For a short time, it seemed as if the Denton Police Department outside Dallas had been inspired by great communicators such as Ashton Kutcher and CNN.
A Twitter page, headlined "Denton Police," fed details of every arrest the department had performed, coupled with TwitPic mugshots.
This remarkable, real-time communication between the police and outside world surely was a futuristic forerunner to Texas' progression towards secession.
Until it was revealed to be the work of University of North Texas senior, Brian Baugh.
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Shaquille O'Neal and Mark Cuban are deeply confirmed Twitterers.
They have different styles but their fingers seem rarely to leave their keyboards. Perhaps one can even blame sore Twitter-finger for Shaq's poor free-throw percentage.
However, I have been following a bizarre Twitter exchange between the two NBA personalities, one that has now blossomed into strong rumors that Shaq wants to be traded to Cuban's Dallas Mavericks.
It all began on Saturday when Shaq, who has almost 600,000 followers, tweeted: "I'm lookin foor u mark cuban".
The Dallas Mavericks owner replied: "you know where i live.." Which he then followed up with: "And make sure to wear your best ShaqAlbert outfit to the arena tomorrow".
Well, Shaq then maintained a Twitter silence. While Cuban made the plot thicken during the game between the Mavs and Shaq's Phoenix Suns on Sunday by tweeting: "Gotta Love @The_Real_Shaq 's heart. dude never lets up."
It seems that a meeting between the two was then arranged, as Cuban tweeted to Shaq at 6:50 a.m. on Monday: "Not happy about it, but will be there." A couple of hours later, he tweeted again: "shaq found me. wish I could say what happened. I kept my cool."
I, too, wish I could say what happened between these two most engaging of characters. Did they have a row or a love-in? Did they have a free-throw competition? Why did Cuban need to keep his cool? Did Shaq claim he was a better tweeter?
However, just when I had decided that this must merely have been one weird conversation between the two of them, I noticed some deeply researched gossip suggesting that Shaq might, indeed, wish to continue his tweeting days in Dallas.
The first ever Twitter-brokered NBA trade? Stranger things have happened. But not many.
(Updated 12.23PST. Herewith Mark Cuban's latest Twittered news- with Dallas being smoked by Cleveland, Cuban tweeted: "just found out got fined25k by nba.) nice". Oh, Lordy.)
How can anyone not enjoy Mark Cuban?
A man who danced passably well on "Dancing with the Stars". A man who tends to say frightfully sensible things as loudly as possible in the hope that someone will hear. And a man who has been fined a total of $1.5million, some of it for complaining about NBA refs.
It seems as if he has been strangely quiet on that subject for a while. Until Friday, when he just couldn't take it any more. What does the modern human do when he just can't take it any more? He twitters.
A little context: Cuban's Dallas Mavericks aren't all that good this year. They might just scrape into the playoffs, but they wouldn't even scare the bobcat who walked into an Arizona bar last night.
On Friday they played the Denver Nuggets, a team that is slightly better, but also a team that has as one of its members, JR Smith. Regular Cubanists will know that the Mavericks' owner was fined $25,000 for walking onto the court in January and yelling at Smith.
Frankly, I've wanted to do that myself once or twice. The man's body is so dense with tattoos that it looks like a decaying English country house drawing room wall and he always seems to play with a little scowl. He also always plays well against my Golden State Warriors, so that might have something to do with it.
In any case, after a perceived Smith transgression, Cuban tweeted: "how do they not call a tech on JR Smith for coming off the bench to taunt our player on the ground?"
Which he then followed up with: "scary part of that play: Same crew chief from game in Denver where they missed call - last play of the game & 1st JRSmith/Wright issue."
Fights aren't scary. Crew chiefs are.
One can only imagine how the NBA, an organization that seems uncomfortable with Cuban largely because he's more intelligent than most of its members, will react to his modern form of heckling.
And just in case you were wondering whether it really was Mark Cuban doing the twittering, may I offer you his latest tweet: "just so you know, I dont use a "ghost twitter" like some folks do:)"
Oh, if only they'd make him commissioner of the NBA. What fun we'd all have. Basketball would be better for it, too.
Those nice people at ESPN reported this week that Mark Cuban, who I am told, was given a lot of money by Yahoo for some gizmoid or other, is one of the finalists in the bidding to buy baseball's most charming, unlucky, losersome team, the Chicago Cubs.
