Police in Japan's Kyoto Prefecture raided a shoe manufacturer in July and commandeered a list of about 1,500 purchasers of the company's signature "tosatsu shoes" -- shoes with built-in cameras. Investigators have begun visiting the purchasers at home to ask that they hand in the shoes (but, out of fairness, said they would not cause trouble for customers who could produce a legitimate reason for needing to take photographs and video by pointing their shoe at something). The seller was charged with "aiding voyeurism" and fined the equivalent of about $4,500 under a nuisance-prevention law. [United Press International, 9-23-2014]

-- Doris Carvalho of Tampa, Florida, is raising venture capital to expand her hobby of crafting high-end handbags from groomed, recycled dog hair (two pounds' worth for each bag). With investors, she could lower her costs and the $1,000 price tag, since it now takes 50 hours' labor to make the yarn for her haute couture accessory. [BayNews9.com (St. Petersburg), 9-9-2014]

-- Among the suggestions of the Brisbane, Australia, company Pets Eternal for honoring a deceased pet (made to a reporter in September): keeping a whisker or tooth or lock of hair, or having the remains made into jewelry or mixed with ink to make a tattoo. Overlooked was a new project by the Houston space-flight company Celestis, known for blasting human ashes into orbit (most famously those of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry). Celestis, working with a California company, will soon offer to shoot pets' remains into orbit ($995) or perhaps even to the moon ($12,000). [News.com.au (Sydney), 9-23-2014] [Associated Press via KRLD-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 7-30-2014]

-- Ontario's top court rejected Bryan Teskey's complaint in August over how Roman Catholics continue to be discriminated against by the laws of British royal succession. Even though Ontario (along with many Commonwealth countries) recently removed some aspects of bias (ending the ban on the royal family's marrying Catholics), Teskey pointed out that Canadian Catholics still do not have a fair shot at becoming king or queen (although Teskey did not claim that he, personally, had been a candidate). [Canadian Press, 8-27-2014]

-- Names in the News: (1) One of the three suspects in an August arrest for making fraudulent purchases at a Jupiter, Florida, shop: Ms. Cherries Waffles Tennis, 19. (2) The president of the Alabama Public Service Commission (who invoked prayer in July as the most effective way to fight federal restrictions on coal-fired power plants): Ms. Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh. (3) The investigator for the Ohio state auditor's office who was ordered by his supervisor in July to end a romantic relationship with another government official: Jim Longerbone. [Palm Beach Post, 8-21-2014] [Al.com (Birmingham), 7-28-2014] [Columbus Dispatch, 7-30-2014]

-- Venezuela, already in a recession, suffered a particularly cruel blow (according to a September Associated Press dispatch from Caracas) with the recent shortage in availability of breast implants for its beauty-obsessed senoritas. Restrictive currency controls are limiting enhancement surgeries from the 85,000 performed last year and, according to a local joke, will force Venezuelan women to start developing their personalities. (However, according to leading surgeon Dr. Daniel Slobodianik, when potential patients are told their preferred size implant is back-ordered, many merely choose the next-largest available size.) [Associated Press via CTV News (Toronto), 9-15-2014]

-- But It's About "Safety," Not "Money": On the same day in September, Washington, D.C., and New York City made traffic-camera announcements, with Washington declaring a revenue crisis and New York revealing that just one speed camera in Brooklyn had earned the city $77,550 in a single day. The District of Columbia had projected $93 million in annual camera income, but estimated it would collect only $26 million, while New York City, which has many fewer cameras, was marveling at the 1,551 tickets the Brooklyn camera zapped on July 7. [Washington Post, 9-29-2014]

(1) Staci Anne Spence, 42, was hauled to jail for assault in Sandpoint, Idaho, in September, but when the squad car arrived at the station, officers learned that during the ride, she had completely gnawed through the back seat -- foam padding and seat cover. (2) A 38-year-old man was taken, unconscious, to St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, in August. After allegedly choking his mother-in-law and refusing to cooperate with police, who used a stun gun and chemical spray on him to no effect, he dramatically KO'd himself with an empty beer bottle. [KXLY-TV (Spokane, Wash.), 9-23-2014] [Post Bulletin (Rochester), 8-25-2014]

An August West Virginia Board of Medicine report accused Martinsburg doctor Tressie Montene Duffy, age 44 and owner of a "weight and wellness" clinic, of over-prescribing drugs and repeatedly exposing herself to co-workers -- including forcing one employee to "motor boat" Duffy's surgically enhanced breasts. [Charleston Daily Mail, 8-12-2014]

