Month: January 2018

By Jim Hagarty
2015

Being a genius is not all fun and games. My mind is constantly working, looking for solutions to the world’s ills. This week I was sitting in a drivethrough lineup while a family of eight ordered their meals for the week, when inspiration struck. It strikes me a lot. I have many scars to prove it.

Environmentalists are very concerned about drivethrough restaurants. At any given time on any given day, hundreds of thousands of cars, vans and trucks are sitting in lineups, their engines idling, mufflers spewing crap into the atmosphere. There have been campaigns here and there to ban drivethroughs but the idea of armed insurrections by the villagers if ever a thing was done does not appeal to municipal officials.

Here is what needs to happen. I offer this at no charge to the world. Some clever people will figure out to “monetize” my brainwave.

Install moving driveways at every drivethrough, fancy conveyer belts that would stream all the vehicles in and out of the establishments. Once on the platform, engines could be shut off until the vehicles exit at the other end.

The Inventors’ Hall of Fame, here I come.

By Jim Hagarty
1990

The next time you witness something that disturbs you, and you’re sure you know exactly what’s going on and why, please think of what happened to me on Wednesday.

When I went to my car in the parking lot to head home from work, I saw an empty beer bottle lying on its side by my left front tire. Being an environmentally aware man of the ’90s and thinking about the dime I could earn just by returning the bottle to the store, I decided to pick it up.

No big deal.

I stood my prize upright on the floor of the car over on the passenger’s side and put the car in reverse. But as soon as the car moved, the bottle fell over. Worrying that it might spill some of its remaining contents on the rug, I picked up the bottle and gripped it in my right hand as I drove, holding it below the dash and away from me.

To this point, everything was going well and my good deed for the day was being done to my great satisfaction, even if the rest of the world was taking no notice of it all. But that’s the thing about good works. In order for them to benefit you spiritually, they shouldn’t be done in the glare of attention from the public. Quietly go about being wonderful and don’t ask for applause. You’ll get your reward somewhere along the line.

As for me, my reward’s still out there somewhere, seeing as how, predictably, I soon forgot I was carrying a beer bottle in my right hand and started driving with both hands on the steering wheel. This had the effect of raising the bottle well above the dash and into the full view of passersby on the sidewalks and drivers in other cars.

As I sat waiting for a red light at a busy intersection in town, I began to notice disapproving stares directed my way. People scowled as they crossed the street in front of my car and I started to get the feeling pedestrians were pointing at me.

At the same time, I suddenly felt a glare burning down on me like desert sun on sand and when I turned, I could see a look of great disapproval written on the face of the driver of the car waiting at the lights beside me. I looked away and then looked back to make sure it was me the man was scolding with his expression. When I was sure it was me, I gave him a sourpuss look of my own and mumbled something impolite under my breath.

“What a grouch,” I thought. “Cheer up, will ya? It can’t be that bad.”

Just before the light changed, I saw it – THE BEER BOTTLE! Dancing on the top of my steering wheel to the beat of the music on the radio. To the world at the corner of Waterloo and Ontario streets, I was a drinking and driving lunatic, a RIDE program renegade, having a party in my car in the middle of the afternoon. In broad daylight.

Guys like me should be stopped.

I put the bottle on the floor and drove through the intersection with my eyes straight ahead. This was one good deed from which I expect to get the full, spiritual benefit.

By Jim Hagarty
2013
Nothing better to start your day than the sight of a steaming pile of cat barf on the carpet. Reluctantly, you dig out the cleaning supplies and return to the scene of the crime only to find hardly a trace of throw up and a dog sitting happily nearby with a very satisfied look on his face. Next challenge is to avoid dog kisses for the next five hours – or longer. This is what is called a bad news, good news, bad news story.

By Jim Hagarty
1990

Drowning in an endless stream of disturbing news from everywhere, it’s easy to miss many important other stories taking place in the world.