There will be those on the waggy side of humorous who will claim that he is the perfect person to own the Cubs as his Dallas Mavericks team is one of the most charming, unlucky, losersome teams in the NBA.
(My prejudices. One, I have Golden State Warriors hats and shirts and have still not ceased to giggle at the thought of my lowly Warriors embarrassing the favored Mavericks in the playoffs in 2007. Two, I have publicly declared my admiration for Mr. Cuban's commitment to the televised jig.)
However, if there was anyone who was chemically and congenitally capable of taking Major League Baseball out to the 21st century ballgame, it is surely Mr. Cuban.
As an NBA owner, he is reputed to treat his players and staff extremely well. Despite those who believe him to be more mercurial than Courtney Love, he has shown Colin Powell-like loyalty to coaches.
And he has raised topics, such as the NBA's, um, mercurial refereeing standards, when others didn't have the courage.
Of course, his biggest obstacle may lie in persuading 75% of the strangely crustacean-like men who are MLB owners to accept him as one of their number.
Which would be a little like a Yale secret society accepting Fitty Cent.
First, though, Mr. Cuban must persuade the Tribune Group to sell. And at the moment he is said to be the highest bidder at $1.3billion.
I'm trying to imagine Mr. Cuban's interview with the Tribunal.
(Credit:
CC Mil8)
Somewhere, deep in my sporting areas, I am thinking the newspaper group knows that it should sell to someone who will grab Chicago's imagination, stroke it in the palm of his hand, and then ask it what it wants for Christmas.
Which is why they should only ask Mr. Cuban one question:
What will you do about Steve Bartman?
For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Bartman's plight of fancy, he is blamed for costing Chicago a place in the 2003 World Series. His sin was that, with the natural reactions of a human resources consultant, he attempted to save a flying ball from his seat in the stands, when it was thought that the Chicago left fielder, Moises Alou, would catch it. Fans claimed this, and not the players' mistakes, cost Chicago the game and the series. He has been a vilified figure in Chicago ever since.
Unlike the other bidders, who would probably offer the confused look of moneyfolk, I imagine that Mr. Cuban might give two possible answers to the Bartman question:
1. "I would go to Mr. Bartman's house, knock on his door and ask him to come with me. I would put him in the back of my limousine, give him some brand new Dallas Mavericks gear to wear- I'm big on marketing, you see- and make sure that he is taken to the very fine and efficient O'Hare airport of Chicago. I would ensure his plane was not delayed. And I would send him to the Canary Islands to live out the rest of his days. They say his curse has passed, my friends. But with curses, as with relief pitchers, you can never be too safe."
2. "I would make him a Senior Vice-President of the Chicago Cubs. One thing I have learned in my long life, gentlemen, is that you have to stand up to adversity, not hobble away from it on your artificial hips. Progress is inevitable and cures all ills. Soon YouTube will be little more than a pictogram in the history of art. Please remember that I was the one who said that the NBA's manager of officials wouldn't be able to manage a Dairy Queen. And then I went out and proved that I could. So by making Mr. Bartman a Senior Vice-President I would be declaring that the past is there not to frighten us, but to strengthen us and to make the glory that will be ours all the more sweet. Two things you need to remember, gentlemen. One, the Red Sox finally got Bill Buckner back to Fenway and they haven't stopped winning. And two, Steve Bartman used to be a part-time coach for a 13-year-olds' baseball team in Niles, Illinois. That team, and I wish I'd owned them then, but I will buy them now and make them a Cubs Little League farm team, was called the Renegades."
Management is all about the decisions you make, the attitude you take, and the good fortune you fake.
And one decision Mr. Cuban has made is not to be neutral.
That is why I am convinced his choice of response to this one question would tell the Tribune Tribunal everything it needs to know about his qualifications as a potential owner of the team that the American Association of Psychiatrists has always longed to sponsor, but never had the wherewithal. (Please, just imagine Wrigley being renamed Freud Field.)
I, for one, wish Mr. Cuban the very best of luck. He is one of the finest ambassadors for the tech world's humanity.
And it is unquestionably time that some relatively alive human being showed baseball that sitting on your old-world assets is not what the future should look like.
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