Three people in Japan have died after trying to use a robotic foot massage machine on their necks and shoulders.
In the most recent case, a woman removed the cloth cover of the machine and ended up strangling herself when her shirt collar was caught in its massage rollers. The other two deaths also seem to have occurred in a similar manner. No recall of the product has been issued, but the manufacturer thought it would be a good idea to issue a public warning.
Increasingly, the deceased are bringing their cell phones and other PDAs with them to the great beyond.
"It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them," said Noelle Potvin, a counselor for a Hollywood, California funeral home. While there are no official statistics kept on this phenomenon, funeral directors all over the world are reporting it as a trend.
Sometimes, friends and family leave the departed messages during the funeral. One New York woman went so far as to continue paying her late husband's cell phone bill so she could call him -- and graciously engraved the phone number on his headstone, so others could also make a booty call to the afterlife.
Unfortunately for the grieving widow (and for any buried-alive scenarios) most cell phone services don't offer reception six feet under.
An Indonesian man dubbed the "tree man" because of the gnarled warts all over his body has said his condition had worsened again, although he still hopes to recover and find a job.
An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday.
The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. 'This is something that would honour me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,' she told Reuters by telephone.
Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi's brother, to tell him of the offer. 'I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,' he added.
So I guess the Top dating tip is: if you throw shoes at the President of the United States, people will start offering you their daughters.
If you're still not sure what to get the geek in your life, might we suggest a chorus line of dancing, singing R2D2 robots, as demonstrated in this rather excellent video?
It's not a proper year until everyone's made a list. As such, here's the first five entires in our round-up of the ten best people, sites, services, memes, videos and general stuff on the internet in 2008:
Twitter For a while, it looked like 2008 might be the year Twitter died prematurely, collapsing under its own success. But by the end, it had confirmed its status as the online hangout of choice - a perfect hybrid of social networking, instant messenger, texting and blogging.
RoboCop Whether pictured happily astride a unicorn, or being rapped about by a hip-hop crew from Hereford, the cyborg lawman previously known as Alex J. Murphy was all over the place this year.
Warren Ellis Top British comics writer and novelist, Warren Ellis is one of the most inimitable voices online - from the excellent web comic FreakAngels, to the mindbleach-requiring pictures* on his blog, or his habit of prowling around Twitter demanding Red Bull and 'human bacon'.
Literal video The re-dubbed 'literal video' version of A-ha's 'Take On Me' that simply described what happened in the classic video ('Pipe wrench fight!') was a slice of pure comedy perfection. Later iterations took on Tears For Fears and (naturally) Rick Astley, but the first remains the best.
Barack Obama The newly elected President of the Internet didn't just have the most innovative online campaign ever - he also launched a thousand web memes. Including, naturally, the Barackroll.
I've been playing this game like a billion times trying to get the highscore but I never seem to make it.
It was only a matter of time – the infamous George Bushshoe-throwing incident has inspired an internet game where the playerthrows a brown shoe at a moving target of the President. Sock and Awe – a pun on the US military strategy of "shock and awe" – gives players 30 seconds to try to hit Bush as many times as possible.
The Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, can be seen peeping over a lectern next to Bush in the mock-up of the now-infamous joint news briefing on Sunday when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the US president. The game gives a running total of shoes to have hit Bush in the face – there were 6,722,892 successful hits at the time of writing. The Guardian's best effort was 12 in one go.
