In Yokohama, Japan, near Tokyo, one can visit the Unko Museum -- a whole interactive experience built around "cute" poop. ("Unko" means poop in Japanese.) For example, reports the Associated Press, one can sit on a colorful fake toilet and pretend to poop as music plays, then collect a brightly colored souvenir poop to take home. An enormous poop sculpture erupts every 30 minutes, volcanolike, and spews little foam poops. In one room, visitors can play a "whack-a-mole" type game where they stomp on poops. Visitor Toshifumi Okuya was delighted: "It's funny because there are adults running around screaming, 'poop, poop,'" he said. The museum opened in March and will remain open until September. [Associated Press, 7/4/2019]

Suspicions Confirmed

In the College Station neighborhood of Pulaski County, Arkansas, traditions run deep, especially when it comes to the Fourth of July. Beneques Christopher, 19, told KSDK that the holiday "firework war" has been going on for years, and even attracts people from other neighborhoods: "They know when Fourth of July comes, this is the spot to be at." But this year, the ritual went awry, resulting in many injuries and several people facing charges. Christopher was one of the victims: "It popped right here," he said, pointing to his groin area. "And it could have been dangerous because I almost lost everything." Instead, he suffered a second-degree burn on his thigh, but he feels lucky that he didn't lose any fingers, as five others did. When police officers arrived, people started pointing fireworks at them, leaving two deputies with injuries. While a local pastor hopes to shut the tradition down, Christopher vows to continue it: "We started the tradition, and now we have to keep it going," he said. [KSDK, 7/5/2019]

Walmart Shunning

An unnamed woman pulled a stunt in a Wichita Falls, Texas, Walmart on June 25 that got her banned from the store. According to NBC News, Police Sgt. Harold McClure said a store employee reported that the woman had eaten half a cake from the bakery, then attempted to buy the other half (for half-price), saying she found the cake in that condition. While Walmart did not want to press charges, they did prohibit her from shopping at the store in the future -- a policy they're familiar with, after an incident in January at another Wichita Falls Walmart. In that case, a woman rode an electric cart around the store's parking lot while guzzling wine from a Pringles can. She was also Walmart-shunned. [NBC News, 7/1/2019]

Least Competent Criminal

A craving for cake batter ice cream brought New York City police officers to a Baskin-Robbins store in Coney Island on June 29 -- a fortuitous detour, as it turned out. The Associated Press reported that when 33-year-old Emmanuel Lovett walked into the shop and tugged on his denim shorts, a loaded pistol dropped to the floor, and officers swarmed Lovett, who, it turns out, had a robbery record that prohibited him from having a firearm. He was charged with criminal possession of a firearm. No word on whether he, or the officers, enjoyed their ice cream. [Associated Press, 7/2/2019]

Telling It Like It Is

A diner in Little Rock, Arkansas, is getting attention for a clever menu item. According to United Press International, Mama D's offers a "My Girlfriend Is Not Hungry" option, which adds extra fries, chicken wings or cheese sticks to an order to share with a dinner partner who underestimates their hunger. On its Facebook page, Mama D's said the option is "a solution for those who tend to dine with people that eat food off their plate." [UPI, 7/3/2019]

Family Values

On July 6, Okaloosa County (Florida) sheriff's deputies responded to a 911 call after a 13-year-old boy stabbed his 15-year-old brother in the arm three times with a multi-tool. The boys, from Clarksville, Tennessee, were sitting in a parked car in Crestview, Florida, when the incident occurred. Lt. Todd Watkins told Fox News that the younger boy was "tired of his brother picking on him," and he told officers he'd "rather be in jail than eight hours in the car with him." "I stabbed him and I don't care about going back to jail," he said. While the 15-year-old was in the back of an ambulance being treated, he was overheard calling some of his friends to retaliate against his younger brother. The 13-year-old was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. [Fox News, 7/7/2019]

