What did comedian Michael Ian Black do to get banned from Facebook? I'd like to think it was karmic payback for providing the voice of the Pets.com sock puppet, an enduring icon of dotcom disaster.

Black isn't sure why Facebook disabled his account, but he's mad as hell:

How am I supposed to maintain my vast terrorist network without this social networking site?

While it's true that I never poke, nor poke back, I think I've been a loyal and true Facebook friend. I always accept friendship requests, right up to the bullshit 5,000 friend limit. Facebook, is it my fault that more than 5,000 people want to feel my love? No, it is not. It is the fault of my genetically superior brain and startling good looks. If you're going to start discriminating against gorgeous geniuses, then I don't even know what.

How am I supposed to receive invitations to events to which I have no interest in attending? How am I supposed to keep up with what various high school students I have never met are doing? How am I supposed to install and then uninstall various applications because they are annoying? Facebook, don't you realize that these activities take up most of my waking hours?

But maybe this unlikely pair should kiss and make up. Black, a clever sort, has been stuck doing basic-cable schlock like VH1's "I Love the '70s/'80s/'90s" series and Comedy Central's Reality Bites Back. Pets.com folded after figuring out that spending millions of dollars on TV advertisements and paying for express shipping on bags of cat food did not make business sense. We're not saying Facebook's economic model is quite that bad. But Black would make a better spokesman than Mark Zuckerberg, the social network's hopelessly tongue-tied CEO.

(Photo by Del Far)