Australian Les Stewart holds what the Web site Oddee.com calls the "third most bizarre" of all Guinness Book world records: having typed out the written numbers "one" through "one million," over a period of 16 years from 1983 to 1998, according to an August story in his local newspaper Sunshine Coast Daily. He said he typed for 20 minutes at the beginning of every waking hour during that time because he "wanted something to do." "It just came naturally to me."
In May at Boston's Howard Yezerski Gallery, photographer Karl Baden displayed contact prints of the 7,305 images he took of himself, one a day every day for more than 20 years, beginning Feb. 23, 1987. Baden admitted, though, that on Oct. 15, 1991, he was late for a class he was teaching at Rhode Island School of Design and promised to do the photo when he returned but then forgot. He says it's his only blemish, but in fact proves the humanness behind his art.
Recurring Theme: In August, News of the Weird wrote about 12-year-old Kyle Krichbaum's lifelong obsession with the sound and feel of vacuum cleaners and his collection of 165 machines and his five-a-day vacuuming habit. In September, two Georgia Tech researchers told a conference in Austria that many owners of the Roomba vacuuming robot seem to ascribe human qualities to it, including giving it a name and, in some cases, dressing it up. Professor Beki Grinter and her colleague said part of the Roomba obsession was because a robot qualifies as a gadget, which means that males can be expected to do more of the household vacuuming.
