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...