All William Warner wanted to do was watch a DVD. What he ended up doing was being shot in the hand by his Toshiba laptop after a fault in the disk loading tray somehow catapulted part of the steel tray out of the DVD drive and through his hand. He never did get to watch the film, thetitle of which remains a mystery.

The painful remnants of when laptops attack!

According to the New Zealand Herald, 52-year old New Zealander William Warner was attempting to put a DVD into the disk drive of his Toshiba laptop when the machine suffered a bout of ineptitude and shot Mr. Warner through the hand. As you can see from the picture it was no surface wound but a full-on gaping cavity that pierced his entire hand. Just what type of spring loading DVD drives do they have down-under?

“I looked at my palm and I was wondering, God what just happened? Then the pain … became excruciating and I had to be rushed to hospital”

Toshiba, bless them, offered Mr. Warner a brand new laptop for his pain. Mr Warner probably wants a new hand.

“I’ve been told I can no longer fish or play golf, and even writing for me now is a struggle. I can’t believe that trying to play a DVD on the laptop would land me with injuries that ended the use of my right hand as I know it.”

Although being offered another opportunity to chop his hands off, Mr. Warner is still seeking financial compensation from Toshiba. The case continues.

The closing stages of the 1980′s were famous for the tearing down of The Berlin Wall and Milli Vanilli. That they were both created in Germany is the only similarity that they share. In the 21 years which have passed since the un-masking of the damned, many things have been written, many irrelevant top 100 television countdown  shows about the 1990′s where celebrities who have fallen out of flavour give their inane comments, have been aired; there is even a film in the works about their brazen lies (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0965381/). There has not, however, been an admittance of blame.  We are hereby taking the blame for Milli Vanilli, or rather, the fact that they existed for so long (not the end of Cold War segregation in Deutschland, in case you were wondering.)

Formed in Germany in 1988 by Frank Farian, the original lineup of Milli Vanilli featured a group of, what, at the time, were considered highly capable singers. Unfortunately, image and MTV were beginning to dictate what was  what was audibly, visually, and financially viable in music. For the original lineup of Milli Vanilli – who were deemed to have hit the ugly tree one too many times during their descent to Terra Firma – this meant replacement. This came in the form of the more visually appealing Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. They had long hair, nice abs and couldn’t sing a note. Which was fine, at least at the beginning.

For those who don’t know the story of Milli Vanilli – undoubtedly because you are too young – basically they pretended to sing a bunch of songs, palming themselves off as, well,  singers, all the while lip-syncing to a backing track, incidentally performed by the same poor souls with radio faces who had initially made up the band. In the age of Xfactor et al. miming is not seen as such a crime, that they got away with it for so long is a crying advert for musical ineptitude and why we are here.

In the two years that they were pulling the wool over unsuspecting eyes they won a truck-load of awards. During the 1989 American Music Awards they won best new artist in both the pop/rock and the soul/rhythm and blues categories and best song for Girl You Know its True. They won best Internationalal artist at the Juno Awards a year later and went on to win a Grammy award for best new artist that same year.

The Grammy award in 1990 is of particular interest, not only because of its calibre (Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, John Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, Leonard Bernstein and Quincy Jones have all won one), but also due to what happened a year earlier during a live performance for MTV at Lake Compounce Theme Park. As the ‘group’ ‘performed’ (and by performed, we mean lip-synced) their biggest hit, Girl You Know its True, the backing track got caught and continually skipped over the main line of the song. In a brazen attempt to conceal their embarrassment, they continued as if nothing had happened. The crowd went wild. Eventually the skipping CD got they better of them and they ran of stage in a Benny Hill fashion. Nobody battered an eye-lid. Not a word, not a comment, not a murmur, not a peep. What on Earth did they think they had been watching? A year later they won a grammy.

That so many people, including the highest echelons of the music industry, couldn’t recognise that what they were watching wasn’t real is tantamount to treason. We take the blame for Milli Vanilli and for all of the ineptitude that let them mascarade around at the same time real things of importance were happening.

