Coded W*%d Puzzles

I read the following headline recently:  “SF Mayor Targets ‘Bulls*** that has Destroyed our City”. I think we all, at least initially, feel good about ourselves when we solve these coded word puzzles. Eventually though we likely think, “Why do I even know that word? Why was I able to solve that puzzle?”  

There doesn’t seem to be any consistency as to how many letters have to be encoded. I’ve tried to figure out the rhyme or reason to this over the years. I used to think that, the worse the word, the more encoded it would be, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s a tough decision for the writer ‘cause if you encode too many of the letters you can’t figure out the word, but if you only encode, say, one letter, it doesn’t disguise the word enough… 

I had a friend in high school who encoded the bad words when he spoke. He often used to say "H E double toothpicks for the word "h***". I never liked being in his pew when we recited The Apostle's Creed at church.

 

Bowling for Dollars

Our local cable provider advertises that, when you subscribe to their cable package for $26.99 a month, you can watch tape delayed high school bowling. That seemed like an unusual show to feature in their ad, but, you know what? It caught my eye. But maybe it caught my eye ‘cause it was so odd. Why would I spend $26.99 per month to watch tape delayed high school bowling on my TV?

If I really wanted to see high school bowling, wouldn’t I just go the bowling alley and watch for free? And with my $26.99 I could buy a bowl of bowling alley chili and maybe a cocktail. And it would be live.

And I’d have money to bowl a game or two I bet. You know how some old guys try to golf their age? My goal is still to bowl my age.  It gets harder every year.   

Merry Christmas!!

 

Tenors

I just saw an ad for The Ten Tenors. They are part of a “pick four” offer at a local theater. I assume they are one of the shows you can pick as part of your 2022 “discount” ticket package. But maybe you actually get to pick four of the tenors for that individual show. That would make sense since there are typically four parts (SATB) for any vocal arrangement. Except for one thing: these guys all sing tenor…

So yeah, ten tenors. How many tenors do we need? We used have The Three Tenors who were all really famous. Then other tenor groups sprang up. On vacation last month I saw an ad for The Texas Tenors. I assume these guys are a bit larger and probably wear hats.

Do basses ever get to tour? How about sopranos or altos? Regardless, these tenors need to ride this momentum as long as they can. I predict somewhere out there there’s a group touring as “The Twelve Tenors of Christmas”. I’m pretty busy with this blog and holiday stuff but if somebody could look that up that would be great.

 

Pining Fir Trees

Today is December 15^th and I don’t think I’ve seen one car with a tree on top of it yet this year. What’s up with that? My theory is that, since the trees are so expensive this year (like everything else), people are going out in the middle of the night and cutting down trees. That’s right, stealing them. They think they’re not gonna get caught ‘cause they do it in the middle of the night. Well, good luck with that, folks. Any policeman seeing a car with a tree on top of it at three in the morning is gonna know you stole the tree, especially if you don’t have the cool red net around it. And they’re gonna see that it doesn’t have the red or blue or yellow or white tag on it. And the police know which color tag should correspond with each size tree I bet…

Have you ever seen it where people forget after Christmas and lay their artificial tree out by the street? I’ve not seen that but if you do see it we’d like to hear about it here at Uncle Tommy.  

 

 

Sweater Season

I attended a Christmas luncheon Friday where we were supposed to wear an ugly sweater. So yeah, I wore one. When I got in line for the buffet, a guy who wasn’t wearing an ugly sweater looked at me and said, “My wife doesn’t let me keep old clothes.” I did not have a quick response. In hindsight I could have said:

•          “Oh, this? This is new (even though it was my father’s gray cardigan with the red trim).”
•          “Oh, is this ugly sweater day? I didn’t realize.”
•          “It’s amazing how many people win ugly sweater contests who just wear what they consider regular clothes to the event.”

Later, the joke was on me when I still had the sweater on (it’s comfortable!) when I went to the grocery store. I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen in 15 years. In my excitement, I didn’t tell him that I had come from an ugly sweater luncheon. Based on my appearance, he may thought I was a bit down on my luck.

I must not have looked too bad – he did not offer to pay for my groceries.