Public Notice to the World

I don't know who wrote this, but it is both funny and achingly accurate:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 5, 2008

Dear World:

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4. Early tests of the newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by mid-January.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service -- and hopefully even to improving it in years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The USA