Author: Jim Hagarty

Nothing’s simple any more. You hear it said. So do I. You might, in fact, have heard it from me. I’m usually saying it. People of the jury, I present as my evidence, well, just about every aspect of modern life.

It doesn’t matter what you go to buy, or to eat, or to watch in a theatre. Saturday, at one of these big movieplexes, a friend and I stood gawking for 15 minutes before the popcorn stand, weighing all the various options and packages priced for value. Bargain hunters from way back, we took our time and came up with what we think, but still aren’t sure, was the best buy.

Has anyone’s life improved as a result of having all this variety pumped into it? I don’t know. I do know that simplicity is as quaint a notion as table manners, modesty and diplomacy.

Witness my main piece of evidence. When I was a kid on the farm in the 1830s, our black and white TV got three channels. We picked up the broadcast signals from these local stations by way of a space-station-looking aerial on the roof of the house which we controlled by an electric “rotor” in our living room. Amazing science.

Today, in the city, of course, my TV-watching options are much more varied although my family and I have not signed up for all the channels money can buy. For 22 years, I have had a pretty good arrangement with my cable company. They’ve run a wire into my house, I’ve plugged it into my TV, they send me a bill for this luxury every month, and I pay it. Every year they send me a letter saying, sorry, but we have to charge you more for your service. I pay it. I don’t see any other cable companies banging on my door, so I have no choice.

Now, in my feeble mind, the simplicity of the relationship between me and my cable company goes like this: If I don’t pay, they take the wire away. Not hard to understand.

But this week, I received in the mail an “Important Notice of Changes” to my cable service. “As part of our ongoing effort to improve customer service, we have simplified the terms applicable to our various services.” I opened the document and it fell out before me like a scroll Julius Caesar might have read from. On that parchment are typed 5,493 words (I did a computer word count) defining the new relationship between my cable company and me.

Somewhere, a lawyer is basking in the south sea sun at a beautiful resort paid for with the money he or she charged my cable company to write to me with all these simplified terms.

There are 52 sections in the document and most of them seem to more or less define what awful things will happen to me if I don’t live up to the agreement.

Okay, here’s a little nugget: “We may assign or transfer the Service Agreement or any of our rights or obligations hereunder without your consent. The provisions of Sections 8, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and any other provisions of these terms which by their meaning are intended to survive termination. These Terms have been drawn up in the English language at the express request of the parties.”

I am baffled as I believe I am a party and I don’t remember expressly requesting this, or anything else, with the possible exception of being left alone.

Here is the most I can put together from all I’ve read so far. If I don’t pay them, they’ll take the wire away.

If I was writing the Simplified Terms, I’d reduce the 5,493 words to about 12: If you don’t pay your bill, you will lose your cable signal.

Words a TV-addicted couch potato like me can understand.

Expressly.

©2007 Jim Hagarty

Our cat Mario is 18 years old and getting kind of creaky. He has trouble going up and down stairs. So another family member regularly picks him up and carries him up the steps from the basement to the main floor to ease his journey.

Sometimes, I see him sitting at the bottom of the steps, meowing, telling me to pick him up and carry him upstairs. I don’t do that as I am not 18 and I’ve become a little wobbly on the steps myself. I imagine the disaster if I was carrying him squirming under my arm and trying to get upstairs, the two of us inevitably ending up in a horrible mess on the basement floor.

This morning, as I started to climb the steps, I could see he wanted a lift. Reluctantly, I had to reject his plea again and I started my journey upwards. I am not going to admit that I’m moving a bit slowly these days but as I reached the landing before three more steps to the kitchen, I saw Mario zooming past me like an Olympics speed demon.

I don’t know what to conclude. Either the cat is pretending he can’t climb the steps anymore or I am pretending I can.

©2024 Jim Hagarty

Our little dog Toby is 13 pounds of fun and fury. He’s a poodle and smart as, well, a poodle, which, next to the border collie, is the second smartest dog of all the breeds. So I have heard. And after 10 years of living with this little dynamo, I believe it.

Every time I take him to the groomer, she finishes off his bath and haircut by tying a fresh new neckerchief on him. He looks cute as a button when I bring him home, all freshly trimmed, and with his new scarf around his neck. His latest one is bright green with white polka dots.