Leonard Decides Whether You Can Be Nervous or Not: Leonard Embody marched up and down a sidewalk in September in front of Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tennessee, in military clothing and with a rifle on his back and a GoPro camcorder attached to his chest -- just his latest street demonstration supporting Tennessee's "open carry" gun law. According to a WSMV-TV report, this episode made even some supporters edgy because of the school setting, but Embody failed to see the problem. "Other people may think I look terrifying," he acknowledged, but he doesn't think he does, and if you disagree, he suggests psychological counseling. (Tennessee bans guns on school property, but a few inches away, on the sidewalk, Embody has decided that there is no problem.) [WSMV-TV, 9-19-2014]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Police in West Valley City, Utah, searched for an exceptionally unintimidating man in August after reports that the man tried to rob a Subway sandwich shop and a Family Dollar. In each episode, an employee told the man to wait while the employee went to a back room, but then simply failed to return, leading the "robber," eventually, to walk away empty-handed. (2) In Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in August, Kevin Clarence, 20, was arrested for an inept attempt to rob a supermarket. He entered the store, and only then, according to witnesses, put a plastic garbage bag over his head and decided to wait in line for his opportunity to address a cashier. He quickly got tired of waiting and said, "I'll be back," but was caught by police minutes after leaving the store. [KSTU-TV (Salt Lake City), 8-30-2014] [BBC News, 8-14-2014]

In 1993, News of the Weird introduced readers to Kopi Luwak coffee -- whose beans had first passed through the digestive tracts of Asian civet cats (to give them, supposedly, a certain tartness, as well as a certain hipster price tag). Canadian entrepreneur Blake Dinkin, 44, believes his Black Ivory Coffee tastes even better because his pre-digested beans are recovered from elephant dung in Thailand -- and are less bitter, in that the pachyderms, unlike civets, are herbivores. Dung-farming labor in Thailand may be inexpensive, but it takes 33 pounds of Arabica beans to achieve the precise blend Dinkin demands, and he told NPR in August that he anticipated sales only to upscale resorts in the Middle East (and to one elephant-themed store in Comfort, Texas). [NPR, 8-20-2014]

Donald Denney and his father (also named Donald Denney) concocted a plan on the telephone for Dad to smuggle a ball of black-tar heroin into the son's Colorado prison during visiting hours, to be passed by mouth via kiss from a female visitor. However, Dad failed to find a woman with a clean-enough rap sheet to be admitted as a visitor. Still enamored of the plan, however, the father decided to be the carrier himself, and inserted the "package" into his rectum for later transferral to his mouth (though the eventual messy kiss of the son would be awkward). Neither Denney realized, despite audio warnings, that all phone calls were monitored, and in September (2010), prison officials were waiting for the father, with a body-cavity search warrant, as he arrived. [TheSmokingGun.com, 9-21-10]

Thanks This Week to George Bayrd, Chuck Hamilton, Bruce Leiserowitz, Steve Dunn, and Sam Scrutchins, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The job of determining stress levels in whales is itself apparently stressful. The most reliable information about tension lies in hormones most accurately measured by researchers' boarding a boat, sidling up to a whale and waiting until it blasts snot out of its blowhole. By catching enough of it (or wiping it off of their raincoats), scientists can run the gunk through chemical tests. However, a team of engineering researchers at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, told The Boston Globe in September that they were on the verge of creating a radio- controlled, mucus-trapping drone that would bring greater civility to the researchers' job (and reduce the add-on stress the whales must feel at being stalked by motorboats). [Boston Globe, 9-10-2014]

(1) The newly inaugurated "Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" (a project of Osama bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri) failed spectacularly in its maiden mission in September when it attempted to commandeer an American "aircraft carrier" in port in Karachi, Pakistan. Actually, the ship was a misidentified Pakistani naval vessel that did not even vaguely resemble an aircraft carrier, and Pakistani forces killed or captured all 10 jihadists. (2) A September raid on an ISIS safe house in Syria turned up, among other items (according to Foreign Policy magazine), a Dell laptop owned by Tunisian jihadist "Muhammed S.," containing (not unexpectedly) recipes for bubonic plague and ricin, and (less likely) a recipe for banana mousse and a variety of songs by Celine Dion. [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-12-2014] [Foreign Policy, 9-9-2014]

