Goodbye, kai--zen, hello permanentpress.ca

I've moved house, permanently.
Check out my new home in the digital universe, permanentpress.ca.

I [heart] rollercoasters

Not necessarily to ride. I just like to watch.
Check out these sexy coaster photos by Christoph Morlinghaus.

(via Coudal)

Chocolate Waterboarding

Maybe, from now on, I'll write about nothing but chocolate in this blog.

Post one: Choir boys, waterboarded in chocolate

(via Boing Boing)

Ethereal Japanese pod house

In the future, may we all live in delightful little pod houses like this one.

Expialidocious

The sweetest listen -- mixing dance sounds with clips from Mary Poppins

(Via Coudal)

What? You haven't met Skeena?

When I was just a youngster, my parents got divorced. My mom, looking for a new place to live, had a choice: move back to her home town, or move somewhere new.

She opted for somewhere new. And hence, I grew up in a bourgeois little university town with it's own landed gentry, green lawns and Tudor buildings. It was lovely. And I even learned some manners along the way.

BUT there was another Kirsten who didn't move to the bourgeois university town. She moved back to my mom's home town. And that's where the fun starts.

Where my destiny splits, I start to explore the other me: Skeena. The cussin' Albertan girl with dirty boots and sun bleached hair.

Visit the dilapidated Grey Gardens

These photos are just so amazing and precious... an abandoned mansion, left as it was when its two eccentric residents moved on. Here's more about the documentary on the house and the folk who lived in it.

(Via Coudal Partners)

Let's get proactive about health insurance

I'm trying to understand this: why are we covered by insurance when something bad happens to us, or if we need glasses or special shoes, but we aren't covered when we're proactive about our health?

There have been enough studies by now showing that lifestyle has a considerable impact on our health. Why then aren't our health insurance premiums scaled according to how well we take care of ourselves?

It would work like this: Do you go to the gym three times a week? You pay less. Do you walk instead of drive? Pay less. Do you meditate, do yoga, run, or do something else to manage the impact of stress? You pay less too.

And it would work like this: Prove that you do something active once or twice a week, and that activity is covered by your insurance. Just like your glasses. Or your medication. And don't try to tell me that this system would be rife with fraud. Surely there's an intelligent way to make it work.

Not only would proactive health insurance reward people who are already healthy and active, but it would be a strong incentive for all kinds of people to work harder at staying healthy. Imagine if your gym membership was covered by insurance, provided that you checked in and worked out two days a week?

Or maybe you join AA. Or quit smoking. Health insurance should offer incentives to people who make positive changes that affect their long term well being.

Incentives aside, proactive insurance sends a message. It says: as an industry, an employer, a society, we're not just here when you need extra help, but we place a value on your quality of life and well being.

Boom boom -- scooter mounted cannon

French Vespa cannon...
(via Neatorama)

Are you ready for the future according to Ray Kurzweil?

Visionary Ray Kurzweil brings you the near-distant future. I quote: "By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. That will replace most travel."

From aircraft boneyards to underwater runways

Will we say goodbye one day to the glorious days of air travel?

Probably not. But it's nice to play around with the idea.

Here's an article about an aircraft boneyard that is filling up because less people are flying.

And... super sexy shots of the flooded and abandoned Flushing Airport, in Queens, NY.

Chat perdu

Or is it? Best lost kittykat poster ever.

(via Coudal Partners)

Please I want to live here

In a glorious, futuristic treehouse. Make it so!

(via ihaveanidea on Twitter)

100 abandoned houses

A little tragedy lives inside each one.

(via Coudal Partners)

Waiting for spring.

Celebrating my Internet-versary

Today is my Internet-versary. On this day nine years ago I entered the weird, turbulent world of working for web companies. Quite by accident.

My neighbour got me the job. They were hiring a writer; the deal was, she was supposed to get a bonus for bringing me on board. But she never received it.

I started my first day with a desk but no computer. They gave me a pen and paper, and asked me to write some kind of press release.

Next door lived the creative department. There was a graphic designer -- an Auzzie who talked obsessively about how her hair was falling out. One day she broke the door because she slammed it so hard. Also next door was a wild American girl who had worked for Yahoo! She was the only person in the company who understood online advertising.

And there were lots of other people doing things I didn't understand at all. They had a boatload of money and were going to take on the world, working around the clock to bring the marvels of online travel booking to far flung places like Vietnam and Lithuania.

They even made a TV ad. A pretty good one.

But about the time the TV commercial went to air (maybe four months after I started), everything stopped. The office went from a bustling hub of activity (and daily crises), to completely empty in a matter of weeks. Everyone around me quit, or was laid off, one at a time. Except me, and a few bumbling executives.

