Month: June 2016

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was a poor doggy named Fred.
“I’m always hungry,” he said.
“They do feed me kibble
But only a little.
I’m starvin’ and soon I’ll be dead.”

By Jim Hagarty

I could never live in Florida,
Though I hear it’s very nice.
I need to spend winters buried in snow
And falling down hard on the ice.

And I couldn’t live in Bermuda.
Though the beaches there look so fine.
I would miss the sound of snowblowers,
And the wind whipping through the pines.

Don’t even mention Tahiti,
Hawaii or old Mexico.
I’m sure those places are heaven on Earth
Except that they fail to have snow.

So here I sit in the sweltering heat
In the country that’s captured my soul.
Another few months I’ll be stranded inside
With my dog and remote control.

By Jim Hagarty

I tried to stop it. Brexit. Not the referendum by the British to leave the European Union. I couldn’t stop that.

I tried to stop the suffix “exit” from entering the lingo but it’s too late. Journalists have grabbed onto it and away we go.

France might be the next to go. That will be the Frexit. The headline on my morning paper today asked the question, Quebexit? Separatists in the Canadian province of Quebec are encouraged.

But get ready for a few painful months of “exit” at the end of everything. Garbage day: Traxit. Divorce? Weddexit? Leaving home? Nestkit?

I can’t think of all the ways it will be used just yet but I know that headline writers are losing their minds this weekend at the prospect of a whole new world. I know because I used to be a headline writer. We are a simple people, easily amused. But then I retired.

Or retirexit, if you will.

By Jim Hagarty

Please forward all future mail to my new home in the Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, all 58 letters of it. I had grown tired of living in a town in Canada with only 9 puny letters.

In English, that translates St. Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of Saint Tysilio of the Red Cave.

Before I moved last weekend, I checked out two other villages before deciding on the one in Wales but I found that the people who live in A in Norway and Y in France keep things just way too simple for me.

By Jim Hagarty

I am mad at my cat Luigi. Really mad, in fact. If he lived at your house, you would be too.

The reason I am upset is the boy will not look after his teeth. I have told him and told him to take better care of them, but he won’t. He is stubborn as a billy goat.

As a result, the vet has recommended Luigi be administered the Dental Preventative Package. This will cost Luigi $473.41. As he does not have a very high income at the moment, I will be forced to take it out of his weekly allowance, a bit at a time.

However, if in the course of getting the Dental Preventative Package, it is discovered the Luigi will need a tooth pulled, he is going to have to cough up $8.14 per minute for 30 minutes of surgery for a cost of $244.20.

Of course, he will also require 30 units of Isoflurane Maintenance at $3.30 for another $99. He will also need $71.46 of pre-anesthetic/surgery blood work. And finally, Luigi will have to dig into his mad money to come up with $30.50 for the blood collection fee.

The total for all this work will be $976.44 taxes included. That is if he needs only one tooth pulled. If he needs two, the price would rise by another $503.03 for a total of $1,479.47.

To recap: to clean the cat’s teeth will be $473.41 and to remove one tooth will increase the price to $976.44, two teeth, $1,479.47. To fix the teeth. Of a cat. A cat.

I have lectured Luigi till I am blue in the face and he hides behind the water heater because he doesn’t want to listen any more. But it’s clear. He is going to have to get a job. If we pay all his bills for him, how will he ever learn to be responsible?

Those mice don’t catch themselves, I have told him. He doesn’t listen. To him I am just a great big can opener with an attitude.

He does like my big toes, however. Every once in a while, he likes to sink his teeth into them.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was an old baker named Joe
Who died face down in his dough.
No one could guess
The cause of his death
But I think he kneaded to go!

By Jim Hagarty

Over the past few weeks, I have being writing (almost) daily tips on how to do genealogical research and family history projects. Today, I wrote tip number 25 and I think I will leave it at that for now. They are arranged from last to first but tomorrow I will reverse the order. The tips are located by clicking on Genealogy. My credentials are this: I have published a 400-page, hardcover book of family history and through my research I was able to find my family’s long-lost farm in Ireland in 1994. The house they lived in till the early 1850s was (and is) still standing. It can be done.

By Jim Hagarty

There’s a place I know
Where you don’t want to go.
You’ll regret it if ever you do.
Cause the folks who live in Curmudgeonville
Will point out what’s wrong with you.

Not one happy face
In this weird little place
Will you find if you wander the town.
Cause the folks who live in Curmudgeonville
Are always gloomy and down.

They wake up grumpy.
Their cereal’s lumpy.
And it’s all downhill after that.
Cause the folks who live in Curmudgeonville
Are sullen and angry and flat.

I never will know
What laid them so low
But one thing I am certain of:
The people who live in Curmudgeonville
Have forgotten what it is to love.

By Jim Hagarty
Here is another song from When the Day is Over, a CD by my friend and fellow singer-songwriter Caroline Danowski Burchill. It is called Vivien, My Friend. The CD is available for purchase at the Corner Store.

Vivien, My Friend by Caroline Danowski Burchill