Perhaps there are parents who (according to the Cinepolis movie chain) long to watch movies in theaters while their children (aged 3 and up) frolic in front in a "jungle-gym" playground inside the same auditorium. If so, the company's two "junior" movie houses (opening this very week in San Diego and Los Angeles) may bring a new dimension to "family entertainment." Another view, though, is that the noise (often "screaming"), plus the overhead lighting required for parents to monitor their tykes' equipment-usage, plus the planned $3-per-ticket surcharge, will soon create (according to the Guardian critic) a moviegoing "apocalypse." [The Guardian (London), 3-8-2017]

(1) The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January granted IBM's 2010 application for a patent on "out-of-office" email message software (even though such messages have, of course, been ubiquitous for two decades) after the company finally convinced examiners that its patent had enough software tweaks on it to qualify. (Critics, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, laughed at the uselessness of the tweaks.) (2) Also in January, the office granted Daniel Dopps a patent for "adhesive vaginal lipstick," which his Mensez Technologies claims can cause the labia minora to tighten so strongly as to retain menstrual fluid until the woman can deal with buildup in privacy. [Ars Technica, 3-1-2017] [News Limited via Fox News, 2-21-2017]

-- Why live with a cat if one cannot take it out for some wine together? The Apollo Peak in Denver and the Pet Winery in Fort Myers, Florida, serve a variety of the real grape to humans and nonalcoholic proprietary drinks for the kitties to enjoy tableside (or underneath). "Pinot Meow" ($12) in Denver and "Meow and Chandon" ($15) in Fort Myers, are specialties -- basically watered catnip, according to a February New York Times report (so the felines can also get buzzed). The wine outing is the human's preference, of course, with a loftier cachet than the "happy hour" most cats might prefer (say, a "sardine bar"). [New York Times, 2-15-2017]

-- "I tried the $5,000 hamburger, and it was absolutely worth it," wrote the apparently straight-faced CNBC reviewer Robert Frank in February, describing his meal at the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay restaurant Fleur. (The burger included Waygu beef, foie gras and truffles, and was served with a similarly inexplicably priced wine.) Other recent consumer challenges: an $18 cup of coffee at Brooklyn's Extraction Lab; a $100 bottle of Norwegian iceberg water (Svalbardi.com); a $2,000 pizza at New York City's Industry Kitchen (caviar, truffles, gold flakes); and a $25,000 taco at the Grand Velas Los Cabos resort in Mexico (caviar, brie, Kobe beef, langoustine lobster, rare tequila -- and once again with the gold flakes). [CNBC, 2-23-2017] [WABC-TV (New York City), 2-8-2017] [Fox Business, 3-3-2017] [Industry Kitchen, 12-17-2016] [Houston Chronicle, 3-9-2017]

Anglers fighting to preserve choice spots on the fishing pier on Sebastian Inlet, north of Vero Beach, Florida, have taken to tossing lead weights and other items at "competitors," especially those who approach the pier to fish directly from their boats. Such territory marking by the "piersters" includes, according to a February report in Florida Today, perhaps a version of classic mammal behavior, like strategic urination and hurling their feces at the waterborne invaders. [Florida Today, 2-20-2017]

-- Illinois has problems: a $130 billion unfunded pension crisis, 19 months without a budget, the lowest credit rating and highest property taxes in the country, and the murder rate in Chicago. However, at least the state house of representatives is not standing by idly. In February, it moved to designate October 2017 as Zombie Preparedness Month (basically, adding "zombie invasion" to the list of mobilizations for any natural disaster and urging residents to stockpile food and supplies for up to 72 hours). [Wall Street Journal, 3-7-2017]

-- Lawyers for former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. have convinced federal officials that his bipolar disorder was "caused" by the stress of being a congressman and thus that he is entitled to "total disability" worker compensation for an "on-the-job" injury -- and thus to about $100,000 a year, tax-free, according to a February Chicago Tribune report. (Jackson, 51, also receives Social Security disability payments.) Lawyers said his disorder (often attributed to genetic factors) surfaced during an investigation into Jackson's looting of his campaign treasury for luxury goods and vacations (charges eventually settled with a guilty plea). Jackson dated his onset to June 2012, meaning that his last 72 House votes came while "totally" disabled. [Chicago Tribune, 2-23-2017]

