Marilyn's Photos - Apr 17 2026 - Cats and Dogs are Politics

 

What is history?  How do we decide?  This topic seems like a field with land mines every two feet.  There's no easy way to get out of the field. So to my surprise, the topic of history came up in the news. Here's a headline from the National Post that got my attention.   No election, no imminent shuffle, no more talk of "cats and dogs" in committee, Carney says Reading the article, here's the section on cats and dogs and showboating. Carney says:  "There is a difference between real testimony, real substance, getting to issues, debating aspects of law...and showboating,"  he added.  "We're going to have less of that."   To illustrate his point, Carney pointed to comments by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton during committee debate on Bill C-9 during which Lawton discussed his preference for puppies while his wife preferred cats. In a statement to National Post, Lawton countered that his discussion of pet preferences was in fact on topic. “My point on cats and dogs was simple: free speech is necessary to protect debate on controversial issues, otherwise our society is relegated to expressing only harmless opinions about pets. Liberal attempts to twist my words in this less than 12-second clip are nothing more than an attempt to re-write history,” he said. In pursuit of "history", I wanted to find the original words in the original committee hearing.  It was on December 4th, 2025 regarding a justice committee.   "...the member for St. Thomas - London South shamelessly filibustered for hours, talking for two hours about dogs and cats, not about hate crimes, not about anti-Semitism, not about attacks on LGBTQ Canadians and not about threats against women." I have just been searching for more than 15 minutes in the Parliament of Canada website trying to find the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, December 4th 2025.  This was interesting.  I haven't looked at Hansard since I worked for QL Systems in 1979 and we were the vendor that provided access to search through Hansard and other federal documents. I looked at Hansard a lot then. While I haven't come up with that December 4th meeting, I did read through the November 27th meeting.  Andrew Lawton could easily be accused of "crimes against committee efficiency" - interruptions, misrepresenting motions as points of order, and then consuming the meeting with numerous and very long filibusters.  I can imagine he can talk for two hours about cats and dogs.  Is that a useful skill for a politician?  I don't think so.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 16 2026 - Worms in the Pond

 

The pond water is cold, but not too cold.  I found out because I could see earthworms at the bottom.  It is a very shallow pond so easy to see them and get them out.  They do get very wiggly and would like to avoid rescue.  Were they looking for new territories or mates? Did they get disoriented and fall into the pond? How long have they been there?  They can survive for several days in water. Good thing for me it wasn't the Giant Gippsland earthworm of Victoria, Australia.  It is 3 feet long.  That would circle the pool - it is a tiny thing and wouldn't that look like a snake to me.  And remember how slimy earthworms are in defence mode? And when they stretch to travel, double the normal length. This Australian earthworm can live two decades, so I guess I would save it from the pond. It would be more of a wrestling match. Facts about this earthworm:  You know it's in your garden, as it makes a strange gurgling sound as it moves beneath the ground.  Wouldn't that be hilarious? I bet Millie would jump in the air out of surprise with such a serenade.  And I can count on this information as David Attenborough featured this worm in his 2005 documentary Life in the Undergrowth.   Here's a picture we can trust showing its size.  Those other pictures...look like AI to me. You can now search for AI-generated pictures of anything.  I searched for AI-generated images of this worm, and the ones that popped up for this worm look AI.  Typically, Getty Images and other picture sites have them labelled as such. I was moderating pictures for one of the groups I host on Fine Art America and testing them for whether they are AI-generated images. AI-generated images are out of scope for the group.  Here are the AI-generation sites that the image-testing site HIVE uses. That's a lot to me. And the object to the left of the list?   A strange and beautiful glass and light art work installation at the National Gallery.  It looks like alien barbed wire here.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 15 2026 - Cheese Monger

 

Why is monger such a seemingly ugly word? The word that t is commonly cited as the ugliest word is moist - due to its tactile sound. Monger is considered unappealing because of its harsh consonant sounds.  Monger originates from Latin mongo, meaning merchant or dealer.  There are fishmongers, cheesemongers, costermonger (fruit, vegetables, and fish from a street barrow)  and ironmongers (hardware), plus some more.  Then in the metaphorical world, there are fearmongers, warmongers, gossipmongers, hatemongers, and scaremongers.  And more still -  miraclemongers who feign or deal in fake miracles, drugmongers (self-evident) and whoremongers (also self-evident). A female fishmonger would have been called a fishwife, fish-fag or fishlass. A female cheesemonger was called a cheesemonger. I guess cheese is a universal thing.   Cheesemonger is still in use today although cheese sommelier and cheese steward are also terms that are used. It takes 4,000 hours of experience to get certified standing.  And then it isn't a high-paying profession.  But one has a thousand jokes.   What cheese do you use to coax a bear out of the woods with?  Camembert What cheese can you disguise a small horse with?  Mascapone. Why did the cheese lose a fight with a stone?  Because the Roquefort back There was an explosion at a cheese factory in France… all that was left was de brie And then a musical version: Sweet dreams are made of cheese, who am I to diss a brie, I Cheddar the world and the Feta cheese, everybody's looking for Stilton   Cheese at Pearl Morissette, located in Jordan.  Now Canada's #1 restaurant.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 14 2026 - The Long Shot

 

Are you a golfer?   "Xander Schauffele’s tee shot on the par-5 eighth hole Thursday at Augusta National ended up in somebody’s merchandise bag, just a few feet to the left of the fairway. Schauffele used a tee to mark the spot, removed the ball and then handed off the bag to a woman in a pink and white outfit. He was able to play on without penalty and made par. “It just flew straight into the bag. It was a great break. That bounce would’ve put me in the pine straw and who knows if I would’ve had a shot to hit up the hill,” Schauffele said after shooting a 2-under 70 in the first round. “So thanks to the lady on 8,” he said." “A little bit of a mixed bag,” he said. No pun intended, presumably." This picture is from a few years ago, and was taken on April 14th that year - what a difference each year.

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Marilyn's Photos - Apr 13 2026 - That Big Rat on board

 

The massive rat seems to be staying with me - one of the headlines from a few days ago.  It was on a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Aruba before Christmas 2025.  There are curtain rails in a KLM Airbus A330 and people saw it running along the top and into overhead storage units while over the Atlantic Ocean. It was caught on video HERE.  A rat is a rat.  I don't think it looked massive, but then what is a headline for? And can a rat compete with bringing on peacocks as pets, birds of prey (they have their own passports in the UAE), with one flight having 20 birds (in 2017).   Here's a good news weird story. On one flight,  Pope Francis married two engaged flight attendants after they told him an earthquake had destroyed the church that they'd planned to marry in.  That's a very sweet story.   Here's the opposite - an overhead locker overflowing with maggots when a passenger in 2010 from Atlanta brought some spoiled meat on board. Or what about a scorpion on board a U.S. flight in 2015 - it was spotted after it stung a passenger. And how big can a rat get? The biggest rat in the world is the Bosavi woolly rat from Papua New Guinea - up to 32 inches long and 3.5 pounds.  The pictures shown are pets - complete with collars and leads.   And don't confuse that massive rat with a Ram Air Turbine or RAT - which is commonly up to 64 inches in diameter.  Part of an airplane.   We got this picture of Millie when we were visiting friends last weekend.  She spotted something on the table in the centrepiece and was beserk over it. Here it is turned into a Birthday Greeting (of sorts).

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