Our ethos is simple, we are here to take the blame. Apparently we live in a blame culture; and in a blame culture there needs to be someone who you can turn to when there is nobody else who will shoulder your blame. Whatever the reason, whatever the occasion, we are there for you. From the simple and the transparent – be it stubbing your toe or spilling your tea; waking up late for work or missing the bus – to the arduous, perplexing, intricate and convoluted – your dog died; you hate your boss; the IOC decided to oust you from your abode and build an Olympic sized Ice-rink in your back garden and erect an athletes village in your once pristine street-market turning a once thriving local community into a dull and bland advert for a hotch-potch amalgamation of too much glass, no class and student residents. We are there. Blame us.

Politics, science, philosophy, food, revolution, environment, education, celebrity, television, crime, animals, history, love, money, relationships, family, sport, technology, travel, war, weather, health, business, birthdays, parties, celebrations, drugs, employment, nature………….and breathe…………..cybercrime, nuclear energy, credit cards, pornography, computer games, graffitti, hollywood. Kitchen sink. There is blame.

If you have anything you want us to take the blame for. Tell us. Let us know. Post a link. Send a letter. And we will publish an apology, allowing you to sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that the blame rests with us. Go on, don’t be shy.

All you wanted were some cigarettes. Not a big ask considering you had worked 67 hours the week before and the huge pile of cash that should be sitting in your bank account goes someway to masking the sheer hell of the weeks work; the 59 cups of coffee, 246 cigarettes; the hell the neighbours gave you; your work colleagues who every day take a little of your soul, not to mention the nagging girlfriend and the flatmates whose eyes you want to cut out with scissors. The two thousand pounds that is nestling sweet and cold in your bank account will make it all, if at least not worthwhile, then bearable. Only it wont because when you hit the 4 digit key into the machine and ask it nicely for money, it tells you “insufficient funds’.

You can hear the machine laughing at you. You try it again, the infuriation rising in the pit of your stomach like the bowls of Mt St Helen’s, ready to burst into an exquisite ulcer. You know there is money there, or at least their should be, their normally is, its the 26th of the month, there is always money there ready to be exchanged for intoxication.

You haven’t been to the bank for a while but this time you sweep in like the north wind demanding to know where your money is. The clerk tells you to get in line – you hadn’t seen the 27 other sweating cicadas wasting their lunch hour queuing in the bank, now all staring at you as if you had just raped their children – so you wait and you wait and all you want to know is where the money that you worked your fingers to the bone for is, its your money, its your right. So the clock ticks down and finally its your turn and you demand a statement and you receive it and it turns out that you have no money. Your card has been cloned and a man in South Africa has spent all your money.

Card cloning is becoming big business and if you get caught in its vicious web, you are going to be experiencing a whole world of frustration. Your bank account will be frozen and your cards cancelled. You will then have to wait for new cards and pin numbers which will take up to 2 weeks. In this time, not one person will apologise to you. Not one person will say “sorry Mr/Mrs… I know you bank with us and under our watch somebody stole all your money, so we are sorry.” There will be no such apology.

The card manufacturers who have developed the Chip and Pin system that is being so easily violated will not take the blame or apologise – the chip and pin system has been used for a lot longer on the continent and criminals are learning how to corrupt and bypass the mechanism. In an extra kick-in-the-teeth victims are being denied reimbursement because as far as the computers are concerned, the correct card and pin number have been used in the crime. That you have never been to South Africa is of no concern to a computer.

Taketheblame would like to console the victims of debit card cloning and offer our apologies on behalf of those who are truly responsible.

This is a box of Spam. It is not an email of zero interest promising you a bigger penis or a box of viagra

A little over 6o years ago a group of men from Manchester, England, produced what is widely conceived as the first computer in the guise we know it today: that of fixed memory which can store a program. Using just 128 bytes of memory, weighing over a tonne and taking up a whole room, it calculated the highest factor of a number. Known as ‘Baby’, it differed from the American ENIAC and Colossus in that it didn’t require – sometimes days in the aforementioned models – re-wiring every time a new calculation needed to be carried out. It is a far cry from today, the age of instant communication gratification.

In the time you read that first paragraph, nigh on 100 million electronic messages upped and left their respective outboxes. Within them were stored the thoughts, feelings, aspirations and desires of the multitudes. Hearts were broken and marriages ruined. The dirtiest secrets were revealed in a myriad of confessions, the innocent and guilty parties left to rue the night before. The most powerful men and women on Earth decided the fate of thousands and saved the life’s of countless others; business men and women divulged the keys to a fortune and lost as much again as the markets surged. Across the globe the days business is dissected, old plans resurrected and future plans lamented. Not bad for one minute in time.

