Author: Jim Hagarty

Okay, I’ve got as big a soft spot for man’s best friend as the next guy. Or, maybe I don’t.

But umbrellas for dogs?

Do the umbrella manufacturers of the world really need to put on a night shift to crank out cute little parasols which are fastened by way of a wraparound, velcro-tightened thing which goes up and over the doggie’s torso? Am I missing something, or did God not already make arrangements to keep dogs relatively dry in a rainstorm by covering them with fur? That’s fur as in f-u-r; the stuff we can make coats out of, or used to. Yeah, that stuff.

I truly am glad that there are people in the world who spend their time thinking up groovy new things (such as words like groovy) but I really wonder when the day will come when someone somewhere will declare, as someone actually did in the 1890s, that everything that can be invented, has been invented. Will that be a hundred years from now, a thousand?

Ask yourself this simple question. Do you need a radio built into your toaster? In fact, is there anything now that radios can’t be built into? They’re in flashlights and toolboxes and shower stalls. How long before your favourite station starts churning out the hits the moment you sit down on your touch-sensitive toilet seat and stops when you stand up? The only thing, in fact, that they are not building radios into – are radios.

TVs built into the outside of refrigerator doors. Is this a good idea? In a 24-hour period, how many minutes or seconds do you actually stand in front of your closed fridge door? Like radios, TV screens are popping up everywhere. In the backs of the seats in new vans and, of course, on telephones. This must seem pretty crazy to someone still around who remembers the days before radio and TV, but even to someone such as me who didn’t see a TV in our home till I was seven and when it did arrive it was encased in a big wooden box in the corner of the living room, the big black phone being attached to the wall kitty corner from that, this stuff is a heck of an adjustment.

Do we need car windshield ice scrapers that take 12-volt batteries and bring the benefit of their heat to the glass? I guess we do. What about battery-powered, water-shooting teeth flossers. Pick me up a couple, would ya mind?

A computer mouse that massages your hand as you move it around is just the ticket. Why didn’t I think of that? I could have retired last year.

I don’t have an MP3 player yet, but someday I’ll probably get one. When I do, I might just pick up the new one that is roughly the size of a silver dollar and holds hundreds of songs. It has twice the memory of the Apple computer I paid $4,000 for in 1994 and which is so heavy it would have still been sitting on my desk if Hurricane Katrina had blown my house away.

Everything is digital. Cameras, of course. But also thermometers, pedometers, odometers, barometers and whateverometers. Digital weigh scales. Clocks, watches, voice recorders. And what isn’t digital is motorized – toothbrushes, screwdrivers, pencil sharpeners. Bicycles. Kids’ lifesized toy cars.

Something that is coming, that I only recently heard about and didn’t completely take in, are miniature DVD screens on tombstones. At a touch, relatives will once again be able to hear their loved one’s voice, see them in their younger days, in an old home video. Okay, I guess, as long as the video is not X-rated. Like the poor mom in Peterborough whose daughter pawned her videorecorder, but forgot to take out the tape, a tape which showed mother being kind of unmotherly, if you know what I mean. In this day of instant video distribution, of course, Mom’s movie was soon playing in every home theatre in town.

A problem pre-video camera people – you know, we hair-covered cavemen – never had to worry about.

©2005 Jim Hagarty

Someone somewhere embarked on a critical mission and dedicated hours, maybe years, of their life to successfully inventing a resealable chocolate bar wrapper.

I must have missed the announcement. Did important people the world over identify a need for such a thing? Does the inventor not know that the average chocolate bar eater consumes the whole darned outfit in one sitting usually lasting about 30 seconds?

We chocoholics do not squirrel away our treasures and portion ourselves out one little square of creamy goodness every day. Five hefty chomps and the whole silly thing is gone, as it should be.

I would say a person who reseals chocolate bars for future consumption needs to get themselves to a psychiatrist right away as there are obviously some childhood potty training issues to be worked out.

So, instead of curing cancer, someone spent a year or two of their life coming up with a resealable wrapper.

I could ignore this (and maybe I should have) except for the fact that you have to have the skill and precision of a diamond cutter to open the freakin’ thing. This is not a boycott, but I have to stop buying these stupid bars as I cannot afford the frustration level involved in opening them.

