News of the Weird

-- In November, U.S. marshals in Detroit confiscated the belongings of Marie Antoinette Jackson-Randolph, a former high-society, day-care chain owner, who is now in prison for scamming the government out of $13.5 million in meal money for underprivileged children she allegedly fed at her centers. Among her "estate": 100 pieces of Baccarat, Waterford and Lalique crystal, 911 purses, 606 pairs of shoes, 165 pairs of boots, a roomful (floor to ceiling) of costume jewelry, and various fur and skin garments (leopard, coyote, mink, fox, sable, chinchilla, snake, lynx, rabbit, lamb, beaver, weasel and raccoon, in a variety of colors). (Said the owner of the company hired to sell the furs: "I don't know whether she hated animals or loved them. It's hard to tell.")

-- According to a December Wall Street Journal report, Commodity Futures Trading Commission judge Bruce Levine has heard nearly 180 cases of alleged broker fraud against investors (who bet on future prices of beef, soybeans, foreign currencies, etc.) in his eight years on the job, yet has ruled against the investor every single time that he was called on to render a decision. (Some cases were settled privately, but even then, according to some parties, Judge Levine often pressured the investor to accept a tiny percentage of his original claim.) The other CFTC judge decides for investors about half the time.

From Susan Smith, a professor of health and safety sciences, University of Tennessee (July): People who use sign language have up to five times greater risk of hand and wrist injuries than people who don't use sign language. From zoologists at the University of Kerala (India), writing in Current Science (July): After eight impotent gerbils had alcohol injected into their eyes to blind them, five of them began to copulate (possibly due to the release of melatonin).

-- An October New York Times dispatch from India highlighted the growing problem of intra-family frauds in which one member will claim a living relative's land or wealth by swearing to the government that the relative is dead. An advocacy group, the Association of Dead People, helps aggrieved citizens figure out just how to prove that they are indeed alive, which can be a difficult concept for India's bargelike bureaucracies to accept. The association's founder said he remained officially dead even after he ran for office, filed lawsuits and got arrested just to get his name on public records.

-- Protests: California environmental activist Dona Nieto ("La Tigresa") appeared topless at several logging sites in Humboldt and Mendocino counties in October in a demonstration ("Striptease for the Trees," featuring "nudist guerrilla poetry") to save giant redwood trees; loggers' reactions ranged from embarrassment to a defensive recital of Bible verses. And in October, when three neighborhood planning officials in the village of Barlestone, England, arrived at the house of Brian Statham to supervise the council-ordered clearing of his yard, Statham jumped in his forklift and systematically picked up the three men's cars and set them down on their sides.

-- In October, an appeals court in San Francisco became the first to test whether a relationship amounted to "dating" under California's new domestic-violence legislation that permits victims to collect judgments even if they aren't a cohabiting couple. The rejector, Joyce Oriola (who said she was stalked by Adam Thaler after she refused to go out with him), had to claim the couple were actually dating in order to qualify her for money damages. Thaler, the heartsick rejectee, logically had to claim that the two were just friends. (The court ruled they were not dating.)

-- After 100 employees took ill (dizziness and nausea) at the National Pen Corp. offices in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., in September (with 24 being sent to the hospital), white-suited hazardous-materials crews went over the building from top to bottom, looking for gas and chemical leaks, among other possibilities. The official cause, determined the next day by the San Diego Fire Department, was an excess of urinal cakes in a third-floor men's room.

-- In October, the prosecutor in a rape case in Lewis County, Wash., said he was thinking of subpoenaing Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit (via his Earthly channeler, spiritualist J.Z. Knight), who reportedly "heard" the defendants confess to the crime during a session at Knight's retreat in Yelm, Wash. However, Knight then told reporters that she had been "in a trance" during the session and therefore could not recall what the defendants and Ramtha had talked about.

-- In October, David B. Smith, the lawyer who formerly represented North Carolina death-row inmate Russell Tucker, admitted that he had sabotaged an earlier appeal because he had come to believe Tucker was guilty and deserved to die. (Tucker's execution date has been postponed, anyway, on other grounds.)

