IDEO is the über-cool corporation, complete with corporate identity hand made by the logo master Paul Rand (you might know some of his logos: IBM, ABC, Westinghouse), that designed such ass-kicking consumer electronic as the Palm V and the Handspring Visor.

They have a bunch of smart asses working around the clock coming up with cool stuff (just what we need more of, don’t you think).

I particularly recommend checking out the Identity Card Project (see link on the front page) and the space vacuum.

I was somewhat surprised to learn that all the brands pictured below are owned by Philip Morris. To read about Adbusters Harper’s Campaign go here. And stop eating Kraft Dinner, it tastes god-awful anyway.

Go see The Legend of Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan. In this re-release of the ’94 Drunken Master, Jackie Chan plays a master of the Drunken Boxing style of combat who needs to actually be drunk to reach the peak of his abilities.

There’s this one scene where a dude with an axe comes at Jackie, and then Jackie’s like: “pow, pow, whap-pow, kapow, smack-wap”, and axe-guy is like “oof,” and then Jackie does this flip-somersault thing and then: “whap, whap, whap, YIIAHH! wap-wap-WHAP,” and the axe guy falls off the roof.

Probably the best Jackie Chan movie I have ever seen. I don’t think he’s human.

The latest issue of Adbusters magazine is, I think, the best they’ve published to date.

If you have a copy, I recommend spending some time reading Kono Matsu’s scrapbook of the EarthWorks media campaign (Kono is the creative director or Powershift, the marketing wing of adbuster’s parent organization, The Media Foundation). It is a facsinating window into the workings of activism and advertising.

Well done, adbusters.

While perusing an extensive list of MP3s I stumbled across an album that I recorded with my old band Horton’s Choice. We wasted all of our attention spans and money recording the CD and didn’t have anything left over to actually duplicate any.

Bottom line is, there are about seven copies of this CD in the world. Having spent a lot of time and money recording it (don’t get me wrong, it was an incredibly low budget and only took a week, but everything is relative, right?), I offer it to you.

You can download the whole album, tentatively un-titled The Borden-Carleton Sessions, at MP3.com except for one track which can’t be posted on MP3.com for legal reasons (email me if you have high-speed internet and curiosity).

Oh, dear. What does Carpal Tunnel Syndrome feel like?

[UPDATE – added 25 minutes later]
It turns out I only ache when I’m doing boring or unpleasant work.

Imagine a website where you could:

• find out the current ski conditions
• find any business in your province
• see all properties up for sale on a map
• contact anyone in your government
• download the provincial budget (and the previous three years of budgets)
• find anything and everything you could possibly want to know about the election including live results
• easily find every single accommodation, campground, festival or event, restaurant, or tour in the province
• find useful and up-to-date weather info including a chart of the temperature over the last 24-hours
• watch the Province House live
• view every single Provincial Statute
• see where everything in your province is on a map

Then imagine that it’s all easy to find and navigate, quick to load, and resists the temptation of self-indulgent multimedia.

If you are lucky enough to live on Prince Edward Island then you already have a website like this: www.gov.pe.ca. “Website architecture and construction by Reinvented Inc. for the Government of Prince Edward Island, Canada”. I build websites and I fancy myself a fine critic of effective sites. This one is insanely great.

Thanks to some pervasive media campaigns (most significantly that of Mothers Against Drunk Driving) our generation has done a pretty good job of stigmatizing drunk driving. You’ll still encounter a few nuts and jackasses that insist they’re “<drunkspeak>ok to drive</drunkspeak>” but in general it’s understood that driving drunk is really stupid.

Having grown up with tag-lines like ‘Friends don’t let friends drink and drive’ burned into my subconscious I find it very odd to hear an oldie-olson¹ talk about how drunk driving was common when they were growing up. This is the same generation that claims they didn’t know smoking was bad for you².

This got me thinking: Old people are stupid and I am smart.

Upon further thinking, this premise seemed somewhat unlikely. Then it dawned on me: What do I do that that is so stupid it will make my kids wonder how we even managed to reproduce? The answer: Sleep deprived driving.

Having just gotten back from an all night drive to Halifax and back to deliver a “friend a co-worker” to the airport on his trip to New Zealand (the bastard), I can attest to the stupidity of driving while over-tired. Fortunately I had a fellow aov author to share the driving duties.

Bottom line is, driving while over tired is really stupid³.