Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

If a skitter bites your big toe
It’s useful to let the bug know
It has sealed its fate –
You’ll retaliate.
You don’t let bad things like this go.

By Jim Hagarty
2007

It’s not easy to come by a little bit of dignity in this world and it’s hard, for us all, sometimes, to keep our heads up with all the little humiliations we have to put up with in the average week.

But if people sometimes wonder what it is we have to do for a little respect, imagine the plight of the lowly hamster, who, though well fed, has a curious role to play in the scheme of things. As far as can be determined, these little guys are born to amuse – people. Plain and simple. And so they tear around in their little cages, in full view of the members of whatever household they happen to land in, eating, sleeping and, well, you know, in full view of everyone. If they want privacy, they can crawl into a cardboard tube or cover themselves up with woodshavings but that’s about it as far as any personal space is concerned.

They run their little ferris wheels so long and hard that they finally collapse in a pile. And let loose in their “space balls”, they explore every square inch of their surroundings, leaving nothing out and shaking off the concussions that surely must come from all that bashing and crashing into door frames and furniture.

One such creature, a “teddy bear” hamster called Hammy who has better sideburns than Elvis used to sport, recently took up residence in our home, bringing with him, at the same time, equal amounts of delight and despair.

He’s a better entertainer than half the talent on TV, as he rides along in his big plastic Barbie car, sits on our shoulders and heads and hurls himself off furniture in an effort to go sightseeing – alone.

But Hammy has a dark side to his nature which has us all worried. Though pretty chipper on the surface, it’s apparent he is a pretty conflicted little fellow down deep inside. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that our young hamster has a death wish.

The reason for this admittedly gloomy assessment is the fact that our furry rodent has escaped his quarters four times this week and for such a creature to run free in a house with two murderous cats is just plain asking for it.

The first brush with doom came when the lid popped off his space ball and he broke loose from his confinement. Having not heard the ball in a while, we looked up to see our diminutive dodo ripping around the front hallway with two very interested kitties in hot pursuit. I grabbed the water bottle we keep handy for emergencies and sprayed the cats, but in the excitement managed to give Hammy a good shower as well. He seemed grateful to be returned to his cage.

A couple of similar incidents followed and on Saturday, he somehow escaped from the downstairs bathroom while his cage was being cleaned and headed for behind the furnace which also happens to be the cats’ hideaway. I have sported a gash on my head all week as I slammed my noggin squeezing down to pick up the quickly disappearing prey.

But things really came undone when he ventured too far off a lap, causing our most homicidal feline to pounce, grab the little guy in his mouth and prepare for the final assault. Only extreme yelling and commotion caused him to drop his toy and run for it.

And this is where the dignity part comes in. Imagine if every time we went for a walk, we were hunted down by creatures 20 times our size.

But it also may have something to do with this. As I was going through some receipts the other night, I came across the one for Hammy. Instead of “hamster”, it read “dog food – $8.99.”

No wonder he is depressed. It’s just too bad he’s so determined to fulfil what might be his curious destiny, though it will be cats, and not a dog, who prepare him for the feast.

By Jim Hagarty

I have a daughter, 18, and a son, 20. They both have iPhones. And they both, this week, have been talking about Pokemon Go. My daughter has even wandered around our town, playing it.

It is at times like these that I feel I am sharing my home with two Martians and their mother. Or they are sharing their home with some weirdo from Jupiter.

Where the hell did Pokemon Go come from?

And what the hell is it?

Attempts have been made to explain this thing to me. They were as effective as explaining squirrels to a dog. Mostly because I don’t want to know what Pokemon Go is. By the time I learn about it, it will be Pokemon Went, that is one thing I know for sure.

I am not a Luddite (one who hates modernity) and I consider myself pretty cool with today’s technology. But it is as though things keep falling right out of the sky and I am not ready for them and never will be.

I think it took about one 24-hour cycle between the time I first heard about personal drones and the news that a friend of mine had one and was posting pictures on the Internet that he had taken with his. Then another friend got one. Then I saw a video of a handgun that had been attached to a drone. The owner flew it somewhere and emptied the gun just to see if it could be done. Then a news story about a woman sunbathing on her balcony when she looked up to see a peeping drone above her.

All too fast. All too fast.

Before that, it was the “Cloud” which just fell out of the clouds. I had no idea what it was but I think I use it today. Through my phone and laptop.

Then I woke up one day to see people making artificial human limbs using their 3-D printer.

Whaaaatttt?

Then there was the Apple iWatch and after that, every company had some version of an Internet powered watch.

And, of course, autonomous cars. They drive themselves. Now we can run over other people without lifting a finger.

Flying cars are on their way.

But the next thing to fall from the sky won’t be anything anyone will be able to predict. One day it will just be there.

And within a very short period of time, it will just be ordinary. Maybe even gone.

I am not yet ancient, but in our home when I was a kid, our telephone was a brown box attached to the wall. And I was seven before we got our first black-and-white TV. And it only broadcast seven hours a day, starting at 4 p.m.

I guess things fell from the sky back then too, but they seemed to take a bit longer to float down to the earth.

I am sure my parents lived in a constant state of shell shock.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was a gunslinger named Jud,
Whose reputation was nothing but mud.
More often than not
He missed what he shot.
But at least things weren’t covered in blood.

By Jim Hagarty

Maybe your experience has been different from mine, but for some reason I cannot explain, I can’t get rid of my junk by holding garage sales.