Just Say No

An Independence Day holiday in Bodega Harbor, California, went terribly wrong for a group of six friends who rented a house there. On July 4, 32-year-old Betai Koffi of San Francisco indulged heavily in LSD, taking four doses over the course of the afternoon. He became delusional and violent with his friends, who were trying to prevent him from leaving the home. After assaulting several of his housemates and wrecking a rental car, he took off on foot and came upon a security guard. Koffi plucked a landscape light out of the ground, Sonoma County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Crum told KTVU, "and stabs the security guard with the metal end of it," knocking the guard to the ground. Koffi then stole the guard's pickup truck and ran down two different couples as they enjoyed an evening walk. Finally, sheriff's and highway patrol officers arrived, and Koffi aimed the truck at them and accelerated. A CHP officer fired his gun, striking Koffi three times. "If this guy had kept going, who knows what he could have done to other people," Crum said. "He was just blatantly going after people, driving after them." Eight people were injured, but all are expected to recover. [KTVU, 7/5/2019]

Dumb and Dumber

According to WHDH, two men were transported to the hospital on July 6 after both were shot in the foot while they cleaned a loaded, homemade cannon in a basement in Epping, New Hampshire. Friends drove Albert Dionne, 56, of Nottingham, New Hampshire, and Christopher Krafton, 52, of Amesbury, Massachusetts, to the Epping Fire Station in the bed of a pickup truck. The cannon, made from the barrel of a muzzleloader rifle, had been loaded and failed to discharge, so they were cleaning it. [WHDH, 7/7/2019]

Redneck Chronicles

OK, the first mistake was letting Matthew Morrison, 44, sleep in a tent on your lawn. A homeowner in Crestview, Florida, allowed Morrison to bunk on the property as a favor to someone he was trying to help. But things went south on July 6, when Morrison entered the home without permission and threw lighted firecrackers under a sleeping 9-year-old girl's bed. The homeowner chased Morrison out of the house with a stick. Morrison told Okaloosa County Sheriff's deputies it was a "prank gone wrong," but the little girl was left terrified. Lt. Todd Watkins told Fox News: "I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish. The prank thing didn't really sound like it was a legitimate reason." Well, maybe this had something to do with it: When Morrison was arrested, officers found 2 grams of methamphetamine in his pocket. Morrison had a prior criminal history, including drug charges; he was charged with burglary and possession of methamphetamine. [Fox News, 7/7/2019]

Sweet Revenge

Serina Wolfe, 24, was about $5,000 mad at her boyfriend, Michael Crane, for his refusal to buy her a plane ticket for her return trip to New York, the Tampa Bay Times reported. So she used his credit card to pay for an expensive breakfast at Clear Sky Beachside Cafe in Clearwater, Florida, on June 27 -- REALLY expensive, because she left a $5,000 tip for the waitress. Initially, Wolfe told Crane the charge wasn't hers, and he reported it as fraudulent. But the restaurant had already paid the server the $5,000. Wolfe, of Buffalo, New York, was charged with grand theft after admitting that she was the big tipper. [Tampa Bay Times, 7/3/2019]

Arby's has turned the trend toward plant-based "burgers" on its head with the new Marrot: a carrot made out of meat. Vice reported that Arby's has definitively rejected the plant-based meats movement. "(W)hat Americans really want ... is great, tasty meat," said Jim Taylor, Arby's chief marketing officer. "So we said if others can make meat out of vegetables, why can't we make vegetables out of meat?" The Marrot is made by rolling raw ground turkey breast into a carrot shape, cooking it sous-vide for an hour, covering it with a special "carrot marinade," and then oven-roasting it for another hour. Bon appetit! [Vice, 6/27/2019]

The Litigious Society

Tommy Martin, 58, of Mount Holly, North Carolina, hopes to see Hardee's in federal court after a "humiliating" incident at a Belmont store in which Martin was given just two Hash Rounds on his breakfast plate, rather than the half-dozen or so depicted on the company's website. Martin, who is black, told The News and Observer that he felt like he was in a scene from the segregated 1960s when he asked for more. "The manager came back and said that what you get. Got home with tear in mine eye," Martin said in the handwritten lawsuit filed June 24 in U.S. District Court in Charlotte. The cashier was prepared to give him more Hash Rounds, Martin said, but the manager, who is white, stepped in and gave him a refund instead. [Raleigh News and Observer, 6/26/2019]