-- A councilman in Overtornea, Sweden, introduced a bill (a "motion") that workers be given paid "sex breaks" during the business day in order to improve well-being and, thus, job performance. The primary beneficiaries would be married, fertile couples, but all workers would receive the benefit. And employers, said Councillor Per-Erik Muskos, would have to "trust" their employees because some surely would "cheat" (by not having sex!). [International Business Times, 2-21-2017]

-- Not Clever Enough: Daniel Crowninshield, 54, pleaded guilty in federal court in Sacramento in 2016 to illegally manufacturing assault weapons that had no serial numbers -- despite efforts to circumvent the law by claiming that his customers actually "made" their own weapons using his equipment. Crowninshield (known as "Dr-Death" online), an expert machinist, would take a "blank" metal casting and, using special equipment and computer programs, create the firing mechanism for a numberless AR-15 -- provided the customer presses a button to start the process. "Pressing the button," Crowninshield figured, made the customer the creator, not a buyer or transferee of the gun, and thus exempt from federal law. In February, Judge Troy Nunley, unimpressed, sentenced Crowninshield to three years and five months in prison.

[Department of Justice press release, 2-16-2017]

"Life's full of peaks and valleys, man," Californian Georgiy Karpekin told a reporter, but Jan. 18 seemed all valley. Karpekin has both a pickup truck and a car, and as he was leaving Sacramento City College that day during violent storms, a falling tree crushed the truck. When he got home, he learned that the same storm had taken down another tree -- on top of his car. (Karpekin, insured and uninjured, called himself "the luckiest guy.") [KTXL-TV (Sacramento), 1-19-2017]

Miami defense lawyer Stephen Gutierrez caused quite a spectacle on March 8 when, representing a man accused of arson, he rose to address jurors, and his pants appeared to catch fire. He insisted afterward that a malfunctioning e-cigarette caused smoke to billow from his pocket, but observers had a field day with metaphors and "stunt" theories. [Miami Herald, 3-8-2017]

-- Despite an exaggerated, widely read headline in London's Daily Mail, the recent death of a 50-year-old man in Japan was indeed pornography-related. The man was a hoarder of porn magazines, living alone with an unimaginably large collection, and when he suffered a fatal heart attack sometime early this year, he collapsed atop the piles, where his body was found in February. (The Daily Mail headline had him "crushed" to death under a six-ton stack, but the Mail conceded below the headline that he might have just fallen.) [Daily Mail, 3-3-2017; Gizmodo.com, 3-6-2017]

Chengdu, China, barber Liu Deyuan, 53, still provides traditional "eye-shaving," in which he holds the lid open and runs a razor across its inner surface. Then, using a thin metal rod with a round tip, he gently massages the inside of each lid. Liu told Chengdu Business Daily in April (2013) that he had never had an accident (though the reporter balked at volunteering for him), and a highly satisfied customer reported afterward that his eyes felt "moist" (surely the easiest part of the story to accept) and his vision "clearer." [South China Morning Post, 4-15-2013]

In February, two teams of South Korean researchers announced cancer-fighting breakthroughs -- by taking lessons from how two of medicine's most vexing, destructive organisms (diarrhea-causing salmonella bacteria and the rabies virus) can access often-unconquerable cancer cells. In journal articles, biologist Jung-joon Min of Chonnam National University described how his team "weaponized" a cancer-fighting invader cell with salmonella to stir up more-robust immune responses, and nanoparticle expert Yu Seok Youn's Sungkyunkwan University team coated immunizing cells with the rabies protein (since the rabies virus is remarkably successful at invading healthy cells) to reach brain tumors. [ArsTechnica, 2-9-2017] [Science Magazine, 2-10-2017]

-- Gemma Badley was convicted in England's Teesside Magistrates' Court in February of impersonating British psychic Sally Morgan on Facebook, selling her "readings" as if they were Morgan's. (To keep this straight: Badley is the illegal con artist, Morgan the legal one.) [The Gazette (Middlesbrough), 2-21-2017]

-- Michigan is an "open carry" state, and any adult not otherwise disqualified under state law may "pack heat" in public (except in a few designated zones). In February, an overly earnest Second Amendment fan, James Baker, 24 (accompanied by pal Brandon Vreeland, 40), believed the law was an invitation to walk into the Dearborn police station in full body armor and ski mask, with a semi-automatic pistol and a sawed-off rifle (and have Vreeland photograph officers' reactions). (Yes, both were arrested.) [Detroit Free Press, 2-6-2017]

