Saturday, April 29, 2006

Break Time


Colin Szydlowski with a hint of the glam rocker look

Thanks to Leanna Spina, a wonderfully talented make up artist, and Colin a very willing guinea pig, we managed to produce a bunch of incredible colorful images in just a few short hours. Fun, fun, fun. Yes, yes, I know I should have been doing the tax work today but work all day and all week makes this photographer a person wanting to jump off a bridge (while taking pictures of course). Plus my back was getting sore from bending over my floor of receipts sorting them into their various categories.

As thrilling as that may sound to some of my accounting friends out there, I needed a break. And what better way for a shutter bug to take one than to take a couple hundred pictures.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Running around


On the theme of rabbits...

Today or this evening rather was spent running around the city. First there was the InsideOut launch, the gay and lesbian film festival, at the Gladstone. Then run off to shoot the opening of Contact. Only I got the dates mixed up it's actually tomorrow. Still, I got to see some of the photos already hanging on the walls. Then to Cache to talk to Mike, one of the PR guys, about photos I took last week.


"Jen" at Cache from the "Bold and the Beautiful".

Does anyone out there watch this daytime soap. I forgot the last name of "Jen". If someone could leave a comment I'll update the info. Also if anyone knows the bunny guy at the door of the InsideOut I'll put his name up as well. With all the running around I really did a bad job at remembering people's names.

To be honest the act of doing my taxes has been in the back of my mind lately, causing me to not think clearly on any particular thing I'm doing. If the blog entries seem sluggish over the next few days it's because of the tax work I'll be doing.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

From the Garden to the Table


A wasp at the top of a grass blade.

I managed to procrastinate again from doing the taxes which are due at the end of the month. Instead I shot a backyard insect then went inside to shoot some building blocks for photographers direct (an online stock agency based in the U.K.). Someone on the site was looking for the letter 'P' and objects that contained them.

After shooting the 'P' blocks I decided that since I was all set up to shoot stuff anyway I'd shoot my pork chop dinner as well. Of course as it usually happens when I'm cooking a got a phone call. It was Juliet from Juicy Stuff. She wanted to brief me on tomorrows event. Luckily the pork chop has two sides. The face down side is, shall we say, a little crispy.


"Form of... a Bunny! Shape of an Ice Bucket!"

The cake mold I used to shape the rice had too much detail in it that didn't translate to the rice clump. You can't make out the bunny eyes, nose or mouth. I thought about putting a cherry half for the nose but that required me going out and buying a can of fruit cocktail. As this isn't a real photo shoot (and I was hungry) the bare rabbit had to do.

Note: I did not eat the food with the chopsticks. The chopsticks seemed to photgraph better with the brown place mat than the spork.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Black and White versus Color


Leanna Spina

Today at lunch I got into a discussion with Leanna about black and white versus color. She thinks she looks better in black and white photos where as I think she looks just as good in color. I do think the black and white draws your eyes more to the texture of the image itself.

As a test I've shot an image and as you can see I've uploaded it as B&W and Color.

Any comments from the readers?

Monday, April 24, 2006

Worm Sign


A slime pile of worms

It rained all day right into the night. Someone told me last night it dropped to -8 C. I find that hard to believe as I didn't see any ice in the morning. Early this morning (around 1am) while doing my taxes I decided to take a break and get outside. Holy cow! It had gotten cold. The misty rain didn't help.

I ended up at the nearby park gathering worms for the backyard garden. There were hundreds of worms on the ground. I didn't see them at first walked very slowly in order to not step on any of them. While most of the worms were relatively small, maybe 10 cm in length, there were the huge worms that were about twice the length.

I'm storing them in two large ice cream buckets with soil, corn husks, and water in the basement sink. I plan to release them into the backyard once it gets warmer.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Cat People


Nigel Fluffypants aka Droolio looks at me with distain.

On my way home, on the bus, I overheard a couple talking about the bad side effects of asbestos and other wonder technology that doesn't get tested enough before entering the market. In the mist of the doom and gloom chit chat I realized I knew one of the voices. It was Orbis, a guy that I met at my birthday movie "Serenity" back in September of last year. I joined in on the conversation. Here are the hilights (true or not they make good points).

hilights
  • deet used to repel mosquitoes melts plastic.

  • thanks to vegetarians, big business, and the invention of cloned meat, cows and other farm animals that require lots of land, food, and resources will go extinct.

  • asbestos with fire, good. Asbestos with people, bad.

