Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty

I started a blog two weeks ago to entertain the masses.

And to make money.

So I did an Internet search on how to start a blog.

Mission accomplished.

Then I did some more searching, this time on how to make money from a blog. Imagine my surprise: There are a million ways. Or are there?

I finally settled on the words of advice from a blogger who makes $100,000 a month. That is a nice round figure, I thought, and he seemed pretty humble. So I became his disciple.

There were sites I found by people who make many times more than $100,000 a month but I am not a greedy man. I can get by on $1,200,000 a year.

My guru had 20 suggestions. I looked them over carefully. They seemed to make sense.

His biggest pearl of wisdom came when he discussed his opinion that the riches won’t come from the blog itself. Instead, they will happen as a result of what I am able to sell on my blog. And what I need to sell is my expertise.

I need to think of myself as a teacher. Imagine what it is my readership needs, assess what it is I have expertise in, and then match those two things up.

Expertise. Hmmm.

I took an hour out of my day and just sat and thought about my expertise. What is it, I asked myself, that I am an expert in? What things do I know that many people don’t know and how can I align that knowledge with the needs my readers have?

My brain started doing its brain thing. The session extended into a second hour. I encountered some difficulty in singling out something I know that most people don’t know and need to know.

Ideas started to come. I know how to prevent my breakfast cereal from becoming soggy. (Hint: Pour the milk in the bowl first, then the cereal.)

I know that the best way to trim your fingernails is to use a toenail clippers.

Good ideas, I knew they were, but the wheels ground to a halt.

Then, jackpot!

This winter I discovered how to easily peel that pesky free coffee sticker off the side of a McDonald’s coffee cup. Without giving too much of the secret away, the answer is to peel it off while the coffee is still inside the cup. The hot coffee melts the wax holding the sticker to the cardboard.

I was elated.

Following my guru’s next steps, I am going to write an e-book about easy sticker removals and post that for sale on my blog.

I will compound that success by coming up with a beautiful, hardcover, coffeetable version of the e-book. I will sell it for $29.95. Correction: $39.95.

Third, I will organize a speaking tour about the subject of sticker peeling.

Fourth, a YouTube video.

And finally, I will offer courses on the subject. On-line and off. The eight-week, real in-person course will cost students $599.00. Correction: $799.00. And bring your own McDonald’s coffee cup, contents still inside.

I was over at the local Chevy dealer today. They have two new Corvettes in the lot. One cherry red, one silver. I can’t decide which one to get.

Ah, what the hell?

I’m going to get both of them.

By Jim Hagarty

I don’t speak cat and can’t understand cat speak.

I am even worse when it comes to cat typing.

My cat Luigi just walked across my keyboard and this is what he wrote: “hjyunuyjuhk”.

Anyone fluent in Catlish might be able to help me out. Drop me a note if you understand what this means.

The best I can come up with, based on 10 years of close association with Luigi, is: “gotnokibble”.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There once was a bug named Fred
Who burrowed down deep in my bed.
A long fart in my sleep.
Now from Fred, not a peep.
I believe the wee fellow is dead.

The battery in one of our smoke alarms needed changing one night and so I went out and bought a new nine-volt battery (the small rectangular one with both the negative and positive poles at the same end) and prepared to fix up the little lifesaver on the ceiling.

However, as often happens, I got myself distracted at something else – probably refereeing a battle between our dog and cats or pausing to check my email at the sound of the ding – and so I slipped the battery into the pocket of my jeans and attended to whatever emergency had come up.

I walked around with battery in pocket for a while before remembering the important job that awaited. Reaching my hand into my pocket, I retrieved the little power producer only to feel my fingers burning at something scorchingly hot in my pants. Literally hot and not just sexy as per usual.

Basic instinct (ahem) took over and I quickly dropped my pants right there and then in the middle of the living room. Fortunately, my wife and kids were in bed asleep and so were not witness to the sudden private party I was apparently engaged in around midnight on this particular Wednesday.

My action may have been a bit rash but I have always lived by a policy which commands me to instantly remove my pants whenever they catch on fire. In this case, the garment hadn’t actually ignited but whatever had happened, there was far more than the normal amount of heat in the place where I usually keep only a few coins and the occasional jelly bean.

Coins, battery. Aha! I shook out my jeans and sure enough, out fell the battery followed by a few quarters.

Now, in one of the few times I can remember my high school education coming in handy, I was able to put two and two together. One or more of the coins had come to rest against the two battery poles, opening up a current. In a few minutes, the charge had raced around that battery and coins so rapidly that it not only heated up the whole affair, but completely drained the battery of its energy in the process.

