You Say Torpedo, I Say Torpedo

This week I heard a famous 380BC quote from the Spartan warrior Dienekes. When told that the Persian enemy’s arrows would be so numerous that they would blot out the sun he replied, “Good, then we will fight in the shade!” So yeah, this quote has stayed famous for like, what, 2400 years? Not sure I get it. I’m not sure it ranks up with “I have not yet begun to fight!”, or, “D@$* the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”, or “I shall return!”. Or even, “I’ll be back!”. ( Was Schwarzenegger trying to quote General McArthur there?)

I mean, did Vince Lombardi or Knute Rockne ever fire up their football teams at halftime by shouting this Dienekes quote? Dienekes must have been a tremendous soldier and they wanted something to remember him by.That's gotta be it.

I’ll try this saying at the next sales meeting at work. Yeah.

7/10 Split

 

It’s ice cream season. I love ice cream. I love the novelties. Let’s look at some of these novelties as we enter the summer season:

• Banana Split – I know a guy who owns a bowling alley and he’s opening an ice cream shop. This may lead to some sticky bowling balls, but we’ll see. I told him he needs to call his banana split the 7/10 split. We’ll see if he takes me up on that. Maybe the 7/10 split is so undesirable in bowling that bowlers would stay away from something with that name…
• Bomb Pop – It’s red, white and blue and you eat it in red, white and blue order. Perfect for America’s 250^th anniversary. Get one now!
• Creamsicle – Popsicle with ice cream in the middle. Delish. Also known as the dreamsicle or jet bar. I get that dreamsicle and creamsicle could get confused with each other and the “C” and the “D” are close to each other so maybe it was a simple typo. But jet bar?

Perhaps the jet bar was invented to carry and drop the bomb pop. I’m pretty busy running this blog so if somebody with a military ice cream background could look into that that’d be great. Somebody who worked in the galley .   

It's Getting Butter All The Time

 My family and my readers are aware of my love of butter. I even received a beautiful yellow Butterie butter dish for my birthday!  The Butterie eliminates the daily chore of attempting to soften the butter to a spreadable texture by microwaving it. You simply leave the Butterie out all night and it’s there on the counter to greet you each morning.

Many of the letters we receive here at Uncle Tommy are signed “LOL”. Some people understand that to mean “Laughed out Loud”. Others take that to mean “Lots of Love”.  Some say it’s a combination of those two. We here at Uncle Tommy understand the real meaning of the phrase: “Land O Lakes”.Yeah. We know the code. 

You’d butter believe it.     

Smelling Bee

 It’s really hard to find good help what with the immigration crack down and all. Workers are being deported and those who remain are often over worked. We were at a restaurant last week where the waitress had to cover the whole dining room by herself and asked us multiple times if we could sneak her out of the building!

I’ve been covering this whole blog pretty much by myself lately and I made a big mistake on the previous post about drug sniffing dogs. Chalk it up to exhaustion. Originally I had erroneously typed dog sniffing dogs being out of work instead of drug sniffing dogs.  That’s a big difference. This error was in the original post and some of you may have read it before it got corrected.

Rest assured dear readers, your dog sniffing dogs are not being retired. Or deported. As far as I know, they’re out there in full force.  But if your dog is a German shepherd or French poodle, make sure its passport is up to date!

Oooh That Smell

Now that marijuana is being legalized in so many states, we are seeing more and more former drug sniffing dogs who are now out of jobs. These poor dogs went through meticulous training, sometimes lasting (dog) years. Remember that old saying: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Yeah, these dogs can’t likely become seeing-eye dogs or sled dogs or something. Most of them can't be "untrained". 

So these dogs are retired. They stay inside on the couch watching animal planet. Or they end up at a shelter, or at the pound. (In Canada, do they call the pound the kilogram?)

At any rate, someone needs to start an adoption program for these guys, something along this theme: "Tired of being hooked on weed? Adopt this dog. You’ll never buy weed again.” Pretty simple if you think about it.

Tubby Time

We had an interesting conversation yesterday about tub access for seniors. One of the last calls you want to receive is the elderly relative or neighbor calling to tell you that they’ve fallen and they can’t get up. There’s a range of these calls, none of which are good. However, the worst of these is likely, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get out of the tub”.  Nobody wants that call. Even professional first responders don’t want that call.

So, should the elderly be required to wear bathing suits in the tub or shower after a certain age? I know this seems extreme and I have no idea how it could be enforced, but, for the benefit of society, I don’t think this is a bad idea. We may be on to something.

This could also be helpful when a senior receives one of those face time calls from the grandchildren.

 

Diaper Time

I’m going to a diaper party Saturday. It’s my first one - I’m pretty busy with this blog. I was familiar with toga parties when I was young, in fact I was in my high school’s Latin Club as many of you know (I was also on the Latin Club basketball team), and we had incredible banquets where we wore the garb. Julius Caesar had nothing on us. We ruled. But I hadn’t been to a diaper party.

