Feb 25 2025 - Blonde Bombshell

 

Do you know that some words have a masculine and a feminine form in English?  That's what comes to mind with Blonde Bombshell.  When did you hear of a Blond Bombshell?  Don't think so.  The Britannica definition says an attractive woman with blonde hair.   While we think of Marilyn Monroe as "The Blonde Bombshell", the original was Jean Harlow in her film Platinum Blonde.  The next movie was actually named Bombshell.  That was in the 1930s, so could the origin of bombshell be WWI? There's an underlying meaning of Blonde Bombshell  - something in this range: "a blonde with explosive sexuality and is available to men at a price." "exciting, dynamic, sexy woman" So are there any male blond bombshells?  Here's an article that says there are:  Justin Bieber is identified in the article. The article is really about men dyeing their hair blond - platinum blond.  And then there are headlines such as "Blond Bombshells:  Top Shirtless Male Models Turning..."  it says they are setting the modelling industry ablaze.  So much for social trends vs catchy headlines. Go to Quora and there is general refusal there that bombshell can be used to refer to an attractive man.  What to say - go to Quora and you are on your own as far as I am concerned. And other masculine and feminine words in English.  The Wikipedia entry refers to blond/blonde and is considered a distinction stained primarily in British English. It seems to stand alone. Gender neutrality in jobs seems to me to be a social political topic. Blonde bombshell?  I see this as a moment in movie history.

Here's the first pass at working with metallic watercolours.  I tried out a test piece of the colours I bought.  I photographed the page in sunlight in order to get the sparkle and then worked on it in photoshop. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Nov 2 2024 - The Rewards of Winter - Bugs gone

 

All of a sudden it is colder.  A lot colder.  I was thinking about the positives of having a deep freeze in the winter.  Bugs die.   Florida residents worry that a warm winter will mean a lot of insects the rest of the year. If we lived year-round in warmer climates we would have to attend to our bugs.  Not like here - we can swat and squash them away. They are small and bothersome, but not particularly worrisome?  Well we do have a big insect here.  It is the Praying Mantis.  It is up to 18 cm or 7 inches long - that was in 1929 in China.  Somehow we consider them gentle insects.   Praying Mantis are not in the same category as Beetles with those huge pincers.  They can be up to 17 cm and 6.7 inches long,and  they look fierce - there's the Hercules and the Macrodontia cervicornis, Titan, Giant longhorn, Actaeon, Atlas and the Elephant.  They are the size of a large hand.   I wouldn't step on one of those, would you?  Likely to reach out and grab my foot.  There's more. What about the insects like cockroaches?  And there are enormous flies, hornets, wasps, and of course spiders.   The fear of insects and spiders is common among humans.  A general wariness around bugs is normal.  Maybe that explains a good deal of our wariness behaviour.There are 10 quintillion insects on earth. And Scientists say we have both a fear and a disgust for insects.   So I ponder our weather growing colder, as I conclude this article on the "Biggest" insects.  At the bottom (of course) are more headlines and pictures.  There is a scary story of a different sort: "Donald Trump's Makeup Free Face..."  There are 2 pictures  one without makeup and then one with a shiny orange face with hair dyed match.  The article says the pictures have been fact-checked and confirmed authentic.  Which seems more unreal?  Insects 7 inches long or a former US President with orange makeup and hair?  I realized that I have an innate fear and disgust of an orange President.

This picture came from Cuba at the Che Guevara memorial.  The stone walls were embedded with shell and coral fossils.  They made beautiful patterns and abstract images.

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July 12 2024 - Swept Out to Sea

 

That's the headline.  My first thought is to wonder if it was one of those "stories" that gets you to look at advertisements.   It turns out to be an actual news story from yesterday with the introduction "Yes, it's quite an incredible story!" That's because a woman was swept out to sea at a beach in Japan and found alive 37 hours later, having drifted more than 50 miles in the Pacific Ocean.   How did she survive?  Did she float?  Did she swim all that time?  I think she had a floatation device on - "a swim ring".    She was spotted by a cargo ship and rescued by the crew rather than the coast guard.  I appreciate that a cargo ship would be a "life-saving" moment, but to me the vast size of a  cargo ship would scare me,  On the other hand, it might be that the ocean waves would scare me more - they were 6.5 feet high.  Two of the crew members jumped into the water and tied a rope around her and then pulled her up to the tanker. The dangers of being out there that long?  Heat stroke in the day, hypothermia at night, and being hit by a ship in the dark.  So a headline that is circling around the globe celebrating an "incredible story". Aren't these great colours in this water reflection?  It was at the Nathan Phillips Square a few years ago.  It is the TO Sign reflecting in the water pool. Here's what you can do in Photoshop with this kind of image - lots of fun.

