OMFG, this woman could be a single gunshot or heart attack away from being President...

...and if this photo is any indication she's may well either fire the former or induce the latter in John McCain.

Look, part of me is sort of excited: no matter what the election results, the US will either have an African-American Commander-in-Chief or a female Vice President.

And this is difficult, because debate over Sarah Palin will, inevitably, be sexist - or at the very least focus on gender in a way it never will for male candidates. We're already speaking about her in a way that we don't about the men. Kindly, she's being referred to as the ultimate hockey mom; unkindly, a transparent selection designed to woo Hillary Clinton's potentially dissatisfied supporters; and really unkindly with words that shouldn't be used to describe any woman. McCain and Obama's gender simply doesn't fit into the bullet-point descriptions of them we receive. I might argue that Palin's gender is a lot like Obama's race, in this election: something relevant if it's not too threatening, or if it doesn't dominate everything else to the point where it's perceived as a weakness. I fear that Sarah Palin's nomination, in the short term, may be something of a step backwards for women in politics, as the best way to discredit her will be to focus on all of those things that, unfairly, are perceived as being particularly female attributes, especially in politics. Obama's camp has managed, very carefully, to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to race (mostly!) in that he's clearly a black candidate but he's not too black.

It's unfortunate that we're still there, but that's the reality of the situation whether we like it or not. Honestly - and this is a difficult question to answer because it makes us confront our own embedded sexist attitudes - did anyone look at this picture and think "Vice President?" At the very least, this makes me think that this woman will have trouble being taken seriously on a political stage (and again, this may be something sexist in me speaking up in a way that I can't really articulate, but that's the sort of emotional response that drives somenone to vote for one candidate over another.) So rather than get into a debate as to whether or not this is right - because it isn't - it makes more sense to ask if she's a good choice to help the original Johnny Mac get elected. What surprises me in all of this is that this woman was picked by a McCain camp that should know better, seeing as much of his own bid for the Republican nomination in 2000 was undone by some very careful management of his public perception.

We're all used to overly candid photos and videos circulating on-line now, but this is something else, no? It's fodder to promote her perceived lack of seriousness, lack of experience (which, I fear, is just a sort of code for "female" in the hearts and mains of many, sadly.) I realise that there may be an not-inconsiderable portion of the American public that likes Sarah Palin because of photos like these. For some people this is incredibly real, and relevant, and therefore really, really attractive in a leader. But if the Dems can't get their hands dirty when they're being provided mud like this, then they're even worse at getting themselves elected than the last two federal elections have indicated.

Oh, and one last thing: I'm not even certain this photo is real. It has the faint but unmistakeable whiff of Photoshop to me. But that just adds to the argument: McCain has entered the realm of gender politics where the gloves - and a good portion of the other clothes - are off. For all the talk of Obama's lack of experience, we've never seen him in a Speedo, and the most the race card has been played up was in satire - that New Yorker cover from earlier this summer - that everyone chose to distance themselves from. Maybe this is the difference between race and gender: there simply isn't a way to invoke the former in a political arena without sounding racist, but there are plenty of ways to subtly introduce the latter and not come off sexist. I don't know if that says more about our attitudes towards race and gender than it does the nature of politics, but either way, I think this is trouble for the McCain camp.

It's Britney, Bitch!

This might well be an actual comeback for Britney, as opposed to the train wreck that was last year's VMAs. This year - almost a year to the date after her latter-years-Elvis impersonation at the VMAs 2007 - Britney is appearing in a couple of commercials for the MTV Video Music Awards. She looks good, happy, sparkly, not particularly clever, and mostly not insane. So normal Britney.



So rather than talk about her past couple of years - the metaphorical elephant in the room - they put an actual elephant in the room. No idea why or what it means.

Best, though, is the inclusion of madcap Brit comic Russell Brand, he of the worst hair ever. Russell, who was the best thing about the forgettable Forgetting Sarah Marshall, has a delightful propensity to bite the hand that feeds him. So I'm looking forward to all of the usual nonsense in early September, as he'll be hosting.

Mostly, though, I'm happy to see Britney is off the suicide watch. I think her meltdown, as catastrophic as it was, is something she'll recover from. And let's give the girl a little bit of sympathy: she has the second worst showbiz mom in the world (thank you, Dina Lohan, for setting the bar so low); she makes worse choices in men than Elizabeth Taylor, and she's no longer getting her body rocked by Justin Timberlake. These are things that would drive anyone to go on a two year bender.

So I have just one more question: there's Britney, but where's Whitney? Duelling comebacks, yo!

Barack Obama Wants You to Have Cupcakes!

My friend Bryan Leblanc turned me on to this little bit of absurd political geniusness: BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com. How do you take the effortless charisma and implied linked goodwill of the possible next President of the US and translate it to the web? Simple, just think of those things that make you feel good, and have them all start with Obama.

Apparently, he made me a mixtape.

As a side note, a lot of these cute messages imply a sort of friendly connectedness and do so by referencing Facebook actions or other tech-related items, which I thought was interesting. Whenever I get asked (it's more like accused, really) by people about how the Internet may be reducing our ability to create "real connections" with each other, I always like to point out how many of us use our on-line social networks to provide little bursts of joy to a large group of people in a way that is just impossible off-line. In fact, the aforementioned Barack site was Bryan's status update today, so there you go.

I'm front-page news!

I had the great pleasure of making a speech to APEX (the Association of Public Service Executives) last week. And because of this, I made the front page of my hometown paper.