For a while, I still came to work every day. I sat at my desk (which now had a computer), and tried to look busy. But my boss was gone. And her boss was gone. And his boss was gone.

I finally asked why I was still working. Did they forget about me? The answer: if someone buys the company, they'll need me to write the press release. And they were paying me a lot. More than I was worth. So that was okay with me.

And then one day the phone rang. It was Red Herring, wanting more dirt on what was going on over there and why we were going down. If Red Herring only knew how badly my long gone boss wanted to get their attention when things were good...

After a couple weeks, I stopped coming to work. I went to Scotland and had a little vacation. I had no one to tell that I was going on holiday. And no one ever bought the company.

Finally feeling my oats.

They say... that when you have a baby, it takes something like 18 months to feel like yourself again (if you ever do...).

Today, for the first time in... oh, a couple years, I woke up wondering what kind of hijinks I could get up to on a Saturday. Instead of wondering how much sleep I could steal.

It was a familiar -- and wonderful -- feeling: energy and curiosity.

A bunch of old codgers up to no good

Whatever they're up to, you know these old men are bad ass. (Did everyone look like an old man back in 1935?)

Streets we love: Ontario East

Why do I love Ontario E.? Because it's dirty. It's real. It's a thriving little community whose inhabitants make their own rules. Though it's close to the city, no one gentrified it. Maybe because Ontario E. is far too complicated...

Choose a glaring day in late spring to walk Ontario E. At times unnerving in a beautiful way, it's as close as you can get to a trip to the carnival. The real carnival. Start at Amherst and follow it all the way to Frontenac.

Walking West to East, here are some of my favourite stops:

1. The Spirit Lounge
Possibly the most flamboyant restaurant in the city. Obey the house rules, or be banned for life.

2. Pat and Robert
Around Ontario E. and Plessis, big-haired couple Pat and Robert have built a small empire: cigar shop, hair salon, shoe store... each a temple to their collective obsessions. Don't forget to visit the Tabagie -- it's amazing. Bring along your granddad...

3. The valley of the tattoo artists
One day I counted 13 tattoo parlours along Ontario E., between Amherst and Frontenac. A week later, there could have been 15, or 10. Not sure I would go there to get a tat. But apparently lots of folks do.

4. Hub cap palace
Near the intersection of DeLorimer and Ontario E. there lives a poem to the noble, lost hubcab... each shiny disk lovingly displayed like trinkets in a magpie's nest. It's dazzling. How could anyone love hubcaps this much?

5. The truly fantastic flea market
It's not fantastic because of what you can find there. It's fantastic because it's there at all. Upstairs used to be the home of a gentleman who was perfect blend of Lindsay Lohan and David Lee Roth. Awesome.

There are so many more gems... the Buddhist temple with astonishing white statuary, two cavernous, almost barn-like churches re-inhabited by newly-arrived Montrealers, innumerable ambiguously named massage parlours (rub and tug, anyone?).

And if you go further East, past Frontenac, under the railway bridge and even past the giant (sugar?) refinery, you'll get to the precious Promenade Ontario -- a thriving commercial strip, loved by the locals and largely forgotten by the rest of the city.

Oh... Ontario East... Never change...

People we love + Photo Story #2: The coolest old people ever

A few years ago, I took my Belgian/Welsh friends to see the tam tams.

It's one of those things the out-of-towners like to see. Every Sunday in the summer and fall, hundreds of people gather at the foot of the mountain to dance, play bongos, take mind altering substances and kick back in the sunshine.

And that's when we saw them: the two coolest old people ever. 80-year-old hepcats dancing their pants off. So far as we could tell, they were totally high. And wearing the most amazing disco clothes. Truly the awesomest, coolest cats I've ever seen. I'll never forget them.

Maybe I don't go to the tam tams very often. But if I make it to 80 and can still shake my wrinkly booty... you can bet I'll be there with my wild-haired old man in tow.

I did see one of them about a year later, doing his geriatric hepcat thing at the Montreal jazz festival. But haven't come across them since...

Ice balls, huh?

Does it really take a Canadian to debunk the supposedly paranormal appearance of ice balls in London? Or am I taking a good yarn at face value?

So some dude found a bunch of giant ice balls all over a park. And wonders... is it some kind of hail?

Maybe.

Where I grew up, it almost never snowed. When it did, the snow was so sticky, we would go outside and roll giant snowballs. They would start out fist sized, and grow and grow and grow and grow until they were too big for our little bodkins to push another foot. And then we would roll another one.

Looking at many of the photos, you can even see the trail left by obsessively ball-rolling kids.

But I like this explanation better... frolicsome Londoners rolling giant balls down Hampstead Heath. W00t!