-- In September, the Seattle-based Mars Hill megachurch announced it would close several branches as founding preacher Mark Driscoll takes personal leave to contemplate over-the-top messages he's made in the past about women. Among the most striking statements (as gathered by the "Wenatchee the Hatchet" blog in Wenatchee, Washington) were those expressing certainty that women exist solely to support men. A man's penis "is not your (personal) penis," he told men. "Ultimately, God created you, and it is his penis." "Knowing that his penis would need a home ... God created a woman (who) makes a very nice home." Driscoll added, helpfully, "But, though you may believe your hand is shaped like a home, it is not." [Salon.com, 9-8-2014]

-- Catholic priest Gerald Robinson passed away in July, and many around the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio, were shocked to learn that his body was buried with full priestly rights. Wrote the diocese, Father Robinson "was a baptized member of the body of Christ, and he was, and remains, an ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church." In 2006, Robinson was convicted of murdering Sister Margaret Ann Pahl years earlier. [WNWO-TV (Toledo), 7-11-2014]

-- Recurring Theme: Another rogue Muslim cleric enraged mainstream Islamic scholars recently. Egyptian Salafist preacher Osama al-Qusi proclaimed via fatwa in August that men could properly spy on women bathing, but only if they have "pure intentions." For example, he wrote, if a man intended to marry the woman, he might learn some things otherwise unrevealed before the ceremony. Egypt's minister for religious affairs, Mohamed Mokhtar, has already banned "tens of thousands" of "unlicensed" preachers from working in Egypt's mosques because of their embarrassing fatwas. [The Guardian (London), 8-22-2014]

-- Televangelist Jim Bakker no longer runs the Praise The Lord ministry, but still operates a church near Branson, Missouri, with a website selling a staggering array of consumer goods denominated as "love gifts" for worshippers who donate at certain levels via the website's shopping cart. Featured are clothing, jewelry (some "Tiffany-like"), bulk foods, "Superfood" legacy seeds, fuel-efficient generators (and a "foldable solar panel"), vitamins and supplements, "Jim's Favorite" foods (like ketchup), "survival" equipment and supplies, water filtration products, and a strong commitment to the supposed benefits of "Silver Solution" gels and liquids ($25 for a 4-ounce tube), even though the FDA has long refused to call colloidal silver "safe and effective". Of course, books, CDs and DVDs (and a digital download) of Bakker's inspirational and prophetic messages are also available. [Daily Mail (London), 9-15-2014] [JimBakkerShow.com]

(1) Ten parking spaces (of 150 to 200 square feet each) one flight below the street at the apartment building at 42 Crosby St. in New York City have been offered for sale by the developer for $1 million each -- nearly five times the median U.S. price for an entire home. (2) New York City plastic surgeon Dr. Matthew Schulman told ABC News in September of an uptick in women's calf liposuction procedures -- because of ladies' frustration at not being able to squeeze into the latest must-have boots. (The surgery is tricky because of the lack of calf fat, and recovery time of up to 10 months means surgery now will not help the fashion plates until next fall.) [New York Times, 9-10-2014] [ABC News, 9-17-2014]

Order in the Court: Signs went up in August in the York, Pennsylvania, courtroom of District Judge Ronald Haskell Jr. addressing two unconventional problems. First, "Pajamas are not (underlining 'not') appropriate attire for District Court." Second, "Money from undergarments will not be accepted in this office." Another judge, Scott Laird, told the York Daily Record that he'd probably take the skivvy-stored money anyway. "The bottom line is, if someone's there to pay a fine, I don't see how you can turn that away." [York Daily Record, 8-13-2014]

-- Habitual petty offender Todd Bontrager, 47, charged with trespassing for probing various locked doors at a church in Broward County, Florida, in August, admitted skirting the law a few times, but said it was only "to study." "Incarceration improves your concentration abilities," he told skeptical Judge John "Jay" Hurley, who promptly ordered him jailed to, he said, help him "further concentrate." [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-8-2014]

-- American Matthew Miller, 24, told the Associated Press that he had a "wild ambition" when he entered North Korea in April that he wanted to experience prison life there in order to secretly investigate the country's human rights stance. In September, he was convicted of espionage in a 90-minute trial and will be conducting his investigation amidst hard labor over a six-year period, beginning immediately. [Associated Press, 9-14-2014]