Wayne A. Louden was profiled in the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle in September for his history of at least 37 traffic collisions in the last 10 years (23 of them serious, though none of any kind this year); he admits to some problems (bad vision, diabetes, depression). And in July in Ponta, Texas, Charles and Jennifer Smith and their three preschoolers purchased a new Dodge Intrepid, which was totaled in a collision the next day; on Aug. 11, fire destroyed their trailer home; then Jennifer drove over the family dog, whose leg is now in a cast; and in September, after the community banded together to get the Smiths a new trailer home, a storm totaled that one, too.

News of the Weird has reported several times on husbands or wives who were victims of murder attempts by their spouses, yet who quickly forgave and asked the judge to forget the whole thing. In October 2000 in Denver, Tom Mason, 52, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for hiring a hit man in 1998 (really an undercover cop) to stage a fatal truck-crash murder of his wife (he had bought her a Hyundai Excel to reduce her chance of survival); the wife, who divorced Mason after that, remarried him in April 2000 and begged the judge not to send him to prison.

A 28-year-old man was shot to death by his first cousin during a dispute over how to paint the floor at a construction site (Banner, Ky., October). And one man was shot to death and his killer then beaten to death by relatives and in-laws at a Labor Day barbecue, all because of a request by one of the relatives that another man move his car (Marshall, Texas, September). And a 30-year-old man was shot to death at a bar by a fan of race car driver Dale Earnhart who was angry that the victim was wearing another driver's (Jeff Gordon) cap (Spencer, Ind., October).

Five police drug-squad members were reassigned pending allegations that they had searched a suspect's rectum, said a police spokeswoman, "manually and possibly with a pair of pliers" (New Orleans). A 9-year-old boy was charged with making more than 90 prank phone calls to 911 in one evening (Columbia, Tenn.). Mr. Derby Ray Herrick allegedly robbed a Firstar Bank, went home, found his apartment on fire (burning cigarette), and was identified that night by firefighters and bystanders after bank camera photos were released (Des Moines, Iowa). The first of a series of church-approved comic books on the life of Pope John Paul II was published, featuring little Karol Wojtyla skiing (yelling, "Outta my way!") and playing soccer (Rome).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

What a strange year. It looked like any other until sometime around, oh, November, I guess, and then all of a sudden, for some reason, when I reported the latest incompetent criminal or imaginative fetishist, people would yawn. They said there were stories on the front page that were more bizarre than anything I was reporting. What do you suppose they meant? Well, whatever. Anyway, here is our annual compilation of the best disturbing yet underreported stories of the last 12 months.

Crisis in Medical Care

Interviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, local body piercer Nathan McKay, 24, lamented his failure to find proper medical care: He needs follow-up on his already-surgically forked tongue, and he wants all of his teeth removed (and replaced with platinum implants). "I want my tongue split even farther," he said, describing a split as far back as possible, to the uvula, so as to have two separate strands. McKay's original surgeon performed only because he was a family friend and has balked at a follow-up. (McKay also has 1-inch holes in his earlobes, to hold ebony disks.)

(Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nov. 20)

Encouraging News From the Academy

The University of Surrey (Guildford, England) added to its curriculum in service-sector management by beefing up its graduate course offerings in in-flight catering and appointing a professor of airline food.

(The Guardian, Oct. 3)

The Most Urban-Legend-Like True Story of the Year

Cheltenham, England, partyshop owner Samantha Munns punctured her thigh when she fell on the nozzle of a balloon-inflating canister, and within seconds, enough helium gas had entered the subcutaneous tissue in her leg and abdomen to cause them to swell painfully to twice their normal size. Munns was treated at Cheltenham General Hospital by physician Alison Moon, who prescribed rest to let the gas dissipate.

(The Times (London), Dec. 11, 1999)

Unclear on the Concept

The Netherlands legalized prostitution in October and began regulating it as any other business, including subjecting brothels to workplace safety rules, such as requirements for bright lighting and for separate showers and changing rooms for males and females.

(Sunday Telegraph (London), Nov. 5)

William Draheim was fired from his job in St. Louis Park, Minn., in May for sexual harassment (for talking allegedly too much at work about his pierced penis); Draheim's workplace was Video Age Inc., a distributor of hardcore pornographic movies and sex toys, large inventories of which fill the offices (and in fact, customers placing orders frequently talk dirty on the phone).

