volcanic mountains on one of the Aleutian Islands, unconnected to other civilization and 625 miles from any medical facility (in Anchorage), "accessible" only by a weather-challenging "puddle-jumper" airplane to Cold Bay for a connecting flight. About two-thirds of the residents have flying anxieties so severe that King Cove has a makeshift vending machine dispensing Valium. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has campaigned to build a road to Cold Bay to eliminate the nerve-wracking flights, but it would disturb a federally protected wilderness, and the U.S. Interior Department has so far declined. (Unconsidered: Channel the late Sam Kinison, who implored starving Ethiopians to just "mo-o-o-ove!" since food doesn't grow in the desert.) [Alaska Dispatch News, 4-14-2016]

-- Michael Blevins, 37, reported to Florida Hospital in Orange City (near Daytona Beach) in May after finally realizing, three days after the fact, that he had shot himself while cleaning his handgun. He said he was on pain medication and besides, was wearing a black shirt that obscured blood stains. He said he had felt a sharp pain but that, mainly, it had aggravated his back injury, causing him to fall and hit his head against a coffee table, and thus was not aware of the origin of the loud noise the .22-caliber handgun made. Deputies investigated briefly but closed the case. [Daytona Beach News-Journal, 5-10-2016] -- Charles Richardson, 35, was arrested at the Beachcomber Hotel in St. Pete Beach in May after he had accidentally locked himself out of his room but broken back in by shooting the lock with his handgun. [BayNews9.com (St. Petersburg), 5-19-2016]

Annual Chinese "Tombsweeping" celebrations have made News of the Weird several times, most recently in 2008 when the government reinstated it as an official holiday. (Traditionally, people brought jewelry and other valuables to ancestors' gravesites for burial with the body, thus theoretically "enriching" the relative's afterlife.) In recent years, during economic turbulence, some brought only paper images of valuables (or just left signed checks -- "generous" checks!). Now, a retail market has developed of ultra-cheap knock-off upscale items, such as fake Gucci shoes, computers, big-screen TV sets, and even one full-size "air-conditioner" (because, perhaps, it may be "hot" where the deceased is headed?). A Hong Kong representative for Gucci has issued warnings against trademark abuse, even though the flimsy fakes are hardly convincing. [New York Times, 5-5-2016]

The 547-acre FBI Academy on the grounds of the Quantico (Virginia) Marine Base houses a firing range on which about a million bullets a month are shot by agents in training, but it also happens to be a de facto wildlife refuge for the simple fact that the academy is off-limits to Virginia hunters. Thus, according to a December (2011) ABC News dispatch, deer learn that, despite the gunfire (sometimes at astonishingly close range as they wander by the targets), none of them ever gets hit. The academy has also become a "sanctuary" for foxes, wild turkeys and other critters. [ABC News, 12-26-2011]