Cultural Diversity

A cafe in Bangkok, Thailand, is encouraging customers to "experience the death awareness" and reflect more on their lives by inviting patrons to get into a coffin and spend some time with the lid closed after finishing their coffee. Death Awareness Cafe owner Veeranut Rojanaprapa told United Press International that the practice encourages people not to be driven by greed. "When the lid of the coffin closes ... they will realize that eventually they cannot take anything with them." (Hope there are air holes.) [United Press International, 6/26/2019]

Nightmare Neighbor

After her husband suffered a stroke in 2012, Junghee Kim Spicer, owner of the Yakima (Washington) Arts Academy, increased the number of piano students she taught in her home, angering neighbor Paul Patnode, who complained and forced Spicer to get a permit that limited the hours and number of students she could teach each day, reported the Yakima Herald. Spicer complied, according to court documents, but Patnode, unsatisfied, sued her and lost that case in 2014. Undeterred, Patnode changed tactics: From November 2015 through March 2016, he parked his diesel pickup truck next to Spicer's home, remotely revving the engine and setting off the truck's alarm each time a student walked by. Spicer and her husband won a $40,000 settlement in their resulting lawsuit, and on June 25, the Division III Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. Chief Judge Robert Lawrence-Berry wrote: "(Mr. Patnode) intended to achieve through harassment what he had been unable to achieve through legal means." [Yakima Herald, 6/25/2019]

Government in Action

Health Canada has issued a seemingly obvious warning to consumers of Venus Simply3 razors: They pose a potential cutting hazard. CTV News reported that the four-packs, sold at Walmart, have been recalled because "the blades ... can become misaligned ... and pose a higher risk of cuts during use." No one in Canada has reported being cut. [CTV, 6/27/2019]

Technotot

Two-year-old Rayna McNeil of San Diego is an early adopter of online shopping. In late June, as Rayna played with her mom's mobile phone, she managed to purchase a $430 couch from Amazon. Mom Isabella McNeil told KNSD she had been scrolling through some couches on her phone before handing it off to Rayna, but she didn't realize the toddler had made the purchase until a few days later, when she got a "Your couch has shipped" alert. "I didn't remember ordering a couch," she said. It was too late to cancel the order, so McNeil plans to resell the item locally. "Lesson learned," McNeil said. She will make sure apps are closed in the future. [KNSD, 6/28/2019]

The Classic Headline

Police officers in Manchester, New Hampshire, were called to a local hotel on June 28 after Matthew Williams, 35, of Nashua was reported to be behaving "erratically" -- shouting, throwing things and "acting aggressive," according to Fox News. Officers called in a K9 unit, and when the dog entered the hotel room, Williams allegedly "wrapped his arms around the dog and struggled with him," eventually growling and biting the dog on the top of the head, police said. Williams was charged with resisting arrest, simple assault and willful interference with police dogs; authorities said the dog was not harmed. [Fox News, 7/1/2019]

People Different From Us

-- Zack Pinsent, 25, from Brighton, England, hasn't dressed in modern clothing since he was 14 years old. Instead, he makes and wears clothes that were popular in the 1800s. "At 14, I made the symbolic decision to burn my only pair of jeans in a bonfire. It was a real turning point," Pinsent told Metro News. On a typical day, Pinsent wears a floral waistcoat and knee-high leather riding boots, along with a jacket with tails and a top hat. He explains that his obsession started when his family found a box of his great-grandfather's suits. He now researches, designs and sews clothing for himself and other history buffs, to great response: "I've been all over the world and people are inquisitive and appreciative," he said. [Metro News, 6/27/2019]