Someday I will tell you about how things were in the good old days but for now I am busy picking away at this little wrapper like a gerbil with a sunflower seed, except I expect the gerbil is making more progress than I am.

I just hope that other important advances in the preservation of sweet treats, such as mini freezers for keeping partially eaten ice cream cones alive and something to extend the life cycle of chewing gum are also keeping scientists in their labs at night, burning the midnight oil.

©2013 Jim Hagarty

I haven’t gotten to be fabulously wealthy by luck or by accident. It has taken a lot of hard work and ingenuity but most of all, I have always made it my business to take care of every penny that has come my way. Because, as the old saying goes, take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. I am especially careful not to let money slip away from me while I am not looking.

That is why I was disturbed tonight to take a look at my PayPal account. For the past month, there has been a consistent amount in that account and suddenly, for no apparent reason, the amount has decreased by five percent. For the past 30 days, there has been 21 cents in my PayPal account, not a fortune, I will admit, but somewhere along the line I earned that 21 cents and it is mine. All mine. So imagine my distress tonight when I checked the account to discover that there is now only 20 cents in it. I examined my electronic statement from the company high and low and I am not able to discover what would explain the sudden drop in the total funds in my account. Somewhere along the line, a penny has disappeared and as I said earlier, by looking after my pennies, the dollars have always taken care of themselves.

That penny did not dissolve or otherwise disappear. It is still out there somewhere. Someone else, who might have had 30 cents in his PayPal account, now has 31 cents. PayPal is a very large company now and this is how the big financial institutions are ripping off the little guy. I want to know where my penny has gone and I will not rest till I get answers. Friday, if it takes me all day, I will be on the phone with PayPal, looking for my missing funds. If I have to go all the way up to the president of the company, I will. And if I have to sue someone to get my penny back, by God I am going to do it.

It might just be that I will have to take my 20 cents out of my account, which I will then close, and instead keep that money in a sock tucked under my mattress. Yes, some criminal might break in while I am away and steal it, but someone is stealing it anyway, so I would rather it be stolen from right under my nose and it would be my nose as I like to sleep face down.

I read years ago that it is not worth a man’s time to bend down to pick up a penny off the sidewalk if one is discovered lying there. Whoever wrote that story calculated the time it would take for a man to pick up that penny, and the author came to the conclusion that it was simply not worthwhile to make the effort. If it took a man one minute, for example, to pick up that penny, he would be working for 60 cents an hour and that just makes no sense at all.

But, I remember the days as a kid, scouring the ditches around our farm for pop bottles I could return to the store for two pennies. I also remember my first job on construction where I made 165 pennies every hour. So, this is no small matter. I will have my penny and then I am going to lobby for a new law that prevents big companies from engaging in this sort of horrible wage theft.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

I have often wondered if I get inspired too easily. I read stories about other people and I say to myself, “I wish I could do that.”

Today I read about a woman who has had nine surgical procedures to look like Ivanka Trump. Always, my next question is, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

It isn’t that I want to look like Ivanka Trump. I think that is aiming a little too high. I have sort of let myself go over the years and I am not up for a breast reduction, for one thing.

No, I would like to look like Ivanka’s dad. And I think this can be achieved without nine surgeries.

Donald Trump and I have the same basic body style, though I am shorter than he is. We both sort of hunch over when we walk and lumber like Bigfoot rambling through the forest, trying not to be seen. And Donald and I normally wear facial expressions that seem as though they could only result from about six straight hours a night sniffing gasoline fumes. We seem to also share intelligence levels.

What I would have to change is my hairstyle. But I think that is easily doable. I can drive out to any farm around where I live in Canada and buy a nice big bale of yellow straw from a field of barley. Then I would deliver it to a weaver to work her magic. Finally, I would glue my new hairpiece to my head with Elmer’s carpenter glue.

One long red tie later and I will soon have people screaming out their car windows at me as I walk the streets. I hope I can handle the adulation. There is no operation for that as far as I am aware.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

I live an hour away from the city of London in southern Canada, a place with almost half a million residents. When I was young, there was a colourful and popular AM Radio deejay in that city who hosted a morning call-in show.