-- Wells Fargo Bank famously admitted last year that employees (pressured by a company incentive program) had fraudulently opened new accounts for about 2 million existing customers by forging their signatures. In an early lawsuit by a victim of the fraud (who had seven fraudulent accounts opened), the bank argued (and a court agreed!) that the lawsuit had to be handled by arbitration instead of a court of law because the customer had, in the original Wells Fargo contract (that dense, fine-print one he actually signed), agreed to arbitration for "all" disputes. A February Wells Fargo statement to Consumerist.com claimed that customers' forgoing legal rights was actually for their own benefit, in that "arbitration" is faster and less expensive. [Consumerist, 3-1-2017]

Ex-Colombo family mobster and accused hitman "Tommy Shots" Gioeli, 64, recently filed a federal court lawsuit over a 2013 injury at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City. He fell and broke a kneecap while playing ping-pong (allegedly because of water on the floor), awaiting sentencing for conspiracy to commit murder. The New York Post also noted that the "portly" Gioeli, who was later sentenced to 18 years, was quite a sight at trial, carrying his "man purse" each day. [New York Post, 2-7-2017]

French artist Abraham Poincheval told reporters in February that in his upcoming "performance," he will entomb himself for a week in a limestone boulder at a Paris museum and then, at the conclusion, sit on a dozen bird eggs until they hatch -- "an inner journey," he said, "to find out what the world is." (He apparently failed to learn that from previous efforts, such as the two weeks he spent inside a stuffed bear or his time on the Rhone River inside a giant corked bottle.) He told reporters the super-snug tomb has been thoroughly accessorized, providing for breathing, eating, heart monitor and emergency phone -- except, they noted, nothing on exactly how toileting will be handled. [The Guardian (London), 2-21-2017]

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "bioacoustic research" team recently reported recording and listening to about 2 million underwater sounds made over a four-month period by various species of dolphins ("whistles," echolocation "clicks," and "burst pulses") and can, they believe, distinguish the sounds to match them to a particular dolphin species (among the five most prevalent) -- with 84 percent accuracy. The team built a computer algorithm to also make estimating dolphin populations much easier. [Hakai Magazine, 2-16-2017]

-- Compelling Explanations: (1) Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey, justifying his proposed bill to require a woman seeking an abortion to first identify the father, told a reporter in February that the father's permission is crucial because, after all, the woman is basically a "host" who "invited that (fetus) in." (2) After the North Dakota House of Representatives voted yet again in January to retain the state's Sunday-closing "blue laws," Rep. Bernie Satrom explained to a reporter: "Spending time with your wife, your husband, making him breakfast, bringing it to him in bed" is better than going shopping. [The Intercept, 2-13-2017] [Valley News Live (Fargo) , 2-1-2017]

-- Small-Town Government: The ex-wife of Deputy Sheriff Corey King of Washington County, Georgia (largest town: Sandersville, pop. 5,900), filed a federal lawsuit in January against King after he arrested her for the "crime" of making a snarky comment about him on Facebook (about his failure to bring the couple's children their medicine). King allegedly conspired with a friendly local magistrate on the arrest, and though the prosecutor refused the case, King warned the ex-wife that he would still re-arrest her if she made "the mistake of going to Facebook with your little (excrement) ... to fuss about." [WMAZ-TV (Macon), 2-7-2017]

In a first-person profile for the Chicago Tribune in February, marketing consultant Peter Bender, 28, recalled how he worked to maximize his knowledge of the products of company client Hanes -- and not just the flagship Hanes underwear but its Playtex and Maidenform brands. In an "empathy" exercise, Bender wore bras for three days (a sports bra, an underwire and a lacy one) -- fitted at size 34A (or "less than A," he said). "These things are difficult," he wrote on a company blog. "The lacy one," especially, was "itchy." [Chicago Tribune, 2-21-2017]

"Fecal transplants" (replacing a sick person's gut bacteria with those of a healthier one) are now almost routine treatments for patients with violent abdominal attacks of C. diff bacteria, but University of California researcher Chris Callewaert says the concept also works for people with particularly stinky armpits. Testing identical twins (one odoriferous, the other not), the researcher, controlling for diet and other variables, "cured" the smelly one by swabbing his pit daily with the sweat of the better-smelling twin. The Callewaert team told a recent conference that they were working on a more "general" brew of bacteria that might help out anyone with sour armpits. [New Scientist, 2-10-2017]