The other night, the poor little fella suffered a wardrobe malfunction. I was sitting on the couch watching TV when he jumped up beside me with his kerchief in his mouth. He laid it down carefully beside my leg, and looked with great concern directly at me. It was his “do something” look I am accustomed to seeing several times a day, but this time was different. He has a whole mess of toys and plays with all of them on a regular basis but he never plays with a scarf that has fallen off, which they tend to do now and then.

This seemed to be the scenario. His neckerchief fell off which apparently upset him. He then put it together that if he brought it to me, I would probably put it back on him again. He got his wish.

The other thing that intrigues me is how well, after the past decade, he and I communicate with each other now. He has a variety of barks that all mean different things. And a whole repertoire of looks that he gives me depending on whatever need he has at the moment.

One look Toby has never given me is one of anger.

What I have learned over the years is that he has certain needs and he has become very good at letting me know what they are. And those needs do not just involve food, water, exercise, play, fresh air and sleep. There are other things that also require attention. Such as love. Several times a day he sticks his nose and then his whole head under my left hand (never my right, I am left-handed) because he wants to be petted. He also brings me his toys, hoping I will play with him.

And when I dress him in his sweater to take him for his walk in winter, he sticks his nose through the hole just like a toddler would and his legs through the legholes. During a thunderstorm, he follows me around vibrating and frightened, wanting me to pick him up and comfort him. He crawls into bed with me and dives under the covers.

We talk about godsends, without remembering what that word means. Toby was meant to come live with us, that I know. One Monday morning, I found myself with an unexpected $400 in my wallet. That night, we went to a breeder to size up her latest litter of puppies. Our son and daughter fell in love with the smallest one. I asked the woman how much it would cost us to take him home. She said $400, of course.

When we returned to pick him up two days later, she asked us what we had named our puppy. My daughter had chosen the name, Toby.

“That’s funny,” said the breeder. “That was his grandfather’s name.”

Ten years ago, not long after Toby arrived in our home, I retired. With my wife at work and the kids in school, I was alone at home all day. I needed, and found, a buddy in our funny wee dog. The Universe had come to the rescue yet once again.

My God I love that little guy.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

A couple of weeks ago, on the Internet, I noticed a good deal on a very large capacity thumb drive. So, I checked it out.

Since then, and it started immediately, on every page I surf, there are large gaudy ads for little tiny thumb drives.

Before that, I went searching for an inexpensive but good-quality set of headphones. Ads by the dozens for those followed my search. It didn’t matter what content I chose to view – music, news, commentary. There the ads were.

Before Christmas, I looked for a really good and not cheap audio recorder I could chirp my songs into. I can’t remember as far back as I’d like to but this has been happening to me over and over for years. Sometimes I don’t mind it as the ads keep me tuned in with the latest technological toys, but mostly, they are a nuisance.

So here is my plan to liven up my surfing.

As my polka dot bikini bathing suit is frayed and looking terrible, I am going to do a search for new bikini swimwear. As it seems to be mostly young women who wear these things, I foresee many enjoyable hours of surfing (ironic, eh) ahead of me this winter.

I don’t think much could go wrong with my plan but if the authorities do show up at my door, I promise to go quietly.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

Note to all serious junk collectors: here is a sign you have the sickness bad. You are parked at the far end of the second-hand store parking lot enjoying a coffee. Your eye catches, in the distance, their big green garbage bin. The lid is open. The bin is full.

And sticking out atop that pile of refuse are four perfectly good plastic lawnchairs. “What the hell?” you exclaim to no one.

Briefly, you consider driving over to the bin and loading those tan lovelies in your car. These are chairs someone didn’t want so they gave them to the second-hand store. And that store didn’t want them!

But you want them.

Somewhere there is a hotline, or ought to be one. Sadly, you leave, remorsing over what might have been. Your quality of life will have to remain in the moderate position for another day.

But take heart. There is always the local dump. You are still fond of the perfectly good bookshelf you retrieved from there one day, right from under the massive sign, Absolutely No Scavenging Allowed. You assumed, maybe incorrectly, that what was meant was it was illegal to steal that sign.

You even thought at the time, “I could use a sign like that.”

©2016 Jim Hagarty

It isn’t right to get a chuckle out of another person’s accident but sometimes, it can’t be helped. Like the mishaps shown on America’s Funniest Home Videos. A person falling off a boat into a lake or flying off a trampoline into a kiddie pool is funny, but for me, the humour often resides in the effort the person went to to create their own misfortune.

