Your Complete Infosource…

Do you remember reading about something called the SarcMarc here last week? It is a downloadable punctuation mark for giving adequate notice of the sarcasm that precedes it. Though it may appear rather impractical to the vast majority, especially considering the fact that it costs $1.99, a certain Paul Chambers might even kill for such a contrived punctuation mark after a frivolous Twitter post got him booked under the UK’s Terrorism Act.

After inclement weather put his travel plans in jeopardy, the 26-year-old Britisher joked on Twitter that he would blow the Robin Hood “airport sky high.” The tweet followed the airport’s closure on January 6, 2009 due to heavy snow. Apparently, he was scheduled to board a flight to Ireland from that airport on January 15.  Acting on a tip-off from an unnamed person, the police arrested him on January 13.

“I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they’d never heard of it,” Chambers is reported to have said. “Then they asked all about my home life, and how work was going, and other personal things. The lead investigator kept asking, ‘Do you understand why this is happening?’ and saying, ‘It is the world we live in’.” Do you still remember the SarcMark? I think “the world that we live in” certainly needs it.

Chambers was released on bail a few hours after his arrest and remains in danger of being tried for perpetrating a bomb hoax. Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that the authorities have banned him from the airport for life and his employer has suspended him until it completes an internal probe.