Photo story 1: The night the shooting gallery burned

Back in 2002, I moved to a little enclave nestled behind the cigarette factory on Ontario St. The neighbourhood was pretty sketchy, but my immediate block was idyllic: a tiny little nest tucked in the elbow of Ontario and Iberville.

Out front, old people watched TV on their front porches and surveyed everything that went by. The depanneur downstairs did a fast trade cashing in empties. Out back, a community garden huddled in the shadow of the giant old church no one went to. And out back, the girls visited their shooting gallery.

Idyllic the rest of the time, things got busy in my neck of the woods every morning between 5 and 8 a.m., when the girls dropped in around the corner to get their fix.

It went like this: at the crack of dawn, truckers would come into town across the Jacques Cartier bridge. Starved for, uh, female companionship and other delights, they'd pay a quick visit to the girls of Centre Sud in the early hours before delivering their goods.

And then the girls of Centre Sud would pay a quick visit to the guy behind my apartment. If you were up early enough, you would see them, all skinny bones, wandering off their fix. If you were up after 8:00, you'd never know they were there.

Sometime around Christmas, things started to get a little strange. One morning, the police cordoned off our little corner. The guy who lived in the shooting gallery (or whatever it was) had lost it. They were trying to talk him down from doing himself some serious harm.

After that, the girls disappeared. The house that was a shooting gallery stayed filthy, but quiet. No one came and went. Nothing happened.

Until the fire trucks woke me up. It must have been February or March... and again, our corner was cordoned off and filled with men, hoses, giant fire trucks. The shooting gallery was on fire.

Melt your bunny every which way

awesome...

Post mortem: two months, no Internet (at home)

So we did it. We turned off our Internet November 1 and survived, unplugged, until January 1.

But... by late December, the honeymoon of living offline at home was over.

Yes: our space was cleaner. Yes: we felt pretty righteous, unplugging and all.

Some of our friends were in awe. Others knew it would be a short-lived experiment.

Admittedly, once back online, we were pretty happy to be in the swing of things. Though now we're not so sure... J is already talking about going offline again. Permanently.

Below, the pros and cons of unplugging at home.

Pros

Early to bed. Less distractions = more sleep.
The novelty factor. The web gets more interesting when you're not on it all the time.
Quality time at the cafe. Doing all your online business at a cafe is really nice...
Everything runs more smoothly. The web at home is a great interrupter.
A better ISP. It gave us an excuse to switch from a bad ISP to better ISP.

Cons

Missed messages. We missed some time-sensitive emails.
Banking gets complicated. Number one inconvenience, hands down: no online banking.
Difficulty finding information. Boy... the yellow pages in Montreal really do suck.
Trouble getting things done. It gets a little more complicated to do some simple things.

Over all, I'm conflicted. Did we have a better quality of life without the web? That's debatable.

My solution: Stay online at home. But also stay aware of time-sucking behaviours. Know when we're just checking email obsessively, and when we're going online to make life more fun, more efficient or more interesting.

Some of us just aren't cut out for team sports

Team sports are good for kids. Unless you're an eight-year-old without an ounce of fat and it's two degrees and raining.

They say that kids get into sports because they're passionate about it. Or some such thing. Maybe that's the case with some kids. I started playing soccer because my friends were doing it. And my mom thought it was a good idea.

Oddly, I still get a tingle out of kicking a ball around once in a while. But during my three-year foray into team sports, I took too many balls in the face to ever get back into the game for real as an adult.

So it's 1978, I'm seven years old, wearing mud-caked soccer cleats. It's November and we're chasing the ball up and down a field covered in puddles. My tiny, red soccer shorts and jersey are soaked, clinging to my skin. I'm as cold as I've ever been.

The game is dominated by big girls, with rosy cheeks and rugged Scottish mothers who shout from the sidelines. Meanwhile, I try to stay warm and out of the way. Until half time when maybe we get to sit in someone's VW and drink hot chocolate for 20 minutes.

It's funny how, when you're seven, you never think "I don't have to do this." You just do it because mom packs you up in your gear on Saturday morning and drives you to the field. No questions asked.

And then, one day, in the middle of the game, I got it. I don't remember if something happened, or if I just realized how much I hated those rainy, Saturday morning soccer games. Whatever it was, it took me three years to get to No.

No, mom. I don't want to play soccer anymore. I don't like it.

And so, instead, she drove me to the barn every Saturday morning. And I trudged around in the rain, knee-deep mud and horse poop. And I dragged a cranky, mean pony to the ring and rode in circles for an hour.

And I had the giantest kid party ever. I friggin' loved it. Go figure.

Golly Miss Molly... it's 2009

On this end: no predictions, no resolutions, no top ten lists.

To everyone: good health, good luck, stay warm, be sure to have some fun...