  • bananas will be extinct in 10 years unless a new replicating seed strain is found.

  • corn that we eat today are hybrid versions of corn smaller than your palm

  • orange carrot flavored cauliflower is tasty.

  • wonder drugs come on the market way too fast without enough testing.

  • pharmaceutical companies are generally evil.

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a great TV show!

Kate and Orbis invited me over to continue our chat. It was at their home that I was introduced to Nigel, the cat with the "Fat Head". Nigel looked like his head was big due to the rest of his body was shaved.


Nigel using cat will power to get human (any human) to open door.

I realize that this is the second blog entry in a row to feature a cat but how can you say "no" to these big eyed fuzzy animals?

Saturday, April 22, 2006

The cat came back


Mimi, the Lopez family cat

Today's job got me outside of the apartment to go and shoot some candid family photos. After shooting the people I hunted down the family pet, a cat named Mimi. Cats are incredibly difficult to shoot while moving around a dim house. Mimi was no exception. After crawling around on my hands and knees chasing after the cat I gave up and started packing away my camera gear.

It was only after packing my camera, the last thing to be packed, that the cat ran up to my leg and started purring. Sheesh.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Hang 'em High


The hanging Easter egg

On the way to McDonald's with Leanna, we noticed a tree of Easter eggs, some leftover decorations from the holiday that just past. It reminded me of the dead body hanging from the tree in the Clint Eastwood movie. As grim as that sounds it was an okay western. Can a person watch too many movies in a lifetime?

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Stylist Party


Model and film maker Jason Davie

Tonight at Cache, a cool bar to hang out hidden in the King and Bathurst area, was a party for the "Stylist" modeling agency. My assignment, was to cover it for Juicy Stuff (the web site I've been getting work from recently- ed.). As I wasn't given a time to get to the bar I rushed there immediately after seeing the movie "The Sentinel" with my Dad.

The movie was not that great thanks to editing done by an advanced deficit disorder editor. The number of jump cuts in the first part of the movie seemed never ending. Hold the camera still for a moment. Can we hold on a scene without jumping back and forth? It was like watching a movie by moving a pair of bifocals in front of your eyes.

I arrived at Cache early. It was another hour and a half, around 10:30, when people started showing up. In among the crowd of dancing women and people smoking I bumped into Jason Davie. Jason is a film maker that I met at Darryl's HLAP party and as part of an improv troupe that my friend Bruce Simpson was in a few years ago. Turns out it's a small world.

Spring still Springing


The tree next door

A while ago it came to my attention that there's a large percentage of blog entries talking about women and or food. While both subjects are fascinating to me (as well as others I'm sure) I would like to take a timeout and post a nice floral picture to say that "Yes, at Bagelhot, we listen to our readers every now and then".

This blog entry is dedicated to Roger (at Monster Records) and his mom. Thanks for reading.

Okay the coast is clear... Bring on the food and girls!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The Million Dollar Pyramid


Pyramid of rice - a million dollar idea?

I've noticed at various restaurants, when served a rice dish, the rice is in the shape of something. I've seen flowers, round spheres (inverted bowl shapes), and now the pyramid. It's an simple idea to make eating more interesting.

I'll have to try that with my bunny cake tins. I originally bought them for cooking cake mix that didn't fit into the standard two nine inch diameter circular pans. Mostly they, the bunny tins, sit around and collect dust.

Monday, April 17, 2006

The Pea Versus the Brown Thumb of Death


The Pea - early stages

Wow hoo! The pea seed I planted about a week ago (and forgotten) has actually made it's way out of the ground. As most of you know I'm not very good with plants which is why this plant growing is so amazing.

FACTS
  • Peas aka pisum sativum or green beans are actually not a vegetable. They are a legume which are fruit.

  • Peas like to grow in cool and moist environments.

  • Pea pods that are over ripe will look dull whereas ripe pea pods will look shiny.

  • Peas contain vitamins A, B1 and C.

  • upon mass consumption peas can make males less fertile. They contain estrogenic material.

  • ironically, consumption of peas is good against prostate cancer.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Easter Sunday


Warden Subway Station - on the way to my Aunt's place

Sunday. Easter. A day of seeing the family and eating food. A lot of food. Why is there always food associated with seeing family?

Here are some possible answers...
  • people like to eat and people have to eat.

  • allows relatives who don't speak to each other to be in the same room and have something in common.

