In January, a baby was born to Canadians Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, but seven months later, they still have not revealed to family or friends whether little "Storm" is a boy or a girl. The couple are intending to raise Storm free of gender-specific cultural stereotypes (i.e., such things as domesticity, aggressiveness, preferences for arts or mathematics) because society tends to overvalue "boy" norms. On a larger scale, in Stockholm, according to a June Associated Press dispatch, the 33 Swedish preschoolers at the Egalia school socialize in daily environments scrubbed of all gender references. For example, boys and girls alike play with kitchen toys and building materials, and when playing "family," parental roles are interchangeable. Critics say the children will be left unprepared for the "real" world.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

- Who Knew? "The streets of 47th Street are literally paved with gold," said one of New York City's gold wranglers, as he, down on all fours and manipulating tweezers, picked specks of gold, silver and jewels that had fallen off of clothing and jewelry racks as they were rolled from trucks into stores. The man told the New York Post in June that he had recently earned $819 in redemptions for six days' prospecting.

- New, on the News of the Weird Food Cart: (1) grasshopper tacos (at San Francisco's La Oaxaquena Bakery, but pulled in June by local health authorities, who were concerned that the bakery was importing Mexican insects rather than using American ones); (2) cicada ice cream (at Sparky's Homemade in Columbia, Mo., but also yanked off sale by local health authorities in June); (3) maggot-melt sandwiches (which are just what you suspect - cheese and dead maggots - at the California State Fair in July).

Civilization in Decline

- Growing Up Early: (1) A loaded handgun fell from the pocket of a kindergarten student in Houston in April, firing a single bullet that slightly wounded two classmates and the "shooter." (2) Prosecutors in Grant County, Wis., filed first-degree sexual assault charges recently against a 6-year-old boy, stemming from a game of "doctor" that authorities say he pressured a 5-year-old girl into in 2010. (3) Lakewood, Colo., police, attempting to wrest control of a sharpened stick that a second-grade boy was using to threaten classmates and a teacher, gave him two shots of pepper spray. (The boy had just finished shouting to police, "Get away from me you f---ers.")

- Tippecanoe County (Ind.) judge Loretta Rush, interviewed by the Journal & Courier of Lafayette, Ind., in June, underscored parental drug use as a major risk factor in a child's drifting into substance abuse. "I had a case where a child was born with drugs in his system," recalled Rush. "Both parents were using. We were looking for (placing the child in any relative's home), but both sets of grandparents were using. So (the) great-grandmother's in the courtroom, and I had asked her if she would pass a drug screen, and she said she would not ...."

People Different From Us

- Self-described Las Vegas "performer" Staysha Randall took 3,200 different piercings in her body during the same sitting on June 7 to break the Guinness world record by 100 prickings. (Veteran Las Vegas piercer Bill "Danger" Robinson did the honors.) Coincidentally, on the very same day in Edinburgh, Scotland, the woman with the most lifetime piercings (6,925) got married. Elaine Davidson, 46, wore a full white ensemble that left bare only her face, which was decorated green and sported 192 piercings. The lucky guy is Davidson's longtime friend Douglas Watson, a balding, 60-something man with no piercings or tattoos.

Armed and Clumsy (all-new!)

People Who Accidently Shot Themselves Recently: Sean Murphy, 38, destroyed most of his finger trying to shoot off a wart (South Yorkshire, England, June). A Secret Service agent (assigned to Nancy Reagan) shot himself in the hip holstering his gun (Ventura, Calif., February). A 17-year-old boy, playing with a gun in bed, shot himself in the testicles (Orlando, February). A training officer at the Ohio Peace Officer Academy shot himself in the thigh (December). Sheriff Lorin Nielson of Bannock County, Idaho, shot himself in the hand (December). Johnathan Hartman, 27, holstering his gun in his back pocket (after threatening his girlfriend), shot himself in the butt (Billings, Mont., December). A man trying to scratch his nose with a pellet gun shot himself in the face (Amherst, Mass., November).

Undignified Deaths

(1) A 24-year-old man, riding a party bus for a friend's bachelor night in Detroit in June, was killed on Interstate 94 when he popped open an emergency escape hatch on the bus's roof and peered out at the sights. His head slammed into an overpass. (2) A 59-year-old woman, who had borrowed a steam roller to help with maintenance on a road near her home in Whatcom County, Wash., in June, lost control of the vehicle, sending it into a ditch, where she was thrown and fatally rolled upon.

Visit Chuck Sehpherd daily at NewsoftheWeird.blogspot.com or www.NewsoftheWeird.com. Send your Weird News to WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com.