Your Weird, Weird World

You know you're living in a very strange time and place when:

A woman in Japan is arrested for virtual murder: Really. The lady's "husband" in a video game abruptly divorced her. Said she: "I was so angry" that she accessed the dude's log-in details and killed off his character. Next thing she knew police were whisking her away to Sapporo, 620 miles from her home, where she now resides in a non-virtual jail and faces a potential sentence of five years in prison.

A guy in the U.K. is sued over an eBay evaluation: According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, Chris Read of Herne Bay, Kent, didn't like the used phone he purchased on eBay. It was the wrong model, he said, and appeared to be damaged. So he returned the phone, got a refund and posted his experience on the web. Baaad move! Now the seller is threatening to sue Mr. Read for libel, claiming damage to his business.

An ad analytics firm claims "gazillions" of downloads for Google: Well maybe not gazillions, but in its analysis of downloads for Google's Android phone, Medialets cited "roughly 206,000 to 770,000 app downloads" in the first day of the Google phone's availability. "Roughly?" Sheeesh. How about "fuzzy wuzzy?"

Seems to me it's getting harder and harder to tell what's real and what isn't. To take a phrase from Buffalo Springfield: "Something's happening here; what it is ain't exactly clear ...."