Shana Tova from Google Israel 2008

Italian police have issued video footage of a man who has been hypnotizing supermarket checkout staff and getting them to hand over the cash.

In every case, according to reports, the last thing staff remember is a man leaning over and saying ‘Look into my eyes’ before suddenly finding the till is empty.

In the latest incident captured on video footage the man walked into a bank in Ancona in northern Italy.

He waited until he got to a female bank clerk and, according to the video footage, appears to hypnotise her into handing over more than £600.

He then calmly walked out.

The cashier who was shown the video footage reportedly has no memory of the incident. She only realised what had happened when she saw the money missing.

Checks of CCTV cameras in the bank showed her being hypnotised by the man.

Italian police are now looking for the suspect – who bears an uncanny resemblance to Saddam Hussein – who they believe is either of Indian or North African.

A well-executed Facebook parody site called Hatebook has stepped in to provide grumpy people with a place to bitch about everything they hate.

You know those days, the ones when you’d love to have your Facebook status say “My boss is a tool!”. But since our parents and bosses are aware of and most likely connected to our social networks, many of us may be wary of venting our frustrations online using standard social-networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.

Hatebook looks and functions much like a hellish version of Facebook. There is an evil twist for everything. The color scheme is red, profiles include a section called “Why I’m Better Than You!”, and members can create “Hate Albums” that consist of photos and descriptions of things they hate.

The German creators of this hater’s social network have done a very good job replicating much of Facebook’s functionality, and they have even thrown in some additional useful features. You can visually locate other members by looking for their avatars on a map via integrated Google Maps. You can also see which members have last visited particular profiles.

Too much Hatebook can be a bad thing though. Because all messages (”junkmail”) are viewable by all other users, and there are no privacy controls.

This is not the first attempt to parody or lash back at the take-themselves-too-seriously social networking websites and the general trend towards constant online interconnectedness. Some others include Isolatr, Snubster and the real-life social interaction instigator NoSo. Even Facebook is trying to laugh at itself with the launching of Enemybook and Snubster apps.

So find a place to vent your angst. It can be cathartic.

In an homage to New York’s recent nude Lindsay Lohan photo spread, the Village Voice columnist decided to stage his own version. He painstakingly re-created each pose, which Lindsay had, in turn, re-created from the original Marilyn Monroe series. (Bert Stern, who photographed both Lindsay and Marilyn, did not work with Musto.)

“I’ve long lived quite dangerously myself, and so, anxious to share my desperate man-tits with an audience beyond Chelsea, I gleefully agreed to star in an homage to an homage: Musto as Lohan as Marilyn. That’s three generations of loveliness, and I prepared for it by not shaving or waxing a thing, just letting it all hang in the wind as both a nod to history and a means of reclaiming control. Just like with Marilyn and Lindsay, people have always grabbed at me, wanting a piece of my piece and a slice of my soul, but usually with more pepperoni and less cheese.”

How to use spray tan?

How to get rid of that aweful spray tan! eeek!

A strange sight at Grand Central.

A couple of hundred people, indistinguishable from the 500,000 commuters who pass through the midtown station each day, suddenly freeze. They were part of an improv group which has put on this public event before, but never in such a theatrical space. A cop was asked what was going on: “I have no idea! That is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m a cop!”