  • Good way to feed the part of the family that's not doing as well financially without making it obvious. (ie. dinner then a care package to take home)

  • allows the family that can cook to be showoffs while still pleasing the rest of the family.

  • allows the family that can't cook to use remarks like "Well she's as dumb as a doorknob but she makes a great pumpkin pie!"

  • allows relatives to say "I remember you when you were that small." or "My, how you've grown" or "Wow! You're fat!"

  • a way to pawn off food that's been sitting in your fridge or cupboard nearing or past the expiry date.

  • a way to pass off food that you received but don't want to eat (ie. Christmas cake).

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Thank You for Smoking


The Bagel Rating System (BRS) for movies.

Today being the Saturday within the Easter weekend I didn't really do too much earth shattering stuff. The usual holiday things like puttering around the apartment, some spring cleaning, maybe some gardening, then seeing a movie with a bunch of other strangers looking for something low energy to do...

Let's rewind a bit to the spring cleaning. I'm sure I heard some gasps coming out over the internet, some of you readers might be in awe, maybe even in shock to think that I might actually be "cleaning" the apartment again. After all, it's only been a few months since the last cleaning took place.

To put those reader's minds back at ease I didn't do a whole lot of cleaning, not like the apartment cleaning of the blog of old. I went through some boxes and found some old, old, old CDs that I burnt back in the early 90s. I couldn't remember what was on them, even with the label, let alone what platform they worked on. I decided it was time to chuck them.

About 70 odd CDs later it was off to the garden. Technically I don't have a garden. Not yet anyway. Right now there's a pile of dried up dirt with clumps of grass growing from random spots in the back yard. I decided this year I would try my hand at agricultural cultivation. I have two goals. 1) to produce food, 2) to make a home for the worms.

With my landlords blessing and knowledge of what kind of soil I was dealing with I started tilling a small area with a dutch hoe I picked up at the local hardware store for only $10.00! The small patch was delibrate as I wanted to ease into this gardening thing. Worse case senario: if the plants all die I can get a garden gnome, place it in the centre of the dirt, then plant grass around it, and no one (other than you bloggers) would be the wiser.

As for the movie, I went to see "Thank you for smoking". I didn't have any expectations about the movie as I really didn't know what it was about. It's hil-ar-ious! A very well written movie where you wonder what the main character will do next. I recommend the movie to anyone who needs a good laugh. If I had a rating system I'd rate it a whole bagel.

Friday, April 14, 2006

The Easter Friday Move


Marc's Apartment located right next to the TTC station.

6:50am - Woke up about three hours after getting into bed from getting home from the Ultra club. I had to be up early in order to get to Marc's place by 8:00am, to get to Zee's sister in laws (the storage house) by 9:00am so we could help them move into their new home.

7:15am - leave my apartment.

7:30am - I manage to catch the bus and subway without waiting. I'm half an hour early. I decide to wonder around Marc's neighborhood and do some shooting. It's damp and cold.


Michelle arrives.

8:00am - dial in Marc's buzzer code. He's awake! Comes downstairs to get car and wait for Michelle.

8:11am - Michelle shows up. We drive off to the sister in-law's.

8:30am - We're arrive early. Decide to go to Tim Horton's for coffee. I get a toasted bagel with cream chesse.

9:00am - arrive at the sister in-laws. Start packing truck.


It's drizzling rain on the way to the new house

9:33am - Truck is loaded. We form a small convoy on the way to the new house.


The house

9:50am - We arrive at the new house. The neighborhood is still under construction. It's muddy and wet but at least the rain has turned more into a mist.


Juley takes command telling us what goes where.

9:55am - we check on the kid and start the move of stuff into the house.


Wade and Marc start moving stuff from the truck.


The "Kid", Michaela gets some Zzzzs.


Tired baby with Michelle


Happy baby being tickled by auntie.

11:43am - we finish moving stuff in and entertaining the Kid. We drive back to the sister in-laws for lunch.


Happy family in new home.

3:20pm - We get kicked out.

4:00pm - Nancy, Marc, Michelle and I see V for Vendetta at the Varisity theatres downtown.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Ultra Spring


Spring is here at the Ultra Supper Club.

Tonight my job was to go to the Ultra Supper Lounge to shoot a spring fashion line for Juicy Stuff. Upon arrival we, the juicy stuff writer and I, noticed that there was no area assigned to the fashion show. No runway, no area, no nothing. When asking around, other photographers or other people that might be in the know, gave us the same answer "I'm not sure.", "I don't know", "What? There's a fashion show?". Clearly it was going to be an event where we would have to be on our toes to get a good vantage point to shoot from and see the models.