(City Pages (Minneapolis), May 31)

City of the Year

Among the news from Akron, Ohio, this year: A father was indicted for assault for a pattern of roughing up his teen-age daughters to spur them to high achievement (capped by threats to kill one after she misspelled "cappelletti," thus finishing second in the National Spelling Bee). A man was found living with his father's corpse 11 years after death, brought to light only when his mother died, and he failed to bury her, too. A 69-year-old man filed a lawsuit against a 61-year-old woman whom he said tricked him into marriage, when he actually had intended to marry the woman's 83-year-old mother. A woman serving a life sentence for brutalizing her then-7-year-old son for soiling his pants tried to get a new trial by claiming that the son actually had been molested by the family dog. A 10-year-old boy, trying to avoid leaf-raking chores by hiding out underneath a pile of them in a driveway, was hospitalized when his mother accidentally drove over him. A high-school coach got caught after he sneaked onto the track to run the second leg of his team's 4-by-100 relay at a meet.

(Akron Beacon Journal, Aug. 23; Akron Beacon Journal, July 11; Denver Rocky Mountain News-Associated Press, July 6; Akron Beacon Journal, July 26; Star Tribune (Minneapolis)-Associated Press, Oct. 23; Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 31)

Left Out of the Olympic Games

The annual national cricket-fight tournament was staged in Beijing in October after another stellar recruiting season among Shandong province cricket farmers, who attempt to breed for the physique and character to endure rough matches inside 8-inch-wide plastic containers.

(New York Times, Oct. 4)

The reigning college Milk Bowl dairy-sniffing champions, Mississippi State University, won the "ice cream" category (by coming the closest in agreement with professional judges as to sensory quality), finished second in "cheddar" and "yogurt," third in "cottage cheese" and "milk," and fifth in "butter."

(Wall Street Journal, Feb. 8)

Japan's Kazutoyo "The Rabbitt" Arai (who weighs 101 pounds) beat defending champ Steve Keiner (400 pounds) in the annual Nathan's international hot-dog-eating championship at New York's Coney Island on July 4, gobbling up 25 in 12 minutes, to Keiner's 16.

(New York Post, July 5)

In Finland, Japan's ultra-serious Seibotu Raiders easily beat a more relaxed European team in the finals of the Kemijarvi international snowball championship (seven players per side, 270 snowballs each, a field about the size of a tennis court with some barriers for cover, and the object of seizing your opponent's flag before being decimated by direct hits).

(National Post (Toronto), April 11)

Lesser of Evils in the Heartland

Eight farmers in the town of Nemaha, Iowa (population 112), have taught themselves to perform various square-dancing routines while seated on and precision-maneuvering their tractors, according to a June San Francisco Chronicle dispatch. However, since all are males, four of the dancers operate their tractors dressed in calico skirts in order to deflect the sight of all-male dancing.

(San Francisco Chronicle, June 26)

The Future of Warfare, One Hopes

The most encouraging aspect of Filipinos' newfound national mania for sending text messages by cell phones, according to a July New York Times report, is that Muslim guerrillas at war with government troops in the southern islands picked up army troops' phone numbers and now spend more and more valuable combat time merely pecking out insults.

(New York Times, July 5)

"Yo, Damien! You Talkin' to Me?"

Seven Brigham Young University students organized a Fight Club, inspired by the Brad Pitt movie and periodically drawing as many as 300 cheering spectators to watch men pound each other into submission. (Fighting is not against the BYU Honor Code, although watching the R-rated "Fight Club" movie is, and the brawls are held late enough at night so as not to violate the Mormon "family home evening" concept.)

(Salt Lake Tribune, April 24)

Criminal With the Worst Short-Term Memory

Federal grand juror Mark Vincent Hinckley, 37, part of the panel that had just voted secret indictments against an alleged Denver drug dealer, was arrested in August after he went to the dealer's office and attempted to sell him information about the indictments for $50,000. Hinckley had apparently forgotten the evidence that he had just heard: for example, that the government had planted bugs in the dealer's office. According to prosecutors, Hinckley's proposition was recorded in full.