One of those is the success Agriculture Canada scientists are having cloning cattle. After years of research, trial and error, they’re now close to perfecting a method of splitting cow embryos so they can reproduce in the lab almost any number they like of exactly identical cows. Already, three such cows and one bull have been cloned. And experts say there’s no reason this process shouldn’t work with other species of animals, including humans.

This development down the road of technological innovation, it seems to me, is a bit scary. How long will it be before a tyrant takes his fiercest, most able soldier and clones himself a million-man army of identical fighters? Or clones a couple hundred identical replicas of himself to take over leadership in the lands he conquers?

But there are other concerns.

In the United States, scientists have ventured even further in genetic manipulation than we have in Canada. According to Canadian Press: “Last month scientists in Texas announced they had produced genetically engineered calves by inserting genes from foreign species into fertilized eggs from cows. The foreign genes included one from humans. Researchers hope the additional genes will speed growth and make the cattle leaner.”

So, move over God, we’ve truly arrived at the time when we can produce designer animals. We can mix ’em up in a bowl like our favourite pies, pour them out on a tray, cook ’em and presto: instant horse, cow, dog, etc. We will be able to make them look like we want them to look, run as fast as we want them to run, even live as long as we want them to live by adding desirable genes from other animals.

What we may eventually get, by adding human genes to animals, for example, are cows that speak to their owners: “More hay over here, please!” Or cows that milk themselves.

And call themselves in from the fields.

But if we can add human genes and characteristics to animals so easily, the more frightening prospect is the certainty that soon we will be able to add non-human genes to humans. So, when we want to develop invincible high-speed runners, we’ll take a human embryo into the lab and throw in a little racehorse. When we want to raise the meanest, toughest professional wrestler around, we’ll toss a couple of pinches of gorilla into the bowl. (Watching some of them on TV, it’s open to question whether or not this has already been done.) On and on it could go. To develop long-distance swimmers, we’ll throw in some fish. For workers to develop that cold Antarctic continent, we’ll patch in some polar bear and penguin.

All this cloning and mingling of human and animal is bound to lead to many strange and frightening sights. Like pigs driving tractors and planting their own crops. And people with fins and gills who won’t need scuba gear to go take a look at the Titanic.

But now for the good news. Before your cute little Muffy’s born, the vet will bag up a few extra embryos for you which you can toss in the freezer. And when your precious little pet wanders out in front of that Mack truck, there’ll be no need to feel bad for long. You’ll just go back in the house, reach in your freezer and pop another Muffy into the microwave.

In fact, Muffy, probably part human anyway, may do the same for you when you go.

And some day in this crossbreeding future world, when someone angrily calls you a pig or a jackass, they might not be all that far off the truth.

Writers, of course, are leading the way as most of us already have some bull in us.

By Jim Hagarty
2018
Many of us lose our keys on a regular basis. Lucky for me, I finally have a solution for the problem. For Christmas, I was given a key finder, a little miracle device. So when I lost my keys today, I knew science was on my side at last. The problem is, I could not find the key finder and now need a key finder finder. I don’t know how the blasted thing works but I suspect it needs to be attached to my key ring. But the irony of it all is kind of delicious. It reminds me of a special blade that is sold in stores which is advertised to make easy work of getting into products that are enclosed in hard, glass-like moulded plastic. The hilarity of this thing is that the blade is enclosed in hard, glass-like moulded plastic as it hangs on the shelf at the hardware store. How am I supposed to get it out of the Fort Knox package and not leave my hands bruised and bloodied? In any case, I somehow lost my keys between the garage and my car, a distance of about three feet. I searched for a frantic half hour and was just about to sneak a bomb under the car and blow it up when I finally found them. In the ignition, of course. Turns out, I am the key finder. No science involved.

By Jim Hagarty
2013
I’m 62 and sometimes I wonder how my life is going. The other day, a 61-year-old man in Canada was charged after 155 cats were found in his freezer and 49 live ones were discovered in his apartment. My life is going pretty well.

By Jim Hagarty
2013

I write, play and sing country music, so I hope I can get away with this.