One day, or maybe for a few days, bowling enthusiasts began calling in to Bill Brady, the witty broadcaster, with complaints about the state of bowling facilities in London. What had the bowlers upset was not any shortage of bowling alleys in the city but the fact that there were very few opportunities for “open” bowling, the chance for friends to simply drop in to an alley and enjoy a few hours of their favourite sport. The reason for the restriction was that, as the complainers explained it, all the bowling times were taken up by league bowling. If you were not part of an official team in an official league, you were out of luck.

The deejay listened to call after call with great sympathy until finally he received a call from a man who lived in a small hamlet located 10 miles or so outside the city. The very old community, called Birr, is home to fewer than 50 people.

“Ya, Bill,” said the caller. “We’re having a heck of a time out here in Birr.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Bill Brady.

“Well,” said the caller. “A brand new, 40-lane bowling alley opened up here recently and the noise from that place is driving everyone nuts.”

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Brady.

“Well, not only is this place huge, it’s open 24 hours a day and it is all open bowling. No league bowling at all. The noise from the bowling and from all the cars coming and going and the bowlers talking and laughing in the parking lot is keeping us all awake every night.”

“That sounds pretty disturbing,” said Brady.

“It’s just awful,” agreed the Birr man. “Do you have any ideas what we can do about this?”

Bill Brady promised he would look into the matter with authorities to see if any local bylaws could be enforced to bring more peace and quiet to the citizens of Birr.

The next few days saw bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving London and heading for the phantom bowling alley in Birr.

That infamous call was made about 50 years ago. Bill Brady is long gone and maybe, perhaps, is the annoyed caller from Birr. On the other hand, I was driving through the crossroads community yesterday on my way to London when I noticed a sign on a small house close to the highway signalling the “Mayor of Birr” had his office on the premises. Birr, of course, is too small to have a mayor. Or a bowling alley. But maybe the village’s most famous prankster is still up to his tricks after all this time.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

I am sitting in a pizza shop in a huge shopping complex in a large city in Canada.

Every time the door opens, my napkins blow off onto the floor and a cold wind sweeps over me as though I was adrift on an iceberg. That’s because all these gigantic stores, though connected, somehow forgot to put a roof over their mall.

What the heck is it with the end of the enclosed shopping mall? I’ve always loved those warm, cozy places. I could sit hour by hour on a nice big bench with coffee in hand and people watch. Now and then, someone I knew would sit down beside me and we’d chat. I will pay you $100 if you will bring me a photo of a bench anywhere in the new commercial centres and if you find one, it will be sitting outside somewhere at the mercy of the weather.

Now, with these Titanic-sized stand-alone stores with entrances that face the parking lots, you have to walk half a mile from store to store in the frickin’ cold, dodging cars like a fox trying to lose the hounds.

Oh well, as a friend of mine used to frequently say and now I do too, they didn’t ask me before they went ahead with this and so they did it wrong.

©2012 Jim Hagarty

There could be only one reason our birdbath was always empty. There must be a hole in it. I fill it three times a day and soon there is not enough water left in it to drown a gnat.

However, I thought it might be possible that the birds are taking so many baths they are causing our water bill to shoot through the roof.

Sure enough, I looked out the kitchen window one day last week to see a dozen starlings standing on the edge of the bath waiting their turn. And there they were. Two of the medium-sized speckled birds taking a bath at the same time. And they were splashing up a storm.

Then a third starling slipped into the rapidly dwindling pool and started flapping its wings like crazy.

Mystery solved.

However, the drama wasn’t over. Soon, a fourth starling joined the first three and before long, a fifth guy jumped in. It began to look like a typical Friday night hottub party without the bikinis and the booze.

But my jaw dropped when Starling No. 6 squeezed itself into what was left of the bath and I could hardly see the bathers for the plumes of water they were generating while another six stood on the edge of the bath, waiting their turn.

When the bathers all suddenly left as though they were late for a meeting, I went out to inspect the damage. There were several feathers in the remaining water which was so sparse it was completely gnat friendly. And there was a whole lotta poop.

I cleaned the whole thing out and prepared for the next big communal party.

It’s a living.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

A friend sent me a bit of a nasty email. He has a bad habit of doing this. Almost every time he hits “send”, his list of real-life friends gets a little shorter. But many of us take this quirk of a character flaw into account and stack it up against his many better qualities.