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Apr 3 2023 - Rainbows

 

Hawaii has the most rainbows in the world. The Secrets of the Best Rainbows on Earth, has declared Hawaii the rainbow capital of the world. It has rainbow arcs on the license plates. The islands of Kauai, Maui and Oahu are the best places and the Moa Valley is known as the Valley of the Rainbows. Alaska and Yosemite National Park are the next two and then the fourth is Niagara Falls. A triple rainbow is possible there and also a 360-degree rainbow. The rainbow is seen in a circular formation instead of semicircular.  The Skyline Tower deck is the place to see a circular rainbow.  Australia and Ireland complete the list of top places to see rainbows.  What are the world records for rainbows?  The longest lasting rainbow was almost 9 hours in Taipei in 2017.  The most rainbows at once is covered in an article by Country Living and it was 5 rainbows.  That's a Supernumerary Rainbow.  This one was verified by NASA.  But the photo of 8 rainbows in 2014 was investigated by SNOPES and is false.   Which record would you prefer?  To see the longest lasting rainbow or to catch the biggest rainbow trout?  Or perhaps to see the smallest rainbow in the world.  This occurs on the butt of the peacock spider in Australia.   Here's an image retrieved from Pinterest. But it looks more photoshop than photo.  The second one comes with a blog post and appears authentic.    "After being up at Niagara Falls back in 14 I had to come back for more and wanted to be there when the lights on the Canadian side light up the falls. The night we arrived the light were turned up and got to see some amazing rainbows. The lights would change color and it was a sight to see a rainbow being different colors along its length. In addition to the floodlight bows I also got nice rainbows from natural sunlight and using the super wide angle field of view with my GoPro camera I got nice full circle rainbows. For anyone who is a waterfall or rainbow chaser. Niagara Falls is the place to go and falls are BEST on the Canadian side and this is the perfect bucket list item." Author: Michael Ellestad, Ohio, USA This reflection image comes from a few years ago in First Canadian Place.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 23 2023 - AI is Coming and it terrifies me!

 

The New York Times had an article last week on an AI chatbot named Sydney and called it weird and creepy.  Sydney is "acting unhinged." Today it is Businessinsider.com and the author, Emily Senkosky is "terrified." Last year she was a writer for a company that was licensed to use the GPT-3 - its latest version is ChatGPT.   Her task in 2021 was to write an article in which she wrote a paragraph and the AI wrote a paragraph.  People were to guess which was which. Fast forward to the new version, she thought she'd assess where ChatGPT is now. And what terrified her?  "It was able to draw conclusions from the draft and write, dare I say, original ideas based on it, also using tactics for writing well, such as varying the length of the sentences. It even used some humanlike phrases to describe things, and most impressively, it was able to intuitively explain the limitations of its own abilities." So could we expect more creativity in the regurgitation of articles in the future? That's what I experience across the internet when researching a topic or story.  Today one can read the same paragraphs across all the publications that have reported on the story.  Lots of times the same mistakes get repeated - mistakes of fact, grammar and spelling.  That would be a benefit if the errors were corrected. What about this headline?  Russian hackers are trying to break into ChatGPT.  And this one:  Fraudsters are using machine learning to help write scam emails in different languages.  And this:  Business email compromise (BEC) gangs who pose as your boss, colleague or supplier and request urgent or important financial transfers to be made. One such scamming group is named Midnight Hedgehog and uses executive impersonation to deceive recipients into making payments for bogus services. But then I use Flexify to create abstracts like this one out of  pictures like the second one and think that's ok and even fun. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 7 2023 - Caution with Swear Words

 

