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? 

Teachable Moment

 

We lost electricity for 3 hours one evening recently. We had dinner by candlelight and shuffled around in the dark with our flashlights. Some bi-products of an electrical outage

• We have no idea what we ate.
  
• I’m not even sure that was my wife.
• I changed into casual clothes during the outage. When the lights came back on none of my clothes matched.

Regarding the third point, this is, as President Obama used to like to tell us, a teachable moment. If you see someone out on the town and their clothes don’t match or don’t quite match, don’t automatically think that they’re a dolt. They might have suffered through an electrical outage.

A great commercial for generators would be to have a guy standing in front of the camera in unmatched clothes saying, “Do you suffer from electrical outages and have to get dressed in the dark?” 

Did I mention I took a marketing course in college?

New Words and Phrases for 2024

 Since it's now the fourth quarter, here are some new words and phrases for 2024:

• Two upped – When you get one-upped twice
• Seven Upped – When you drink too much soda
• Seven Up for Seven Brothers - A new musical I'm working on built around soft drink jingles
  
• Nagavate – Giving directions a bit too aggressively
• Halfie Birthday – Song sung on one’s half birthday (half of a cake is optional)
• Oh! K. – When you’re pleasantly surprised and OK with what’s being proposed.
• Zebrum – One Zebra
• Hank Sr Moment – A beyond senior moment. (Named after Hank Williams Sr.)
• Sighmultaneous – when two people sigh at the same time

Feel free to use these and let's get 'em out there!