Fish Tail

Did you hear about the fishing contest a while back where the winners got caught putting lead in the fish to make them weigh more so they would win the contest? Yeah, these guys are looking at jail time – and they have to give back their trophies. (Not sure if they got to keep the fish.)

I know they won some money, and they were sneaky dishonest and all, but jail time for a fishing contest?  That seems a bit extreme. No Houston Astros went to prison for the garbage can lid cheating scandal back in ‘17...

Maybe they can set up a less strict prison for these fish crime guys. Make ‘em eat fish that’s supposed to be de-boned but it still has bones in it. Make them eat mackerel for 3 months.

Reduce their sentence but put ‘em in small cells and pack ‘em in like sardines.  

Big Boned

 

Have you seen these giant skeletons people are putting in front of their houses? This is a relatively new phenomenon, at least around here.  These things are like 20 feet high. It’s like having the skeleton of the Jolly Green Giant in your front yard. Where do people store these skeletons in the off season? Granted, I’m sure they come apart, but one of these dudes could easily fill a good portion of your attic. It would be great if you could transform the parts into a slide for your kids or something. That would solve the storage issue. Somebody should invent that.

Speaking of the Jolly Green Giant, what's with him always saying “Ho, Ho, Ho” in that really low James Earl Jones-like voice? “Ho, Ho, Ho” is a Christmas saying, but the giant was always out in a sunny July-like garden. Granted, Green Giant made frozen vegetables, but that “Ho” connection was never made clear.

Or was it “Hoe, Hoe, Hoe” and he was barking out instructions to the laborers in the field?  

Sweet Talk

 

The World Series is happening. The Dodgers won the first two games. And since Halloween is this week, I thought we’d take a look at baseball themed candy.

•           The Baby Ruth Bar – To avoid paying Babe Ruth any royalties, the candy company said this candy bar was named after President Grover Cleveland’s daughter, who had died 15 years prior to the introduction of candy bar. Yeah, sure. They named it after her!  
• Oh Henry – I always thought this one was named after Henry Aaron, who beat the Babe’s home run record. Wrong again. It was not named after him. The origin of the name is unknown.
• The Reggie Bar – Reggie Jackson thought the two above were named after Ruth and Aaron so he demanded a candy bar in his name. And he got it. But it had short life.  
• Junior Mints – These delicious treats were not named after any player, not Ken Griffey Jr or Cal Ripkin Jr. It would have been cool for one of them to claim that the candy was named after them. That would have been some fun controversy.

And with the Dodgers back in the World Series, I think it’s time for the Reese people to honor long time shortstop Pee Wee Reese with some type of candy. Maybe that's just me...

As an aside, always check the expiration dates on your candy, kids. At some point those Junior Mints become Senior Mints.  

Change is Gonna Come

 

Remember when you were a kid and you’d check the coin return on pay phones for change? When I was 8 years old I found 35 cents in a pay phone at the hospital. That kept me checking those coin returns for years. Like a gambler after his first win, I was hooked. There were no 800 help lines for child pay phone checkers to call then. Now there’s 800 numbers if you think you’re hooked on gambling. Fortunately I was cured when pay phones became extinct.

Of course, if you’re addicted to checking pay phones like I was, maybe calling an 800 number wouldn’t have been the best way to treat the disease since you could easily be drawn to a pay phone to call the 800 number. That would pretty much defeat the purpose. 

I guess that’s why they got rid of pay phones…

It’s a Dog’s Life

 

I saw an article recently that stated that dogs are living too long; their lives are being extended by drugs and that basically these old dogs are miserable. But then I hear commercials on the radio stating that dogs don’t live as long as they used to but you can change that if you feed your dog Farmer’s Choice or whatever it’s called. This radio guy tells us that his dog Winston used to eat table scraps but now that he’s eating Farmer’s Choice, Winston is more like a puppy again.

The author of the article may be having some disconnect between dog years and real years. (“Dogs used to live to 84 and my dog died when he was 11.”) I bet that’s it.

As to the owner of Winston, we here at UT have a pretty quick solution: The owner of Winston needs to take that $160 a month that he gives to Farmer’s Choice and spend it on his own meals. Then he can still give little Winston table scraps and he and Winston both eat better. That, my readers, is a win-win.

In hindsight, when you name a dog after a cigarette, how long do you really expect him to live?

Yellow Press

Remember the Yellow Pages? I guess they’re still around somewhere on the internet. But back in the day the Yellow Pages was this huge yellow book of business phone numbers and ads that got dropped off on your porch once a year. You never saw the delivery guy. It just showed up. Their advertising theme was, “Let your fingers do the walking in the Yellow Pages”. That was one catchy jingle. It insinuated that you would use the yellow pages instead of walking around town looking for stuff. This got me to thinking: Did people really walk around looking for places before there were the Yellow Pages? I suppose it’s possible, especially if you were on vacation in a new place.  “I’m hungry for Chinese food.” “OK, let’s start walking. Maybe we’ll find a place.”

At least you’d be hungry when you finally found the place.

Uncle Manners

I saw it again. I was at a nice restaurant, and a woman sneezed into her cloth napkin not once, but 4 times. I tried not to stare, and maybe I missed the first sneeze, but I unfortunately saw the last 3. That behavior is not acceptable. There was no attempt to use the elbow. So yeah, she got the memo about not sneezing into one’s hand, but she missed the one about the cloth napkin. C’mon. Somebody’s gotta pick up that napkin when they clear the table…

In situations like this it is perfectly acceptable to not say a “God bless you” or “Bless you” after the sneeze. No “Gesundheit”. How else are they going to get the idea not to do that?

By the way, “Gesundheit” is only German phrase I know. When I’m around Germans I always hope one of them sneezes so I can use it. I'm trying to find out if there's a separate German phrase to use after one sneezes into one's cloth napkin?