Grimsby had a Halloween party on Saturday with the downtown filled with children in costumes. I was at the Dog Spot yesterday and she had over 400 children in for candy. Dogs came in too as there is a dog costume contest that will announce the winner on Wednesday.
So far the most popular dog costume ofo all time is Keki, the dog dressed as a mop. This was back in 2017. Here's how it worked:
I guess with social media dog costumes have come into their own. My thinking is that you can dress them up take the shot and then watch the costume get demolished. No worries about having to take the dog out for a showing. I am fond of the hot dogs, loaves of bread and pumpkins.
The best jobs of 1925 were supposely in finance, banking and corporate management. That was followed by automobile and electrical engineering. Medicine and Law have always been prestigious positions, and then the civil service. At the bottom of the heap were unskilled agricultural and migrant labour, textile and factory, and coal mining. Of course radium dial painting must be the all-time worst - they all got radium poisoning and jawbone decay.
That's just 100 years ago. Think long ago and there were "gong farmers" who manually shovelled human excrement and waste out of cesspits, privies and sewers at night. Too many excrement-related activities way back then. There's one that picked up dog excrement from the streets by hand to be used in the tanning industry.
What do we think today's best and worst jobs are? One site says that telemarketers are the worst, followed by cleaners, truckers, construction workers, soldiers, social workers, customer service advisors, slaughterhouse workers. Some of these seem tame, don't you think? OK here's a few: pet food taster. crime scene cleaner, and...wait for it: Pain dry watcher. Checking how the colour of matt and emulsion changes over time...this one is a novelty job that is thrown in to entertain us.
It seems to me these don't rate like the worst jobs of 100 years ago. And what do they claim the best jobs are? There's no list. It's all about what's in demand and what's stable. We can know that medicine is still in the top ranks, and today includes speech-language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists and so on. Of course corporate executives and lawyers are still tops. I expect information security is a great area now. And there are lots of engineering specialties now.
So many neat and clean jobs now. Think and be paid.
Oops I missed the Hamilton Chrysanthemum Show - it closed yesterday. Here's a picture from a previous year. So many beautiful shapes, colours, and textures in Chrysanthemums.
Don't think that it is only the interior that can benefit from silly trompe l'oeil effects. These are chalk drawings and there are lots of them. Make your front sidewalk a little more fun.
I am back to the strange egg cooker. Here's the picture, but the article does not include this product.
So I asked Google. It says it is a smart kitchen gadget like the Cheffy Egor smart egg cooker. You can see it in action HERE. It is considered a breakfast robot, or egg cooking robot. You can also get the synchronized toaster robot - I guess that makes it a breakfast robot. I don't think you can buy it, you have to pre-order it as they get their funding in place. Early-bird and VIP pre-orders start around $199 to $299 US. Combine that with the T.O.A.S.T.R. and it is $349.
This truly is a gimmick Christmas present. It reminds me of the pre-orders for Teslas. Look at them now. Blasting off into space with the Roadster 'flying car' that can perform 'kick flips'.
I haven't found out if that egg machine s real or just an AI idea. Maybe Cheffy Egor saw the picture and decided to make a dream come true.
And what would make me think of Christmas gadgets and gimmicks anyway? It is wreath time for the Fantasy of Trees. It is only a month away.
Here's the Santa holiday rug. He seems to be coming out of the chimney in reverse, and to my mind that would be the sewer.
All of a sudden there are videos of magnet fishing. Is this a new endeavour? No - it began in the early 2000s in Europe, and Wikipedia says it originated with boaters trying to retrieve dropped keys and tools from the water. Then it got commercialized in the mid-2010s and catered to the hobbyist market. The Pandemic caused it to boom as an outdoor pastime. Now it is an online community, sharing stories on YouTube, and TikTok.
I think we are all fascinated with finding things that are surprises. Strolling along the beach, looking for shells and finding coins, sounds ok. But actively searching areas with a metal detector seems a strange pastime to me. So metal-detecting underwater seems particularly strange and unpleasant. All that gook. And what gets thrown or lost in the water? Here's a few things:
A live World War II bomb by a hobbyist in Milwaukee
A safe full of cash - New York City couple totalling $100,000
An antique payphone
A medical hip replacement rasp - used by doctors during hip replacement
A mysterious mask of Hillary Clinton
Firearms and handguns
Industrial and auto debris
And today's Acronym? RINO - I had no idea what to make of this word in the New York Times news summary - Republican in name only.
On the other hand, who am I to think someone's hobbies are strange? Here's a macro image I took of the side of a donation bin.
You may not even be in the Halloween mood yet, but the Christmas gadgets have already arrived. And one of them is the Halloween Rug. Here it is. It is hilarious, with its beige mid-century living room, light streaming in the window. Shouldn't it be in a kid's bedroom with a messy bed and toys everywhere?
I wanted to find the strange-looking egg cooker. It is nowhere in sight. But I found the egg spinner which scrambles the egg inside the shell. Amazon has tons of them in cute shapes and colours. But this is a most embarrassing product - it wouldn't be a fun Christmas gadget at all. Unless you explain to the recipient the following:
You can make "golden eggs" - spin them, hard boil them and have a yellow-gold "egg-thing" you can eat.
More entertaining than the gadget is the method for doing this by hand:
Spin or Shake: Place a raw egg in an egg spinner (like the Golden Goose), use the DIY string-and-cap trick, or shake the egg vigorously inside a shirt sleeve or by hand for 2 to 3 minutes.
Test the Shell: Shine a flashlight or phone light through the egg in a dark room; a dull, uniform orange-yellow glow means the yolk and white are blended. (Clear or distinct bright/dark centers mean you need to spin more.)
Boil and Cool: Lower the eggs into gently boiling water for about 10 minutes, then plunge them immediately into an ice bath before peeling.
More gadgets are on their way - it's a long road to Christmas time.
Some things happen once and they are gone. This field is at Cherry Street and Highway 8. It as perfect in 2012 when this photo was taken. It seems like an Autumn Serenity image.