I hang in there, but it isn’t easy. I replied to this latest email very carefully, as I always try to do, in order to avoid the mountain-molehill phenomenon. I kept writing, then backing up and erasing and starting again, to choose better wording.

At one point, a part of one of my sentences read, “…if you want to…” I erased that line and wrote something else. But maybe I didn’t get rid of it all.

Just before I hit send on my reply, I notice some stray letters at the very start of the message, right at the top. They were: “f you.” They were left over from “if you want to.” A Freudian slip? My true feelings?

I don’t know, but I broke out in a sweat, deleted the f you and sent the message. Maybe I should have left those four tiny letters in. Or maybe I’ll use them in my reply to the next nasty message which I know will be coming soon.

The worst thing that ever happened to my friend was the invention of email. Seriously. Worst thing. Ever. And I am not effin’ kidding.

The distance between the brain and the computer screen is simply not far enough for some opinionated souls. In the old days, we were told to write the letter but wait one day before sending it. Most of the time, we would end up ripping it up.

Emails, it seems, are not so easy to shred. Common sense is a wonderful commodity but sometimes it just can’t keep up with the pace of change.

©2012 Jim Hagarty

It’s a well-known fact of life that sometimes a person’s best intentions go up in smoke and lead to the worst circumstances.

This has happened to me a time or two in my long life and now it has happened again.

My family and I no longer had any use for a very nice workbench a carpenter had built for our shed. The shed had been repurposed and now there isn’t much work goes on in there, hence the surplus workbench.

So, we moved it against one wall of the back of our house, right under the kitchen window, and it has seen a lot more use there than it ever did or ever would have when it was in the shed.

As I had befriended the wild rabbits in our backyard and as winter was coming on, I worried over how they would survive. So, I (cleverly) filled in the bottom third of the workbench with boards after raking a pile of leaves underneath it to make it more attractive for the bunnies. Lots of soft bedding for them, I calculated. I left a rabbit-sized opening at each end so they could make a hasty retreat if a predator joined them under the bench.

It didn’t take long for My Bunny (practically a pet now) to discover her new digs and to wander in there for a look. I happened to be standing next to one of the openings when she came bouncing out one day, hopping right across my feet.

“What a great guy I am,” I remarked to myself, as I reached to pat myself on the back.

But the bunnies gave a terrible review of their new winter home and abandoned it right away. I am not sure what I did wrong but there must have been a design flaw somewhere.

So tonight came the good intentions gone bad.

We have had a skunk lurking around our yard very late at night and early morning for the past month or so. It feasts on the birdseed I spread on the ground.

I am not a big fan of skunks and I wondered where the smelly creature was hanging out when not dining under the bird feeders.

Tonight I got my answer.

Standing outside well after dark, I saw a telltale fluffy black and white tail disappear under our workbench. It then turned around and stuck its nose out the doorway, fleeing back inside once it saw me standing there.

This annoying wild animal has taken up residence in the wonderful hutch I made for the bunnies that seem to prefer to freeze half to death in a bush in winter than take advantage of my generosity and workmanship.

Later today, I’ll be busy evicting our newest tenant and boarding up its apartment.

If it gets upset and take revenge on me, I’ll be eating my meals in the shed for a while. At least there is no workbench in there now to stumble over.

©2023 Jim Hagarty

The first thing I am going to do when I get to be 86 is sue my daughter for $520 million. That is what Frank Stronach has done to his daughter Belinda and I think it’s a heck of an idea.

Frank says his darling Belinda has mishandled their company called Magna International since she took over and he wants to see things put right and $520 million in his bank account. All those times he tucked her in at night when she was a toddler, I wonder if he whispered to himself, “Some day, Belinda, you are going to pay!”

I have many years to go before I turn 86 in 2037 and that also gives my daughter almost two decades to save up $520 million for when I come a’callin’ for my money. I think that is fair notice.

If she sets aside $27 million a year, and with the interest added on, she will have more than enough to settle my claim. Then, as these things go, I will promptly die the next day and give it all back to her in my will.

Without my lawsuit threat hanging over her head for 19 years, I am more than certain she would fritter away that $520 million and wonder where it had all gone.

Best savings program ever.

Dads have to look out for their daughters.

©2018 Jim Hagarty