Stephen Reed, the former mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty on the eve of his January trial on corruption counts stemming from the approximately 10,000 items of "Wild West" and "Americana" artifacts worth around $8 million that he had bought with public funds during 28 years in office. For some reason, he had a single-minded obsession with creating a local all-things-cowboy museum, and had purchased such items as a stagecoach, stagecoach harnesses, a "Billy the Kid" wanted poster, a wagon wheel and a totem pole. Somehow, he explained, as he was leaving office after being voted out in 2009, the items he had purchased (theoretically, "on behalf of" of Harrisburg) had migrated into his personal belongings. [Washington Post, 1-26-2017]

Caribou Baby, a Brooklyn, New York, "eco-friendly maternity, baby and lifestyle store," recently (2013) hosted gatherings at which parents exchanged tips on "elimination communication" -- the weaning of infants without benefit of diapers. Parents watch for cues, such as a certain "cry or grimace" that supposedly signals the need to hoist the tot onto a potty. The little darlings' public appearances sometimes call for diapers, but can also be dealt with behind a tree, they say. Said one shocked parent, "I have absolutely been at parties and witnessed people putting their baby over the sink." (Update: The maternity store is now called Wild Was Mama, and "elimination communication" meetings are not mentioned.) [New York Times, 4-19-2013]

Despite California's 2015 law aimed at improving the fairness of its red-light cameras, the city of Fremont (pop. 214,000, just north of San Jose) reported earning an additional $190,000 more each month last year by shortening the yellow light by two-thirds of a second at just two intersections. Tickets went up 445 percent at one and 883 percent at the other. (In November 2016, for "undisclosed reasons," the city raised the speed limit on the street slightly, "allowing" it to reinstate the old 0.7-second-longer yellow light.) [KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 2-3-2017; TheNewspaper.com, 2-8-2017]

-- Tammy Felbaum surfaced in News of the Weird in 2001 when she, originally Mr. Tommy Wyda, consensually castrated James Felbaum (her sixth husband), but he died of complications, resulting in Tammy's manslaughter conviction. (Among the trial witnesses: a previous spouse, who had also let "expert" Tammy castrate him: "She could castrate a dog in less than five minutes.") Felbaum, now 58, was arrested in February at the Westmoreland County (Pennsylvania) Courthouse after mouthing off at security guards searching her purse. She quipped sarcastically, "I have guns and an Uzi (and) a rocket launcher. I am going to shoot a judge today." (She was in court on a dispute over installation of a sewer line to her trailer home.) [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2-7-2017]

-- Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, Florida, convicted and given a 20-year sentence in 2012 for firing a warning shot into a wall to fend off her abusive estranged husband, finally had the charges dropped in February. The persnickety trial judge had earlier determined that Florida's notorious "Stand Your Ground" law did not apply, even though the husband admitted that he was threatening to rough up Alexander and that she never aimed the gun at him. (With that defense not allowed, Alexander was doomed under Florida's similarly notorious 20-year mandatory sentence for aggravated assault using a gun.) [New York Times, 2-8-2017]

-- In 2008, Vince Li, a passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada, stabbed another passenger, then beheaded him and started to eat him, and in 2009 was "convicted" -- but "not criminally responsible" because of schizophrenia. He has been institutionalized and under treatment since then, and in February, doctors signed off on an "absolute" release back into society for Li (now known as Will Baker) -- declining a "conditional" release, which would have required continued monitoring. Manitoba province law requires absolute discharge if doctors conclude, on the "weight of the evidence," that the patient is no longer a "significant" safety threat. [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 2-10-2017]

-- Doris Payne, 86, was arrested once again for shoplifting -- this time at an upscale mall in an Atlanta suburb in December -- but according to a 2013 documentary, "careerwise," she has stolen more than $2 million in jewelry from high-end shops around the world. No regrets, she said on the film, except "I regret getting caught." Said her California-based lawyer, "Aside from her 'activities,' she is a wonderful person with a lot of fun stories." [WXIA-TV (Atlanta), 12-14-2016]

-- When disaster strikes, well-meaning people are beseeched to help, but relief workers seem always bogged down with wholly inappropriate donations (which take additional time and money to sort and store and discard; instead, all such charities recommend "cash"). A January report by Australia's principal relief organization praised Aussies' generosity in spite of recent contributions of high heels, handbags, chain saws, sports gear, wool clothing and canned goods -- much of which will eventually go to landfills. (Workers in Rwanda reported receiving prom gowns, wigs, tiger costumes, pumpkins and frostbite cream.) [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 1-15-2017]