Sadly for every 1 of those eventful emails, 9 polar opposites are sent and received. Of the 1 billion and growing emails that are sent every year, 90% are of absolutely no use. They are spam, and nobody seems to apologise. It is a glaring omission on someones behalf that they did not see it coming. A glance in any single inbox you care to mention will hold material that would, without hesitation, get you publicly killed in some countries on earth, sent to prison in others, flogged in yet others and castrated in the ones not mentioned. So why is it allowed in ours? Why is nothing concrete done and whose fault is it? What can be done? You turn on the spam filter and it either ignores all the spam or simply takes every email you receive and disposes of it.

Taketheblame™ has learnt that 57% of the junk that drowns your inbox originates in the good ol’ US, a further 16% emanates from South Korea, the remainder from the other 4 corners of the globe. Free Viagra, low interest loans, extra income, free money from Nigeria and free degrees from prestigious universities all figure heavily in the most detested spam. This is a family site so we can’t go into too much detail, but it is the XXX sites, the blatant pornographic advertising that makes it so surprising that governments, police agencies, IT companies and Internet watchdogs do not stand up and make a difference. The malicious brainwashing and corruption of our youth is surely excuse enough to free our inboxes? Until such action is taken, Taketheblame™ is here to act as your spam filter.

Who said Taketheblame wasn’t revolutionary? Who said we could’nt be held responsible for things on a grandiose scale? Well, in an unprecedented move, not seen since OJ didn’t take the blame, we are holding our hands, arms and feet up and taking the blame for things that haven’t even happened yet. That’s right. We are taking the blame for the future. For absurdities, wrong doings and plain mentalisms that are yet to occur, but probably will.

Say goodbye Sainsburys

The year is 2234, Google and Tesco are the only two companies in the world. Anyone who works in any sector, in any country in any dialect works for one or the other. Self-employment died out with the Saudis in the last throws of rebellion some 80 years ago when Tesco finally took over the last remaining oil field and with it, sole right to sell petrol on Tesco forecourts throughout the entire world. The last remaining farmers on the African sub-continent finally gave up the right to their own land and their own produce 50 years prior and the Europeans barely got out of the 21st Century. Western Europe didnt. With petroleum and food finally conquered, for the time being they can rest on their laurels. It was, in hindsight, always going to be the two most sort after products that caused the most trouble. The vast Alaskan, South American and Antarctic oil fields found in the early 22nd century have enough oil to last well into the 27th century. Enticing every farmer on the face of the planet to produce food solely for the blue and white of Tesco proved to be trickier than fixing a lightbulb. With an estimated 657 million small holdings and farms in the early 20th century, that is a lot of compensation. How they did it, I for one don’t want to know, I like my hands and face as they are. Broadcasting it would only end my life prematurely. Use your imagination. There are only Tesco shops and they sell everything. everything.

Google, after the bloodbath with Microsoft that resulted in the loss of so many, has control of the airwaves – it was discovered in 2007 that the “white noise” in the “space” between traditional “analogue” “channels” could be used by Google and their microscopic engineers to build unfathomable ways and means to transport information on a truly spectacular scale. The advertising revenue was such that the dollar became obsolete and the “Google” soon became the only currency in the world. Banks collapsed, countries capitulated, Jerry Springer became popular again as myriad of billionaires needed a channel to vent their spleen. The people loved it as there was nothing better than watching a broke former-billionaire cry on TV. So all information, economies, wealth, knowledge and media is under their control. This about covers everything.

Taketheblame would like to apologise to the people of the next millennium. We are truly sorry. It is our fault.

ah greenpeace, bless them. So they have come out and said that videogame consoles are a “toxic menace” (reuters, fri 23rd May 08). They have tested them you know. Say they contain all manner of chemicals and toxins from hell; polyvinyl chloride, phthalates, beryllium and bromine to name just 4. That your wiis and PS3s and XBOXs allegedally contain these things is bad enough in the eyes of these eco-warriors but the presence of these already mentioned chemicals could affect memory and sexual development. So say they.

