The most recent exposition of people who tattoo their eyeballs, at the International Tattoo Festival in Caracas, Venezuela, in February, featured the phenomenon's founder, Luna Cobra, who said it all started when he tried to create "bright blue" eyes, as in the 1984 film "Dune." (Pigment is injected, permanently, so that it rests under the eye's thin top layer, the conjunctiva.) Asked what the process feels like, devotee Kylie Garth told BBC News, "It was mentally intense," resembling an eye poke, pressure and "a bit of sand" — but "no pain." Cobra urged young people to get their jobs before trying eye tats, since "you're going to look frightening forever to the majority of people you encounter."
Agree to disagree
Spouses often disagree politically and vote accordingly, but occasionally one runs for office against the other — as is the case in Bremerton, Wash., where incumbent Council Member Roy Runyon is being challenged by his wife, Kim Faulkner. Both were mum as to reasons and in fact filed their registration papers together at the same time in May. Said Runyon: "We're different people. She might have a different approach."
It's her right to dream wedding
In April, London's Daily Mail spotted Anna Broom of Gillingham declaring that despite her various disorders that keep her from working, she nonetheless imagines a first-class wedding with champagne, horse-drawn carriage and Mexico honeymoon — all at government expense — because that would be her "human right." She told a reporter that a small ceremony at a government office would not boost her confidence, but that her "dream" wedding would be just the thing to get her back on a job search.
Apes have rights, too
Once again, in May, lawyers went to court trying to persuade a judge that some rights under the U.S. Constitution be extended to intelligent apes (here, chimpanzees, as "autonomous and self-determining beings" at least as perceptive as, for example, severely mentally ill people, who retain rights while institutionalized). Lawyers are once again asking for a writ of habeas corpus (now available only to humans) to take Hercules and Leo out of a lab and into a sanctuary. (Adding to the discussion, in the week after the court hearing, a Harvard professor and colleagues, writing in the journal Current Anthropology, hypothesized that chimps could cook foods if given the chance. Tests revealed that they resist raw food when they are able to place it into a device that made it taste better — which in theory makes them more intelligent than children who eat cookie dough.)
Awaiting Prince Philip
The South Pacific islanders on the Vanuatu island of Tanna believe that 2016 will be the year that the man they inexplicably worship as a god — Britain's Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh — will finally visit them. One highly regarded islander told a London Daily Telegraph correspondent in New Zealand that the cult is starved for a visit, since Philip's only contact since the 1940s has been via gifts (one, the most treasured, an autographed photo). Legendary Vanuatuan "Chief Jack" was convinced that Philip was a descendant of island royalty.
Updates
Backyard firing ranges are legal in Florida (as News of the Weird reported last year), and in March a Florida House committee voted to keep it that way, shooting down legislation to outlaw them even in urban and residential areas. (Firing on private property is legal except if shooting over a public right-of-way or an occupied dwelling, and "negligent" gunfire, though illegal, is only a misdemeanor.) In 2014, one Florida legislator, originally from Alaska, said even in that liberty-conscious state, residents in urban Anchorage do not have rights that Floridians have.
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