I don't know what's happening with the BlackBerry crisis, but it's OK to hold the whipped cream on my blackberry shortcake (I'm cutting back)

Mmm, the ripe ones would make great shortcake, wouldn't they?

In my company e-mail this morning, I found this from our IT guy:

There is a outage with the North America blackberry system. Emails cannot be sent or received. The outage is estimated to last through the morning.

Translating IT talk into English, I gather that this is a problem afflicting BlackBerry users, which doesn't affect blackberry consumers at all. As it happens, personally speaking I have "a outage" of my own, blackberrywise, but it's entirely a function of market economics--the blackberry market and my personal economics.

Shortcake. Blackberries would make great shortcake. You could put just a dollop of whipped cream on top, with maybe a hint of vanilla whipped in, and . . .

Oops, I'm drifting. If blackberries are a subject of great interest to me (if there were just something we could do about the damned price), the BlackBerry is of almost none. Except for this sudden discovery that it's apparently possible to make the entire North American BlackBerry system go kerplooey!

I read just recently here on DWT that His Holiness Joe Lieberman, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, is proud to be able to cooperate with the Bush administration and has come increasingly to admire the job being done by Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Now, when Judge Chertoff first entered my consciousness some years back, I had the impression that he was a person of some substance, perhaps even accomplishment. But I know you have to be careful with these D.C.-esque resumes. As no one demonstrated better than Chimpy the Prez's own personal Poppy, George H.W.B., it's possible to build up a history of impressive-sounding jobs without ever doing anything, or even acquiring the know-how to do something if you wanted to. But by the time Chimpy tapped Chertoff to be secretary of homeland security, following the sudden unavailability of Rudy Giuliani's pal Bernie Kerik for the job, it's clear that the Chert had embraced rank chumpdom with open arms. (See: Katrina, Hurricane.)

I wonder how Secretary Chumpoff, I mean Chertoff, greeted the news that the entire North American BlackBerry system can be offed with a single whoosh. I suppose the Republican Noise Machinists' Union is looking at the usual suspects: godless, or rather wrong-godded, terrorists. I'm more inclined to think it's another case of business as usual, corporate-America-style.

The only reason to outsource the job to furriners like Osama bin-Laden is that they can probably do the job cheaper. But not better. No, never better. When it comes to fucking up America, nobody could hope to do a better job than our beloved corporate whoremasters. Is it any wonder we pay our CEOs the supermegabucks?

And you can hold the whipped cream on my blackberry shortcake. Lately I haven't been getting to the gym regularly. Oh, it was just whipped? With some vanilla and sugar? Well, we don't want it to go to waste. Environmentally speaking, we hate waste, don't we?

I'll keep you posted on the BlackBerry mess. Or better still, you just keep an eye on your BlackBerry for updates.