The recently concluded Olympics included a few of the more obscure athletic endeavors (such as dressage for horses and steeplechase for humans), but U.S. colleges compete in even less-heralded "sports," such as wood chopping, rock climbing, fishing and broomball. University of Alabama, 2015 national football champions, dominates also in the 280-school bass-fishing competition, and New York's Paul Smith College's 5,000-student campus raucously cheers its championship log-splitting team (against seven other schools). And Ohio State whipped another football powerhouse, Nebraska, in ice-based broomball. [Wall Street Journal, 8-22-2016]

-- We now have computer or cellphone apps to, for example, analyze the quality of one's tongue-kissing; alert you when your zipper is inadvertently down; make a refrigerator also be a stereo and photo album; notify you when you need to drink more water; check the male-female ratio at local bars so, if you're on the prowl, you can plan your evening efficiently; and reveal whether your partner has had someone else in bed while you were away (via differential contours of the mattress). And then, in August, the creators of the new "South Park" virtual reality game announced that they had figured out how to release a "fart" smell that is crucial to game-players when they put on the VR mask. [New York Times, 7-10-2016] [New York Post, 7-24-2016] [Daily Telegraph (London), 4-14-2016] [AdWeek, 8-26-2016]

-- Inexplicable: Pizza Hut announced in August that it had finally mastered the technology to turn its cardboard delivery boxes into customers' workable disk-jockey turntables and will make them available shortly in five stores in the United Kingdom. (Each box has two record decks, a cross-fader, pitch and cue controls, and the ability to rewind.) Music stars P Money and DJ Vectra are featured, and the boxes will sync via Bluetooth to phones and computers. [Daily Mirror (London), 8-23-2016]

-- Lame: (1) Steven Scholz was sued for $255,000 in Oregon City, Oregon, in July after he allegedly fired on a family's house (15 gunshots) and traumatized their young son inside. Scholz explained that he thought the Biblical Rapture had just occurred and that he was the only survivor. (2) Aman Bhatia, 27, was charged with battery and lewd molestation in July after allegedly groping six women at Disney World's Typhoon Lagoon water park. Despite witnesses telling police that Bhatia was positioning himself for furtive groping, Bhatia claimed that his glasses were broken and thus he was not aware that women were in his path. [The Oregonian, 7-29-2016] [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 7-6-2016]

-- In July, Ryan Bundy (a leader of the Malheur federal land occupation protest in Oregon in January), exercising his philosophy as a "sovereign," wrote his judge that he rejects the federal court's jurisdiction over him in his upcoming trial, but that he would agree to co-operate -- provided the government pays him $1 million cash. Bundy (who signs court documents "i; ryan c., man") said for that sum, he would act as "defendant" -- or, as a bonus, if the judge prefers, as "bailiff," or even as "judge." (Bundy's lawyer, not surprisingly, is Bundy.) [KOIN-TV (Portland), 7-28-2016]

-- Recurring Theme: People with too much money have been reported over the years to have paid enormous sums for "prestigious" license plates, usually the lowest-numbered. In China, the number 8 is regarded as lucky, and a man identified only as "Liu" obtained Shanghai province's plate "88888" -- for which he paid the equivalent of $149,000. Shanghaiist.com reported in June that "Lucky" Liu was forced into annoying traffic stops by police eight times the first day because officers were certain that the plate was bogus. [Shanghaiist, 6-29-2016]

-- Greenland's first "world-class tourist attraction," opening in 2020, offers visitors a "stunning view" of the rapidly melting ice sheets from the area's famous, 250,000-year-old Jakobshavn Glacier. The United Nations-protected site is promoting a "tourist" vista that some call "ground zero for climate change" -- and which others hope won't be completely melted by 2020. [Mother Nature Network, 7-12-2016]

-- Third-grade teacher Tracy Rosner filed a lawsuit against the county school board in Miami in July (claiming to be the victim of race and national origin discrimination) after being turned down for a job that required teaching Spanish -- because she doesn't speak Spanish. (Rosner said "non-Hispanics" like her are a minority among Miami schoolteachers and therefore that affirmative-action-style accommodations should have been made for her.) [Miami Herald, 7-25-2016]

-- An Idaho man took his pregnant daughter, 14, and the man who raped her, age 24, to Missouri last year to get married (because of that state's lenient marriage-age law) -- asserting that it is the rapist's "duty" to marry a girl he gets pregnant. The father now says he was wrong, but an Idaho judge nonetheless sentenced him to 120 days behind bars for endangering his daughter. (The rapist received a 15-year sentence, and the pregnancy ended in miscarriage.) [Idaho State Journal (Pocatello), 5-31-2016]