At around 11:00pm, maybe 11:30pm, things started happening. Some of the tables were being moved, the people rope dividers shifted, people being asked to clear an area. It wasn't until about 11:50pm that the bikini-clad models started walking out. This had to be the oddest fashion show I've shot this month.

The area cleared for the models to "pose" was a small couch with a large padded foot rest in front. The models sat down at starting posing using fake sex positions. Far from the passion whot at the Aries party a few night ago, I could see what they were trying to accomplish, but it just didn't work.

Instead of sexy bodies filled with passion I shot a clump of intertwined body parts with about as much sexiness as watching a bunch of worms in the dirt. It's hard to pinpoint where they went wrong. Perhaps it was the odd model looking off into the distance not making the connection with the other model. Maybe it was that the improvisational skills required to pose in a sexy way wasn't there. They were fashion models after all not strippers.

Perhaps that is where the show failed. To sell the swimwear with sex they hired the wrong type of people. They would have been better off doing a runway show with the models they hired. At least then the group of people and media that had been waiting for the two to four hours might have actually seen the clothing line and got a few good shots of the clothes.

In the end the show wasn't that memorable. At least not for the right reasons. At one point a glass tumbler exploded about a meter away from my head after hitting the wall behind me. A drunk girl threw the glass. In anger? trying to hit someone? not sure why. As I was sitting in the corner going through pictures I figured she wasn't aiming at me since I wasn't shooting anyone at the time. I try to make it a point to ask people in bars in crowds if they want their picture taken to avoid things like this.

The security guys were on her the instant the glass hit the wall. So quick that I didn't really make out her face. The security are the type of guys with bodies so huge they look like they have tiny heads by comparison. You wouldn't want to get on their bad side but if they're helping keep you from harm you appreciate them being around.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Oysters, Panties, and Model Birthdays


A take away fork

Today's adventure took me to Bluepoint. Located at 291 King street west, Bluepoint is the new oyster bar restaurant on the block. It's located in a highly competitive area that caters to the live theatre crowd. Although we didn't get to try many of the dishes, the dishes we did try, a few assorted oyster dishes, were very fresh. There was one meat dish that came with the take away fork (pictured above). The food writer thought it was a little odd to have such a fancy place with nice dishes serve food with a wooden piece of cutlery meant for take away fish and chips.

After the food sampling we were off to the Motorcycle club (formally the Indian Motorcycle club) to see a panty party. If you think there's a lot of good looking women running around half naked while guys run around with panties on their heads think again. This was a charity function. You, the donator, would donate underwear and buy raffle tickets for charity. There were some great prizes including 100 free downloadable tunes from iTunes.

The night didn't end there as the Juicy Stuff crew and I made our way to LUX at King and Bathurst. There was a birthday going on with a bunch of models from the Moxie modelling agency. Why there was a modelling agency involved? I didn't get a chance to stick around long enough to ask why.

As a side note, I ran into the girl that I took a picture of from the Playboy fashion launch (the girl on the runway with all the viewers looking on) and managed to show her the image I captured using the Epson P-2000. Small world.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Yours to Discover


Darryl Gold and Andrew Majtenyi somewhere near or in Caledon

"A place to stand,

A place to grow,
We call this land...
Ontario.

A place to stand, a place to grow, Ontari-ari-ari-oh."

If you grew up in Ontario during the 70s, or maybe even in the northern part of New York State, I'm sure you would have heard this little ditty. It played on television sponsoring tourism in Ontario.

As a kid growing up in Ontario my parents took me hiking quite a bit. I'm not sure if they were into nature themselves or maybe it was to introduce me to the while "roughing it" experience just in case they wanted to abandon me later on in life. They would know that I'd be okay, for a few days at least, being able to build a fire using some twigs and some birch bark and making a shelter by digging a hole.

The experience would also make you appreciate the smaller things in life, like working washrooms, toilet paper, a warm dry bed, a roof over your head, a stove to cook your food, and power outlets for your tech. Yes, we're very fortunate individuals.

Our trips were to go off to some area near Hamilton and hike along the Bruce Trail armed with a stick and a few "Eatmore" chocolate bars. Although I don't really remember much of the hiking specifically, I do remember the eatmore chocolate bars melting in my pocket becoming a goo-like substance (with peanuts). I also remember seeing a garter snake half ruptured from eating a frog that was too big. Aside from that and some random memories of walking and pitching a tent in the rain then walking around the next day in soggy shoes, that's about it.

