Why the BlackBerry is made for men

I came to a realization the other day. It doesn't matter that my new BlackBerry is pink. It's made to be used by a man. And the reason why is all because of the holster it's designed to go in to.

First off: because I am a woman, I have hips. The holster is designed to be worn at the hip. The darned thing sticks out off my side like an abnormal growth! If I wear a coat over it, I feel like people are staring at the big lump on my side. No good.

Secondly: the holster really only stays on if you are wearing a belt. What if I am wearing women's pants that don't need a belt? The holster is going to flop over and not stay on very well. And forget it if I am wearing a skirt. Why bother?

Not like any of this will stop me from using my Crack... er I mean BlackBerry.

11.3.08, ETA: Here's another reason why the BlackBerry is made for men, which was indirectly supplied by a man. This morning I showed my BlackBerry to a male coworker who said, "How do you type on that thing with those fingernails of yours?" And honestly, it's not all that easy... and my nails aren't even that long... yet. :D

The Fine Art of Procrastinatoring

One of my favorite singers, Jamie Cullum, has a wonderful song aptly titled "Why Do Today What You Can Do Tomorrow":

Heaven sent, are days like these
Here with you, snoozing in the breeze
Tomorrow leads, today won't interest me
Today I'll be procrastinatory

There's a lot to be said about wasting your time
I don't really care as long as someday you're mine
I don't know what I want
But I wish I knew about love

Why do today what you can do tomorrow
Why do today what you can do tomorrow

So come with me and we'll waste a day
Somewhere warm, somewhere far away
So vote for me, it really isn't that complex
My politics are of laziness

There's alot to be said about wasting your time
I don't really care as long as someday you're mine
I don't know what I want
But I wish I knew about love

Why do today what you can do tomorrow
Why do today what you can do tomorrow

So come with me and we'll waste a day
Somewhere warm and somewhere far away

Why is it that procrastinating is so appealing? I don't think it's necessarily because we are lazy. Perhaps it is due to today's overdriven, overscheduled, get-it-now kind of culture. Somehow, even with the aid of such powerful technology at our fingertips, we're all busier than ever. And we need some kind of release from that... just put it all off, if only for a little while. Hence, doing nothing but watching marathons of House Hunters, playing with the Wii, or perhaps just staring blankly out the window.

I don't think I need to mention that the reason I am even writing this post to begin with is because I am procrastinating.

That's not democracy: Greenspan's two decades of steering federal monetary policy to the current financial crisis, and J. Edgar Hoover

Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman from 1987 to 2006 (fearless defender of wealth inequality and chief architect of the global finance meltdown of the late 2000s), is a symbol of plutocracy (rule by the rich).

Presidents are limited to serve eight years, and are (theoretically) elected every four. If chief lackey to billionaires, and economic overlord to the rest of us, can serve for nearly twenty, while the presidency shifts three times between the two (allegedly oppositional) parties, there's a problem with our democracy.

An even more frightening example is the top law enforcement officer, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Someone needs to write an essay titled Did Democracy Exist in the United States in the 20th Century? The Case Against: J. Edgar Hoover. This mean-spirited director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972 (yes folks, you're reading that correctly, 48 years) was put in place by the despicable dean of domestic despotism, acclaimed liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson brought us the Espionage and Sedition Acts, Palmer raids, overall criminalization of dissent (journals opposing the war not allowed in the U.S. mail), and imprisonment of dissenters, including socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who won 6 percent of the vote in the four-way 1912 presidential race. That election is another good example of the kind of democracy we have: Republicans would have won with Theodore Roosevelt, but they preferred to nominate Taft instead and kept him in the race knowing it would give Democratic candidate Wilson the presidency. (Wikipedia reminds that "William Howard Taft remains the only U.S. President to finish third in a bid for reelection to a second consecutive term.")

J. Edgar was A. Mitchell Palmer's protogé while, from mass raids in 1919 and 1920, 16,000 people were imprisoned, most of them without charge and of whom a few hundred eventually deported. Mr. Hoover maintained this damn-the-rights-of-those-who-would-propose-progress throughout the rest of his five decade career, although he clearly put his own political survival over Red Scare level repression all the time. After promotion by Woodrow Wilson, J. Edgar "no organized crime" Hoover stayed as director of the FBI through Republican presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover; Democratic presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman; Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower; Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; and Republican Richard M. Nixon.

Although certainly all the faces in government can change, and a system can still be fundamentally anti-democratic, forty-eight years for one person in one position of great power – moreover a person and position characterized by suppression of people opposed to the government – counts as a very clear symptom of a diseased democracy.

Acknowledgements:

• ThirdCoastActivist.org for highlighting Greenspan's tenure.


• Background on the Red Scare for one of the few places where Woodrow Wilson's oppression is summarized.


• My father, for a visceral as well as an intellectual understanding of history and humanity.

[Cross-posted at mlncn.com]