The Tykables "baby store for adults" opened in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, recently and so far has outlasted attempts to shut it down (as being, allegedly, inappropriate for the community). Part of the business model is selling adult diapers for medical needs, but a major clientele is adults with a fetish to be treated like helpless babies -- with diapers, clothing, accessories and furniture (oversized high chairs, playpens and cribs). (Though the owner controls store access and has blocked out window views, critics are still uncomfortable explaining the store to their children.) [CBS News, 6-8-2016]

(1) Overenthusiastic Insurance Fraud: A 30-year-old woman, "LTN," has so far escaped prosecution in Hanoi, Vietnam -- because her insurance fraud caper already cost her a third, each, of her left hand and left foot. Those are the parts police said she paid a friend the equivalent of $2,000 to chop off to claim a $157,000 disability- policy payout, according to an August dispatch by Agence France-Presse. (2) Husband Who Needs to Believe: Police in Hartselle, Alabama, arrested Sarah Shepard for soliciting a hit man to kill her husband, Richard (after police set up an undercover sting, even working with Richard to stage his fake death to convince her that the job was completed). Now, Richard is trying to help Sarah. In August, he asked her judge to reduce her bail, certain that she had been "entrapped" because, for one thing, she could hardly manage a grocery list, much less a murder. [Agence France-Presse via The Guardian, 8-25-2016] [WAFF-TV (Huntsville, Ala.), 8-16-2016]

(1) A traffic officer in Guelph, Ontario, pulled over a 35-year-old motorist on July 11 traveling 67 mph (108 km/h) in a 45 mph zone -- at night on a stretch with no highway lights and no headlights on his vehicle. The stopped driver was given citations even though he pointed out that he was watching the road with a flashlight on his head, held in place by straps. (2) Twenty-three local-government bureaucrats in Boscotrecase, Italy, were disciplined in July after being caught shirking duties, including by falsifying the time clock. It was unclear whether the 23 included the two "mystery" workers photographed punching in for work while wearing cardboard boxes on their heads. [Guelph Today, 7-13-2016] [The Local (Rome), 7-12-2016]

James Davis, 73, was ordered by the town of Stevenson, Alabama, to dig up his wife's body from his front yard and re-bury it in an actual cemetery. The front yard, he pleaded, is where she wanted to be, and this way he can visit her every time he walks out the door. Davis, who is challenging the order (in 2012) at the Court of Appeals, said he feels singled out, since people in Stevenson "have raised pigs in their yard," have "horses in the road here" and "gravesites here all over the place." [Associated Press via Washington Post, 8-19-2012]

News of the Weird has recently learned that Steven Wayne Hillier, of Australia, listed as a Classic Middle Name murderer in 2010, was found not guilty on retrial.

The phenomenal Japanese singer Hatsune Miku (100 million YouTube hits) is coming off of a sold-out, 10-city North American concert tour with high-energy audiences (blocks-long lines to get in; raucous crowd participation; hefty souvenir sales), except that "she" isn't real. Hatsune Miku is a projected hologram on stage singing and dancing (but her band is human), and her May show in Dallas, according to a Dallas Observer review, typically ignited frenzied fans who know the show's "every beat, outfit ... and glow stick color-change." Her voice, a synthesized "vocaloid," is crafted in pitch, timbre and timing to sound human. (The latest PlayStation brings Hatsune Miku into the home by virtual reality.) [Dallas Observer, 5-16-2016]

-- Make Up Your Mind, Feds: On Aug. 11, the federal government's Drug Enforcement Agency famously refused to soften the regulation of marijuana, leaving it (with heroin) as a harsh "Schedule I" drug because, citing Food and Drug Administration findings, it has "no medical use." However, as the Daily Caller pointed out, another federal agency -- Department of Health and Human Services -- obtained a U.S. patent in 2003 for marijuana-derived cannabinoids, which HHS pointed out have several medical uses (as an antioxidant and for limiting neurological damage following strokes). [Daily Caller, 8-17-2016]

-- Priorities: (1) "A dog has better protection than our kids," lamented an Oregon prosecutor in May because, unlike the pet law, the "child abuse" law requires proof the victim experienced "substantial" pain -- which a young child often lacks vocabulary to describe. (Simply showing welts and bruises is insufficient, the Court of Appeals has ruled.) (2) That same Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in June that Thomas Wade, 44, was not guilty of a crime when in 2013 he unzipped his pants, reached inside, and at that point cursed the woman he had confronted in a public park. "Distasteful," wrote the Court, but it was an exercise of Wade's free speech right. [The Oregonian, 5-21-2016] [The Oregonian, 6-10-2016]

