Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

It's just so ridiculous it's almost funny (February 7th)

Leigh Van Bryan the 26 year old Irish bar manager joked on his twitter account that “I’m going to destroy America and dig up Marilyn Monroe”, was arrested along with his partner Emily Bunting 24 on their arrival to the US on terrorism suspicions and immediately forced to return back to the UK. The pair were locked in a cell for 12 hours, interviewed under oath by Homeland Security officials and accused of intending to commit crimes in the US. Van Bryan claims the tweet was taken out of context and the meaning lost in translation, as the word ‘destroy’ refers to getting trashed and partying. The tweet referred to a US comedy ‘Family Guy’ quote ‘3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!’ Van Bryan’s luggage was searched for shovels and spades, and Bunting accused of planning to act as his ‘look out’ during the tomb robbing crime. Van Bryan states “It’s just so ridiculous it’s almost funny but at the time it was really scary. The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist.”

Inspired by Richard Hartley-Parkinson http://ow.ly/8Sy0o image source twitter http://ow.ly/8Syrh

I like the whimsy of all this hullabaloo (January 4th)

Noah Kravitz known online as ‘Kravy Krav’ and more recently by his twitter handle of @Phonedog_Noah before his current @NoahKravitz, is being sued by his former employer over the following list on his twitter account. Kravitz’s former employer ‘Phonedog’ claim the twitter list is equivalent to a client contact list and is demanding $2.50 for each of the 17000 followers to the account during his period of employment, a sum of $340,000. Turns out that when Kravitz left his employer amicably, he was to receive backpay and a percentage of advertising sales revenue. When this failed to eventuate, Kravitz sued and was countersued for the twitter account value, although it’s a mystery where the value of $2.50 has been derived. The suit has implications for many users who mix work and social through their social media accounts.

Inspired by Chris Taylor http://ow.ly/8eW1w image source http://ow.ly/8eWdE

Angela Dorothea Merkel the 56 year old first female Chancellor of Germany and former head of the European Council, announced via Steffen Seibert her press secretary’s twitter account, a planned trip to the USA. The method of announcement via twitter has created great angst among the German press corps demanding to know if future announcements from the Chancellor’s office will similarly be made public via twitter. Apparently many of the press corps do not have twitter accounts and still rely on dinosaur technology such as facsimile machines to receive their press release information. Merkel had agreed to the use of twitter technology given the lead taken by other progressive governments around the world, to announce this official visit to the USA to meet with President Obama.

Inspired by Sam Stein ow.ly/4ym2l image source Wikipedia ow.ly/4ymeY