Wedding Dress(ing)

 

Readership has really picked up lately here at Uncle Tommy’s. We’ve tried to speculate as to the reason(s) for the increase. It could be any or some combination of the following:

•             Excitement associated with the World Cup
•   Excitement about Taylor Swift’s historic marriage

I suppose it’s possible that this blog, like the ranch dressing and free soda refills enjoyed by international soccer fans, has great appeal to the soccer fans AND to fans of Taylor Swift.

To attempt to make sense out of all this, I’m doing research for a post digging into whether or not there were free refills on ranch dressing at Taylor and Travis’s historic wedding.

Spice Girls

 

Looking for something to do after the exciting holiday? Maybe it’s time to take a look at your spice rack. The average American kitchen has 27 different spices in their spice cabinet. It’s hard to keep track of such a wide inventory of spices. And it’s even harder to keep track of their expiration dates. Many of these spices are rarely used – when’s the last time you actually used clove? Or Rosemary leaves (the only spice name sentence that I’m aware of)? One needs an excel spreadsheet to track these items and who has time for that?

So, should we be purging items from our spice cabinet? I say, no! Don’t do it! Does ginger really go bad? How about garlic powder?

In a worst case scenario, the expired spices can be used as a deodorant. I assume that’s how the brand “Old Spice” got its name. Running this blog and all, I don’t have time to research that but if somebody could look into it that’d be great.

(I’m guessing you might have to find a different use for that expired garlic powder…)   

The Audible Letter

More U.S. history: Why do some American’s put the “r” in Washington? “Warshington”, they say. Linguists say it’s a Midwestern accent thing.  They say the tongue slides through the r to get to the s. Apparently the tongue knows the alphabet…

What we have here is the opposite of the silent letter. This is a letter that’s not in the word, but it gets pronounced as opposed to the silent letter which is there but it’s not pronounced. This is not taught in our schools but maybe it should be. And we need to name this phenomenon. It’s been around long enough (250 years in the case of Warshington). Some possible names:

“Extrar” – Do we need to go any further?

“Englirsh” - This could be it

This could cause problems for Wheerl of Forturne. We're gonna have to work through that.

What Exactly Are We Celebrating?

 

Well yeah, there it was. I hope you enjoyed celebrating America’s 250^th birthday, ‘cause the 300^th won’t be celebrated nearly as much. Why, you ask? Because that date will be overshadowed by the celebration of Taylor Swift and Kelsey Grammer’s 50^th anniversary. People will say, “Oh yeah. I guess it is also the 300^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence”.  Yeah. You watch…

Yeah. Do these celebrities think about these types of things? Like, the effect that’ll have on fireworks sales? And yeah, forget about their 50^th anniversary, what about even next year? Will the fourth of July ever be the same?

What’s my wife gonna do with these leftover red white and blue paper plates?

TNT

More American history: We saw some great fireworks over the weekend. But no fireworks can compare to what took place in New York City over the weekend: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift tied the knot. What a way to begin the next 50 years of American history. The couple will get to celebrate their 50th anniversary at America’s 300^th anniversary. I look forward to that. Apparently all kinds of celebrities attended the wedding. Adam Sandler officiated at the ceremony. (Adam Sandler?) Was the pope not available? C’mon, we’re talking Taylor Swift here…

My only regret was that her mother Loretta Swift (from M*A*S*H) passed away last year and was unable to attend.  

Axe to Grind

More US history: Some guy in the 1800’s wrote that our founding father George Washington chopped down a cherry tree when he was young. The legend has grown to the point that a good percentage of Americans believe it.  We don’t know how old George was (10?, 17?) and we don’t know the size of the tree. We don’t know if it was their only tree or if they had an orchard? We only know that George owned up to chopping down the tree. He could not tell a lie. OK, but apparently he couldn’t be trusted around cherry trees. When asked about the new stump in his yard, George’s father probably said, “Oh George did that. But he told us about it. We’re proud of him.”

Chopping down a cherry tree is kinda wimpy. This writer needed to enhance his story and make the tree a council oak or a redwood. C'mon, this is George Washington we're talking about here...

Lastly, isn't it crazy that America's best apples come from the state of, you guessed it, Washington? Oops, looks like I'm mixing apples and cherries. 

Happy 250th, America! 

 

Fun Time

More US History: We used to have a roller skating rink in town called Fun Spot. And guess what? I always had fun there. Always. Fun is a word that shows up a lot in advertising. I had a Fun Size package of M&M’s last week. It had 11 M&M’s in it. I thought that was an unusual number, so I opened another package. That package had 10 M’s (Do I really need to add the “&M”’s in this context?) in it. Regardless, I don’t consider 10 or 11 M’s “fun”, do you? You may not even get all the colors. And some say all the colors taste the same, but I’m not so sure. Shouldn’t “fun size” be the larger size?

Should we describe clothes sizes the same way? Petite = fun size. Should Big and Tall be “More Fun”?