Sort of cool: the Ottawa Citizen covered this conference and my speech was pretty well received. A reporter wrote this story about it (which also reflects to contents of the speech pretty well).

I get a fair amount of media coverage, but this was extra-special. One, because I grew up in Ottawa, but more importantly because I really believe that government needs to do more to engage young people. I was really honoured to be able to present to four hundred or so high ranking Public Service executives and get my message out to them: I also love telling goverment folks that teenage Canadian workers essentially have taxation without rerpresentation, because it's true. You can work - and therefore pay taxes - when you're 14 (12 in Alberta!) but you can't vote.

Anyway, it was some very nice coverage and made my family proud. Next up is getting some work with the Feds to try and effect some change. But this was a great start.

You can put my head on your heart!

Or a picture of it, anyway.

For a while now, I've been wearing a blue t-shirt with a hand-drawn image of a guy named Fred on it, with his name and hometown scrawled underneath his head. Don't know him, never met him, but I love him.

Or I love the idea of him: this t-shirt is one of many available through Joy T-shirts. It's pretty simple: you buy a shirt with someone's face on it, and in doing so get a code, that allows you to access their website and upload a photo of yourself. Eventually, they draw you, and then put you on a t-shirt. Why? well, in their words:

"Every face on a Joy T- Shirt has been inspired by a real person. When you wear your shirt you are encouraged to think about that person and how your everyday actions can affect others and the world we live in.After you purchase a shirt you may then upload a photo of your own visage via the participate link to have your face drawn by hand and worn on the hearts of others. It is about taking an active stance against racism and discrimination while being an advocate for peace and equality... because in someway or another, we are all connected!"

You can see me here and, should you choose, buy me and wear me on your heart. Or someone else, should you choose: after all, some of you know where my head's been and won't want it anywhere near your vital organs. And then someone will wear you, and so it goes. Fred, by the way, has a passion for "soccer, video production, movies, hip hop, spending time with [his] family, carib lager, jerk chicken, lending a helping hand, banging on the drums." And I can get behind pretty much all of those things.

I love this idea for its simplicity, and the truly viral nature of the message. Every time I wear the shirt, someone asks me about it, and I spread the message. It's fun, it's smart, and it's direct. so a massive shout out to Jeff Woodrow, the smartypants behind all of this. And thanks to him for not making me look too much like Fred Savage in the drawing.

Zig-a-zig-ah!

Last Spice Girls shows, ever, for ever and ever, until the end of time, and forever, and ever* were this week in Toronto. I went to one, and it was probably the most fun a human being can have and still be legal.

Almost as great was getting referred to as a Spice Girls "expert" in Eye. Read this!

*band reserves the right to reform for a boatload of money at a later date.

This is sincerely great, but I am not good with sincerity.

I'm as PoMo-ironic as anyone, but this is amazing.

We live in the age of self-help: we have the luxury, in the West anyway, of thinking about ourselves and our problems - our mostly internal problems - more than any other group of people in history.

For the most part, we don't till the land. We live long lives. We have food, and shelter, and the basics. Even those of us who live in comparative squalor - not the very poor or the homeless, but people who, economically speaking, are in the lower classes, do okay compared to say, your typical African today, or your typical North American 150 years ago. You're reading this, and that means that you've got the Internet, and some time, and some space. Those things are all pretty amazing and pretty luxurious compared to what our lives could be like.

I mention this briefly because, in the strictest, most Maslowian sense of it all, out hierarchy of needs is pretty well developed. We have the luxury - or the curse - of a massive amount of self-reflexion, and because of that I think we focus on problems that we shouldn't focus on.

Which brings me back to the whole self-help thing. the good part of it is that most of the industry just repeats essential truths, and these are things we need to hear over and over and remind ourselves of often. Life is okay. Be good to people. For the most part, the work you put in is directly correlative to the result achieved. these are good things to know and to hear. But we move away from these things as we get more and more wrapped up in this quest for self-knowledge: we spin more and more intricate webs of self-thought, and all of a sudden we are thinking about our problems too much, until we become our problems. the fundamental truths, the really simple things get lost, and the problem becomes the thing, instead of the solution.

So I find it really amazing when someone can present these truths, these same lessons, the things we should all know but convince ourselves aren't as important as our problems, in a way that cuts through all the crap. Here's a guy who's done it.

His name is Randy Pausch, and this is his "last lecture," a tradition in which an academic hypothesizes the last lecture they would ever give if they knew they were going to die.



Randy is going to die. He has inoperable cancer and a few months to live. About a million people have viewed his full, hour-long lecture online already: this is an 11-minute version, and I found it genuinely inspiring. Now, it's from an episode of Oprah: she is both the best and worst aspects of the self-help industry rolled into one ginormous brand, but this, for me, is what it is: a man with everything who is going to lose it all and chooses to live each day focusing on what he has, not what he is going to lose. I find that genuinely inspiring, and I'm not moved by much. If he can do it - this guy who is going to leave his three young children soon for no good reason other than his pancreas sucks - then I can too, right?

So I recommend that you watch this. If you've got an hour, you can see the full-length version here. In case you don't have the 11 minutes that this shorter version takes, here are the big lessons in a nutshell: choose people over things; work hard and the rest will come; decide to have fun every day; live your life the right way and things will sort themselves out for the most part.

I don't know why I need a dying man to tell me that, but I'm glad he did.