They obviously havent played GTA 4. For a number of reasons. One, if they had been playing some good computer games and left toxic avenger on the backburner for a few minutes they would have been immersed in some graphically mesmerising bloodbath and not worrying about what the hell was inside the machine. Two, if they had been playing it then they would be far more concerned about the content of the game and not the fairytale concoction of death inducing phantom chemicals inside the box and how big its freaking carbon footprint was. Quite frankly I would want my kid to have its memory defragged by a coctail of polyvinyl cholrides after playing this, then they might not take the graphic shooting, killing, rape, violence and, what it has to be said, pure unadulterated fun of this game into adulthood.

The problem obviously isn’t present when the game is sitting peacefully on your living room floor. No, it is a silent, deadly killer which only rears its ugly head in the great outdoors. It is after the games have been ejected from the household that the degradation arrives and the evil chemical start seeping into the water system, slowly killing or mutating anyone stupid enough to ingest them.

The problem for take the blame here is that this is just another smokescreen for the real culprits. Computer games are not killing the environment and it is foolhardy to say so. The real polluters are escaping unpunished, and it is for that we are sorry.

Why is all news bad? Just look at the rolling news channels, the millions of news sites on the Internet. The 9 o’clock news, the 10 o’clock news, even Newsround is just full of bad news. The news, or rather bad news, makes people sad, scared, angry and depressed.

There is a scene at the start of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the kids breakdown and as they sit on the side of the road pondering what to do the camera pans out and you can hear a fictitious radio news broadcast. It talks of civil unrest, murder, rape, stabbings, shootings, nuclear fallout, war, fighting in the streets, death, gloom and worldwide armageddon. Its a cunning ploy by director Tobe Hooper to set the disturbing, graphic scenes that follow against a world collapsing. The year was 1974 yet it could be a news bulletin from today.

Just a brief glance at any newspaper or news website today will tell you so. Ex kkk member goes to prison, woman dies after brutal attack, Gunmen and US forces clash in Iraq, more arrested in 11 year old slaying, soldiers die in friendly fire, Greece on fire, Kenyan politicians potentially steal billions, suicide bomber kills 2 near Kabul airport, Israeli freighter sinks, South Koreans in hostage situation, hurricane in Jamaica, fierce fighting in Congo, Brazil train crash, fighting in Darfur, North Indian clashes, Indian Maoist violence, Papua tensions. This is a snapshot gathered in seconds. It is like this everyday.

Maybe it is symbolic of bad news creating bad news. If you listen to sad music, you become sad. Perhaps good news would create good news. And by that string of thought, we blame the news media for the state of the country and the state of the world today. Its all good and well David Cameron blaming computer games for the evil deeds committed on the streets of England but that is just immature, weak, lameass propaganda. an excuse. If music and computer games are responsible now, in this country, what is responsible for the African subcontinent child armies? Grand Theft Auto?

10 years ago the news gladly waxed lyrical about how the UK was 10 years behind American gun culture. It appears their predictions are coming true. What should be happening is predictions of good. But until then, our apologies for all the bad news.

Why not go to www.goodnewsnetwork.org

It is nothing but good news.

Our philosophy is simple, our motivation honest; We Apologise. We apologise and take the blame because no one else will. We will take anything that has ever wronged you, and write you an apology. We are sorry. Apparently we are in the grips of a so-called blame culture. Well we don’t know about you but we don’t see anybody taking the blame. We don’t see written, verbal or etched in sand apologies from the people on whose doorstep the blame should land. Put it on our doorstep then. And we will apologise to you.

It is amazing how much a simple apology means. How a simple “I am sorry”, “we are sorry” can brighten a day and more often than not, erase the problem. For we are forgiving creatures. But we are also stubborn and will hold a grudge when no apology is forthcoming. That will now change.

The last time you were spurned by a lover, ejected from a pub, riptoffed by a garage, over charged by a cinema. The last time your football team lost, your cricket team capitulated, your rugby team wimped out. The last time your car parking place was used by the work experience, the last time your bike got a puncture on the way home. The last time it rained or the last time you were mugged. The last time you phoned your bank and you put on hold in India and all you wanted was a balance. The last time your holiday was cancelled, your train was late, your subway ticket got lost in a drain. The last time your dealer ran out, you missed the bus or the kids across the street shouted abuse at you. The last time your friend didn’t call back, the animal you most love became extinct. You have no money, you have no motivation, You hate your computer. We, from the deepest, most honest depths of our heart, apologise. We will take the blame, because no one else will.

Our promise to you