(Denver Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 2)

Relentless American Ingenuity

Disabled Springfield, Mass., police officer Charles Peck, 55, asked the city council for higher benefits based on the 1982 squad car crash that ended his career. Peck was hurt so badly that he was declared dead at the scene (and resuscitated at the hospital), and in his latest petition requests benefits equal to his full salary, which is an amount usually available only to surviving spouses of deceased officers. Peck points out that, since he had been legally dead, he has actually survived himself and thus is in a position similar to that of such spouses.

(Associated Press, Feb. 11)

He Needs a Little More Seasoning

Highway Patrol officers in Spearfish, S.D., arrested a 17-year-old boy on Feb. 19 and charged him with stealing a car in his nearby hometown of Madison. According to the police report in the Madison Daily Leader, the troopers were casually finishing up a meal at a Perkins Restaurant when the boy, from an adjacent booth, walked up, spread-eagled himself on the floor, and shouted, "Please don't shoot me" and "The car is in the parking lot."

(Madison Daily Leader, Feb. 22)

Demand-Side Regulation

A bill introduced in the Vermont legislature would penalize any adult who chose not to own a gun, by requiring him to register with the state and pay a $500 fee for the privilege of being unarmed. Also, a bill introduced in the Mississippi legislature would seek to dampen the rampant sexuality inside strip clubs by making it illegal for a male customer to have an erection, even though he remains fully clothed.

(Boston Globe, Feb. 1; National Post-Reuters, Jan. 25)

The End of Politics

In March, British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Glen Parrett overturned Mike Frazier's victory last year in the election for mayor of the village of McBride, ruling in a 28-page decision that Frazier did not deserve the office because he had made knowingly false statements about his opponent.

(Globe and Mail, March 9)

Where the Fox Network Gets Its Ideas

On April 27, a reporter for Russia's RTR television arrived in the town of Ivanovo to shoot a piece on a housewife merrily feeding her family while her soldier-husband was away serving as a peacekeeper in Kosovo. However, the reporter had received word minutes before that the husband had just been killed on duty. Thus, the reporter shot some "before" scenes, in which the carefree wife earnestly spoke of her husband's imminent return, and then the scene after he informed her of the death, featuring her crying uncontrollably.

(Reuters, April 28)

Real Names, Straight From Central Casting

The 19-year-old patient who walked away from the Montana State Hospital for the mentally ill in Warm Springs in May, but who was captured 12 hours later: Mr. Terry Crazy. Among the four people arrested in the May murder of a waitress in Washington, D.C.: Mr. Gene Satan Downing. The reputed leader of a Southern California prostitution syndicate, nine associates of which were arrested in October: Mr. Hung T. Dong.

(Associated Press, May 26; Washington Post, Nov. 18; Inland Valley Daily Bulletin-Associated Press, Oct. 29)

I Dance on Your Grave

Entrepreneur Adam Bilski received a license in May from the city of Oswiecim, Poland (a.k.a. Auschwitz), to open a disco on the spot of a World War II-era tannery that "employed" concentration-camp workers and became a gravesite for many of them. And "Stalin's World," a tourist attraction devoted to themes of the World War II-era Soviet police state, was scheduled to open late this year near Gruta, Lithuania, which was a gateway through which 200,000 people passed en route to Siberian labor camps. (The developer plans for visitors eventually to enter the park on cattle cars and eat oat gruel and fish broth, just as the prisoners did.)

(Washington Post-Associated Press, Aug. 18; The Scotsman (Edinburgh), July 25)

The Year's Most Hapless Criminal

T'Chacka Mshinda Thorpe, 25, was arrested in Lynchburg, Va., and charged with possession of cocaine after a brief chase, which ended abruptly when Thorpe tripped on his low-hanging baggy pants, fell, and broke his leg.

(Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 14)

A Man Not Like Other Men

John Murphy, 64, was arrested in Toms River, N.J., after a May 10 spree in which he vandalized 12 urologists' offices because they had refused his requests to gratuitously give him prostate exams.

(Associated Press, May 18)

Florida's Real Problem With Numbers

Within a four-day period in May, a judge in Tampa sentenced a girl to 18 years in prison for the brutal murder of her mother, while two other Florida judges sentenced statutory-rape defendants (whose teen-age victims only reluctantly testified against them) to 71 years and 105 years, respectively.

