Category: Uncategorized

By Jim Hagarty
2014

What kind of day did you have yesterday? Better or worse than this guy’s?

Walter “Snowball” Williams, 78, woke up in a body bag at a funeral home in Mississippi. He had been pronounced dead the night before but when they went to embalm him, he started kicking like crazy in the bag. So much for not having a snowball’s chance in hell.

The coroner had an explanation. His pacemaker likely stopped working and after he was bagged, it started working again at some point.

I am not a doctor, coroner or embalmer, but if this actually happens, might it not be a good idea to check a guy’s pacemaker before you plant him? Good old Snowball. I hope he outlives the coroner and all the employees at the funeral home.

Give ‘er hell, Snowball. You’ve gotten a second chance!

By Jim Hagarty
1993

This week’s continuing feature, You’ll Never Get Sick Of Being Healthy, looks at ways to identify when it’s time to slow yourself down. Although much is written on the subject of hurry nowadays, many people, when confronted, do not believe they’re rushing about too quickly. They are often surprised to learn impatience is playing any part in their lives at all.

Here then, at 10 sure signs you are out of control and need to ease back on the throttle a bit to lower your RPMs by a thousand or two. If you have experienced three or more of the following situations, it’s time to throw the brakes on.

You’re in too big a hurry when:

1. You find yourself pushing open an automatic exit door at the supermarket;

2. You can’t wait for the toast to pop up on its own, but grab the little plunger and force it up, half toasted;

3. You pull your pants out of the dryer and though they’re still half wet, slide them on anyway;

4. You call in the Mounties to investigate if someone who arrived in the restaurant after you, gets his coffee first;

5. You count the number of items the people in front of you at the supermarket express lane have in their baskets and suffer mental meltdown if some of them are cheating;

6. You sound the emergency alarm if the car ahead of you hesitates for three milliseconds after the light has turned green;

7. You pop a left ventricle, swear at the cat and ram your fist in your ear if the receptionist on the phone puts you on hold;

8. You play dodge ’em with a couple of 18-wheelers in an attempt to save a few seconds running across the four lanes so you can stand in line at the bank;

9. You work up an aneurysm while in a bank lineup when you see a teller or two discussing the weather and weekend plans with other customers after their transactions have been made;

10. You sob like an actor on General Hospital when you come across an accident on the highway and are forced to slow your car down to a crawl.

Now, if you identified with three or four of the situations listed above, you are in the beginning stages of Nervous Wreckitis and need hot baths, long walks and more sleep. If you agreed with between five and seven of the examples, you’re a Heart looking for a place to Attack and are advised to check out May Is Discount Month at the local cemetery.

If you could identify with eight or more of the above items, it’s T-minus-10 and counting. All that’s needed now is a clear day for liftoff.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

As if the world wasn’t dangerous enough, now cops are being attacked by women’s breasts and this just isn’t right. (Actually, in the case here described, it was the left one.)

Leave it to women to find a way to employ those vital life-giving glands to beat up male officers of the law. In Hong Kong, a female protester has been found guilty of assaulting a police officer with that well-known weapon: her breast. The woman was convicted of using her chest to bump the right arm of a chief inspector as the officer tried to control a protest in March. She claimed that what had actually happened was the officer took the opportunity in the midst of the chaos to reach over and grab her breast but fortunately, a wise deputy magistrate saw through that feeble lie and told her that what she had done was a malicious act.

Now, I am not a police officer and any place that hired me to be one would be very poorly protected from wrongdoers, but I think even I would have a little trouble going back to the police station and telling the other officers that I had just been attacked by a breast. The others would be getting treated after being hit by rocks, bricks and wooden objects. Some would be trying to recover from awful kicks to the groin by young people in steel-toed boots. Others would have been slashed by sharp objects of various descriptions. Some would be rushed to hospital. But a hush would come over the room when someone asked Chief Inspector Jim Hagarty what had happened to him, since I was displaying no visible wounds.

“Well,” I would say between tears. “A young woman smacked my arm with her breast.” The room would break out in groans of dismay and calls for revenge, but I would have none of it.