-- Texas! In August, Houston defense lawyer Jerry Guerinot announced his retirement from death-penalty cases, leaving him with a perfect record (for that area of his practice): He lost every single time. Twenty-one clients received the death penalty, and 10 have been executed (so far). He made no excuses, pointing out that "gang members, serial killers and sociopaths" were entitled to representation, too, and that he has taken more than 500 noncapital cases to trial (with, presumably, more success). [Associated Press via Fox News, 8-13-2016]

(1) Tourism officials in Iceland recently posted "hundreds" of signs at visitor attractions showing a squatting person in silhouette, with a small pile on the ground underneath -- and the familiar diagonal line (indicating "don't"). Critics of the signs reluctantly admit Iceland's chronic shortage of public restrooms. (2) In a YouTube clip released in July, a Disney fan posted shot after shot of "rude" Chinese tourists at Shanghai Disneyland, coaxing their small children to urinate in public rather than in restrooms. (3) The Tourism Bureau of Japan's Hokkaido island recently rewrote its etiquette guide for visitors to underscore the inappropriateness of "belching or flatulence" in public. [Daily Mail (London), 7-20- 2016] [Daily Mail (London), 7-19-2016] [Agence France-Presse via Yahoo News, 4-28-2016]

Suspicions Confirmed: (1) A New York Times reporter, describing in June the rising prices of prescription pharmaceuticals, noted that a popular pain reliever (probably describing oxycodone) was available on the Paterson, New Jersey, black market for $25 a pill, while heroin was going for $2 a baggie. (2) The economic growth rate in Ireland for 2015 was revised -- upward -- in July. Growth of its gross domestic product was originally estimated at 7.8 percent, but subsequently -- adding the paper value of several "inversions" (U.S. companies "moving" to Ireland to reduce U.S. taxes) -- Ireland found that it was actually growing at 26.7 percent. [New York Times, 6-14-2016] [New York Times, 7-13-2016]

(1) Investigators revealed in July that an off-duty Aurora, Colorado, sheriff's deputy had justifiably fired his gun to resist a parking lot mugging -- and that, furthermore, one of the bullets from Deputy Jose Marquez's gun had gone straight into the barrel of one of the handguns pointed at him. The investigators called the shot "one in a billion." (2) Matthew Lavin, 39, drew internet acclaim in July after he was gored through his left thigh while "running with the bulls" in the annual spectacle in Pamplona, Spain. Interviewed in his hospital bed by Madrid's The Local, he called it "the best time ever" and said he looked forward to another run next year. [Denver Post, 7-13-2016] [The Local (Madrid), 7-13-2016]

Gary Durham, 40, was shot to death during a heated road-rage incident in Plant City, Florida, on Aug. 10. Durham had served 10 years in prison after an aggressive road-rage episode in 2001 in which he pursued another driver and knocked him to the ground, causing the man to hit his head, fatally, on the pavement. (Included in Durham's 2002 sentence was an order to take anger management classes.) [Tampa Bay Times, 8-11-2016]

-- The Borough Council of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, was surprised to learn in June that, because of an existing local ordinance, dogs were not permitted in its brand-new Pompton Lakes dog park, created with great fanfare in an area of Hershfield Park. The council vowed to fix the problem. (2) In June, a police watchdog agency in Dublin, Ireland, asked officers ("gardai") across the country to try to carry out house raids at "reasonable hours" so that they do not disturb the occupants. (In one complaint, gardai staged a 3:15 a.m. raid to search for evidence of stolen vehicle accessories.) [The Record (Hackensack), 6-13-2016] [Irish Independent, 6-12-2016]

-- A 9-year-old girl named Irina won a contest in Berezniki, Russia, in August for letting mosquitos bite her more often that they bit other contestants. It is the signature event of the annual Russian Mosquito Festival, and her 43 hits were enough to earn her the title of "tastiest girl." The annual Great Texas Mosquito Festival in Clute, Texas (south of Houston), apparently has nothing comparable. [Washington Post, 8-15-2016]

