fails

I have an idea for some enterprising TV station. It's called "CSI: Facebook".

It will be a show in which each crime enjoys a socially networked aspect, something that is sure to suck in younger viewers who find the existing "CSI"s a little too old.

The idea came to me in the middle of the night after hearing that a juror in a UK drugs trial had a very nice Facebook chat with one of the defendants. Why would she do that?

Well, the reporting offered by so many institutions, including the Guardian, gives … Read more

I understand that when married couples decide they don't like each other any more, they sometimes opt for extreme feelings and gestures.

No wife, though, has perhaps expressed herself in quite as socially networked way as Angela Voelkert.

Voelkert, according to court records obtained by the Smoking Gun, decided to use Facebook to see if she could find out what was really in her husband's mind.

She created a Facebook profile for a superficially attention-grabbing teenage girl called Jessica Studebaker. Her first step was for her creation to friend her estranged husband. Her next step was to persuade … Read more

It's hard to be a policeman. The public has such high expectations of you, and, like a nagging spouse, no one ever seems happy.

However, perhaps some might find their sympathy for one police force threatening to detonate a little, on hearing this tale of arguably misplaced police tweeting.

As the Guardian tells it, police in Watford--a place where trains stop in order to remind people that there is life beyond London--were involved in a delicate operation.

A man had walked into a branch of the Co-Operative Bank, threatened staff, and refused to leave. Rumors spread quickly, as they … Read more

Can it really be the case that cell phone companies will pursue every single customer for an unpaid debt? Even if the person has been dead for months?

This thought is nagging me more than certain elements of my wasted youth after reading a Los Angeles Times story concerning Betty Howard and her Verizon bill.

According to the Times, when Howard, from Loma Linda, Calif., was struggling with breast cancer, she signed up for Verizon's wireless broadband. It seems that Verizon had trouble securing an Internet connection for her. So, last September, she signed up for a package that … Read more

Please don't try this at home. And please don't try this at work, especially if you happen to be the driver of a means of public transportation.

Because this video, posted by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, projects something that is so stunning and yet so entirely everyday.

Here is a bus driver, talking on one cell phone while making adjustments to his smartphone. The only slight drawback is that he's driving the bus, with his elbows.

Who here assembled has never driven a vehicle with one finger or perhaps two knees?

And yet there is something … Read more

Obviously, credibility is the first problem you face when people find you hanging from the wall of a local business dressed as Batman.

In Petoskey, Mich., a 31-year-old man found this out the hard way. The police had to pull him back onto the roof of the building; they later allegedly took a baton-like weapon (more of Daredevil's kind of weapon, but I'll let that slide), a can of "chemical irritant spray" (I would love to believe this was Bat-shark repellent), and lead-lined gloves, presumably to conceal the iPod Shuffle he got Superman for his birthday. … Read more

Fortune doesn't always favor the butt-dialer. In fact, has any butt-dial ever enjoyed a good result?

I ask because I bring you news of someone who might be another victim of butt-awful fate.

According to the Associated Press, three men with seemingly ill-intentions were discussing stealing things from people's houses in upstate New York.

It so happened that one of them enjoyed perhaps an imperfect lock on his cell phone. Or perhaps, he had his body positioned in such a way that the cell phone was activated.

In any case, it seems that this activation led to a magical key or two being depressed--to 911.

Kevin Walsh, sheriff of Onondaga County, told the AP that the alleged miscreants were driving not far from a place they had robbed some time previously. … Read more

I am thinking of writing a book about all the faux pas people have committed on Facebook.

Here's another to add to my already large collection of stories for the book, provisionally entitled: "Face It, I'm a Half-wit."

According to the U.K.'s Portsmouth News, a 16-year-old with a clearly refined sense of humor decided to block all the water passages in a restroom at a public library.

Using all of the ingenuity at his disposal, he shoved toilet paper down the sinkholes and then turned on all the taps.

Being socially conscious, he did … Read more

Class, we need to go over this again: when you post things on Facebook, it is likely that they will go far beyond your few thousand friends.

This reminder needs to be made right now. You see, the mother of 7-year-old Ukailya Lofton from Chicago has accused her daughter's teacher of taking a cell phone picture of her daughter's hair--in order to post it on Facebook. It seems she thought the hair was somewhat amusing.

As the story was told to ABC7News Chicago, the mother, Lucinda Williams, said that her daughter wanted to have hair with Jolly Rancher … Read more