“Beware of false prophets, which comes to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they’re ravening wolves.” Mathew 7:15

Donald Trump isn’t particularly worried about this election. He should be, but he isn’t. He’s done the job he set out to do. There were glitches, and people saying he was a disaster, but so what? He never ran for office expecting to do anything. Like every politician in Washington with a keen sense of self preservation, the more you say, the less you have to accomplish.

Maybe he learned this from his mentor and fixer, Roy Cohn, the right hand to…

“I don’t regret anything.” Amy Winehouse

Kachru watched the people coming into the school auditorium. Most were retired couples wearing parkas and carrying coffee cups. A heavyset reporter was there from The Edmonton Examiner. He’d tried to interview Kachru coming through the doors earlier. Kachru had politely declined. A mistake, obviously. Now the reporter sat directly in front, feet out, sweaty hair.

Late that afternoon, Kachru had brought in his slide projector and screen. There was a remote of sorts on a long electrical cord. He’d taken off his sweaters, but still wore his Pashtun vest and Wellco boots. …

“They’ve got everything for you men to enjoy…” The Village People (YMCA)

President Donald Trump doesn’t pay much attention to lyrics. His favourite song “Is That All There Is?” sung by Peggy Lee, describes watching a house burn down and turning to drink. Why does Trump like it? “It’s a great song because I’ve had these tremendous successes,” he said. “And then I’m off to the next one.”

Missing a song’s point seems to be standard with this president. It’s like there’s a little man on one shoulder doing the “daddy dance.” On the other, he’s singing something else entirely…

“My cooking was so bad, my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.” Phyllis Diller

As history describes it, turkeys were first introduced to the Thanksgiving dinner table way back in the early 1600s. No record explains exactly why the Pilgrims chose turkey for this historic feast. They weren’t the plump and juicy turkeys we know today— in fact, they were embarrassingly skinny by comparison. Then again, so were cows and sheep.

No, the choice of wild turkey remains a bit of a conundrum, although it might have been because the Pilgrim’s guests were the Wampanoag tribe.

The Wampanoag…

“Everybody’s talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” Maureen Dowd

“Reading is 4 chumps, brotha,” Mew16 wrote on reddit, an opinion shared by many in the discussion group — and not just brothas. As one woman explained, “Maybe it was being forced to read for 12 years, and the whole thing associated with shitty teachers and shitty people and shitty memories.”

Whether “shitty” memories can account for not reading, or the content of books themselves, certainly there’s a turn-off rate. …

“It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.” Dolly Parton

“Whoosh,” she’d say, tossing another log on the fire.”Whoosh, whoosh,” the next time, and the time after that. Sparks flew in and out of the hearth.We moved the rug back, then the old colonial furniture, then her.

She kept saying she wanted more fire. “You’re going to burn the place down, Sylvia,” we kept telling her. Ten minutes later, another log got tossed. “Whoosh,” she’d say, firelight in her eyes. She was a monster.

Kevin, innocent as a deaf puppy, brought Sylvia.

We…

“Go home and sin and come back with a song I can sell.” Sam Phillips

“You’ve got a song you’re singing from your gut,” Johnny Cash once said, “and you want that audience to feel it in their gut, too.” He spent a lot of years trying to connect this way. Some songs did it better than others, probably the most powerful being “Folsom Prison Blues.” It was the second of Cash’s songs recorded on Sun Records (the first was “Hey, Porter”).

Cash must have sung “Folsom Prison Blues” thousands of times during his career. He even sang it at…

“I don’t care if someone wants to go out there and worship the bark on a tree.” Jesse Ventura

We didn’t see much of her the first couple of weeks. She left for work later than we did, and didn’t get home until eight or nine in the evening. Al, her landlord and our neighbour, said she worked as a dancer at a jazz club. Al didn’t care much for jazz. “As long as she pays her rent,” he’d tell us in our shared driveway, “I don’t care what kind of dancer she is.”

One evening we’re talking to Al…