(1) The Elanora Heights Public School (a primary school in Sydney, Australia) recently banned clapping during student assemblies in an effort to help pupils with noise anxieties. To show audience approval, students are asked to "punch the air," "pull (on their) faces" or "wriggle about." (2) In July, The Nairobian newspaper reported the remarkable career of "Rosemary," reputed to be the Kenyan capital's oldest prostitute -- still going strong at 64 after more than 5,000 clients. She said she could make it through 40 on a good day, but never missed church on Sunday. [Sky News (London), 7-20-2016] [The Nairobian, 7-16-2016]

Didn't Think Ahead: (1) In July, Joshua Jacobs, 30, accidentally knocked down a traffic sign at 12:45 a.m. in Vero Beach, Florida, and, spotting a sheriff's deputy, sped away. The deputy gave chase -- especially, he said, given the fully-grown marijuana plant resting in the bed of the pickup. Jacobs was arrested. (2) Jeremy Watts, 30, and Jessica Heady, 24, were charged with aggravated burglary (a PlayStation and other electronics from a man's home) in Clarksville, Tennessee, in August. The pair had offered the haul to a Cash America Pawnshop, but did not realize that the home they had burglarized was the pawnshop manager's. [TCPalm.com (Stuart, Fla.), 8-2-2016] [Leaf Chronicle (Clarksville), 8-3-2016]

Researchers writing in the journal Animal Behaviour in July (2012) hypothesized why male pandas have sometimes been seen performing handstands near trees. They are urinating, the scientists observed, and doing handstands streams the urine higher on the tree, presumably signaling their mating superiority. A San Diego Zoo researcher involved in the study added that an accompanying gland secretion gives off even more "personal" information to other pandas than the urine alone. [Live Science, 8-28-2012]

Australians are about to learn how particular some people are about their genders. Queensland University of Technology and three other sponsors have created an online preference survey (currently underway) that asks participants to decide among 33 "genders" (since "gender" is, according to the World Health Organization, "socially constructed"). "Male" and "female" are clear enough -- but only where "identity" matches plumbing. Otherwise, it's "trans" or "transsexual," or else the more complicated bigender, omnigender, polygender, pangender, intergender, genderfluid, "cisgender," trigender, demigender, "gender non-conforming," "non-binary," "none gender" and a few others. [News.com.au (Sydney), 7-29-2016]

India has supposedly outlawed the "baby-tossing" religious test popular among Hindus and Muslims in rural villages in Maharashtra and Karnataka states, but a July New York Times report suggested that parents were still allowing surrogates to drop their newborn infants from 30 feet up and awaiting the gods' blessing for a prosperous, healthy life. In all cases, according to the report, the gods come through, and a bedsheet appears below to catch the unharmed baby. [New York Times, 7-29-2016]

-- More federal civilian employees have "arrest and firearms authority" than the total number of active-duty U.S. Marines, according to a June report by the organization Open The Books, which claims to have tallied line-by-line expenditures across the government. Several agencies (including the IRS and EPA) purchase assault weapons and other military-grade equipment (camouflage, night-vision goggles, 30-round magazines) for their agents, and even the Small Business Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Education buy their agents guns and ammo. [Washington Free Beacon, 6-22-2016]

-- San Diego Padres outfielder Melvin Upton Jr. was traded on July 23 to the Toronto Blue Jays -- in the middle of a series between the Padres and the Blue Jays in Toronto. Normally, such a player would merely gather his belongings and walk down the hall to the other team's locker room. However, while Canada treats Blue Jays' opponents as "visitors," Blue Jays players, themselves, are Canadian employees, and if not residents must have work permits. Upton had to leave the stadium and drive to Lewiston, New York, which is the closest place he could find to apply to re-enter Canada properly. (He made it back by game time.) [Associated Press via New York Times, 7-27-2016]

-- Shrewd Tourism Campaigns: (1) Since Bulgaria, on Romania's southern border, lies close to Romania's iconic Transylvania region, Bulgarian tourism officials have begun marketing their own vampire tourism industry -- stepped up following a 2014 archaeological find of a 4th-century "graveyard" of adolescents with iron stakes through their chests. (2) The new tourism minister of Thailand is threatening to close down the lucrative sex business in Bangkok and Pattaya, even with the country still rallying from a 2014 near-recession. Ms. Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul insisted that visitors are not interested in "such a thing (as sex)" but come for Thailand's "beautiful" culture. [Mother Nature News, 7-22-2016] [Daily Telegraph (London), 7-17-2016]

