Born in the USAA

Hey, what’s up with these USAA commercials? They’re on a lot during football games. They show football player Rob Gronkowski (acting pretty foolish) talking on the phone trying to get insurance. He finds out that USAA is available only to current and former military personnel. Apparently Gronk never served in the armed forces so he’s disappointed. And yeah, we viewers are disappointed as well ‘cause most of us didn’t serve in the military. That’s a very odd concept, only advertising to military personnel. It seems more suited to the Military History channel. And it’s some very expensive advertising for a product that most of us don’t qualify for. My theory is that the military’s paying for these ads to promote the benefits of enlisting…

Gronk needs to find some funnier material. State Farm should have him in a commercial asking for the Rodgers rate. That might be funnier. Or maybe AFLAC could show him catching a wobbly pass which turns out to be a wounded duck.   

 

Waxing Harmonically

When I was a kid, at Halloween season you could buy wax lips and wax harmonicas. Yeah, harmonicas. They were right there at the candy counter with the Mallo Cups and the Chuckles. Year after year. And for some reason we bought them. Year after year. The harmonicas worked; you could play scales on them, even songs – but eventually you started chewing on them. I’m sure our parents were glad when we started chewing them ‘cause that killed the music. There was no flavor to the wax, but like beavers, we chewed them.

The wax lips were not as fun – you couldn’t play them. But we bought them as well. They were like a mouth guard on the outside of your mouth ‘til we chewed them up too. But the two items were mutually exclusive. You couldn’t play the harmonica when you had your lips in. Maybe that’s what killed the company…

I was reminded of these items recently when I was in Bath and Body Works and sampled their little mints. The taste reminded me of the harmonica/lip wax.  

 

Hurricane Tommy

It seems like we are seeing a lot of new baby names these days, doesn’t it? This has actually been going on for some time. I think I know why. It stems from the south and the east coast. Nobody wants to use a name that’s been given to a destructive hurricane. And even if the name hasn’t been a destructive hurricane, there’s a pretty good chance that sooner or later your child’s name is gonna be given to a destructive hurricane. That’s rough. Ask your friend Katrina.

There’s an easy solution here: Have there ever been 26 hurricanes in one year? I don’t think so. So yeah, give your child a name from the end of the alphabet. Have we ever seen a Hurricane Yvette? Or a Hurricane Zack? Zelda?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure this stuff out.

 

Twin Cities

What’s up with Minneapolis and St. Paul? They’re the twin cities. World’s largest mall. But if you’re having twins, you want to tie the names together, don’t you? Tommy and Timmy. Todd and Tommy. Tommy and Tammy.  Like that.  Minneapolis and St. Paul? Those names just don’t go together. Huh-uh. So we here at Uncle Tommy are here to help.

You could go the Christian route and change Minneapolis to St. Peter. St. Paul and St. Peter. That would work. And it would be alphabetical, reading left to right geographically. I’d be fine with that.

Or you could go the Disney route and change St. Paul to Mickeyapolis. Mickey and Minnie. That would also be alphabetical, reading left to right geographically.

I’m not as crazy about that second option but maybe Disney would build one of their parks there where you go on rides and stuff.

 

Brown Bag

When we walk our dogs, we pick up their stool(s) and then carry them with us in little bags. It’s almost a pride thing, isn’t it? We carry the bags as if to tell the world, “Hey look, I’m doing my part to improve society”. This is an improvement over years ago when you walked your dog and he or she just went and you left it there. Yeah, mankind may be a bit more civilized now in that regard.

But hey, let’s not stop there. There’s a second step. But we’re gonna call this part Step One. ‘Cause we’ve already covered number two.  Yeah, I’m talking urine here. I don’t like to see dogs urinating all over town. Everybody thinks that their dog needs to walk before they’ll go. But dogs can be taught. I don’t care how small your yard is; get the dog to go before you leave your yard. Is that so hard?

Once a neighbor told me on a walk that my “brown bag” was really big for the size of my dog. That led me to think that it would be funny to carry a really big bag of rocks with me when I walk a dog. Just to keep people guessing.

 

Shop Talk

I have a Kroger shopping card. It tells Kroger what I buy and then Kroger sends me coupons for what they think I like. Most of the coupons they send are for stuff that I bought recently, stuff like juice, cereal, bread. But recently they’re trying to lure me into some new ventures by sending me slightly different products, to see if they can lead me away from my normal routine. I feel a bit like a laboratory rat. Or at least a laboratory white mouse…

Yeah, Kroger thinks they know me. I’m not real comfortable with that. So, my plan has been to go there 3 weeks in a row and buy nothing but beer and cigarettes and then see what kind of coupons they send me. If they’re worried about my health, they’ll still send me the coupons for juice, bread and cereal. If they’re in it just for the money they’ll send me coupons for beer and cigarettes. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, can anybody out there use 7 cartons of Salems?