(Tampa Tribune, May 28, 31; St. Petersburg Times, May 27)

The Classic Middle Name (our all-new yearly update)

Arrested for murder in 2000: Louis Wayne Watters, Jr. (Texas), Aryan Wayne Duntley (California), Robert Wayne Rotramel (Oklahoma), Steven Wayne Bowman (South Carolina), Bryan Wayne Padd (Arizona), Jeffrey Wayne Leaf (Oklahoma), Donald Wayne Rainey (Mexico), Michael Wayne Henry (Texas).

Committed suicide in custody after being charged with murder: Kenny Wayne Lockwood (Texas).

Convicted of murder: Robert Wayne Harris (Texas), Christopher Wayne Gregory (Texas).

Appeal of murder conviction denied: Randall Wayne Stevens (Illinois).

Embroiled in marital estate fight: murderer Scott Wayne Blystone (contesting from death row at the State Correctional Institution, Waynesburg, Pa.).

(Watters: Austin American-Statesman, April 28; Duntley: San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 31; Rotramel: Daily Oklahoman, Aug. 22; Bowman: Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, Oct. 31; Padd: Associated Press, Nov. 16; Leaf: Daily Oklahoman, Nov. 1; Rainey: Arizona Daily Star, Dec. 17, 1999; Lockwood: Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 16; Harris: Associated Press, April 25; Gregory: Austin American-Statesman, July 27; Stevens: Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Aug. 8; Blystone: Associated Press, Oct. 15)

Kids Tougher Than Dracula

Nathan King, 12, of Helena, Mont., and Destiny Lopez, 6, of Houston, survived accidents in which they fell and impaled themselves on pencils, which penetrated their hearts. In both cases, clear-thinking adults calmed the kids until they got to hospitals; attempts to remove the pencils prematurely would probably have caused instant death.

(New York Times-Associated Press, March 7; Houston Chronicle, Oct. 27)

The Americanization of China

China's government-sanctioned UFO research organization reached the 50,000-member mark (and is now processing 500 alleged sightings a year), which is not surprising, said the director, because extraterrestrials are as interested in the country's developing markets as are Western nations. And The Wall Street Journal reported in April on a recent "explosion" of successful litigation in China by elderly parents suing their children for failing to take care of them.

(Los Angeles Times, April 9; Wall Street Journal, April 3)

Not Exactly Legal Eagles

Robert Jones' legal theory in his current lawsuit in Atlanta against Liquid Fire drain cleaner (which burned him badly when it spilled out onto his legs) is not that its container was unsafe but that the container somehow looked unsafe to Jones, and thus, before dispensing it, Jones transferred the Liquid Fire into his own container, which turned out to be flimsy.

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 15)

Florida lawyer Philip G. Beitler, who had defended himself at his bribery trial (unsuccessfully), argued to the state Court of Appeals that his conviction should be overturned because, as a client, he had been inadequately informed by his lawyer that representing himself at trial was foolish. (He lost the appeal, also.)

(Miami Daily Business Review, Sept. 8)

No More Command-and-Control Regulation

"Holistic herding," or "low-stress livestock handling," is "changing the whole face of the West," according to a U.S. conservation official quoted in Canada's National Post. Cattle are happier, healthier and more obedient, he said, if they are not shouted at or subjected to stress but, as one rancher put it, allowed "to make up their own minds (where to go)." Also on the new-age frontier, in January, nearly 8,000 cowpokes attended the 16th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada; before submitting their verses, entrants had to prove to a screening committee that they are real cowboys.

(National Post (Toronto), Dec. 28, 1999; New York Times, Jan. 30)

Real Men Eat Cheese

An August Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro, Sardinia (Italy), described locals' love for casu marzu ("rotten cheese"), brown lumps of sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a "viscous, pungent goo that burns the tongue" and whose "wiggling worms (often) jump straight toward the eyes with ballistic precision." Though the cheese is banned by the government, a black market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary cheese, and local gourmets disdainfully dismiss any portions that are so stale that the maggots on them have died.

(Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23)

The Second Most-Hoax-Like True Story of the Year

Dutch researchers writing in an April British Medical Journal advocated via cost-benefit analysis that Viagra be dispensed for free in the Netherlands because, even though costly, it enhances the quality of its users' lives even more, for example, than kidney transplants. In fact, according to the researchers' Quality-Adjusted Life Year measure, a dollar spent on Viagra brings twice as much benefit as a dollar spent on breast cancer screening.

(British Medical Journal, April 29)

The Laws of Irony Are Strictly Enforced

Just after publication of his book "Disciplined Minds" in May, Jeff Schmidt was fired as a staff writer for the magazine Physics Today, after 19 years' service. In his book, Schmidt argued that a hierarchical organization's structure almost guarantees that its workers cannot devote their full energy to the job, and in fact, Schmidt was terminated after a supervisor came across an interview in which Schmidt admitted playfully that he had worked on his book during office hours.

(Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2)

The French textile company Francital began to market a fabric specially treated to absorb perspiration, for people who can't bathe for days at a time.

(New York Times, Feb.3)

Lt. Frank Drebin, Call Your Office

In August, Davidson, N.C., police officer Scott Searcy (backed by his assistant chief) asked to search a woman's car for drugs, giving as his legally required "reasonable suspicion" the fact that on the front seat was a copy of the local alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing, whose cover story on drug enforcement was illustrated by a photo of a marijuana plant. (The woman decided to consent to the search, anyway, and nothing illegal was found.)

(Charlotte Observer, Aug. 25)

How to Tell If You Have Too Much Money

In March, New York City art patrons bought up Christie's Auction House's entire collection of 60 paintings created by artists that happen also to be elephants, including Sao (a former log-hauler in Thailand's timber industry), whose work was likened by Yale art historian Mia Fineman to the work of Paul Gauguin for its "broad, gentle, curvy brush strokes" and "a depth and maturity." Fineman says there are three distinct regional styles of Thai elephant art: northern ("lyrical and expressive"), central ("dark, cooler" colors in "broad, vigorous strokes"), and southern ("saturated tertiary colors").

(Boston Globe, March 19)

What Chaos? What Constitutional Crisis?

Professional psychic Jacqueline Stallone (mother of Sly), in a pre-Election Day interview, said her dogs had told her telepathically that George W. Bush would win the presidency by "200 votes."

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 7)

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)

-- Las Vegas body modifier Nathan McKay, 24, complained in November about the difficulty of getting proper medical care: further surgery to prevent his already surgically forked tongue from fusing back together and removal of all teeth (and replacement with platinum implants). Said McKay, who also has 1-inch-stretched holes in his earlobes (for holding ebony disks): "I want my tongue split ... as far back as possible, to the uvula, so I have two separate strands in my mouth." The original surgeon was a family friend, but he has balked at the follow-up. Said McKay, "I'm not trying to turn myself into anything except someone to remember."

-- London's The Independent reported from Tokyo in December on the prolonged, even "epic" sulk (a state of funk called "hikikomori") that afflicts a million young professionals, who simply withdraw from their careers and hole up nearly 24 hours a day in their apartments (or rooms in the family home) for months at a time, emerging only to gather food before retreating back inside for TV or other solitary pastimes. Many psychiatrists call it merely an extreme reaction to parents who have pressured their sons to succeed.

Girls, ages 10 and 5, were harnessed together daily in a motel room while stepfather was at work (Des Moines, Iowa, September). Girl, 7, kept in a clothes dryer daily for weeks by foster mother (Ottawa, Ontario, September). Boys, 2 and 6, put into tumbling clothes dryers as punishment by mother's boyfriend and mother, respectively (Chicago, October; Niles, Mich., November). Boys, age 17 and 12, chained to bedpost by father, who, citing Proverbs, said he feared they "will grow up and kill their parents" (Riverside, Calif., October). Girl, 16, chained up by father for fear of promiscuity (Corpus Christi, Texas, October). Boys, 5 and 7, kept in trunk of car while mother was at work (San Jose, Calif., November).

-- In a September hearing before an employee appeals panel in Drogheda, Ireland, Paula Levins, 36, claimed her dismissal by the accounting firm M.A. Whately was retaliation for her unwillingness to share an office with an excessively flatulent co-worker and that she should get her job back. Levins said she was pregnant at the time and that the man's gas exacerbated her nausea, especially in the winter when windows were closed.