Wanna write a hit country music song? I am compiling a list of necessary words to use, in no particular order. If they look strange to you, try saying (or singing) them out loud, one at a time. Here goes. More to follow as I think of them:

Ah. Caint. Furgetchew.
Gohn. Craze-ay. Babe-ay.
Laid-ay.
Wand. Yor. Purdy. Liddle. Leps.
Messyu. Awllde. Tam.
Caint. Quet. Drankin’. Thankin’. Asscold. Beere.
Too. Manny. Mammaries.
Daddee. Toll. Me. Lotza. Fesh. Induh. Sea.
He. Wuz. Rat.
Gohn. Feshin’.
Baah.

By Jim Hagarty
2006

I was making my lunch for work on Wednesday and as I spread the peanut butter and raspberry jam on the slices of whole wheat bread – I admit it, I’m a health food maniac – I got thinking about all the many years of brown bagging I have done since the 1950s.

There was first, of course, the lunches at public school, nicely done up by Mom in a tin lunch box (plastic not having arrived on the scene at that time). Sometimes, what was contained within the box made it into my stomach, but sometimes it didn’t. Opening the box, in fact, was akin, on certain days, to parading a wildebeest in front of a ravenous pride of mangy lions: only the inedible portions would be left for me after the bullies got done ripping and tearing.

Hunger in schools is a hot topic nowadays, as well it should be, but it existed back in my day too, and in my case, not because provisions were not sent along on each day’s adventure in staying alive one more day in the jungle that could be the rural one-room schoolhouse. Other days, eating lunch in the “cloak room” – who wears a cloak, anymore? – with all the other boys, lunch time turned into a sort of middle-Eastern market where fruit, vegetables, meats and juices were exchanged amidst loud shouting and waving of arms. It seemed to be a truism that the other guy’s lunch always seemed better, and so, we learned early how to swing some pretty good deals. The dealers, however, were not always on equal footing, Grade 8s, for example, offering swaps with the innocent chaps from grades one and two. I cannot remember specifically, but I am sure I took part in a few of these shameless swindles somewhere along the line.

Lunches then, as they still are, were rated on the goodies quotient – what quantity and quality of cookies and other sweets made it into our lunchboxes. At certain times of the year, after Halloween, Christmas and Easter, the haul could be counted on to be pretty good.

Brown bagging lost its appeal in high school, replaced instead by $1.25 or so of “lunch money” left on the counter and grabbed as we ran out the door. This was enough funds for not only a meal in the cafeteria, but a chocolate bar at the “tuck shop”. Later, however, some of the food got edged out as the cigarettes, at 45 cents a pack, made their arrival on the scene.

One member of my family, who still carried a brown bag to school, unfortunately grabbed a wrong bag in his haste one morning and ended up with a bag of cat scraps that day, food stuffs we affectionately called swill. The cats always looked back on that day with fondness as their lunch prospects took a sudden, if temporary, spike in quality.

Opportunities to make my own lunch in university, assuming they were ever there, were never taken and subs and pizza became dietary staples. I shudder to think of the money that flowed freely from my pockets in those days.

Then there were summer jobs – house painting, truck driving, factories, construction – where lunch bags reappeared. The same old anticipation of each day’s lunch in the construction shack or factory lunch room that was felt in public school returned on those jobs, as did the same old disappointment as reality set in. Envy of what the other guys had spread out before them was also a constant curse.

For the last almost 30 years, economic necessity has kept me pretty well chained to the brown bag, which has probably not been such a bad thing. Had my pockets been bulging with extra cash all this time and I could have dined in restaurants three times a day, especially those of the fast-food variety, I might well not be here to write about this. An hour from the time of this writing, I’ll open my current lunch box, a big, solid red and white affair that looks like one of those special containers medics carry organs in on their way to a transplant, and I’ll spread out on my desk my sandwich, a banana, a glass of milk, a yogurt fruit bottom but most importantly, four caramel candies and a few chocolate chips.

And, out of habit, I’ll check out what my co-workers brought and wish I’d had that instead. All, that is, except for the caramels which l will jealously guard for myself, as any other self-respecting goodies hoarder would do.