I've got mail! Oh, boy, have I got mail.

James Cudmore

There's been lots of chat over the past few elections about reporters and their unhealthy addiction to their BlackBerries.

Of course, now that almost everyone in political Ottawa has a Blackberry, everyone in political Ottawa uses one.

It's not uncommon to write more than a hundred notes a day and to receive even more. But during an election campaign that gets much worse — much, much worse.

How much worse? Well, with an hour of downtime in Ottawa today, I decided to clean out my inbox and my sent mail box.

I deleted messages I no longer need going back to just a few days before the campaign began (the pre-writ period, as they call it). There were 5,142 of them. And those are just the messages I no longer need.

There are another 295 messages in my inbox that need attention (some day).

In the six minutes it's taken me to write this note, I have received six new messages.

It's enough to make the thumbs cramp right up.

— James Cudmore