[Drogheda Independent, 9-29-00]

-- In arguments to a federal appeals court, convicted drug dealer Jorge M. Lopeztegui claimed he was not guilty by reason of entrapment, which he said drug agents committed by not arresting him despite having enough evidence to do so, with the result that he therefore felt free to commit more crimes. (Lopeztegui's appeal was rejected in October.)

-- According to an October report in the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's leading traffic-ticket scofflaw is Thomas Wehrer (250 tickets outstanding, totaling $16,375), who is angry at the city's having changed its rules for collection. Previously, tickets were filed by vehicle so Wehrer would drive junk cars and abandon them with impunity. Recently, the city began filing tickets by owner, making it worthwhile to pursue Wehrer, who claims that's unfair, in that by having continued to register Wehrer's junkers, the city "enabled" his ticket-accumulation habit. (Wehrer also argues that he's a good citizen: Whenever he parks illegally beside a fire hydrant, he leaves the windows down so firefighters could run their hoses through the car.)

-- In October, a federal appeals court refused to grant a new trial to Texas death-row inmate Calvin Burdine despite evidence that Burdine's lawyer slept during portions of his trial. The court said it was unable to determine exactly when the lawyer slept and thus that he might have slept only during unimportant parts.

-- Diane Tuzzolino told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter in November that Cook County Judge James T. Ryan, swearing in as witnesses her daughters, ages 8 and 12, in a fee dispute with an animal hospital, told the girls, "If you lie (on the witness stand), you will go to hell." Judge Ryan said he was simply carrying out state law, which requires judges to make sure children know the consequences of lying.

-- A Texas judicial discipline panel issued a public reprimand in April to a former judge, Robert Hollman, who heard child-support actions in Odessa until he resigned early in 2000 following a female employee's sexual harassment complaint. According to the panel, Hollman played an almost-daily, nonconsensual "bondage game" with the woman in which he bound her hands and ankles together and gagged her and then timed her as to how quickly she could escape.

News of the Weird has reported on jurors who identify a little too much with those they were judging, most recently Gillian Guess, who was convicted in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1998 for her jury-box flirtations with a murder defendant with whom she subsequently had an affair. An August 2000 Washington Post story profiled Dale City, Va., jury foreman Jennifer Day, 30, who led a death-row recommendation for brutal, conscienceless rapist-murderer Paul Warner Powell in May but then spent the next three months visiting Powell for hours daily, becoming his "soul mate," expressing her "love" for him (though Day claims to be happily married), and ultimately testifying that she and her colleagues had made the wrong sentencing recommendation. Said Day, "It's twisted, I know. I don't know if I even fully understand it."

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (41) Carjackers who come up empty-handed because they never learned to drive a stick shift, as was the case with a teen-ager who failed at stealing a 1998 Mustang GT in Bedford, Texas, in July. And (42) the criminal suspect running from police and who leaps into a river, though either unable to swim or unaware of the water's temperature or treacherousness, and drowns, such as Louis Wade Hermann, 24, in Louisville, Ky., in September (who would have been charged only with public drunkenness).

In "The Bar," Norwegian television's version of "Survivor," 10 participants live and work together for 10 weeks, tracked by video cameras 24 hours a day on the Internet (with highlights shown each evening on television). In October, a 44-year-old man was arrested after he happened to choose, of all apartments to burglarize, the participants' home, while all were at work. As the man moved around the apartment gathering valuables, he was shown on 17 video cameras, and show staff rushed to the apartment and captured him after catching a glimpse on the Internet.

The San Francisco Ballet School denied illegally discriminating against an 8-year-old applicant when it rejected her because it guessed she wouldn't become a tall enough adult to be a first-class ballerina. Cost-conscious Buckingham Palace officials said they were contemplating closing a subsidized staff bar which has long permitted employees to drink on duty. A Japanese rail line scheduled some female-only cars during December to head off an expected epidemic of passenger-groping by holiday-reveling men. A deer hunter was accidentally shot in the leg when he tried to pose his dog for a photo holding a shotgun (Bay City, Mich.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)