Some day I will die after being hit by a car crossing the street while dialling a number into my cell phone. Some day my mother will suffer a similar fate emailing someone on her blackberry. Like mother like daughter.
Thanks to an executive director that has magpie eyes and likes collecting trinkets, all the managers where my mom works now have blackberries, which they learned how to use today. Now they can zap each other's handsets with inane messages like "what is the meaning of life?" and "I know where u live." They're almost as fun as lazers, and as they said on Saturday Night Live, everyone in the world likes lazers and cats.
My father the luddite was both intrigued and repulsed by the new gadget at the same time. "What does it do?" he asked, and I tried unsuccessfully to explain that it is a phone, internet, email, instant messaging and palm pilot in one device.
Take the "bl" off of blackberry and substitute "cr" for a more appropriate word for them. The signs of blackberry addiction are all too apparent in the office where I work, where managers walk poor posture and their heads down, prone to bumping into walls and thumb cramps. Rick Mercer did a sketch about just this.
The only real advantage to all this is that when Colin goes down to Vegas next week, he can send us the play-by-play. After all, isn't that what communication technology is for?
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