Marilyn's Photos - Mar 18 2026 - Silly Products

 

Homesense is a very busy store.  I was there on a Sunday afternoon and it was filled with people.  I looked at the lineup in front and behind me to check out.  There were some nice things people bought, and some silly, even stupid things.  So I went looking for clearly stupid things. The website is about Stupid Stuff “We get people coming into our store from time to time and they look around and they ask, why would anybody buy these gift things. Apparently they think it is a bunch of STUPID STUFF.  Well maybe it is, maybe it isn't.  Either way, we know we love it.  So if it is just too stupid for you then you should shop for your gifts and stuff in Walmart or your local grocery store.  You won't find stupid stuff there.  Everyone else... welcome!” Mostly there’s a lot of profanity and farts.  Lots of cats, somehow.  This is nose aerobics basketball.   Heading over to Good Housekeeping they have done a search on Amazon and have come up with very fine products. This is the Ostrich Pillow below.  Then there’s a mobile phone jail cell, a wearable shark blanket - and it says 3,000 shoppers purchased last month, so I guess we shouldn’t be too superior.  There’s charcoal companion meat shredder claws - it says actually useful for cooking.  And the highlight is the personalized cardboard cutout - you send an image and height specifications and get a larger-than-life cardboard cutout.  They are all HERE. Maybe the topic came to my mind when I saw this picture I took of warped window reflections.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 17 2026 - Shamrock Green the Colour

 

Since the internet, technical information abounds - it knows no limits. Take Shamrock Green. It is  #009E60 the hex code in photoshop and similar tools to specify exact colours.  It is a strong, lively green tone.   "In the RBG colour space, it  is 0% red, 62% green and 37.6% blue.  Whereas in a CMYK color space, it is composed of 100% cyan, 0% magenta, 39.2% yellow and 38% black. It has a hue angle of 156.5 degrees, a saturation of 100% and a lightness of 31%. #009e60 color hex could be obtained by blending #00ffc0 with #003d00. Closest websafe color is: #009966." You can see what I mean - lots of technical specifications.  And the details turn out to be fascinating in this article HERE.  This is colorhexa.com.  Perhaps things haven’t got more complicated - they are just more available for us to read and learn about them.  The article includes the simulation of how colour blindness experiences the colour.   Our watercolour class yesterday involved painting pretty little shamrocks in delicate patterns - and the lively Shamrock Green works wonderfully with these pictures. Other pictures?  Not so great. Garish. Shamrock jokes are very corny.  Head over to Guinness World Records and there are records for the largest human shamrock shape, the cultivation of genetically modified plants - 63-leaf clover, and a person in the U.S. with the largest collection - 118,791 clovers. OK so this picture isn’t a Shamrock or an Oxalis.  It is the Jade Vine.  Isn’t this a splendid colour?  I wonder what its hex code might be.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 26 2026 - The Oscars

 

All I seem to care about at the Oscars is whether Anna Wintour has that much hair or was wearing a wig.  At 76, it would seem impossible to have that much hair.  The article talks about her rigorous daily professional styling, even twice daily.   One wonders about the veracity - the answer to the question is generated by AI, which takes the information from whoever has published it most, and likely sponsored it.  The conclusion of the AI article says:  “In summary, the idea that Wintour wears a wig is a persistent, unverified rumour, which professional sources cite meticulous maintenance of her natural hair.” She as there as a sort of humorous joke to present the hair/makeup Oscar.  The Devil Wears Prada 2 is out this year.   Looking at pictures of her from 1991 and 2015 shows that she hasn’t changed very much in terms of aging.  Her youthful appearance has gotten surgery comments. It is observed to be regularly “refreshed.” Doesn’t that lead one to wonder about the wig idea? And why should I focus on Anna Wintour when the outfits are so astonishingly beautiful or horrible? The commentators said one dress looked like some sort of kitchen tool. They said “Ethan Hawke wearing a vest without the accompanying jacket just looks like he should have a little dancing monkey and a music box to go with it.”   I guess it is seeing the outfits one after the other in the article that makes you wonder what most of them were thinking when they chose their outfits. This is the People article HERE.   The Cosmopolitan coverage is HERE.  The real news seems to bel the expense of the outfits. The $4 million mark  was achieved in 2013 with Jennifer Lawrence’s gown.  Jewelry records are the next category. This year Kate Hudson hit the most expensive combination category - $35 million rare green Garatti diamonds and an Armani Prive gown. Gloria Stuart wore a $20 million blue diamond necklace in 1998 and Lady Gaga wore over $30 million in diamonds in 2019.  That seems  in line with an excessive event like this. I look at these sorts of things once a year, so it is quite the experience. The Witch-hazel tree is blooming with its ribbon flowers and beautiful perfume.

