Mystery Photos: Life and Death

Do you recognize these guys?

My friend Steve found a memory card full of photos in Toronto, and he’s pretty sure someone wants them back. I’m going to let him tell the story (he posted it on Facebook tonight):

“… The electronic photo album starts the same way as countless others, with a single airplane wing framed by endless blue sky, shot through the window from 20,000 feet.

The small Kodak memory disk unfolds predictably – four friends posing on the plane, shots of the landscape, pictures of the bedrooms they’ll sleep in over the coming days or weeks.

It ends on a more jarring note – pictures of family celebrations give way to somber pictures of a man on his deathbed. A feeding tube comes out his nose, his lips are battered and bruised. An open casket, a flowery grave.

The dead man looks an awful lot like one of the travelers smiling at the start of the trip, one of the revelers who drinks beer with long-forgotten relatives and sings along happily as someone plays a guitar. But it’s impossible to say for sure – the eyebrows aren’t quite right, and the dying man’s face looks traumatized.

The person who took these photos intended to keep them for an eternity. Instead, they somehow ended up in my grocery bag. I called the grocery store – the Metro on St. Clair West in Toronto – but nobody has come asking.

I posted one of the photos on Twitter, we’ll see if the social-networking service is as miraculous as everyone hopes. I put an ad on Craigslist. And finally, I posted this note on Facebook.

I don’t know anything about the man who apparently lives, fights to live and then dies frame-by-frame on my computer screen. But I do know that someone is dying to get their hands on this disk, so if you see anything you recognize do let me know.”

Steve’s on a mission, and I’m helping out. Email me or message me via this site if you know who these guys are. Let’s get these photos back where they belong. I don’t know about you, but as I’ve been scanning and archiving old photos over the past few weeks, it’s become apparent that a lot of my photos are missing. As you may know, there is a house fire in my recent history, as well as some general disorderliness, and that’s a shame; I’ve lost a lot of pictures I would like to see again.

Maybe Steve can help these people see their pictures again. Fingers crossed.

Today’s Moron: Ray Lam

I had to dig around in my files a bit, but I found what I was looking for: an old factsheet detailing what the New Democratic Party looks for in its political candidates. For you foreigners reading this, the NDP is Canada’s left-of-centre political party, operating at both the federal and provincial levels.

Anyway, here’s what the NDP looks for:

• A commitment to social justice.
• At least one tweed jacket.
• An environmentally friendly personal worldview.
• A belief in the rights of the working class.
• Fiscal responsibility.
• A beard.
• A photo of yourself grabbing boobs.

No, wait, that last one is fake. It’s actually something the NDP doesn’t want. No political party would, in fact. It’s too bad nobody told Ray Lam this.

Lam, the NDP candidate for Vancouver-False Creek (my old stomping grounds) in the May 12 provincial election in British Columbia, resigned yesterday. He won’t be on the ballot, and the NDP is scrambling to find someone to fill his spot.

Lam, 22, quit because his Facebook photos were made public. This can happen when, you know, you put photos on the Internet. The photos in question show Lam in full boob-grabbery mode. Not cool.

When are people going to figure out that nothing is private online? And when you’re running for public office, nothing is secret? The moronity of this boggles the mind. True, this is B.C. we’re talking about, one of Canada’s more loosey-goosey provinces, and voters don’t mind a few shenanigans. The Premier, Gordon Campbell, was busted driving drunk in Hawaii a couple of years ago. He said sorry, and is still premier, for now, at least.

Frontal fondling photos like Lam’s, though, cross the line, especially when we’re dealing with a party like the NDP, which prides itself on its egalitarian treatment of minorities and women. It reminds me of the incident during the last federal election, when a B.C. NDP candidate, Julian West, had to drop out of the race when it was discovered that he had once gone skinny-dipping with teens while he was a camp counsellor … and asked them to body-paint him.

B.C. NDP leader Carole James was front and centre over this issue today, and that was good to see. James, a straight shooter, said her party examines candidates’ Facebook sites and other social media presences, but this one slipped through the cracks.

James said everything is public for public figures, and that’s a lesson Lam learned. She also said something I found really thought-knocking: That it will be interesting to interesting to watch politics over the next 10 to 15 years when you have an entire generation people who grew up with every detail of their lives mapped out on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.

The key is to pay very close attention to what you post online. Even if you think it’s private, it isn’t. And if you have even the tiniest smidgen of a doubt about an image, blog post or message, delete it.

UPDATE: Ray Lam signs $1.2-million endorsement deal with WonderBra.