Can this be the case?  That 80-90 words a day that a person speaks are curse words.  First person plural pronouns make up 1% and curse words 0.5% to 0.7%.   Here are google questions:  What is the D word? What is the F word? What is the E word? What is the J word? Bing answers the question right away 44 and then 35 English swear words that you should use carefully.  To explore further  these are the headlines: Rare and amusing insults, the alphabet of swearing, 21 amazing forgotten curse words, 21 vintage curse words, 77 of the best dirty words from around the world.  Wikipedia says:  Words currently considered curse words or profanity were common parlance in medieval English.  the use of shit in English is much older, rooted in the Proto-Germanic word skit-, then evolved in Middle English to the word schitte, meaning excrement, and shiten, to defecate. Another profanity, damn, has its origins in Latin, with the word damnum meaning 'to damage, hurt or harm'. There is a big paragraph of swear words in the Urban Dictionary.  Their definition says that swear words are words that can be used to piss people off. And below that definition it says they are words people use when they are not smart enough to think of anything better:  why kids aren't as intelligent these days. Wikipedia in its analytical way says there are five possible types rather than just one  - abusive, cathartic, dysphemistic (conveys that the speaker thinks negatively of the subject matter) , emphatic and idiomatic.   But what is it about Croatia and the  J word? There are so many that they call it the J family. 1) Jebote Translation: f*ck Meaning: oh c'mon / what the f*ck / I can’t believe this / are you hearing this? 2) Jebemu Translation: f*ck it Meaning: this sucks / I’m so sorry / hang in there / sh*t.  3) Jebiga Translation: F*ck it. Meaning: eh / what can you do And so on. There are 10 in all HERE.   The Wiktionary has an alphabetical list of English words HERE.  It seems decidedly incomplete to me.    I was colourizing Florida sand pictures yesterday - they look like aerial shots of landscapes to me.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 18 2023 - Pink for boys..no girls

 

I wondered how we got to pink for girls and blue for boys.  And what made us gender-rigid in this respect.  Here's a picture of Franklin Roosevelt in a white dress, party shoes and long hair.  This was the norm in 1884 - gender-neutral.   It was in the 19th century, though, that colours became gender signifiers.   This is different than what has been published as the U.S. history.  But then I think that is because the research in the 1980s by Paolettis and a book published in 2011 get referenced over and over, turning into an urban legend.  "The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colours for babies in the mid-19th century." "For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti." Wikipedia has a long survey of countries showing that pink has been generally used for girls and blue for boys.  Then it chronicles pink for boys and blue for girls. The earliest references are pink for girls and blue for boys - starting in the early 1800s to 1941.   For the blue for girls and pink for boys, scroll to the end and see the US is where the reversal is revealed in the ads.

Another close-up in the Niagara Falls conservatory.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 1 2023 - Predictions this year

 

What are the predictions for 2023?   Our great psychics are listed as: Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Jeanne Dixon, Ingo Swann, Sylvia Browne, John Edward, Doreen Virtue, Chip Coffey, VBaba Vanga and Esther Hicks.  That's according to the best psychics.club.  Today  it is Nostradamus' turn.  He's still making the news after all these centuries with over 6,300 prophecies: Predictions 2023  World War  Nostradamus wrote, "Seven months the Great War, people dead of evil-doing." Mars landing  The French mystic cryptically referred to a "light on Mars falling", suggesting that humans could possibly visit the Red Planet in 2023. New Pope  Nostradamus' third prediction for 2023 is a new Pope succeeding Francis. He suggested that Pope Francis will be the last true Pope and that the next Pope will create a scandal. New World Order  Nostradamus' final prediction for 2023 talked about the new alliance of two great powers coming together. The new alignment will potentially be between a strong man and a weak one or even a male and a female leader. However, the alliance's good effects will not be long-lasting. While there are more details for each one, his language is strange and vague  so I left most of it out.   Here they are with another author's own comments.

Our pictures today are abstracts - rain on the windshield in the foreground and a lamp post in the background.

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Dec 23 2022 - Christmas in the Air

There's definitely a lot of news of what's in the air just at Christmas 2022 - rain and snow.  But how would we know that "Christmas is in the air?"  What would it be?  It means in circulation, in people's thoughts.  Another interpretation is that it is coming very soon.   We're still in the rain here, so await the snow flurries.  Toronto is calling it a "bomb cyclone".  Others called it a "weather bomb".  Now there's a new weather word for me.  Aren't there so many new words all the time?  What is 2022's new expression Goblin mode?  Here's the OED definition:  “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”.  It came about first on Twitter in 2009, but burst out of the pack in February 2022.  And then comes Gaslighting:  “manipulating (a person) by psychological means into questioning his or her own sanity”. And the big one is Permacrisis:  “an extended period of instability and insecurity”. CNN's article on the topic found these words peculiar or depressing.  CNN explains that normal words just won't do sometimes.   Here's the proof of that - a  humorous review of the new words of 2022 from Merriam-Webster: Because (conjunction) The new definition of “because” is “by reason of.” It’s often used comedically to explain complicated things vaguely. As in, “the sky is blue because science,” or “I don’t like her because reasons.” TBH (abbreviation) This abbreviation stands for “to be honest.” It’s often used in text conversations, as in “I don’t feel like going out tonight, TBH.” Fluffernutter (n)This word describes a sandwich that entails spreading peanut butter and marshmallow topping on white bread. Yum? Amirite (interjection)This is a combination of three words “am I right.” It’s used conversationally, often humorously. As in, “Writers and their love of words, amirite?” Copypasta (n)This refers to any type of data (including text) that has been copied and spread online. It can range from lighthearted memes to serious political messages.  Deplatform (v) Use this word to refer to taking any sort of speaking platform away from somebody. Specifically, it can refer to kicking someone off of a large communication platform, like social media. Whataboutism (n) This word refers to the act of responding to an accusation by saying that somebody else committed an offense that was the same or worse.  As in “sure, I was late to work but whatabout that guy who didn’t even show up today?” FTW (abbreviation)  These three letters stand for “for the win.” This abbreviation is often used in social media commentary or when stating approval for something. As in “Fridays off FTW.” And this is all copy pasta from me.