So, using scraps he found in the garage, a kid builds himself a ramp to ride his bike over. He tries it out and the ramp breaks or something else happens to land the poor schmoe on his head and wearing his bike like a pair of metal and rubber overalls.

This is what I laugh at: When a person goes to great lengths to create their own disaster. The funny thing about it is that, of course, he didn’t know all along that that was what he was preparing or he would have stopped shortly after he started. It is his innocence and ignorance of what is about to befall him that makes me chuckle.

This winter I have spent many cold overnights, on one occasion till 7 a.m., building three skating rinks in our backyard. The first two melted away, the third still lives. On the far side of the rink is a shed, in which sits a variety of shed stuff, including our portable firepit assembly – stand, pan, webbed top, etc.

On Sunday afternoon, I thought it would be an excellent time for a mid-winter fire to lift the spirits. So I hustled across the slippery ice, opened the shed door, and lifted the whole firepit contraption which, while not very heavy, is pretty awkward. Now, I could have left the shed, turned right and tromped through the snow, around the rink and to the backyard patio where we usually hold our fires. I could have. But that was the long way around. The short way, a much more sensible route, was to leave the shed and walk straight across the rink to the patio. This is what I did.

And this is what my feet did, halfway across the ice. They flew up to meet the sky. My head flew down to meet the ice. And the firepit, now curiously heavier than I had previously thought, flew down to meet my chest, shoulder, arm and stomach. Before it did, of course, it separated into four different parts, the better to pummel and puncture my suddenly prone body.

Now this is what I imagine. An old squirrel, sitting in our treehouse all winter, watching me make these big patches of ice and having no idea why I was doing this. Then looking on as I spread-eagled on my creation with a big black firepit crushing down on me as I lie there. I would not have blamed the little critter if it had let out a chuckle or two.

After all, I had worked so, so hard to doom myself to this fate. I was limping a lot due to a sore hip from tromping down all the snow for these rinks. Now I have a lame arm and shoulder to go with the hip. Fortunately, they are on the same side of my body so when I walk, I only moderately resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame.

This rink thing is working out just great! I don’t have any video but do you think AFV will give me the $10,000 if I just describe the whole affair to them?

©2013 Jim Hagarty

If I said I wasn’t hurt, I would be lying. First, my abysmal failure to win a free cup of coffee at my favourite coffee shop after repeated attempts.

And now this.

Three years ago, I was among the 75 Canadians who, along with 200,000 other people from around the world, volunteered to go on a one-way trip to Mars to help colonize the place. One-way trip as in never coming back. Ever.

It sounded like a heck of a good deal to me. Six months free travel in a little capsule with a few other people, then setting foot on the Red Planet which would be my new home till the end of time. It would not be crowded there, I wouldn’t have to walk the dog and there would never be another free coffee contest. At least I don’t think there would be.

But alas, today it was announced that six Canadians have qualified for the final round of selection for the 2025 trip. I am not one of them.

I am really getting tired of having my dreams dashed like this. I am as eager to leave this planet for good as some people I know are excited to see me go. And yet, Earth it is for me. For now.

I will write more about it when I get back from the coffee shop and have taken the dog for a walk.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

I have never been a pastor, so forgive me if I do not know all the ways a pastor should behave. The only thing that comes to my mind about being a pastor is that he should probably be kind, loving and helpful. Perhaps even wise. And maybe his family should be too.

But this is where my ignorance and reality collide sometimes, I will readily admit. If you are a pastor in Toledo, Ohio, you might have a different view of the whole pastoring best practices protocol.

Because in that city, a pastor and two of his family members apparently rushed into their church and ambushed a Sunday school teacher who was in the process of teaching a class. After physically attacking her, the pastor, his wife and daughter, dumped out the contents of the teacher’s purse. When the teacher tried to recover her belongings, the pastor pointed a loaded gun at her and threatened to kill her.

The pastor, his wife and their 19-year-old daughter, then scooped up their haul, fled the church and are currently on the run from police.

Reflecting on this, the old expression, “Things you find in a woman’s purse” comes to mind. I have not gone through very many women’s purses over my lifetime, but it makes me wonder just what it is they are carrying around in those things that would be so apparently valuable.

I know I am probably missing something here. But am I wrong to wonder what is being taught in pastor schools these days? When I was growing up, things like this hardly ever happened.