With the exception of the trips with the parents, a canoe trip, and the odd trips with friends I really haven't gotten out to do any hiking around Ontario for a while. That is until today...

Today, I joined Andrew Majtenyi and Darryl Gold on a small excursion outside the city limits for a hike somewhere around Caledon, the same area where a guy with gasoline can went into some Ontario Provincial Police office just a few hours earlier burning three officers. Our first stop was a farmer type store to have some pumpkin donuts! We pulled into the general store, got out of the car, and found they had not opened yet. There were people doing some cleaning or store stuff but no service.

We walked around the place for about five minutes or so taking in the pre-Easter decorations. The place reminded me of the cheesy western Star Trek set in "Spectre of the Gun". It was a large deserted space with an empty hot dog stand labeled "Hot dogs by Chef Pierre" and the odd pink easter egg sign suck at various intervals.


The Cheltenham Bandlands

Our next stop was the Cheltenham Badlands. A reddish rock or dirt formation with a layer of greenish shale sandwiched in between, the badlands are part of the Niagara Escarpment. This would be another great place for a Star Trek type shoot as you really don't see this sort of formation much (at least near Toronto).


"Does anyone hear a train?"

From the badlands we drove for a few more minutes and parked the car off to the side of the road in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. A winding road going off in two directions, a river, and a bunch of trees. Andrew knew where we were but for all Darryl and I knew we could have been anywhere. We walked up a steep incline to get to some train tracks. In one direction there was the bridge that seemed to be about 10 stories down (notice the tree line in the picture). In the other direction the tracks led us toward our next mini hike.

The five minute walk along the tracks took us to a steep incline through a forest. Our destination was a make shift stair way, way at the top of the hill. Along the way we passed some small cave like openings that spewed out cool air. The ground around the openings had patches of ice all over. It was all very green. There was moss covering all the rocks (see picture below).


Green moss laden rocks

As I'm not in peak physical shape, and don't I have been since school days, my boots seemed to be made of lead once we reached about halfway to the stairs. In the back of my mind I wondered how much more work would have to go into carrying heavier more expensive lenses, how much those lenses would cost, and long it would take for me to acquire them. The idea of a camera assistant flitted through my mind to be replaced by a pack mule, to be replaced by a pack goat. This was a sharp incline after all. Is there such a thing as a goat that can carry stuff up a hill?


Make shift stairs with safety rope!

Eventually we made it to the stairs or what could be called stairs. More like a rope with things to step on. The final climb although really steep wasn't too bad. Being able to pull yourself up with the rope made it easier on the legs. We took a few minutes to take a breather, adjust some camera gear, and look out over valley through the trees. Once done we headed back down toward the car and our next hike.


Andrew and Darryl take five.



The view

Once at the car we stopped to drink some water then proceeded to walk through the tiny town of Brimstone to the next trail. There wasn't much wildlife other than the odd crawling caterpillar and some insects. The hilight being two flies making out on Darryl's coat. There were a few birds a fat squirrel. That was about all there was to see as far as animals go.


A fuzzy caterpillar


Two flies making out on Darryl


Robin with twig

The ground became sandy and unlike the icy forest hill that we climbed earlier, the forest we walked through on this trek was nicely paved by a winding road. The forest opened up onto some grassy rolling hills. Walking on the grass felt like walking on a bunch of heads. The ground felt like round hard lumps. The grass would slide odd the lumps like a bad wig. It was a weird sensation.


Lumpy Grass

Our goal was to get to the end of the "Forks of the Credit" path where there was a water fall (part of the credit river gorge), rest, and head back. We got to the waterfall, we rested, but we ended up doing some more hiking toward a small metal bridge.


The waterfall

To see the falls in 3D click here to the ME3D blog.

Andrew had told us that the small steel bridge was a great place to massage your aching feet. It was lumpy and it had holes to let your feet breathe. It sounded kind of wonky but my feet were a bit tired. So off to the bridge we went. It was only a short distance away.


bridge or foot massuse?

Taking off the shoes to walk along the bridge felt odd, actually painful would be a good word. But my feet felt a lot better once I put my boots back on. Darryl ended up running down the hill on the other side of the bridge to the river bank.


