Dog On A Root

  Christmas Candies - jim young (rewritten from an article originally published in the 1990s) “Sweet but twisted. Does that make me a candy cane?” - anon I’ve become a grumpy old man. I know that and I’ve accepted it. Now it’s up to the rest of the world to accept it. And deal with it! What makes me a grumpy old man? I don’t know and I don’t care. That’s one of the advantages of being a grumpy old man. I don’t have to explain things. That’s just the way it is – BECAUSE! But things today aren’t like they used to be. Like Christmas Candies.  Why can’t we find Christmas Candies like we used to have when we were children? I don’t eat Christmas Candies much anymore, but gosh darn it – I want them. It reminds me of Christmas when I was a child. I spent six hours the other night looking for real Christmas Candies. I went shopping at 4:30 pm and was home by 6:00 pm – but it was six hours. I don’t know how the math works on that and I don’t care. Don’t argue with me about it. It was si...

- jim Young “Marley was dead to begin with… This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” - Charles Dickens Our daughter recently gave us a subscription to Netflix for Christmas. I’m an old “hands-on” guy and I still like having a DVD I can hold in my hands. I even have a few classics left over from my VHS collection. But even with a collection of over 60 Christmas movies on DVD, sometimes we crave something new to watch at Christmas and I was excited to see what Netflix had to offer.  It turns out… not much. We’ve enjoyed a few new Christmas movies that we don’t have in our collection, but it turns out that what the Hallmark-type companies flog as “Christmas Movies” are nothing more than Harlequin Romances set at Christmas time. I think I am going to love Netflix overall but at Christmas I may have to fall back on our trusty DVD player for the most part. SCROOGE What to watch on Christmas Eve is always a problem. We know it’...

 

- jim Young “If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.” - Milton Berle I was going through a box of memorabilia that my mother had saved for me when I came across my Grade 4 Report Card from 1962. My birthday falls at the end of the year so I would have been 9. Inside my report card was a ticket for FREE admission to the Canadian National Exhibition. (The grounds only.) Obviously, since I still had the ticket, my parents DIDN’T take me to the CNE that year. But if you look at the back of the ticket, you’ll notice the much BIGGER missed opportunity… the chance to Meet The — 3 STOOGES — In Person for only 50 cents! With an allowance of just 25 cents a week, of which I was expected to save 10 cents, that would take me… let’s see 25 cents - 10 cents = 15 cents x 4 weeks = 60 cents with enough left over for a pop or comic book. Yep, just 4 weeks to save up the money. (You’ll note in my report card below that my marks in Arithmetic were in the high 80s.) I got my report card at the end...

- jim Young With Christmas just weeks away, who has their Christmas shopping done? Nearly done? Started? Whenever I used to ask that question of my coworkers in December, I was met with scorn and sternly told, "Don't remind me. I'm running out of time." “Hey, don’t blame me.” I would innocently reply in defense. “I warned you last January 25th that you had 11 months until Christmas and on February 25th I reminded you that you had 10 months until Christmas and so on.”  Yes, I was that guy. “You got mad at me then and wouldn’t listen,” I would remind them, “so you have no excuse for ‘running out time’ now.” Personally, I love to save at least some of my Christmas Shopping until the last minute as I enjoy wandering through the bustle of the stores among the crowds, admiring the decorations and listening to the Christmas Music playing in the malls. But some people like to do their Christmas Shopping early. As an occasional writer for the website Quora, I was recently ask...

- jim Young “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Alexander Graham Bell Introduction It seems I can’t even admit defeat without Bell messing up every step of the way. Alexander Graham Bell must be spinning in his grave knowing that his namesake company is making such mockery of his life-long work. Despite outages and poor service that Bell Executives refuse to acknowledge, I kind of like Bell. I would rather give them the opportunity to “work things out” than jump ship. Well, that’s part of it. There’s also “the devil you know factor” which comes into play. Switching all my Bell services to 2 or 3 new companies with the learning curve that goes along with it is not a simple undertaking. I would rather allow Bell the opportunity to: 1) recognize and admit their inability to provide the services for which they have been charging  2) take action to correct the situation and actually provide those services.  Sometimes however, one just gets tired of banging their head on a bri...