I scooped up the battery with a plastic dustpan and flung it out into the garage. I checked it next day and as I thought it might be, it was completely spent. How ironic, I thought later, that I could have lost my life trying to repair the device that was designed to save it.

So the next time your friendly neighbourhood flasher drops his pants outside your picture window, check to see he doesn’t have a battery in his pocket before you call the cops.

©2016 Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty

It had been kickin’ around the house for almost 20 years, an old family fiddle that just sort of ended up at our place.

Sealed in a sturdy steel case, it was brought out now and then to be admired, but quickly locked away again for the next time someone became curious enough to snap back the clasps. From one corner to the other, the charming little instrument spent its days and nights silently, within the darkness of its velvet-lined confines, ignored, if not totally unloved. It had gone into a temporary sleep around the same time its owner took up the rest of a more permanent kind.

Then one day recently, with some time on my hands, I thought I’d examine the old music maker to see what it was really like. I had heard somewhere along the way that it was just an inexpensive model, and so I never was able to work up much enthusiasm about it. I don’t play the fiddle, though I’ve always sort of wanted to and maybe now was the time…

Opening the slightly battered case, I breathed in a whiff of mustiness, and instantly wished that, cheap or not, the fiddle had been in the open air all these years. I took the shapely, little brown box upstairs and grabbing the bow, scratched away on its out-of-tune strings with all the precision of a novice skater, taking his first spin across the ice. It was not pretty and metaphorically speaking, I fell on my head and butt several times in quick succession.

To the relief of my family, I finally put the bow away and turned my attention to exactly what kind of fiddle I was holding. Knowing a bit about the heirarchy of acoustic guitars, I figured the same sort of importance is probably attached to when, where and by whom a fiddle was made. So, I took a squinty look through one of the wavy, musical-note cutouts in the top of the instrument and spelled out the first few letters I saw: “S-t-r-a-d…” I couldn’t see too well so I took it over to one of the lamps and holding it near the bulb, examined the details more closely. “Stradivarius” was most clearly written. “1713”

Now, I don’t know if it’s possible to take a stroke while looking through a hole in a fiddle, but I felt like one might be coming on. Had the Greater Power finally smiled down on my humble family with a plan to make the rest of our days on Earth a little bit easier? How many millions of dollars was I just then holding in my suddenly shaky hands? What should be my next move, in light of this discovery?

As if on cue, worries followed the jubilation. What if something happened to the “Strad” (as I have found out they are affectionately called) and we couldn’t collect? A house fire, a home invasion, other calamities.

And then there was the wider family. This being an heirloom of sorts, what portion of my good fortune should be shared with other members of the clan, people who obviously didn’t yet know about the riches I was about to be knee deep in. Was this even information that needed to be shared with relatives? Wouldn’t things be easier if I kept this to myself?

I took another look into the fiddles innards. “Antonius Stradivarius. facelbat Cremona 1713.”

This just kept getting better and better.

But in every crowd there is a spoiler. Someone just waiting to burst your bubble.

“Hey Dad, you might want to come take a look at this,” said my daughter, who had borrowed the fiddle for a look of her own.

I peeked again through the music note hole, this time looking just above the name of the acknowledged greatest violin maker of all time. There, looking back at me from their safe confines, were two other little words I had missed.

“Copy of” brought my dreams of riches and ease to an crushing end. As did the words just below the name of Anton’s hometown: “Made in West Germany.”

Now there wasn’t any West Germany in 1713 or even a Germany, for that matter. West Germany didn’t emerge until after the Second World War.
As usual, I am a wiser but sadder man.

Just once in this life I’d like to be the opposite – a foolish but happier man.

With a billion fiddle bucks in the bank!

Here’s me, warbling away in 1981. A song I wrote as a tribute to a friend.

Ain’t it Funny by Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty

Gun nuts take a lot of abuse from people who think they are, in a word, ridiculous.

As a sometimes commenter, I have had some fun with the species myself. But what is a cynic supposed to do? Ignore the story about the man who shot his mother by accident during a church service (she lived)? Or the man who shot himself in the penis while driving down the road? Am I just supposed to let that go? Really?

But underneath all my mirth-making at the ammosexuals’ expense, I have to admit I have a certain admiration for the toughness of some of these gun-toting hombres. I grew up with a gun on the farm and used it many times. I must have a certain amount of respect lingering in the depths of my soul for the gun carriers of the world.

Some of these men and women are no shrinking violets.

Take the 37-year-old Florida man who only noticed he’d been shot while cleaning his revolver two days later when he changed from a black shirt to a brown one and discovered a blood stain from his wound.