-- Paid to Go Away: Sports Illustrated noted in May that some universities are still paying out millions of dollars to failed coaches who had managed to secure big contracts in more optimistic times. Notre Dame's largest athletic payout in 2014 was the $2.05 million to ex-football coach Charlie Weis -- five years after he had been fired. That ended Weis's Notre Dame contract (which paid him $15 million post-dismissal), but he is still drawing several million dollars from the University of Kansas despite having been let go there, also. [Sports Illustrated, 5-30-2016]

-- Horniness: (1) A year-long, nationwide investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (reporting in May) found more than 2,400 doctors penalized for sexually abusing their patients -- with state medical boards ultimately allowing more than half to continue practicing medicine. Some doctors, a reporter noted, are among "the most prolific sex offenders in the country," with "hundreds" of victims. (2) District Judge Joseph Boeckmann (in Arkansas's rural Cross County) resigned in May after the state Judicial Discipline committee found as many as 4,500 nude or semi-nude photos of young men who had been before Boeckmann in court. (Some were naked, being paddled by Boeckmann, who trolled for victims by writing young men notes offering a "community service" option). [ABC News, 7-6-2016] [CNN, 5-10-2016]

(1) Rhys Holman pleaded guilty to a firearms charge in Melbourne, Australia, in July for shooting 53 bullets into his brother's Xbox. (The brother had urinated on Holman's car.) (2) Mauricio Morales-Caceres, 24, was sentenced to life in prison by a Montgomery County, Maryland, judge in July following his April conviction for fatally stabbing a "friend" -- 89 times. [The Age (Melbourne), 7-22-2016] [Washington Post, 7-15-2016]

(1) Police in Southampton, New York, confirmed a July altercation in which model Christie Brinkley water-hosed a woman she had spotted urinating on her beachfront property. Erica Remkus, 36, said her need was urgent after watching a July 4 fireworks show, but Brinkley shouted, "How dare you!" and, "I walk on these rocks (where Remkus had relieved herself)." (2) Also in July, actor Brooke Shields made the news when she -- as a curator of an art show in Southampton, New York -- managed to rescue a piece that custodians had inadvertently tossed into the garbage. (The cleanup crew had made an understandable mistake, as the statue was a raccoon standing next to a trashcan, ready to rummage.) [New York Daily News, 7- 4-2016] [New York Post, 7-11-2016]

(1) Knoxville, Tennessee, firefighters were called to a home in July when a woman tried to barbecue brisket in her bathroom -- and, in addition to losing control of the flame, melted her fiberglass bathtub. Firefighters limited the damage -- by turning on the shower. (2) One day earlier, in Union, South Carolina, a 33-year-old woman called police to her home, claiming that she had fallen asleep on her couch with her "upper plate" in her mouth, but that when she awoke, it was gone and that she suspects a teeth-napping intruder. [WVLT- TV (Knoxville), 7-13-2016] [WHNS-TV (Greenville, S.C.), 7-14- 2016]

The owner of the Howl At The Moon Bar in Gold Coast, Australia, released surveillance video of a July break-in (later inspiring the perpetrator to turn himself in). The man is seen trying to enter the locked bar at 3 a.m., then tossing a beer keg at a glass door three times, finally creating a hole large enough to climb through, acrobatically, and fall to the floor (lit cigarette remaining firmly between his lips). Once inside, he stood at the bar, apparently waiting for someone to take his order. When no one came, he meekly left through the same door. The owner said nothing was taken, and nothing else was damaged. [Brisbane Times, 7-29-2016]

Too Many Toilet-Themed Restaurants: The first one, in Taiwan, made News of the Weird in 2006, but recently two more opened their doors. One, in Semarang, Indonesia (on Java island), serves only one dish -- brown meatballs floating in thick soup, arrayed in a toilet-shaped pan. The owner's secondary agenda is to inspire people to install toilets in their homes. In Toronto's Koreatown, a dessert-themed one was scheduled to open in August with patron seating on you-know-whats and a variety of brown sweets such as swirly-stool-shaped chocolate ice cream. Potty-themed restaurants have opened in Russia, South Korea, the Philippines, China, Japan and Los Angeles. [BBC News, 7-20-2016] [The Independent (London), 7-22-2016]

In August (2012), a Michigan government watchdog group learned, in a Freedom of Information Act request, that the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department still has one job on the payroll as a "horseshoer." (The Department owns no horses.) Over the years, the position has become a patronage slot paying about $57,000 a year in salary and benefits, and sometimes the "horseshoer" has been asked to do "blacksmith" work, such as metal repair. (The city employees' union fights to retain every job, no matter its title.) [Michigan Capitol Confidential, 8-20-2012]