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Mairlyn's Photos - Mar 15 2026 - Body Language Expert - Training Now

 

The top expert on body language in the world?  It says Joe Navarro - an ex-FBI agent and author of “What Every BODY is Saying” is in top position.  This is followed by Mark Bowden, Susan Constantine, Tetyana Didenko, and Allan Pease.   Such teasers as this line: “Reveal the secrets that are hidden in plain sight.”   They are known as deception detection experts, along with persuasion experts.  Both ends of the spectrum are covered in this profession. Things like interrogation training - that seems a bit scary to consider.  If we take a look at Joe Navarro, his biography says that he has had success as a spy-catcher.  Today we can get a Graduate Certificate for everything and for anything.  We have really learned to monetize education and training. In this area?  Online training takes up to 3 months at 3-5 hours of study per week.  The Joe Navarro Academy asks for $3900 in total for you to become a body language expert, along with training about the areas where you will apply the skills. The page concludes with an invitation to test your nonverbal skills and try a free demo.   What a contrast from 30 to 40 years ago. When I did the coordination for the instructors in the Continuing Education Information Studies Program at Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University), we would find an expert, contact them and then have an in-person training session.  It was lots of fun to put together a training day.  What a contrast to online training available now. And it makes me realize that we have all this potential body language expertise at a time when we are in the presence of people on their iPhones and not present to us at all.  Their body language isn’t even here.  I wonder what training that might lead to… In the space of the last hour, we’ve gone from Spring to Winter.  A snowfall has made everything white.  It says expect more snow today.  Then on Monday, there’s a flip back into Spring with rain.  Do we have the most changeable weather in North America? Not the most, but we’re in the top 5 - the most changeable is on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains from Alberta down through Texas. Here in the Eastern US/Canada we are considered a battleground for polar air and warmer conditions, leading to unpredictable, high-variance Winters.  So we can be optimistic.  That’s because Spring comes this Friday, so it all changes then.  Mark your calendars - 10:46am EDT.

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Marilyn's Photos - Mar 13 2026 - Flat Footed

 

Unprepared is what flat foot means. It’s an American expression originating as U.S. baseball slang - not being on one’s toes.  Anytime there’s an expression with foot it usually is derogatory.  To put one’s foot in one’s mouth or say something stupid.  There is to put one’s best foot foremost vs get off on the wrong foot. And in Middle English a non-foot was a nobody - bottom or lowest part of anything eminent or upright.  They were quite adept at insult by the year 1200, weren’t they?   I got to thinking about this expression as it seems to be in the U.S. news media as the conclusion that the U.S. was unprepared when it launched into the U.S./Israel-Iran war began 2 weeks ago.  I saw a CNN poll that found 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they trusted Trump “not much” or “not at all” to make the right decisions about the war.  This is a worrisome sort of language for a poll to be using.   The U.S. betting site Polymarket has got a lot of attention lately.  It is illegal in Canada and many other countries.  It is a prediction betting site where traders buy and sell shares on possible outcomes - of just about anything - sports, economic indicators, weather, people saying a particular word...   It proclaims: “the promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society.”   Here’s the Polymarket Iran War screenshot.  I expect this is the top betting outcome right now - maybe because rather than in spite of  Pete Hegseth saying it was up to Trump “whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end” of the war.   Let’s go for a pink haze of blossoms instead.  This from last year’s Niagara Blossom Trail.

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