-- A baby boy born in West Java, Indonesia, in November 2018 was given a most memorable name by his parents, Andi Cahya Saputra and Ella Karin. Eight-month-old Google was so named, Saputra told Indonesian media, because "Google has a great meaning ... Google is number one in the world, the site most visited by people." The Mirror reported Saputra told his own father he hopes his son will become "a useful person" and "help" a lot of people, while also explaining that they didn't want to "dilute" the essence of the boy's name by giving him a middle or surname. He's just Google. The baby's mom wasn't really on board with the idea until about three months after he was born. She said people ask if their next child will be named WhatsApp, but it doesn't bother her because they don't understand the meaning of the name. [The Mirror, 6/26/2019]

Precocious

Little Sebastian Swenson of Blaine, Minnesota, wanted Reese's candy and he wanted it NOW. So on the morning of June 11, the 4-year-old climbed into the front seat of his great-grandfather's Hyundai Santa Fe and drove at low speeds to a nearby gas station, where police met him. To accomplish this, according to Fox9, he had to reverse out of the driveway and navigate winding residential streets before getting onto a busy four-lane avenue in rush-hour traffic. Along the way, he dinged a few mailboxes and a tree, but he arrived safe and sound. Blaine police Capt. Mark Boerboom told Fox News, "I've never seen a driver this young before operating a vehicle." [Fox9, 6/12/2019]

Extreme

Michael Wardian, 45, chose the hottest day of the year so far in Washington, D.C., to tackle a longstanding goal of his: He ran all the way around the Beltway -- 89 miles. Wardian, of Arlington, Virginia, started at 1:30 a.m. on June 29 and ran for almost 18 hours, according to Fox 5 DC. "You're like, 'I want to do this but it's never a good time,'" Wardian said. "So we just did it when we had the time." Temperatures on June 29 reached 96 degrees. [Fox 5 DC, 6/30/2019]

Fail

In Rybnik, Poland, a 68-year-old woman who was completing the "maneuvers" part of her driving exam struck and killed a 35-year-old driving examiner on June 24. Police believe the victim was testing another candidate at the time, the Daily Record reported. Deputy Police Commissioner Ryszard Czepczor said it was unknown how the accident happened; the woman was in a state of shock afterward, "and because of that, speaking to her would be quite difficult." [Daily Record, 6/24/2019]

The Limestone County (Alabama) Sheriff's Office is on the lookout for Mickey Paulk, 35, after executing a search warrant at an Athens apartment where he was believed to be living on June 17. While Paulk was not at the apartment at the time, officers did find meth, drug paraphernalia, ammunition and body armor, along with DeezNutz, Paulk's "attack squirrel," in a cage in the apartment. Sheriff's deputy Stephen Young told The News Courier officers were told Paulk feeds the squirrel meth to keep it aggressive, which Paulk denied in a Facebook video. Officers released the squirrel into the wild, but Paulk (still on the run) later told news outlets he went back to the apartment and whistled, and DeezNutz returned to him. A GoFundMe page established to help Paulk pay his legal fees includes a post saying the squirrel has been "safely gotten ... out of Alabama and it is being boarded until his owner's legal issues can be settled." The Limestone sheriff's office took to Twitter to warn locals to be wary of Paulk: "Mickey Paulk is a fleeing felon with felony warrants unrelated to his squirrel." (UPDATE: Shortly before press time, the Limestone County Sheriff's Office announced on Twitter that Paulk had been arrested Thursday night, June 27.) [News Courier, 6/21/2019]

The Continuing Crisis

Early-bird travelers at Detroit Metropolitan Airport got a rude awakening on June 21 when an unnamed man tried to pass through a TSA checkpoint entirely naked. According to WXYZ, the man approached the checkpoint and removed all his clothing, then removed a barrier and approached a metal detector. Officers didn't allow him through the metal detector, so he ran around it, where he was caught and covered with plastic trash bags. A bystander said he was calm and compliant while being detained. Law enforcement determined he was not a threat and took him to a local hospital. [WXYZ, 6/21/2019]

