Dog On A Root

jim Young “That’s all she wrote! It’s been one hell of a blast! Goodbye - over and out! It’s lights out!” - rod urquhart I hope the title of this column is not confusing. Despite the similarity with the title of Rod Urquhart’s regular column Talk Turkey With Urqey in the GNA, this is not Rod Urquhart writing. This is just me, jim (Dog On A Root) Young writing about Rod Urquhart’s writing. To be more specific, I am writing about some of Rod’s books. I have just received an early copy of Rod Urquhart’s latest book Tales Within The Outhouse . It is a “collection of funny short stories” and the third and final book in Rod’s trilogy of “Outhouse short story books” that began with Tales For The Outhouse followed by More Tales For The Outhouse . Spoiler Alert! You don’t have to read these books in an outhouse, but you’ll be missing out on a grand old rural tradition if you don’t.  This trilogy of books can be just as enjoyable while reading them in your own bathroom. (Your cell-phone...

 

 

  - jim Young In the realm of expectation, disappointment is king.” - anon If someone promised to save you a substantial sum of money and was only able to produce less than 15% of half of what they originally promised… you likely wouldn’t afford them much credibility in their field, would you? In fact, in light of their failure, you would likely think they were pretty stupid. Either that or they were taking you for a ride all along. Musk is the richest man in the world. So if he’s stupid, he must be very, very lucky to get where he is. Yet this is what he has done “for”, or perhaps “to” the American people might be a better way to put it.  PROMISES AND EXPECTATIONS While campaigning for Trump, Musk bragged about cutting $2 trillion from government expenses. Once Trump was elected Musk reduced that promise to $1 trillion. As recently as last March, Musk bragged he was on schedule to reduce spending of $1 trillion by the end of May. Recently Musk has reduced that to just 15% or ...

- jim young “If you keep choosing the lesser of the evils, pretty soon all you have left is the evil of the evils.” – Dick Gregory, comedian and Presidential Candidate Just like almost every other election, I’m in a quandary with the upcoming federal election in Canada. Simply put, I’m not a big fan of any of the available choices.  That doesn’t mean I don’t care. But I don’t buy the “if you don’t vote you have no right to complain” bullshit that I often hear given as a reason why I should vote. That’s really a cop-out for those people that believe everyone should vote but they really don't have a good argument for why everyone should vote. Suggesting you have no right to complain just because you didn’t vote doesn’t even make sense. Those who vote for the party that gets elected are really the only ones who shouldn’t have a right to complain. They’re the ones that put the bastard in power! Everyone else should have the right to complain whether they voted or not. In fact, ev...

- jim Young “The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labour is man's noblest calling. Government needs labour to pay its upkeep.” - Russell Baker On Feb 2, Speaking about tariffs, Trump warned Americans, “We may have short term, some little pain and people understand that.” In addition to the “pain” the American people are expected to endure from the tariffs, Trump’s henchman, the richest man in the world, has fired or let go 30,000 government workers. I’m sure they will “understand” there might be some short term “pain” too. Trump on the other hand has been golfing 25% of his first 69 days in office (9 out of the 10 weekends) at a cost of over $26 million (estimated using 2017 costs) to the taxpayers, including the costs of security and the use of Air Force One. It doesn’t look like Trump is feeling any of th...

 

- jim Young DISCLAIMER: Be sure to read this article in its entirety before attempting this self-watering procedure. ”Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.” - Jerry Seinfeld Facebook is filled with suggested hacks to cover everything from keeping mosquitoes out of your back yard to removing highlighter stains to getting gum out of your carpet with a baggie full of ice cubes. It would be nice if they all worked. In fact it would be nice if even half of them worked. Here’s a hack we got from Facebook that could have been a real life-saver for us. We recently planned a 2 week vacation to Cuba. Like everyone going away for a holiday, we had to make many preparations before we left.  Advise the post office to hold our mail - check Book our dog Myra into a Kennel...