This is such a since you didn’t ask post. I present to you, Paul’s eight tips to office success - with a PR bent.

1. Try to keep most of your e-mails to 30 words or less. It takes longer to do at first, but it sharpens what you say.

2. Say yes to every task you’re assigned. I babysat 18 square feet of sod a few weeks ago as part of my internship at Habitat for Humanity Toronto.

In the summer of 2004, I pushed a small outhouse on three wheelbarrow wheels, with an inside to hold a cooler, through eight Canadian cities selling poopsicles – frozen, fair trade, organic bananas coated with dark chocolate – for three dollars each.

I used the poopsicle project to say to as many people as possible, “excuse me, I’d like to be heard.”

It worked. I made front page in a regional version of a national newspaper, was pitied in a Montreal editorial and told to grow up and get a real job by a writer of an Edmonton daily. I was on TV – the news in Edmonton and Calgary, and MuchMusic’s Speaker’s Corner.

My key message was simple, consume crap.

1. The three best cities in the world, in order: Montreal, New York and Dubrovnik.

2. I always feel like I need a bath after I ride the TTC.

3. PR = networking with all known media to as many audiences as you are able to identify.

I recently received an e-mail from Ontario’s Minister of Culture, Aileen Carroll - more specifically, from her Orwellian titled, “Correspondence Unit.”

Apparently, “Minister Carroll would be pleased to respond to [me] in writing.”  I received this message 12 days ago and am still waiting for her letter to arrive in the mail. I bet her penmanship is stunning.

The tardiness of her response, however, has convinced me that her request for my address was just a way for big brother to better track my agitating actions.  When her words arrive, rest assured, they’ll be posted.

The Globe and Mail reported last week that bloggers don’t create news; instead, they opine on news published by mainstream media. This seems to suggest that bloggers editorialize rather than produce fact-based reporting of their own. That assertion is both ridiculous and offensive.

In other news, the Canadian Press reported Tuesday that women are increasingly outblogging men - in quantity, at least. The blogs I regularly read are mostly female written - although, this is more a symptom of my profession than the opinions available in the blogosphere - roughly 80 per cent of the students in my PR program are women.

Was anyone else getting a bit sick of last Saturday’s Earth Hour? Kudos to Tara Wood (a Centennial grad) and the WWF for their successful promotion of the event itself, but what were the key messages? Turning off the lights is a good idea? Symbolism is necessary to show public support for climate change initiatives? What exactly was I supposed to have learned because of the darkened hour?

I have many opinions concerning the TTC and its labour dispite, but I’m not going to share them now. Instead, I’d simply like to observe that the colour maroon is a poor brand choice for an organization dealing with claims of chronic filth. Maroon looks dirty even when it’s not. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then the TTC’s maroon dress has turned it into the devil’s mistress.

If I hear one more person refer to himself as a budding PR professional I’m going to be sick. How about aspiring PR professional? PR professional in basic training? Or, pubescent PR professional instead? I demand more creativity, blossoming students.

And to the word bud – yes you, occasional adjective and frequent noun – meet me at the bike rack in five minutes. I’m going to throw haymakers in your general direction.

Adjective bud doesn’t describe the growth of my communication education antlers, nor my newly ivory tusked PR skills – at best it forms a middle class description of marijuana or shapes the name of Rudy’s neighbourhood friend on the Cosby Show.

Honourable Aileen Carroll:

Tomorrow is an important day for the citizens of my hometown, St. Thomas, Ontario. Your immediate intervention is required to stop the demolition of Alma College.

I would like you to apply the powers of your authority to not just save a heritage building from unnecessary destruction, but to show how it can be done through public and private partnership

Your decision could be the catalyst for the foundation of Ontario’s newest university. Alma College is a significant asset to its city – its storied history demands the Liberal government take leadership of it.

* Today: Steve Peters on Alma College (page two)

* Friday: Our Alma – An Open Letter to Aileen Carroll – Part III

The example of social media I posited to demonstrate three posts ago is fairing poorly. I am attempting to save one of Heritage Canada Foundation’s Top Ten most endangered buildings and it’s far more complicated than I anticipated.

I suggested then, that the digital tools available to me, were sufficient to raise awareness of, and support for, Alma College – I thought it would happen virally. So far, I’m wrong.

I’ve done my research and as best I can tell, there’s a total lack of leadership shown on Alma College. Three levels of government are saying they’re content letting the old thing fall to the ground. They say, it’ll be too expensive to buy ($2 million or so), make structural sound (at least $20 million) and not worth the cost or bother.

I sit in the other camp – I don’t like tearing down my city’s heritage because three governments can’t muster the courage to at least consider the destruction they are permitting. I don’t get it. Isn’t government supposed to give voice to the wishes of the people supporting it?

The interior of the suburban restaurant is cast aglow by lights keeping cars safe in a parking lot on the outskirts of Tampa. I am an unusual guest, so my entrance, fiddling the truck keys in my pocket, makes me look like a pervert.

I spot him immediately; he’s at the far end of the bar; his posture is commendable. There’s a long table set out in front of where he stands. On it are t-shirts, buttons and stickers with his picture and message.

It’s true, even if cliché, that this presidential candidate is nothing short of tall, dark and handsome. His offer of hope isn’t bad either.

I’m at a plaza pub because I’m smitten by the message of a man I’m only recently getting to know. His campaign exemplifies the possible manifestations of our digital world.

Barack Obama is using our online connections to bring grassroots action to fruition. He has, in the words Washington Post columnist, E.J. Dionne, “exploited the social networking sites (and built one of his own), and understood the interaction between virtual communities and real communities.”

Perhaps I’m distracted by the Florida sunshine -
Or, in translating the thermometer’s Fahrenheit hieroglyphics into the Celsius language I understand –
But today, well, I’ve got little to say.

This is an exact reversal of the challenges I faced in producing my previous posts. Then, I wanted to say everything and right away. Now, I struggle to even finish

My disinterested mood, (thanks Inside PRoper English), is holding my blog’s punctuality hostage. It’s not writer’s block – there’s nothing struggling to come out. Neither is it laziness – my first day of reading week is being spent inside in anticipation of lucidity.

Alas, all I can think to do is quote the Great One. “You miss every shot you don’t take.” I hope Mr. Gretzky’s correct, or else I’ll owe the four or five readers of my blog an apology for their time in reviewing this post.

It’s sunny outside and either 25 or 80 degrees depending on the language you speak. My goal this week is to find an Obama ’08 button. If you’d like one, please let me know.