An internal Yahoo memo divulged by AllThingsD shows that the company is not doing so well at two things: dogfooding Yahoo Mail and writing internal memos. In a message filled with casual verbiage and mixed metaphors, Yahoo Senior Vice President of Communications Jeff Bonforte and Chief Information Officer Randy Roumillat co-implore their employees to stop using the company’s prior gold standard, Outlook, in order to help test the recently relaunched Yahoo Mail product.

According to the missive, 25 percent of employees have been routing their office communications through Yahoo Mail—good, but not enough, say Bonforte and Roumillat. “It’s a matter of principle to use the products we make,” they write. “It’s time for the remaining 75 percent to make the switch.”

The memo then goes on at some length to justify the switch, calling the resistant employees phone-using, wagon-circling pilgrims, then sailors, and then comrades. Bonforte plays Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire in Jerry Maguire. Microsoft Office is a dreadnought. Ayn Rand appears as Ayn Rand. NT Server is a “T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents.” It’s not entirely clear who or what “The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl” is, but it’s either a metaphor for Yahoo, the Internet, or life itself.

Roumillat and Bonforte go on to tout some of the features for corporate mail in the "feature-rich" Yahoo Mail: "calendars," "folders," "smart conversation threading," and "powerful keyboard shortcuts." The service also has the integration of the Xobni platform. Roumillat and Bonforte acknowledge that corporate mail is still not yet supported in the Android and iPhone Yahoo Mail apps, but they say the feature is imminent. The e-mail closes with “I pitty [sic] the fool who resists”—we can only assume that means that the role of the man who executes the layoffs of non-Mail-using employees will be played by Mr. T.

The entire thing is worth a read.