Count Your "Bless Yous"

When somebody sneezes, we yell out “God Bless You”. If we don’t, somebody else does. We don’t walk over to the person or even look at them. But we say it. We belt it out. I tend to wait to see if there’s a second sneeze before I say it ‘cause it’s awkward when you say it only to have them sneeze again.  I’ve never figured out if it’s proper to say it after the second sneeze if you already said it after the first sneeze. Sometimes I wait too long for the second sneeze and before they sneeze again the person leaves the room and if you say it when they come back they don’t remember that they sneezed and it gets awkward.

I had a Canadian friend who, instead of “God Bless You”, would ask, “Are you alright?” when someone sneezed.  I admired that. I don’t know if that’s a Canadian custom or if it was just that guy. Maybe sneezing is more of a concern in Canada ‘cause it’s colder up there. I bet that’s it.

 

A Tail of Two Shirties

What’s with Untuckit? Untuckit of course is the company that, that’s right, makes the men’s shirts you don’t have to tuck in. Since their shirt tails are shorter than a normal shirt, Untuckit uses less material but charges the same price that you pay for a regular shirt. What a rip-off! So yeah, they make tons of money. So when the style changes back to tucked in in a year or two, you’re gonna try to tuck in your Untuckit shirt but since the tail is so short, first time you bend over to tie your shoe, that tail’s gonna get untucked. And people are gonna say, “hey look, that guy tried to tuck in one of those old Untuckit shirts”.

I don’t know how this is all gonna wash out but I really wanted to use that title.

 

600

We recently published our 600^th post. Some readers have asked if we’re going to celebrate the post. So yeah, I’ve been trying to find significant things about the number 600. There’s not much significance of that number. 600 would equal two 300 games in bowling. But bowling is a three game sport so we’ll come back to that after the 900^th post. I did a search on the number 600 and two things consistently popped up: NASCAR races and obese people. As you know, it’s our job here at Uncle Tommy to find the connection between those two subjects.

So yeah, I think I found a way to interweave these two. In an effort to bring two people groups together in our troubled country, would it be asking too much to let one of these 600 pound people present the trophy to the winner of the Coca-Cola 600 or the Talladega 600? I repeat: Is that asking too much?

 

Quoting the Raven

There’s a rumor that Subway is coming out with a new line of sandwiches named after famous people. Tom Brady. Serena Williams. Stephen Curry. Wait! What? Stephen Curry? You can’t name a sandwich after someone with a food in their name unless that food is actually in the sandwich. Huh-uh. Having written that, here’re some names we would hesitate to name sandwiches after:

•          The Kevin Bacon – maybe for a breakfast sandwich
•          The Eddie Rabbit – Maybe, just maybe, you could serve this at "I Hop". Maybe.
•          The Larry Bird – tastes like chicken?
•          The Eddie Raven – Nevermore!
•          The Ethan Hawke – Nah
•          The Heart – People will think it's beef heart. Or pork heart. Why don't we ever see pork heart?
  
•          The Bob Griese Sandwich – “The sandwich you don’t have to chew!” Nope

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” may be the only poem to have been made into a movie. It was also made into a not so great song by The Alan Parsons Project. And a football team is even named after it. That’s some poem! But that’s enough. There’s no need to name a sandwich after it.  

 

Special Needa

Did you ever, maybe when you were a kid, or maybe now, associate the name of a business with the individual running the business? For example, our local pizza shop growing up was called Mario’s – Mario’s Pizza. So my friends and I always called the woman working there Mario. (I’m not sure it registered with us that Mario is a man’s name.)

Our local dry cleaner was called Uneeda Cleaners. Get it? Uneeda? (Pretty clever in hindsight). At some point in my childhood Uneeda became a “she” instead of a business name. My mom referred to the woman who worked there as Uneeda, as in “I’m going to see Uneeda. Anybody need anything dropped off?”

Uneeda’s advertising slogan was “Save us a spot”. She removed more than one Mario stain from my shirts. I wonder if Mario and Uneeda hung out?     

 

Talking a Blue Steak

I’ve never had a dental hygienist who didn’t talk a lot. In fact, they “talk a blue streak” as my mother would say. They of course have to talk double because we can’t talk. So we get a 25 minute soliloquy, often one that would make Shakespeare proud. So my question is: do they give the same 25 minute soliloquy to every patient, or does it vary based on age, sex etc? And, how often do they update it? Do the stories vary by the condition of your teeth? Is there a record in your file of which subject they talked about so they don’t repeat it? Do the stories get sharper toward the end of the day?

Periodically, we get the blades on our lawnmowers sharpened. Do people get their teeth sharpened? Is that something I should be doing? I’d ask if I could get a word in…

I think the dentist’s “hold music” should be recordings of the different hygienists telling their stories. That would be cool...