Darryl down on the riverbank

I'm not really sure why as he started telling us earlier about how his knee was getting sore from all the climbing uphill. Still it made for a decent shot with someone in it for scale. Once Darryl made his way back up we headed back to the car. It only took us 40 minutes, about a third the time it took for us to get to the falls. Once in the car we headed off to Mississauga to a cheap all you can eat buffet.

For only $8.99 + tax you could eat as much as you wanted. Whatever weight I may have lost on the hike I most likely gained at the restaurant and then some. I stuffed myself with two heaping plates of chicken balls, fried egg rolls, shrimp, noodles, rice, pork somethings, seaweed salad (that tasted like licking a rubber tire) bad cold sushi, two glasses of water and a can of Coke. If that wasn't enough I forced myself to eat some Jello and some strawberry ice cream just cause it looked good. It may not have been the greatest food but I was starving and it was after all an all you could eat buffet.

Once back in Toronto I took the streetcar home trying not to fall asleep from all the food I consumed. It felt like the chicken balls were expanding thanks to the gas in the can of Coke. By the time I made it home I felt extremely bloated and tired. The end to another great day and another fun story of sightseeing in Ontario.


The final destination

Monday, April 10, 2006

When Pets Attack


Juliet's cat waits to pounce onto the unsuspecting victim's lap.

Today's interaction with the animals started upon arriving home. I walked into the backyard today to get to my apartment and surprised one of the neighbor's dogs. They have three. An excitable shy dog, a bitey dog, and a happy friendly blind dog. The bitey dog jumped up and bit me in the leg probably thinking I was attacking the shy dog. It left once the blind dog gave me the okay by walking up to me and barking a single "woof", wagging it's tail, then wandering away.

I didn't really give it much thought until I sat down in front of the computer and noticed a small hole in my jeans. Upon further inspection my leg had a small bruise with some amount of puncturing. It looked odd, like only one part of the jaw, the upper part, bit into me with the lower part not really doing anything. I disinfected the wound with some rubbing alcohol.

Later on in the evening I went over to Juliet's place. She has three cats. Very affectionate, hair shedding cats. One of them (pictured above) jumped into my lap moments after sitting down. After a few minutes of petting I noticed my hand had a clump of fur as well as my shirt and pants. By the time I left the house I was wheezing for air.

So what does all this mean? It was a slow day today for blogging and the only pictures I took were of the cat and my bruise. Since the bruise is uninteresting (at least from a photography stand point) I opted for the cat picture.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Glomponk


Robin Polfuss and her designer T-Shirt collection for 2006.

Glomponk! What is that you ask? It's the designer T-shirt line to come out of the creative mind of Robin Polfuss. These multi-colored shirts sport cute, fun iconesque graphics suitable for all ages.

Robin Polfuss' spring summer 2006 line of designer T-shirts are available at the Clothing show at the automotive building May 6 and 7 2006.

For more information on the Glomponk line or for sock monkeys (yes, you read right) click to roroart.com.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

He who controls the Spice controls the Universe


A worm making it's way up to the surface

Since my worm fascination which started a few days ago I've been doing a lot of reading. There are a lot of web sites that talk about worms. There are even sites that sell food for worms allowing the worm to live longer and alter their color to make them more appetizing as fish food. To save you some of the trouble I've documented some of the more interesting facts below...

more worm FACTS
  • The melange or the "spice", as Frank Herbert would call it, better known as worm doodie or castings is produced each day equal to the worms weight. Imagine pooping your weight each day. That's a lot of eating. I have to wonder if this fact is accurate.

  • The castings increase the amount of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous in the soil and is water soluble. Great as plant food.

  • The pin head sized poop (castings) are odorless and 100 percent organic.

  • The castings will also repel various insects.

  • Earthworms eat dying organic matter leaving the living plant life alone.

  • The tunnels created by the worms help let water and air mix with the soil.

Out of the various sites I have found the Worm Digest one of the better reads.

Stranger in the night


Tracy and Alan on Transit

I bumped into Tracy and Alan on the streetcar after the Aries Ultra party. It's strange to think you'd bump into anyone you know at 2:30 in the morning on public transit but there you go.

Friday, April 07, 2006

A Kiss is just a kiss


Love to go around

Tonight at the Ultra lounge I was invited to an Aries party. My comment about people making out in Montreal being more public than in Toronto (click here)... I take that back. I guess it just depends on where you are and who your subjects are.

I would also like to point out that this is the 500th photo blogged into the archives. Obviously it has to be Bagelhot!