Hitchcockian

Roy and Brenda Pickard of Knotts End, Lancashire, England, lived in a 1960s horror film for a week in June as a pair of nesting herring gulls terrorized them each time they emerged from their home. "If I try to go out of the door, the two adult birds are right there, and I've got no chance," Roy told the Mirror. At one point, Roy was attacked so viciously on the back of the head that he had to go to the hospital for treatment. Roy contacted animal organizations, but they offered no remedies for the violent birds: It's breeding season, and herring gulls are protected when nesting. "The whole thing has been terrible," Roy lamented. [Mirror, 6/21/2019]

News You Can Use

Equality got a boost in Argentina in June when that country's National Appeal Court ordered a man to pay his ex-wife 8 million pesos (about $178,000) for 27 years of housework. Newsweek reported Judge Victoria Fama reasoned that the wife, who holds a degree in economics, put her career aside for the entirety of their marriage to keep house and raise children, and by the time her husband left her in 2009, she was too old to compete in the job market. "The economic dependence of wives on their husbands is one of the central mechanisms through which women are subordinated in society," the judge stated. Meanwhile, the husband was living "a good life." [Newsweek, 6/11/2019]

Awesome!

A 26-year-old man identified only as Chang from Guangdong, China, went out for a Friday night of drinking with friends on June 7 and returned home to find that his keys were missing. Someone inside let him in, and he went to bed to sleep it off. The next morning, the Chinese news site Sohu reported, Chang awoke with a sharp pain in his chest and went to Dongguan Hospital, where an X-ray revealed the missing house keys lodged deep in his esophagus. Doctors first thought emergency surgery would be necessary to retrieve the keys, but with the help of a muscle-relaxing drug, a gastroenterologist was able to pull them out through his mouth. [OddityCentral, 6/13/2019]

Compelling Explanation

The Behney House Hotel in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, was evacuated after police responded to a reported bomb threat there on June 23, reported WPMT. When officers arrived, they found David Oxenreider, 28, who lives at the hotel, and the homemade bomb he claimed to have made next to a dumpster outside the building. Oxenreider told police he made the bomb to get their attention because he was frustrated that his attempts to warn officials about aliens hadn't been taken seriously. According to the criminal complaint, Oxenreider said he encountered a UFO and aliens in 2014, who told him "humans need to start being good people, or else they were going to destroy the Earth with a nuclear laser beam." Police disarmed the device and arrested Oxenreider. [WPMT, 6/24/2019]

Least Competent Criminal

An unnamed woman arrested earlier was released from the St. Louis Justice Center on the morning of June 5 -- sort of. Jail staff gave her clear instructions about how to get out of the building, according to corrections commissioner Dale Glass, but instead she got on the elevator, pushed all the buttons, and got off at the fifth floor, where she exited through a fire door into a stairwell, locking herself in, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Two and a half days later, staff finally saw her peering through a window in one of the doors. The woman had made noise during her confinement, but Glass explained that the jail is a noisy place, and the staff couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from as she moved from floor to floor. Paramedics were called and the woman was offered hospital care, but she declined, saying, "No, I just want to go home." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6/19/2019]

Oops!

Holmes Beach (Florida) police posted a query on their Facebook page on June 15 regarding an unusual item that had washed up on the shore and was turned in by a local resident: a prosthetic ear. Social media did its magic, and the ear and its owner were reunited five days later. The Associated Press reported that a Beaufort, South Carolina, couple had been vacationing in the Tampa Bay area, and the man was putting the rubber ear in his pocket for safekeeping when a wave knocked it out of his hand. Police Sgt. Brian Hall said he would mail the ear back to its owner, as prosthetic ears can be very pricey. [Associated Press, 6/20/2019]

Inexplicable

Do you ever wish you hadn't invested in a Ring doorbell? On June 22, while Wilton Thomas of North Lauderdale, Florida, was at work, his doorbell camera captured a man in a green car pull into his driveway, exit the car, remove his shirt and crouch down to relieve himself. He used the shirt to clean himself up, then left the mess behind and drove away. Thomas told WPLG he would have understood if the man had knocked and said, "Man, you know what, I had an emergency. I had nowhere to go, and this is where I had to do what I had to do." The Broward County Sheriff's Office is investigating. [WPLG, 6/24/2019]