Today's picture s are more interpretations of the sculpture walls in front of the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls.

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Nov 17 2022 - Dog Barking

 

When I see dogs in other people's cars I bark at them.    I want to say hello. The experts don't encourage this: "One thing you have to bear in mind is that there is no such thing as an official dog language. When dogs communicate with one another it is through body language and tone. So, when you hear dogs barking at one another the key thing that they are listening to is the type and tone of the bark." And yet there so many videos on how to bark like a dog and have conversations with your pet.  Are we learning to distinguish the types and the tones of barking?  I haven't investigated this.  I go with this approach:  "if he starts wagging his tail, jumping up excitedly, and is clearly happy, the chances are he likes what you are ‘barking’ to him." And usually dogs getting a bark greeting in cars get excited so seem to like it. Sometimes Millie sits there with her head to one side - which is dog language for what is this supposed to mean?  - I do the same.  The would likely lead to double confusion.  But it seems fun at the time.  And Baxter? The experts say that cats do not meow at each other.  They meow at humans.  Here's the meow interpretation: The m- or mrr-sound is a pleasant sound that the cat uses for people it likes. If the e of the meow is stressed, it can signal physical discomfort, such as that the cat is hungry or cold. The meow that cats use most with humans has a long ah-sound. If the person doesn’t respond, the cat becomes frustrated and the ow-sound becomes more pronounced, almost like a howl. I remember that Baxter learned the last one when he was boarding at the vets one time.  He came back with a loud and prolonged set of meows that he now prefers. Another grunge abstract with numbers.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Nov 1 2022 - Miniature Stuff,

 

Hardly anyone came for Halloween - it was raining here.  But I did buy cute little candies - little gummy Minions and tiny Kinder chocolates.  They seemed irresistable to buy as compared to eat. Why do miniature things fascinate us?  This is reported to be part of the "psychology of cuteness".  And I had no idea that this has been a topic of research for more than 70 years.   Konrad Lorenz, the German ethologist introduced the concept of the baby schema ("Kindchenschema") in 1943. The "baby schema" is the theory that certain physical features that are typically associated with babies—like a round face and big eyes—are so irresistibly cute to humans they will prompt us to feel a delightful desire to take care of someone or something.  I guess that goes for puppies and kittens, too. Lots has happened since then, and research says these are also factors: they bring back the comforts of childhood, that we experience awe and wonder, that tiny things are nice and non-threatening, and symbolic of stand-ins for the real thing.  How many tiny and miniature things are there that you can actually use?  A lot of things. I like the Miniature Mixer - $43. How tiny is it? 2" x 1.2" x 2.2" Don’t relegate this battery-powered mixer to the dollhouse — or at least know that you can break it out for non-pretend baking needs, too. It’s a working kitchen tool that can be used to whip up undersized baked goods for people who are into the tiny food craze.  The Leaf Blower which is $13 from Pottery Barn  How tiny is it? 6" x 2.5" x 2" You won’t get far using this teensy leaf blower in the yard, but it delivers a stronger-than-expected gust of air that will do away with dust that’s settled on keyboards, bookshelves, and other small and overlooked spaces. The Bob Ross By The Numbers Mini Paint Kit $10 from Target How tiny is it? 3" x 3.75" x 2" This minute art kit includes three paint-by-number canvases (two landscapes and one portrait of iconic TV painter Bob Ross), along with art supplies and, of course, a petite easel on which to display your work.  There are more crazy things HERE.  Our November Calendar reminds us that November is not as dreary as we think.  These pictures of the Willow at Charles Daley park are taken mid-November.  And Japanese Maples also keep their beautiful colours well past the middle of November.     Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca