Category: Uncategorized

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I knew a quiet man name of Chester,
Never talked, just allowed things to fester.
One day he woke up,
And finally spoke up:
“Hey, man, my real name is Lester!”

By Jim Hagarty
I have always been a big John Denver fan. I’ve loved his voice, his lyrics, his tune smithing and his guitar playing. His voice grew in stature over time, so much so that he did not sound out of place singing with Placido Domingo on Sometimes Love. I recorded Some Days are Diamonds on my little pocket digital recorder that came free in a box of Cracker Jacks. Brace yourself!

By Jim Hagarty
Of all the sports cars made by the “big three” automakers in the U.S. over the years, the Ford Thunderbird suffered the most from design tinkering. From its nimble and sport years in the 1950s, the T-Bird underwent horrible changes as the years passed and before it was taken off the market, it had become what a friend of mine use to call, a “lumberwagon” – huge and unsightly. Not even recognizable. But in the early 2000s, almost 50 years later, Ford re-introduced the car and it was a hit for a few years. Although it was larger than the original versions, it was a remarkable reflection of the early car. Alas, it too was eventually dropped. Here is a slideshow of a particularly nice one I saw this week in my travels.

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By Jim Hagarty
2014

I have always had a problem with fear. Ironically, for most of my life, I have been afraid to admit that. For a long time, however, I have been challenging it and in the immortal word of Charlie Sheen, I’ve been “winning” the odd battle. One way I have employed is to study fear, to learn about it. That helps. Here are a bunch of quotes I have assembled recently on the matter. I learned them sitting in a pew at the Church of Google.

Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. I have known talented people who procrastinate indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins.
Charles Stanley

Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
Dorothy Thompson

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
Rosa Parks

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
Henry Ford

True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.
Paul Sweeney

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.
Chanakya

Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.
Chuck Palahniuk

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
Thomas Carlyle

Do what you fear and fear disappears.
David Joseph Schwartz

We fear the thing we want the most.
Robert Anthony

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
Christian Nestell Bovee

This is all you have. This is not a dry run. This is your life. If you want to fritter it away with your fears, then you will fritter it away, but you won’t get it back later.
Laura Schlessinger

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.
Marilyn Ferguson

If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, your life will be safe, expedient and thin.
Katharine Butler Hathaway

One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.
Rainer Maria Rilke

To fight fear, act. To increase fear – wait, put off, postpone.
David Joseph Schwartz

I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Why is it that when we get older, we get more fearful?
Sandra Bullock

When you’re fearful, you stumble.
Jenna Jameson

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.
Dolly Parton

Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.
Maggie Kuhn

Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.
Publilius Syrus

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Where fear is, happiness is not.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.
W. Clement Stone

Sometimes you must suffer through something to defeat your fear of it.
Joyce Meyer

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
Marilyn Ferguson

How can you defy fear? Fear is a human instinct, just like hunger. Whether you like it or not, you become hungry. Similarly with fear. But I have learned to train myself to live with this fear.
Shirin Ebadi

We must travel in the direction of our fear.
John Berryman

Fear of failure has always been my best motivator.
Douglas Wood

People who are prone to anxiety are nearly always people-pleasers who fear conflict and negative feelings like anger. When you feel upset, you sweep your problems under the rug because you don’t want to upset anyone. You do this so quickly and automatically that you’re not even aware you’re doing it.
David D. Burns

A fear of the unknown keeps a lot of people from leaving bad situations.
Kathie Lee Gifford

Fear is the most debilitating emotion in the world, and it can keep you from ever truly knowing yourself and others – its adverse effects can no longer be overlooked or underestimated. Fear breeds hatred, and hatred has the power to destroy everything in its path.
Kevyn Aucoin

I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.
Julia Child

The key to change… is to let go of fear.
Rosanne Cash

Do what you fear most and you control fear.
Tom Hopkins

In boxing, I had a lot of fear. Fear was good. But, for the first time, in the bout with Muhammad Ali, I didn’t have any fear. I thought, ‘This is easy. This is what I’ve been waiting for’. No fear at all. No nervousness. And I lost.
George Foreman

The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.
Henry Rollins

You can’t let fear paralyze you. The worse that can happen is you fail, but guess what: You get up and try again. Feel that pain, get over it, get up, dust yourself off and keep it moving.
Queen Latifah

I like to do something I fear.
Heath Ledger

Fear paralyses you – fear of flying, fear of the future, fear of leaving a rubbish marriage, fear of public speaking, or whatever it is.
Annie Lennox

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I’m on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I’ll sit down at the desk and discover that what I’ve written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.
Rosemary Mahoney

I live in fear of being a contented passenger. I’d rather get parts I can’t play.
Michael Gambon

I know from personal experience how fear and low self worth can cripple one’s ability to succeed in life. But with a little support, caring and inspiration, miracles can happen.
Richard Hatch

What is the biggest thing that stops people from living their lives in the present moment? Fear – and we must learn how to overcome fear.
Brian Weiss

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
Mahatma Gandhi

The thing we fear we bring to pass.
Elbert Hubbard

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
Richard Bach

Fear runs our lives. It doesn’t matter who you are. You have to understand your relationship with fear. Whether you’re scared of getting into a relationship; or taking the new job; or a confrontation – you have to size fear up.
Chris Pine

I am grateful that I didn’t let fear get the best of me. It only holds you back from possibilities and greatness.
Mariska Hargitay

The choice that frees or imprisons us is the choice of love or fear. Love liberates. Fear imprisons.
Gary Zukav

Living with fear stops us taking risks, and if you don’t go out on the branch, you’re never going to get the best fruit.
Sarah Parish

You just have to get rid of fear and confront the world. Look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, ‘I love you and nothing will destroy you and you’re not going to fall.’
Ricky Martin

Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
Robert Burns

I think when you move past your fear and you go after your dreams wholeheartedly, you become free.
LL Cool J

A fear of the unknown keeps a lot of people from leaving bad situations.
Kathie Lee Gifford

You’re not human if you don’t feel fear. But I’ve learnt to treat fear as an emotion that sharpens me. It’s there to give me that edge for what I have to do.
Bear Grylls

The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.
Oprah Winfrey

I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.
Michelle Obama

Action cures fear, inaction creates terror.
Douglas Horton

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity.
Thomas J. Watson

I am totally fearless! Well, of course, I’m not totally fearless. I worry constantly and obsess over things, but I just don’t let fear stand in the way of doing something that I really want to do.
Tom Ford

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce

I’ve always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people.
Hugh Jackman

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.
Richard Bach

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
Zora Neale Hurston

If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.
Sharon Salzberg

As you know from school, it’s when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you’ve done your best.
Alice Walker

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
Miles Davis

It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Mignon McLaughlin

Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.
Phil Crosby

Some days it is a heroic act just to refuse the paralysis of fear and straighten up and step into another day.
Edward Albert

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.
Corrie Ten Boom

They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure.
James Allen

As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.
Chanakya

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.
Nadia Comaneci

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.
Ruby Dee

Failure isn’t an option. I’ve erased the word ‘fear’ from my vocabulary, and I think when you erase fear, you can’t fail.
Alicia Keys

Greatness comes from fear. Fear can either shut us down and we go home, or we fight through it.
Lionel Richie

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell

The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.
Sylvia Browne

Kill the snake of doubt in your soul, crush the worms of fear in your heart and mountains will move out of your way.
Kate Seredy

There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.
Jawaharlal Nehru

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
John C. Maxwell

The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.
William Jennings Bryan

As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
Marianne Williamson

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell

Fear is the base of what everybody does wrong in their lives.
Elaine Stritch

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
Dale Carnegie

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
Dale Carnegie

The biggest obstacle to wealth is fear. People are afraid to think big, but if you think small, you’ll only achieve small things.
T. Harv Eker

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.
Joyce Meyer

When someone fears losing your affection, he or she will strive to keep it. Perhaps you have strived to keep someone’s affection, too. Fear of loss is not love.
Gary Zukav

Discipline strengthens the mind so that it becomes impervious to the corroding influence of fear.
Bernard Law Montgomery

Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.
Frederick W. Smith

Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.
Publilius Syrus

I fear the boredom that comes with not learning and not taking chances.
Robert Fulghum

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.
Ruby Dee

Failure isn’t an option. I’ve erased the word ‘fear’ from my vocabulary, and I think when you erase fear, you can’t fail.
Alicia Keys

By Jim Hagarty
2013

They say money talks but all it ever says to me is “Goodbye!”

