Maxed Out

Bowing perhaps to the obvious, the U.S. military has decided to stop training government-backed militias and local security forces in Afghanistan.

"Freedom is Slavery" – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four This weekend is Labour Day. If you're visiting from south of the border, that is not a typo.

Frankly I'm perplexed. Puzzled. Mystified. Try as I might, I just can't choose an answer. I've winnowed the possibilities down to two but as soon as I pick one, I start thinking the other might be better.

People choose to become tax exiles for different reasons, or at least different versions of the same reason: greed. Stripped of the rhetoric, it all comes down to keeping more of what they've made, inherited, swindled or stolen.

With the dog daze of summer lingering about, ambition and work ethic seem to have taken what I can only hope is a temporary leave. Try as I might, nothing currently going on seems worthy of a whole column.

Some food is good for you. Some is just good. And some is, well, dangerous. Barbeque is dangerous. But it's not just food. Barbeque is religion. Barbeque is life. Barbeque is the archetypal example of doing more with less.

So here's a vacation idea; picture this. Eleven days on an idyllic, white sand and shell beach in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Water so clear and blue you may never want to see water again because anything less beautiful would be disappointing.

Well now, is everything in order? Rail? Check. Chicken feathers? Check. Tar? Check. Rope? Check. I am shocked. Shocked! Some transgressions are simply too egregious, too pernicious, too vile to let slide with a simple firing.

One week ago, I was whipped. Beaten. Broken. Tired of rain, tired of cold, gingerly walking across ground swollen with water and capable of holding no more, I gave in to sloth and re-lit the furnace at Smilin' Dog Manor. The early morning temp was 7.

"I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse." - Woody Allen Okay, maybe the horse wasn't dead... maybe he was just sleeping.