-- Least Competent Criminals: (1) Alvin Neal, 56, is merely the most recent bank robber to begin the robbery sequence (at a Wells Fargo branch in San Diego) after identifying himself to a teller (by swiping his ATM card through a machine at the counter). He was sentenced in January. (2) Also failing to think through their crime was the group of men who decided to snatch about $1,200 from the Eastside Grillz tooth-jewelry shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, in February. They fled despite two of them having already provided ID and one having left a mold of his teeth. [Los Angeles Times, 1-4-2017] [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 2-16-2017]

-- No Longer Weird: (1) Matthew Mobley, 41, was arrested in Alexandria, Louisiana, in February (No. 77 on his rap sheet) after getting stuck in the chimney of a business he was breaking into. (2) Former postal worker Gary Collins, 53, of Forest City, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in February to having hoarded deliverable U.S. mail as far back as 2000. (He is far from the worst mail hoarder, by volume, that News of the Weird has mentioned.) [KALB-TV (Alexandria, La.) [ [Gaston Gazette via Burlington Times-News, 2-23-2017]

-- Luckiest (Bewildered) Animals: (1) In December, a 400-pound black bear at the Palm Beach, Florida, zoo ("Clark") got a root canal from dentist Jan Bellows, to fix a painful fractured tooth. (2) In January, a pet ferret ("Zelda") in Olathe, Kansas, received a pacemaker from Kansas State University doctors, who said Zelda should thus be able to live the ferret's normal life span. (3) In January, an overly prolific male African tortoise ("Bert"), of Norwich, England, who had developed arthritis from excessive "mounting," was fitted with wheels on the back of his shell to ease stress on his legs. [WPTV (West Palm Beach, 12-16-2016] [Associated Press via Kansas City Star, 1-31-2017] [BBC News, 1-13-2017]

-- More People Who Might Consider Relocating: (1) In January, another vehicle flew off a Parkway West exit ramp in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, plowing into (the eighth crash in nine years) the Snyder Brothers Automotive parking lot. (2) Leonard Miller, 88, once again (the fifth time) picked up the pieces in January from his Lanham, Maryland, home after a speeding car smashed into it. [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 1-27-2017] [WTTG-TV (Washington, D.C.), 2-1-2017]

-- "I grew up fishing with my dad," Alabaman Bart Lindsey told a reporter, which might explain why Lindsey likes to sit in a boat in a lake on a lazy afternoon. More challenging is why (and how) he became so good at the phenomenon that turned up in News of the Weird first in 2006: "fantasy fishing," handing in a perfect card picking the top eight competitors in the Fishing League Worldwide Tour event in February on Lake Guntersville. "It can be tricky," he said. "I've done a lot of research." [Tuscaloosa News, 2-10-2017]

-- Each December Deadspin.com reviews public records of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission to compile a list of items that caused emergency-room visits when they somehow got stuck inside people. Highlights from 2016: In the Nose (raisin, plastic snake, magnets in each nostril). Throat (pill bottle, bottle cap, hoop earring). Penis (sandal buckle, doll shoe, marble). Vagina (USB adapter, "small painting kit," heel of a shoe). Rectum (flashlight, shot glass, egg timer, hammer, baseball, ice pick "to push hemorrhoids back in"). [Deadspin, 12-25-2016]

Men (women rarely appear here) Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: Hunter Richardson, 19, Orange, Massachusetts, December (testing an iced-over lake with the butt end of his muzzle-loader). Three unnamed boys (ages 15, 15 and 16), Williamson County, Illinois, January (shot themselves with the same shotgun while "preparing" to go hunting). Suspected convenience store robber, Cleveland, Ohio, July (the old waistband-for-a-holster mishap, shot to the "groin"). James Short, 72, New Carlisle, Ohio, September (reached for his ringing phone in his dentist's waiting room but instead yanked out his gun). Andrew Abellanosa, 30, Anchorage, Alaska, November (shot himself in the leg in a bar, twice in the same sequence). A 50-year-old man, Oshawa, Ontario, February (making a Valentine's necklace out of a bullet by pulling it apart with vice grips). Orange: [Associated Press via Worcester Telegram, 1-27-2017] Williamson: [Herrin Independent (Carterville, Ill.), 1-5-2017] (not online) Cleveland: [WKYC-TV (Cleveland), 7-4-2016] New Carlisle: [Springfield News Sun (Springfield, Ohio), 9-2-2017] Anchorage: [Alaska Dispatch News, 11-7-206] Oshawa: [Global News (Toronto), 2-15-2017]