They obviously do the trick for other cluttermongers – some communities, in fact, pass bylaws limiting the number of yard sales a homeowner can have in a year because some are basically small businesses in disguise – but the few I’ve had have ended only in discouragement and embarrassment as I am continually forced to haul all the old stuff back into the garage.

It might be my prices. I’ll admit, greed gets the best of me and with visions of walking away with sagging pockets of freshly minted coins, I may be pricing myself out of the market. Maybe $10 is too much for a picture frame that cost $3 five years ago. And presentation could be a problem. I kind of just spread everything around loosely on the grass, on the driveway, in cardboard boxes, on a couple of old tables. It may be that I need to hire a marketing guru or business coach to help me catch the eye of those hard-nosed bargain hunters out there.

But the biggest drawback, I can easily see, has to be with my timing. It appears as though you cannot straggle out of bed at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning and start pricing and hauling your stuff to the street after that. The real, professional garage sale junkies have already ransacked the town by then and have gone to wherever these people hang out between garage sales.

Which might be the crux of the problem. I guess I am a stranger in the yard sale subculture. If you get offended by people wandering through your garage offering you a buck for things they’ve been clearly told are not for sale, then yard peddling might not be the thing for you. And putting an ad in the paper saying, “No early birds, please” just seems to serve to attract them.

You also cannot have sensitive feelings to be a success in the garage-sale world. When someone thinks 25 cents is too much to pay for an old flute and tries to work you down to 15 cents, you simply can’t take it personally. Accept that you are talking to an alien, take their 15 cents and move on, and see if they ascend to some sort of Mother Ship after they leave. In fact, if rudeness bothers you, don’t even think about exposing yourself to it by displaying the things you’ve been hoarding all these years. Your tender ears might be shocked at what you’ll hear.

But here’s the real rub. If everyone was as much a washout at this activity as you are, you might feel surrounded by compatriots. That, however, does not seem to be the case. A woman down the street announces proudly that she made $500 on her recent sale ($75 of which was yours). And an old friend from another town says he recently hauled in $950 at a blowout lawn sale.

Give me a break!

Two summers ago, my son and I sat patiently watching people glance at – and walk by – our pile of what might euphemistically be called rubbish on their way to a neighbour’s place two doors down. The couple there were doing a booming business and we watched with bewilderment at how everything they had for sale, sold, including all the stuff on this big, long table. And then, when they were packing up for the day, somebody came along and bought the table!

Last weekend, I put a few things out and amazingly, sold a couple of items. I leaned the bike I bought a few weeks ago for $10 up against a tree with a pricetag of $15 on it, hoping to launch a career as a capitalist. A woman pulled up in her car, got out and asked whether or not I’d take $10 for it as that is all she had on her. I said sure.

I also vowed never to do this again and have spent all week making deposits at the various charities around town as well as the dump where I probably should have been taking all this stuff all along.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A sweet little squirrel name of Joe,
Gathered up nuts like a pro.
But he failed to provide
A place they could hide,
So another squirrel took them, you know.

By Jim Hagarty

OK, explain to me the deal with the patio heaters and fans

You might think that one of these days, modern technological innovation would suddenly come to an end, every possible inventible thing having already been invented. Instead, it is the reverse: The pace of innovation is speeding up all the time. Or is that the pace of marketing?

A while back, I was flipping through a flyer when a photo of a beautiful backyard deck caught my attention. I think what impressed me the most was that the quality and price of the furniture on that deck would exceed the value of the tables and chairs in many people’s homes. In the insides of their homes, that is.

In fact, it occurred to me that this particular arrangement of furniture could easily replace the average person’s inside stuff and I started thinking back to the Lawnchair Years – university and shared apartments and all that. A sturdy lawnchair in those days was a prized possession.

But how wealthy do we have to be to be able to sink hundreds of dollars into furniture that birds will poop on and squirrels go tearing across?

The phenomenon is this. For years, we have been trying to replicate the outdoors inside our homes. We have showers, grow plants, and start fires and even allow birds and four-legged animals – in some cases snakes, iguana and turtles to run and slither around and birds to fly about.

Now, we are taking our indoors, outdoors. And we are willing to spend a king’s ransom to do it. Further proof is needed, you say. Well here it is.

In the photo in that same flyer I referred to above was a stylish outfit known as a patio heater. Now, is this an achievable goal – to warm up the outside?

Here is some more proof. A few weeks later, I saw a similar device, the job of which it is to cool down the patio. Hence, its description as a patio fan.

So, in our obsession to control every minute detail of our environment, we have invented patio heaters to do the job of the sun and patio fans to do the work of the wind.

The person who thought up the patio fan must have turned to someone and said, “Do you think anyone will buy something like this?”

“Send it down to marketing,” would surely have come the reply. “They can sell anything.”

And if you think that isn’t true, ask yourself what would have been your reaction if someone had told you a dozen years ago that you’d be willing today to lay out a few hundred dollars for a wee, high fidelity juke box that fits in your pocket. Or a bicycle powered by an electric motor.

The more educated and populated becomes the world, the more new devices will be created, useful or otherwise.

I talked to a man recently who told me he can open his front door here in Stratford when he is in Toronto, a two-hour drive away, using his smartphone. That’s not something that most of us need, but someday, we probably will have that same gizmo.

And as long as we want our lawns to look like indoor carpets, and our indoor floors to look like big, flat outdoor rocks, the inventors and marketers will keep laughing all the way to their automated banking machines.