Today, in line at the drive-through, I made it to the window, handed the young woman a twenty and she gave me back a ten and a five and then some coins on top of the bills. I retrieved the coins but the bills blew away.

If you’ve ever wondered how wealthy people treat their money, now you know. For us, it’s just like dust in the wind.

An honest man in the car behind me jumped out, scooped up my money and returned it to me. But he didn’t have to.

There is so much more where that came from!

By Jim Hagarty

Some people have trouble identifying irony. I can usually spot it a mile away, like my cat can see a mouse in the grass, a hundred feet away.

I called up the website for a hearing centre this morning and a woman appeared on the screen explaining the company’s services. The video was fine but there was no sound.

Now that is either ironic, or a clever marketing ploy.

“Holy crap,” says the Internet surfer. “I can’t hear that message. I better get right down to that hearing centre.”

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was a young man from Peru,
Who had wives, but only a few.
He loved them all well
But never could tell
What was what and who was who.

By Jim Hagarty
1986

Just this week I read a quiz about cats – a list of questions and answers designed to help owners know the true facts about their pets.

It dealt with whether cats can see in the dark (they can’t), whether a high fish diet is good for them (it isn’t) and whether they need a lot of exercise (they don’t) among other relevant data.

However, it occurred to me that a lot of important information was left out of the article, perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, and I’d like to fill in the blanks. Here are 12 true-or-false statements about cats. Check your score at the end.

1. A cat is most content with itself after it has had a good meal and some pats on the head from its owner.
   Answer: False. A cat is happiest when it has kicked every last grain of kitty litter (along with some of the reason for the litter) out of the pan and onto the floor.

2. A cat can be taught to understand the meaning of the word, “No!”
   Answer: False. A cat, in time, can understand, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty!”, “Supper!” and “You’re in big trouble!” but “No!” is a concept entirely beyond its grasp.

3. When a cat has eaten all it needs, it will stop eating.
   Answer: False. A cat believes its duty is to eat everything it sees, whether the food is in its dish, on your plate, on the neighbour’s front porch or still walking around (as in mice, birds, june bugs, etc.)

4. A cat loves to drink cool, clean water.
   Answer: False. It prefers filthy, lukewarm water, especially the kind found in mud puddles. In fact, it’s next to impossible to drag the average cat past a murky pool without it dipping its face into it. Toilet water is like champagne to a cat.

5. A cat does not like to go to the veterinarian.
   Answer: False. A trip to the doctor’s office is a good chance to mix it up with a few strange animals, maybe slash the smile off a happy-looking dog named George, cuff another cat or two. Also, a cat enjoys breaking out of the cat carrier in the car on the way home and digging its claws into the upholstery.

6. A cat prefers cool temperatures to warm.
   Answer: False. A cat can detect sources of warmth more accurately and quickly than a heat-seeking missile. It loves to sit on furnaces, the hoods of recently parked cars, people’s midriffs and when it’s young, other cats.

7. A cat likes its name.
   Answer. True. At least the names Buffy, Whiskers and Coco. The names Dirty Little Rat, Rotten Beggar and Why You Monster Wait Till I Get My Hands On You don’t appeal to it quite so much.

8. A cat enjoys sleeping in a specially made $40 wicker basket.
   Answer: False. It prefers clothes hampers, shoe boxes, dresser drawers and kitchen table tops.

9. A cat can always find its way back home.
   Answer: True. Even if you move. It knows how to go to the post office, find out your new address and join you later.

10. A cat is so agile, it never falls off things.
    Answer: False. It falls all the time off couches, beds, cellar steps. And what it likes to do on its way down is to try to hang onto anything not nailed down, such as an afghan, cushion, bed sheet or your leg.

11. A cat has feelings.
    Answer: False. Unless hunger can be classed as a feeling.

12. A sick cat prefers to bring up on a clear, hard surface such as a linoleum or wood floor.
    Answer: False. A nauseous cat will crawl on its paws and knees across a tile floor to make it onto the living room carpet before throwing up.

Scoring: if you answered 10 questions or more correctly, you are onto your cat and any day now, will be getting the upper hand; if you answered between six and nine questions correctly, you’ve had your cat for only the past three months and are still telling fellow workers in the mornings about the cute things it did last night; if you answered fewer than six questions correctly, your cat is smarter than you.

And if you answered all 12 questions correctly, your cat is still smarter than you.