Obsessions

• 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.