“Don’t worry,” I would say. “I have charged her and she will pay for her crime.” As obviously she should. Nothing can restore the chief inspector’s peace of mind, but at least this conviction in court is a start.

In time, it is hoped, that boob boo on his arm will heal enough to let him get on with his life.

By Jim Hagarty
1995

When I bought my television 10 years ago, I went all out and got one of those super-duper models that had a built-in “converter” which could receive 52 channels. I think, at the time, the local cable company was broadcasting 18 or 19 channels so it looked pretty good that this magnificent box in the corner with just slightly fewer dials and buttons than your average space shuttle would be a long time going out of date.

How was I to know that in January 1995 all of my 52 channels would be used up and there’d be three or four more that this marvel of modern technology wouldn’t be able to receive? Today’s cheapest TVs are made to accept as many as 181 channels and even they might become obsolete if the 500-channel future unfolds as we’re told it will.

So, I have 52 channels to surf through with my remote control now and still there’s hardly ever anything on. At least now it’s hardly ever on a lot more channels. And at 52, I feel cheated because I can’t receive the three or four more channels I’m entitled to.

Not to sound like Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln, but I remember a time not so long ago growing up on our farm when you could count on two black-and-white channels – 10 and 13 – and on bright nights, you might catch the CKNX Barn Dance on Channel 8. But even with that pitiful selection of channels that quit broadcasting before 1 a.m., I was able to catch the Leafs and Canadiens battle it out on Saturday night hockey broadcasts, see The Beatles knock them out on The Ed Sullivan Show and Hoss and Little Joe argue it out on Bonanza on Sunday nights. I saw Kennedy get shot, Armstrong step on the moon and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker fall from his throne and didn’t know I was being deprived.

So now, the 500-channel universe awaits and some technonuts who are in the know, are suggesting that someday soon, people will be able to send out their own broadcasts from their basement rec rooms. In effect, there’ll be millions of channels and every individual who wants one, will be able to have his or her own. I await with great anticipation the Jim Channel on which I’ll broadcast Easy Home Renovation Tips with Jim, during which I demonstrate the wonders of loosening oil and home acetylene torch kits followed by Treating Skin Burns with Jim. On Today’s Chef with Jim, I’ll feature the beauty of tuna fish sandwiches – For Two or Twenty – followed by Treating Ptomaine Poisoning with Jim. And if I forget to shut off the camera at night you might be able to tune in my all-night show, Sound A Sleep with Jim.

Of course, the downside of this new world may be the possibility that I’ll have to zip by the shows you’re broadcasting on my way to the news. I may be forced to catch a glimpse of Fred’s Fish with Fred, How To Make Your Bathtowels Fluffier with Wilma or Our Trip to Nevada with Herbie and Marsha.

And to those who will wonder where the good old days ever went, relax. They’ll be on channel 1864, right between the all-night Ben Franklin Channel and 24-hour-a-day Abe Lincoln Channel.

(Update 2018: The above prediction came to pass but we do not all have our own TV channels. Instead, we broadcast our own shows on the Internet.)

By Jim Hagarty
2013

A groundhog is living in our backyard. Not just any groundhog, either. This fat brown beast is the stupidest groundhog in the world. I admit I have not met all the other groundhogs and have therefore not been able to make an assessment of them, but I feel pretty good about my judgment that this silly critter is one dumb bunny, if you can call a groundhog a bunny.

Why do I say this? Here are the “deets”. A groundhog digs a hole at each end of its tunnel, for airflow and for escape if being chased by a predator. Now our GH guy is either dumb as a post, as previously stated, or a terrible urban planner. His two holes are thus located: Hole #1 is under the edge of our shed. Not a terrible choice, perhaps. Hole #2 is not so well chosen. It comes up right in the middle of the neighbour’s firepit. Smack dab in the centre. Once a week, my neighbour starts a huge bonfire on that pit, a fire that was so big one time, the fire department roared up to put it out.

