truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Stephen P. Linnen, 33, who was a lawyer for Ohio House Republican state legislators' caucus, was sentenced in September to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to 53 misdemeanors, including 40 times springing out from hiding places while naked and photographing the faces of women reacting to the surprise (and also for fondling 13 of them). However, the judge refused to label Linnen a "sexual offender" and said he poses "absolutely no risk to public safety."

Creme de la Weird: In a weird-behavior genre that has been out of the news for several years now, the Taipei Times reported that a man went to the emergency room of the National Taiwan University Hospital on September 6 with a empty Taiwan-brand beer bottle lodged in his rectum, it having been inserted "wide-end first." Doctors took two hours to remove the bottle and said that the man had a history of such inappropriate insertions.

Bad Week in Louisiana for Barnyard Animals: Austin Gullette, 45, was arrested on August 31 in West Monroe, La., after his sister caught him allegedly have sex with one of her three pigs. Two days later about 100 miles away in Florien, La., Timothy Garner, 35, was arrested after being spotted inside a henhouse, allegedly having sex with a chicken. (A sheriff's official in the West Monroe case said he had never before, in his 29-year career, seen a case of a man having sex with a pig, but then he added, to a Monroe News Star reporter, that of course there were cases involving men with "dogs, donkeys, and sheep.")

Such a Thoughtful Son, to Provide for His Mom: Going against the grain of recent court decisions, the federal appeals court in New York ruled in August, 2-1, that when a man died of "autoerotic asphyxiation" (normally, strangling oneself almost to the point of passing out as a way of enhancing pleasure during masturbation, but in some cases, going too far), it was an "accident" rather than a self-inflicted injury. Thus, mom Shirley Critchlow is entitled to death benefits under her son Michael's life insurance policy (but would not have been for a self-inflicted injury).

On July 12, federal, state, and county officials, responding to a call about an eye- popping scene at a sandbar just off Whale Harbor in the Florida Keys town of Islamorada, discovered a young woman apparently blissfully dangling by the shoulders from meat hooks that were hanging from a makeshift bamboo tripod and stuck in her skin. A Coast Guard officer took pictures and asked if anyone was doing anything he or she didn't want to do, but the heavily tattooed, pierced people at the scene assured him they were just having fun in the sun. A sheriff's spokesman said he couldn't think of any laws that were broken but that he would look into it.

The unassuming town of Greensburg, Pa. (pop. 16,000, just east of Pittsburgh), was the site of two high- profile arrests recently. In July, James Kilpatrick, 21, was suspected as the man responsible for several toe- kissing incidents, including one underneath a public library table, when he allegedly kissed the feet of a 12- year-old girl and asked if he could kiss her liver. In September, Robert Domasky, 48, who cross-dresses as "Kelly," was charged with trespassing (and suspected of identity theft) after "Kelly" was found outside the girls' locker room at Greensburg Salem High School looking for the cheerleading coach. The 200-pound Domasky said he merely wanted her to teach him some cheers. In Domasky's apartment, police found cheerleader magazines and uniforms, pompoms, and photos of "Kelly" in cheerleader garb.