Fedora :: How To Extract Line From Text File

I'm trying to figure this error message out. This little script is supposed to tweet my laptop's IP address, as a cron job, I'm hopeful that it would do so even if it's stolen. This is a variant of one that works, but this doesn't, and I can't see a difference in the curl line of either one.

Code:
#!/bin/bash
user="xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx"
pass="xxxxxxxxxxx"
wget [URL]
TWEET=`sed -n 1p index.html`
curl --basic --user "$user:$pass" --data-ascii "status=$TWEET" "[URL]"
rm -f index.html
exit
This is the error message.

Code:
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: status=66.183.103.67; Cannot allocate memory
{"request":"/statuses/update.json","error":"Client must provide a 'status' parameter with a value."}
Why does curl think the status is the URL?