NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Bright ideas

. Chicago banker George Michael, seeking to avoid $80,000 a year in property taxes, decided to call his $3 million mansion a "church" and apply for tax exemption as pastor. In July 2008, his application was somehow preliminarily approved by the Illinois Department of Revenue. According to a Chicago Tribune report, the application included a photograph of the "church," which was just a shot of an outer wall of Michael's house with a large cross on it, except that the cross was later discovered to have been merely placed on the photograph in marker pen. In July 2009, a state administrative law judge finally reversed the earlier approval.

. The preferred "disciplinary" tactic of Tampa high school assistant principal Olayinka Alege, 28, is to have underperforming students remove a shoe so he can "pop" their toes. Five students at King High School complained, triggering a sheriff's office investigation, but Alege was cleared, and indeed, the students admit that the popping is painless (though "weird," said some). One apparently incorrigible student said his toes had been popped 20 times. However, the principal recently ordered Alege to stop.

The economy is working

. Officials in Heath, Ohio, might have solved their budget problems. The town (population 8,500) reported in July that its new, six-intersection traffic-camera ticketing system issued 10,000 citations in its first four weeks. (Nonetheless, officials admitted that was too many and were discussing how to ease up.)

. Carole Bohanan was hired among 300 applicants by the Wookey Hole tourist facility in Somerset, England, in July to be its witch-in-residence, at a prorated annual salary of the equivalent of about $83,000. The witch's job is to linger in the caves full-time during tourist season, looking like a hag and cackling.

The economy is failing

. A 36-year-old woman pleaded guilty to prostitution in Oklahoma City in June, for giving oral sex to a Frito- Lay employee in exchange for a case of chips.

. In an interview with the Toronto

Star in June, a 36-year-old drag queen, who said he usually gets $60 for oral sex, was lately receiving offers as low as $5. Said "Ray": "I didn't spend two hours getting my makeup on and all dressed up for $5.

Things that live in the water

. "Goose barnacles": A 6-foot-long log composed of hundreds of barnacles, locked together, washed ashore near Swansea, Wales, in August. Each of the barnacles uses tentacles for snatching food, and a 6-foot mass of snake-like appendages, writhing simultaneously, terrified local beachgoers. Scientists said goose barnacles usually remain on the ocean floor.

. "Tubifex worms": Using a flexiblehose camera, public utility officials in Raleigh, N.C., inspected a faulty water pipe under the Cameron Village shopping district in April and found a pulsating, tennis-ball-size mass attached to a pipe wall. Local biologists identified it as a colony of tubifex worms that navigated the system until finding a propitious feeding spot. Officials have attempted to assure residents that the worms are somehow no threat to water quality.

Cutting-edge breakthroughs

. In April, researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City reported the ability to encase scorpion venom in "nanoparticles" that were somehow able to guide the venom intravenously to the human brain, to attack tumors, potentially doubling the venom's success rate.

. A team from Britain's University of Warwick announced in April that it had built a speedy, fully functioning Formula 3 racecar using biodegradable ingredients in the frame (including carrots, potatoes and soybean foam) and chocolate oils in the fuel.