Scrapbookers get scrappy

Making artistic, themed scrapbooks is a $2.6 billion industry in the U.S. (nearly one-fifth as large as the adult-video industry) and has a "Hall of Fame" as protective of its morals as baseball's, which has shunned gamblers and steroid-users.

According to a January Wall Street Journal report, one "superstar" scrapbooker, Kristina Contes, was recently kicked out of the hall for violating etiquette by displaying another's photo inside her scrapbook in a competition. Contes said the oversight was inadvertent but that she is now shunned within the community for her grave offense and called "labelwhore."

Violence lite

First, Arkansas Tech University canceled outright its production of the Stephen Sondheim play "Assassins" (containing some violence) because of "recent tragic events" on campuses, but then relented because of the hard work that the students had already put in.

In February, the production was staged in full, one time, to an audience solely of participants' families, who presumably could handle the violence. However, even that showing took place without the play's prescribed guns, even though they were only wooden props. (The "guns" were later discarded but only after being sawed in half.)

Undignified deaths

- A 39-year-old man in New Zealandwho had been cited 32 times for driving without a seat belt (and who finally rigged a fake belt in his car to create the illusion that he was belted in) was killed in a low-impact car crash in February that would not have been fatal to a belted driver.

- A 74-year-old man died of hypothermia in January after sneaking out of a Winnipeg, Manitoba nursing home at 4:30 a.m. to smoke.

Get-away plans for the summer

James Jett, 33, was arrested in Blount County, Tenn., in February after attempting to evade police by jumping into the Little River and submerging all but his face. However, the high temperature that day was only 36 degrees (F), and by the time he was discovered, he was suffering from hypothermia.

Unclear on the concept

German artist Markus Kison created a full-body burqa, the robe that devout Muslim women wear for modesty, but equipped it to send a digital signal of the wearer's face to anyone nearby via Bluetooth. According to a February report in Der Spiegel, Kison reasoned that, since nothing in the Quran specifically forbids it, women can use it to determine their own personal levels of modesty.

Accidents happen

- Police officer Thomas Wilson, of Brisbane, Australia, pleaded guilty in March to having 8,742 images of child pornography on his computer, but the judge acknowledged that Wilson might have acquired them "somewhat accidentally."

- Ernest Simmons of Orlando was convicted in January of attempted murder of two sheriff's deputies despite his defense that he only "accidentally" shot at them 11 times, using two guns.

- Accused purse-snatcher Derrick Dale, 21, of Destin, Fla., said that the purse fell on his foot and (according to the January arrest report) "the next thing he knew, (it) was in his hands"

Leap Day, literally

Orlando "public artist" Brian Feldman celebrated Feb. 29 (Leap Day) by devoting himself to "leaping," according to a report on WOFL-TV. For the entire 24 hours, beginning at midnight, Feldman leaped off a 12-foot-high platform every three minutes and 56 seconds (a total of 366 times). Said Feldman, "I thought it would be a good idea to get people to think how they spend their day."

Too much time on their hands

- It struck Leo Hill, 81, of Lakewood, Colo., that he was being shorted sheets of toilet paper (in the 12-pack, whose rolls allegedly yielded fewer sheets than similar rolls in the 4-pack), and he earnestly counted 60 rolls, sheet by sheet, concluding that the shortage amounted to enough paper to service one sit-down session per roll. He took his complaint to the Denver Post (and even to the Better Business Bureau), but the reporter, trying to replicate Leo's work, found no shortage, in Leo's brand or eight others.

- Jonathan Lee Riches is believed to be the most prolific lawsuit-filer ever to operate from behind bars. His "docket" now includes more than 1,000 cases in just over two years (with eight more years to go on a federal sentence for fraud). It includes claims totaling several trillion dollars from "injuries" inflicted on him by such people as President Bush, Martha Stewart, Steve Jobs, Britney Spears, Tiger Woods (luggage theft), Barry Bonds (illegal moonshine production), and football player Michael Vick ($63 billion for allegedly stealing Riches' pit bulls and selling them on eBay so that Vick could in turn buy missiles from Iran).