Apparently there are big differences in the two parties. Whereas one wears a toga to a toga party, one does not wear a diaper to a diaper party. That’s a good thing to know and I’ll throw that out there for any of you who might attend one of these someday.

So yeah, you take a box of diapers to the party. And I’m told you don’t have to wrap them, ‘cause, like, everybody’s giving the same gift but the receiver would still have to act surprised and stuff when he unwrapped your diapers. And it’d be hard to tell in the pictures which gift came from which person. 

And don’t even get me started on sorting out the thank you notes.

Camels and Camo

 

While at the zoo last week I saw a couple wearing camouflage.  Yeah, I saw them. They likely did not want to be seen, but yeah, I saw them. You have to wonder in those situations if they were on the lam, hiding from some past misdeed of some sort. That was my first thought. But, as I sought out the security guy, I thought to myself, maybe they weren’t on the lam; maybe they did not want the animals to see them for some reason. Maybe they thought that the animals were more likely to come out from hiding if they didn’t see any people.

In hindsight, I bet they were simply trying to sneak into the zoo without paying. That had to be it. I suppose it’s possible they were hunters but let’s not even go there!

 

Living by a Code

 As a grandfather, I often use the phrase “Code Brown” when one of the children needs a diaper change. I thought “Code Brown” was my own little phrase but it turns out everybody uses it. So maybe I didn’t invent it. It, of course, is a take-off on “Code Blue”, a term used at hospitals. I try to be careful, ‘cause somewhere there’s a doctor who invented the term “Code Blue”. He maybe didn’t get a disease or a hospital wing or an operation named after him, but he likely could tell people at cocktail parties, “Yeah, you’ve heard of the phrase “Code Blue”? I’m the guy who coined that phrase.”

In case you’re wondering I don’t introduce myself at parties with the line, “You may have heard of me – I’m the guy who invented the term “Code Brown”.” No.

Ideal Weight

 

I went to a different deli last week and I think I’m going to keep going back. I asked for a pound of potato salad and the guy got out the container and filled it up and, bingo, it weighed exactly a pound. I thought to myself, wow, this guy’s good. So I doubled down and ordered a pound of Cole slaw. I didn’t really want the slaw, but I wanted to see if this guy was that good, or was he just lucky on my potato salad. So, yeah, he got out the container, filled it with slaw and, bam, he hit one pound on the nose again. Two for two. This time, I felt the need to say something. I congratulated him. He took it in stride, but you could tell there was a little pride there and maybe a little competitive juice. Probably exactly a pound of competitive juice, now that I think of it.

He says he doesn’t compete, but you know he’s gotta be thinking about it. I took a marketing course in college and yeah, if I ran the store, I’d run promotions around this guy. I’d run a 10% off sale if he can come within, say, a half once of what you ordered. Let’s make shopping fun again!.

Wild Pitch

We have friends who still get the newspaper delivered to their house every day. The guy who delivers it throws it to their front step from the sidewalk and about once a month he misses the front step and fires it into their hedge. He never retrieves it from the hedge. And our friends who live there don’t retrieve it.  It just sits there in the hedge, maybe for weeks. The delivery guy is old, so his aim is probably never going to get better. And it’s not like he’s throwing it from his bike. He’s walking.     

I blame the publisher. When they hire these guys, do they assess their athletic ability? Questions like, do they play horse shoes, Jarts or cornball? Were they ever a pitcher? If yes, could they throw strikes? Was their best pitch a fastball, or did they rely on curves and sliders? Does they need a full windup or can they pitch from the stretch?

If they had a military background, did they throw grenades?  

Happy Easter! 

Peeps for Pups

One of our readers recently found Peeps dog food of some sort in the liquidation aisle at one of the big box stores and was kind enough to tell us about it. I have no problem with dogs enjoying peeps (better them than me). The main problem I had was that the Peeps were in the liquidation aisle BEFORE Easter. Nobody discounts candy before Easter. So this meant that:

•                They were leftover from last year, or
•          The store didn’t know when Easter is this year. (Easter does move around a lot.)

I wonder how much different these Peeps are from the human Peeps. I wish some brave person would try one and let us know. My guess is that they are about the same and that Peeps Inc is tired of slow sales in the human market and is test marketing their product on dogs.

I bet that’s how a lot of dog food gets started.  

The Plots Thicken

Is a couple that buys adjoining cemetery plots more likely to stick together until death? I don’t know that answer but I bet the answer is “Yes!” I would assume that, yes, people who lay out the money for these plots, these people who know they will someday be laid side by side, have a better than average chance of staying together. If I was a marketing director for a cemetery, I would really push the “buying plots together can strengthen your marriage” angle. It doesn’t take someone who took a marketing course in college to see this...