The Miracle of Meth: Three terrified people screaming out of an upper-story window at a house outside Dothan, Alabama, on Aug. 24 drew police in a hurry. They were trapped, they yelled -- unable to escape because intruders were still inside, shooting at them. One "victim" said she had been stabbed -- and the blade broken off inside her. With their own shotgun, the three had blown out several windows and walls defending themselves. They had even ripped out an upstairs toilet and sink and dropped them on an intruder outside. Police calmed the situation and later told reporters that there never were intruders -- that the "hostages" had imagined the whole thing, except for the estimated $10,000 damage and the woman's superficial, "defensive" stab wounds. (The home's methamphetamine lab apparently remained intact.) [Dothan Eagle, 8-25-2014]

(1) Mr. Roma Sims, 35, of Westerville, Ohio, was sentenced to just over eight years in prison in August for stealing the identities of more than 500 people between 2009 and 2013 -- before he was done in by having misspelled the names of several cities in various documents while working the scheme. (For example, the largest city in Kentucky is not "Louieville.") (2) In Sebastopol, California, Dylan Stables, 20, already on probation, was arrested again mid-morning on July 22 when, with stolen credit cards in his possession, he decided to drive his car, even with transmission problems. Police noticed him as he slowly drove through town in reverse gear. [Columbus Dispatch, 8-22-2014] [Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, 7-23-2014]

(1) Charged in August with growing marijuana at their home in Corvallis, Montana: Rodney Stoner, 57, and his son, Adam Stoner, 24. Arrested for performing "sexually lewd acts" in front of drivers at a truck stop in Kirkwood, New York, in September: 56-year-old Calvin Wank. [The Missoulian, 8-2-2014] [Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton), 9-22-2014]

Thanks This Week to Willis Craig and Alison Powell, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Dutch inventors Bart Jansen and Arjen Beltman struck again recently when Pepeijn Bruins, 13, called on them to help him grieve over his pet rat, Ratjetoe, who had to be put down because of cancer. Having heard of the inventors' work, Pepeijn asked if they could please have Ratjetoe stuffed and turned into a radio-controlled drone. Jansen and Beltman, who had previously created an "ostrichcopter" and are now working on a "turbo shark," created Pepeijn's rat-copter, but remain best noted for their epic taxidermied cat, "Orvillecopter," created in 2012 (which readers can view at nydn.us/1r0WmmA). [BBC News, 9-10-2014; Daily Mail (London), 9-11-2014]

-- How to Confuse an Arizonan: In August, a state appeals court overruled a lower court and decided that Thomas and Nancy Beatie could divorce, after all. The first judge had determined that their out-of-state marriage was not valid in Arizona because they were both women, but Thomas has had extensive surgery and hormone therapy and become a man -- although he is also the spouse who bore the couple's three children, since he made it a point to retain his reproductive organs. [Associated Press via KSAZ-TV (Phoenix), 8-14-2014]

-- In August, for the 12th straight year, a group of Japanese adult-film actresses has volunteered their breasts to raise money for an AIDS-prevention charity event shown on an X-rated cable TV channel from Tokyo. The 12-hour-long "squeeze-a-thon" ("Boob Aid") sold individual fondles to men for donations of at least (the equivalent of) $9, with donors required first to spray on disinfectant. In all, 4,100 pairs of hands roamed the nine actresses. [Agence France-Presse, 8-31-2014]

-- Regulatory filings revealed in August that AOL still has 2.3 million dial-up subscribers (down from 21 million 15 years ago) paying, on average, about $20 monthly. Industry analysts, far from rolling on the floor laughing at the company's continued success with 20th-century technology, estimate that AOL's dial-up business constitutes a hefty portion of its quarterly "operating profit" of about $122 million. [Quartz, 8-6-2014]

-- Commentators have had fun with the new system of medical diagnostic codes (denominated in from four to 10 digits each) scheduled to take effect in October 2015, and the "Healthcare Dive" blog had its laughs in a July post. The codes for "problems in relationship with in-laws" and "bizarre personal appearance" are quixotic enough, but the most "absurd" codes are "subsequent encounters" (that is, at least the second time the same thing happened to a patient) for events like walking into a lamppost, or getting sucked into a jet engine, or receiving burns from on-fire water skis, or having contact with a cow beyond being bitten or kicked (since those contacts have separate codes). Also notable was S10.87XA, "Other superficial bite of other specified part of neck, initial encounter," which seems to describe a "hickey." [HealthcareDive.com, 7-15-2014]