Reuters has reported the bullet pierced Michael Blevins’ skin and muscle before exiting his body while he was cleaning the gun in his living room on Thursday.

The Deltona, Florida man loaded the gun while resting it on his chest so his dog wouldn’t jump on it, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Blevins told police he fell when his back gave out due to an old injury, struck his head on a table, and accidentally fired the weapon. Between the pain medication he takes for the injury and bumping his head, he was likely distracted from feeling the gunshot, the police report said

He was treated at a local hospital on Saturday, where staff reported the incident to law enforcement.

Maybe, however, this old adage applies in this case: No sense, no feeling.

Any time I have accidentally shot myself, I’ll tell you something. I knew it right away. I’m kind of wimpy that way.

Dang!

By Jim Hagarty

I have always been in awe of the extent of my good fortune.

While most people on Earth spend at least some part of their lives searching for the meaning of their existence, I have not had to do that and as long as I am a homeowner, I probably never will.

I know exactly why the Creator placed me on this planet. I have no doubt at all. I am here for one reason and one reason only: To clean up my garage.

That might not seem like a great reason to you, especially stacked up against the various destinies of greater people who’ve left this world a better place by virtue of their inventions, their art or their cures for incurable diseases. But after more than six decades of trying on various roles both professional and casual, I am always led back to what I know is my true calling – the tidying up of that 12-by-24-foot space designed to house my car but which, of course, never has. Instead, it has served as my family’s personal landfill site and from the start, I have been site supervisor.

Looking back, I guess I should have seen that my whole life was leading to this. As a kid, I spent many happy hours straightening up our basement, eventually graduating to our shed and finally, the garage. I’ve always been blessed by having been surrounded by people who feel that a good part of their life’s mission is to completely mess up the spaces that I am then self-assigned to rescue.

I can only imagine the emptiness of an existence spent in a home environment where everything is forever in its proper place. Where would be the challenge in that? Like mountain biking on the prairies.

Instead, nothing thrills me more than those times when the realization dawns on me that I will not be able to walk from the back door of my garage to the overhead door at the front without going outside and taking the sidewalk from one end of the building to the other. Navigating through the clutter on the inside might be possible, but from experience I know that the short journey cannot be made without falling down several times and risking impalement by various slender objects including hockey sticks, ski poles and garden rakes.

Now another person might institute rules for family members to follow to prevent such chaos or he might even establish a daily routine whereby a 10-minute clean-up would keep the space in good shape, but my experience has been that there is no fun in that.

I pity the poor soul who has never taken a scissors to a Saturday paper with a decluttering column in it or who has never surfed for decluttering tips till 3 a.m. like a sinner searching the Bible for Salvation or at least some loopholes.

Yes, few are the joys that can compare with seeing a garage floor emerge into the daylight which it has not seen in months and to the amazing discovery of objects that appeared to be lost forever.

What is most heartwarming of all is that, as the three-day clean-up nears its conclusion, the family members most responsible for the sorry state of affairs rediscover the space and re-occupy it, even as the supervisor sweeps away the last of the debris. And like shovelling the driveway during a snowstorm, it is strangely sweet to see the path filling back in almost instantly. The seeds of the next cleanup are sown so well in the one just being performed.

Looking back, I now know that the darkest period of my life were the three years I lived in a home I had bought which had no garage at all. So many wasted weekends I spent, broom and garbage can in hand with nothing to clean up. Defeated, I rented movies, read books and went for meaningless bike rides instead.

May I never experience such emptiness again.

He who knows not
And knows not
That he knows not
Is a fool.
Shun him.

He who knows not
And knows
That he knows not
Is a child.
Teach him.

He who knows
And knows not
That he knows
Is asleep.
Wake him.

He who knows
And knows
That he knows
Is a wise man.
Follow him.

• Anonymous

By Jim Hagarty

A writer in the U.S. recently released a book about how the creative class (artists, authors, singers, speakers, photographers, etc.) need to stop giving away their arts and crafts for nothing.

Stop working for free, was the gist of his effort.

My favourite news blog, The Huffington Post, called up the author’s agent and asked if he would write a review of his own book for the news aggregator.

“How much are you willing to pay my client?” asked the agent.

“Nothing,” came the reply from Huff Post, without a trace of irony.

So the author went and told his story of being offered nothing to a Huff Post competitor.

No word yet on what, if anything, the competing blog paid him for his story.

My guess is they matched the Huff Post offer, dollar for dollar.

The Huffington Post is estimated to be worth $1 billion.