This subject reminds me of the song “Love Will Keep Us Togther” by the musical duo Captain and Tennille. Their marriage lasted 39 years. Wikipedia doesn’t say if they had adjoining cemetery plots or not…

The Plot Thickens

As we get older, we need to think about funeral arrangements for ourselves. Purchasing cemetery plots is a nice couples activity. You and your spouse shop around, find what you like, pick it out, buy it, and it’s yours. Maybe there are arguments as to who gets the left plot and who gets the right one, but I’m guessing people just go with which side of the bed they sleep on, right? Or maybe the couple  selects the right or left plot based on which side of the car they sat in. (“Well, Herb always drove. Always.”)  

The separate plots remind me of the twin beds on the old Dick Van Dyke show. It would have been really funny if Dick and Mary Tyler Moore would have switched beds from episode to episode (“Hey, last week she was in the bed on the left”) but I don’t think that happened…

Mario

Tuesday was Mario day (MAR10, get it?). This was a new one to me. It’s a Nintendo-endorsed holiday featuring sales on Nintendo games and stuff. But why should Nintendo “own” this day? What about all the restaurants named Mario around our communities? Shouldn’t they be allowed to participate? We had a carryout-only pizza place near our house growing up called Mario’s.  There were only two women who ever worked there (it was small). We thought they were sisters and maybe they lived upstairs above the restaurant. They probably didn’t need a furnace what with that pizza oven running well into the night. And they got to eat all the pizzas that people never picked up. Pretty sweet gig…

Every day was Mario Day for them I bet. I was often tempted to order a pizza and not pick it up so they’d have more to eat but I never did it.  

Big Ride

I saw a headline today that read: “Governor Wants Tighter Seat Belt Law”.  Really? Those self-tightening seat belts are tight enough now, I thought. They’re tight enough that, when I go through a fast food drive through and order a double cheeseburger, large fry and a 56 oz Mr. Pibb, I can’t take my wallet out of my hip pocket without unlatching my seat belt. (Is that even legal?) Then you eat the burger, fries and guzzle the Pibb and that belt gets even tighter!

I gave a business associate a ride to BW3 once. I didn’t know him that well. My car started beeping – I told him his seat belt needed to be on. He replied, “I know” and proceeded to do nothing. He knew he was too big for the seat belt. I gotta tell you, that was one awkward ride. What does one do in that situation?

•                Turn up the radio?
•          Talk about the weather?
•          Turn back?
•          Ask him to move to the back seat?
•          Take off your seat belt to sympathize?

I think I said something like, “So, like hey, what’re you gonna order at BW3?” Yeah.

Photo Op

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. We’ve been on a moderately needed vacation. Plus we lost an hour this morning. But yeah, nobody ever talks about a “not needed vacation”, or” kinda needed” vacation, do they? It’s always “much needed”.  Regardless, it was a great vacation; I’m rested and ready to go. As my high school history teacher used to say, “Let’s have at it!”

While on vacation, five of us ate at a restaurant, and we emptied the napkin dispenser that was on our table. We told our waitress about it. She checked the dispenser (?) and agreed that we were out, and proceeded to not fill the dispenser or give us more napkins, or give us our check for that matter. We don’t know what we did, if anything, to offend her. We eventually got the check from another employee.

It’s not like we asked her to take a picture of us and then later asked another employee to take another picture of us.  No. You don’t want to do that. But you’ll want to limit the number of pictures to 3, maybe 4. She’s got work to do. Somebody probably needs napkins.  

Stupid Pet Trick

Have you ever taken your dog to the vet to get spayed and instead the dog gets sprayed for fleas (they do that, right?)? I mean, this type of thing has to happen, right? Maybe not all the time, but I bet it happens. That’s why human doctors (well, vets are human too but you know what I mean), before doing a procedure, asks the patient what they’re having done today. The vet can’t do that with dogs. Sure, they can ask the dog in their dog voice what they’re having done today, but the dog can’t answer. No.

When you get the vet's bill, you can’t believe how low it is. And the dog recovers really fast. And you give the vet a really good online review.   

So yeah, there’s a lesson here: If your vet gets really good online reviews, make sure you ask about this little trick.

Some Bunny to Blame

I missed the Super Bowl halftime show this year. I had suggested that Taylor Swift marry Travis Kelce this year during halftime but that did not happen. No idea why. An explanation would be nice. So someone named Bad Bunny performed. Like I said, I didn’t see the show. But a lot of people saw it and the people I was with tonight definitely did not enjoy it.

The fact that people are still trashing this Bunny guy a month after the Super Bowl is concerning, especially considering we’ve been bombarded with the Olympics the past two weeks and then witnessed the huge US win in hockey yesterday. The concern now is what affect this Bunny will have on Easter candy sales. This may not be a good time to be buying Peeps Inc stock.