I wonder how life is in the hog’s home when these massive fires are burning. A little on the toasty side, I suspect. But dumb as he may be, he’s no quitter, I’ll give him that. I filled in the hole he dug under our shed. Two days later I went back to find the hole had been dug out again. You can’t keep good a hog down, I guess.

However, if he wanders out of the hole he dug out at the neighbour’s place at the wrong time, he might be the main feature at a community pig roast. I would try to feel sorry for him, I guess, but really, what was he thinking?

By Jim Hagarty
1991

Once or twice a month, Canadian Press sends its member newspapers a photo of a rebel steer that had the audacity to jump over a fence or out of a truck in a futile attempt to “make a break for it.” When this happens in the country, no one but the farmer and his neighbours takes much notice. They round up the maverick animal and back it goes to join its fellow cattle who weren’t so brave and elected to stay put. This is an event, given the state of some farm fences and the cantankerous mood of some bovines out there, that is not really very rare in rural areas. It is a concern when cattle get hit by traffic on the road but otherwise, it is not an earth-shattering event.

But let livestock – especially cows, bulls or steers – set one hoof on urban pavement or parkland, and big city news photographers trip over their aperture openings on their way to the scene of the crime. In the last few years, literally dozens of their photos of cattle galloping amidst the traffic on busy city streets have turned up on my desk and I am proud to say that as far as I know, I have never used even one in this section of the newspaper. I guess the sight of a bunch of arm-waving police officers and their posse of ever-helpful passersby trying to chase poor cattle beasts back into the country leaves me a bit grumpy. The cattle know they are not where they are supposed to be – the grazing isn’t that great on those multi-lane expressways – but they must be a bit bewildered, even terrified, to see throngs of people yelling at them as if they were monsters on the loose in a horror movie.

Many of these pictures, for some reason or other, emanate from Calgary, Alberta. Perhaps it isn’t so strange that so many escapee steers would head for there as the city is, after all, located in the heart of cattle country. But Calgary photographers, it seems to me, are almost hypersensitive to this problem of livestock that are absent without leave. The irony in this, for me, is the fact that long before there was such an animal as a Calgary photographer, cattle roamed and grazed and slept and reproduced on the very land on which Calgary and its newspaper offices now sit.

Just who, then, is the real intruder?

Perhaps it is pushing this anti-runaway-cow-photos stance a little too far to suggest that many people in our biggest cities have gotten so far away from their roots, that what was once a natural part of our environment has now become an alien to be driven out of our concrete jungles before they … before they what? Lie down under a maple tree and chew their cud?

Some reporters can walk by street gangs, hookers and people sleeping on sidewalk grates in the winter without ever tripping a shutter. But let a Guernsey gallop through a green light …

As long as city schoolchildren answer “the store” when asked where milk comes from, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me when they grow up to become “photojournalists” who think cattle in the city are big news. But then, maybe someday when fanatics have shut down animal agriculture altogether, we’ll be grateful for these pictures to teach future generations what a cow looked like.

By Jim Hagarty
2014

Finally some good news.

Think the passage of time can put you out of reach of the long arm of the law? Think again. Justice for many of the unfortunate citizens of the United States with all their corruption, killings and chaos is often slow to be realized but maybe that is changing.

In Pickens, South Carolina, a lawbreaking movie watcher was arrested and taken to jail this week. And well she should have been. Nine years ago she rented a video from a local store and never returned it. So she was charged with failing to return a rented video cassette – a very serious offence – and taken to jail where she spent one night in a cell.

Pickens County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Creed Hashe says Finley rented the movie Monster-in-Law from Dalton Videos in 2005. The owner took out a warrant against Finley, who was arrested when she was at the sheriff’s office for something else and the warrant was found. (Actually she should also be charged with watching a movie called Monster-in-Law but we’ll let that go for now.)

Chief Deputy Hashe, who also answers to the name Barney Fife, says Finley had been sent several certified letters at the time. She says she never got the letters and that she will fight the charge.

Ya, right. If you’re looking for any signs of the truth in that woman’s brain, I can bet you it will be slim pickins.