-- More Drivers Who Ran Over Themselves: In June, Robert Pullar, 30, Minot, North Dakota, subsequently charged with DUI, fell out of his car and was run over by it. In July, Joseph Karl, 48, jumped out of his truck to confront another driver in a road rage incident in Gainesville, Florida, but as he pounded on that driver's window, his own truck (negligently left in gear) crept up and ran him over. Pullar and Karl were not seriously injured, but in July, a 54-year-old St. Petersburg, Florida, man was hurt badly when, attempting to climb onto the street sweeper that he operates for the city, he fell off, and the machine ran over his upper body. [KXMC-TV (Minot), 6-23-2014] [Gainesville Sun, 7-23-2014] [Bay News 9 (St. Petersburg), 7-22-2014]

-- For patients who are musicians, deep brain stimulation (open-brain) surgery can provide entertainment for operating-room doctors as they correct neurological conditions such as hand tremors. In September, the concert violinist Naomi Elishuv, who has performed with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, played for surgeons at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center so they could locate the exact spot in the brain for inserting the pacemaker to control the hand-trembling that had wrecked her career. (In fact, last week's winner of the annual Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, Eddie Adcock, 76, had finger-picked some tunes in the operating room in 2007 for his own deep brain surgery.) [Huffington Post, 9-11-2014] [New York Times, 9-16-2014]

-- Buddhists continue to believe in the wholesale "mercy release" of living creatures, with smaller and less consequential animals making even stronger statements of reverence, according to a July New York Times dispatch from Yushu, China, describing the freeing of river shrimp the size of a fingernail clipping. These specks of life, an advocate told the Times, "could very well be the reincarnated souls of relatives" who perished in the 2010 earthquake that demolished the local area. "We" workers, said another, "have the same feelings as the fish," alluding to his own occupation of "digging in the mud." [New York Times, 7-25-2014]

-- Surgeons at the University of Arizona Medical Center removed a 47-pound tumor from a woman's stomach in April -- not even close to being the largest ever mentioned in News of the Weird, but likely the only such large tumor appearing in a post-operative photograph being cradled in the arms of a member of the surgical team. (The patient, without insurance, had been putting off the surgery for months, which allowed the tumor to grow and to complicate the surgery -- but credits "Obamacare" with finally allowing her to afford the procedure.) [Tucson News Now, 6-23-2014]

-- Previous reports of obsessively vengeful ex-lovers seem concentrated in Japan, where some heartbroken girlfriends have relentlessly harassed their exes with thousands of phone calls for months after the breakup. However, in a September report from Rhone, France, a 33-year-old man was sentenced to prison for 10 months for harassing his ex-girlfriend with a total of 21,807 phone calls and texts over the 10 months following the split (an average of 73 a day). The man insisted that he only wanted the woman to thank him for the carpentry work he had done on her apartment. [Agence France-Presse via The Guardian (London), 9-5-2014]

-- Size Matters (Sometimes): It's not the first time that a suspect has had the idea, but usually, judges are skeptical. This time, a court in Leer, Germany, ordered a medical examination of the manhood of Herbert O., 54, to help decide a criminal charge of exhibitionism. The man's wife testified that Herbert's organ is "too short to hang out of (his) trousers," as claimed by the victim of the flashing. The judge asked a local health official to make an exact measurement. [The Local (Berlin), 8-22-2014]

Clues at the Scene: (1) Alfred J. Shropshire III was charged in June with burglarizing a home in Lakewood, Washington, identified by his having accidentally dropped at the scene a plaque from a local Mazda dealer naming Alfred J. Shropshire III Salesperson of the Month. (2) John Martinez, 68, was arrested for allegedly robbing a Wells Fargo bank in Denver in July, having been identified by bank personnel who remembered that the robber wore a black T-shirt with "John" on it and in part because video revealed that a silver Honda registered to "John Martinez," was waiting outside for his getaway. [KOMO-TV (Seattle), 6-13-2014] [KMGH-TV (Denver), 7-23-2014]

Most victims seemed baffled or only modestly distressed by the obsession of Sherwin Shayegan, 27 (with one describing him as "completely harmless"). Shayegan's perversion is that, from time to time (allegedly dating to at least 2006), he befriends high-school male athletes, questions them in the locker room as a reporter would, and then, after distracting them with the inquiries, jumps on the athletes' backs and demands piggyback rides. No other overtures are made, and no injuries have been reported, and the principal complaint about Shayegan is his obnoxiousness. His latest arrest took place in May (2010) in Tualatin, Oregon, near earlier incidents in Washington state. [Tigard Times (Tigard, Ore.), 5-6-10]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Bob McCabe, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Sandy Pearlman, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Peter Smagorinsky, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).