I can’t wait to hear what the good reverend has to say to his flock in his next sermon from the pulpit. Maybe, “Rob thy neighbour as thyself”?

©2018 Jim Hagarty

As I crawl under the electric blanket on my bed every night, I am grateful that such a thing exists. I am a cold-blooded animal, constantly at risk of freezing stiff as a two-by-four, so a warm blanket doesn’t seem to be a frivolous possession.

Still, the word “decadence” runs through my warm mind now and then and while I have not consulted the University of Google to find out the exact meaning of the term, my own definition would probably lay out that a decadent thing is a thing a person doesn’t need.

For many thousands of years, people have been covering themselves up at night when they sleep to stay warm. Cavemen and women probably used some form of wildebeest hide to keep the frost away. But it took some genius in the last century to think, “If I ran electric wires inside a blanket and plugged it into the wall, I bet I could sell millions” and here we are.

In effect, I go to sleep every night inside a low-grade toaster oven.

I would have to do an exhaustive survey of all my possessions to decide which of them I don’t need, but right off the bat, the plastic ice cubes I got for Christmas spring to mind. I know why the family member gave them to me. She has suffered through many years of the tantrums I have thrown as I have tried to get frozen water cubes out of their trays.

I could list may other devices like the plastic ice cubes to convict myself of the charge of decadence, but something I bought last fall I think would have any impartial jury yelling, “Guilty!”

I am referring to the butt warmer I bought for our car. I think of the many generations of my family which got from one place to another without even a car, let alone a butt warmer to put on the seat. Did they think, as they were sailing across the Atlantic after leaving Ireland in the 1840s, “I wish I had something warm to sit on”? I am going to go ahead and guess they didn’t say that.

In fact, I myself managed to live 70 years without a butt warmer and hardly ever mentioned to anyone, “Gosh my butt is freezing” but when you run out of things to buy, I guess you buy a butt warmer.

And, of course, as is the case with every decadent thing, once you have experienced the value of the new device, you can never go back.

If I ever emigrate back to Ireland, and it isn’t impossible that I won’t, I am taking my butt warmer with me.

And my plastic ice cubes.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

Not many of you probably know that I am a prolific inventor. My Dad was too. Most farmers are. Economics ensure they devise ingenious ways to do things as many of them can’t afford expensive new machinery.

I have several clever inventions on the go at present. For example, off the drawing board and into production is my WeinerRoaster, an aluminum cylinder slightly larger but in the same shape as a single weiner. It plugs in and cooks up a perfect tube steak in record time for diners in a hurry. The world has been waiting for this.

Then there is my PillowScape, which is doing very well. This is designed for those times in the middle of the night when, for no apparent reason, your pillow completely covers your face and seems to be weighted down somehow. There is a big panic button on the side of my amazing pillow which, when pressed, completely deflates it when mysterious accidents like this happen, usually to longtime married men.

But my crowning glory so far is the GPISS, or Global Positioning Indicator for Seniors System, which successfully guides old guys from their beds to the bathroom for their thrice-nightly visits in the dark. It is designed solely for men as studies have shown women somehow are able to wake from their beds and make a bee-line (also known in the industry as a pee-line) to the can and back again without as much as stubbing a toe, a remarkable feet.

The GPISS has several unique features. It wakes the old fella up at just the right times and even speaks electronically “not again”, saving the man the trouble of getting the words out. It can even be taught to add a couple of swear words to the comment.

The device also has several warning sounds it issues, indicating that the would-be bathroom visitor has, in his confusion, stumbled into the laundry (with a big tub waiting there), the rec room or even into a closet.

Mission accomplished, the stylish grey and white GPISS guides the grumpy old fart (an industry term) back from bathroom to bed and even plays soft lullabies to help him saw off again.

Get yours now for the incredible one-time price of $59.95 US, and if you order in the next fifteen minutes, the manufacturers will include, free of charge, my automatic nose-hair puller, HonkerKleen, which fits over the nose and is guaranteed to do the job painlessly.

Watch this space for more exciting products as I develop them.

You’re welcome.

(P.S. Inventor Thomas Edison lived in my city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada, for a while in the 1800s when he was a young man. He had an apartment above what is now a coffee shop called Edison’s on the main street downtown. The apartment is still there.)

©2023 Jim Hagarty