The Creep Capers
Hello World,
Well, I don't know about you, but I find it hard to believe that next week is Thanksgiving, of all things, and while I hate to be an alarmist, I have to point out that the Sunday after this one is Advent already, so that has to tell you something right there. (Except, of course, for the God-less communists in the KGB who may be monitoring my email, and heaven knows their name is legion, who don't realize that means there are only four Sundays until it's actually Christmas, by golly.) In fact, I was stopped in the hallway at the hospital by a co-worker who announced that radio station 106.7 has already started playing Christmas music, and I need hardly point out, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. That may not be the end of the world as we know it, since the pernicious effects of "holiday creep" have been with us for years by now, but it's certainly a wake-up call for those of us who may not be as prepared for the jolly old elf and his reindeer octet as we might like to be at this time. Once again, it's the poor Pilgrims that get short shrift, and their shrift has been getting shorter and shorter every year it seems to me, and at this rate, it won't be long until like poor Christopher Columbus and Armistice Day before them, they're relegated to the dust heap of holiday history, remembered only by the purists and crackpots, although the dinosaurs and I prefer to be called "traditionalists," thank you very much.
Speaking of holidays, I recently stumbled across a seasonal surprise that I wasn't expecting. I've gotten used to the idea that certain games in FaceBook offer topical rewards to their users, like spooky decorations for your farm, or pumpkin pie in your restaurant. I hadn't seen any of that being available at my zoo, which seems to be a more serious application, that always seems to be lecturing us about habitat destruction and extinction. But I was at my zoo last night, watching the virtual patrons wandering around enjoying the exhibits and amenities, when I spotted some small brown things trotting along that I had never seen before. I had to zoom in on them, but sure enough, they turned out to be turkeys mixed in with the visitors, and that was when I noticed that some of the other guests were dressed as Pilgrims, in that unmistakable style so unexpected in a 21st century zoo, that's for sure. For people who take themselves so seriously, this was about the funniest thing I could think of for my zoo to be doing, and I got a real chuckle out of it. Especially since they obviously fought off the encroachment of "holiday creep" with their Pilgrims and turkeys, instead of stuffing my zoo full of elves and reindeers, and if that doesn't give us all a reason to be thankful, I don't know what would.
In other holiday news, I heard from an alert reader (thanks, Sam!) who had this observation to make about Halloween:
===========================
In the subject of Halloween, I'm sure you've noticed how it has become more popular than ever. Also, that the celebration has changed since we were kids. Thanks to the real-life horrors of today, "trick or treat" has somewhat fallen by the wayside. The days when a kid wandered alone for blocks to the houses of perfect strangers has gone. However, that has been replaced by other things, most of them borrowed from Christmas. We sent Halloween Cards even when we were kids (or rather received them from Grandma) so that's not new. In relatively recent times, people have been decorating their houses with orange lights and other Halloween-y things. There are all sorts of decorations, things that move and make sound, even Halloween ornaments. One day, I was in a convenience store and saw a "Halloween Gingerbread House Kit." Now, I like gingerbread and am happy to see its availability outside of Christmas, but this made me coin a phrase: "the Christmasization of Halloween." I wonder what's next?
===========================
Hmmmm. I think he may be on to something there. Of course, I say that as a person who has obviously lost her mind completely, and I have the award certificates to prove it. In YoVille, my virtual character Gigi has a virtual apartment, and I can buy furniture and accessories for it. I thought I could resist the door mat that says: HI, I'M MAT, but it proved to be too much of a temptation for me, in spite of all my efforts to talk myself out of it. I wish I could say that my feeble sales resistance had hit a new low at that point, and then rebounded sensibly from there, but that would be very far from the case. So when I saw the other door mat that says: NICE UNDERWEAR, I didn't even bother trying to talk myself out of it, because I knew it would be no use. I admit that I'm easily amused, and I find things funny that other people consider just plain weird or worse, but I thought those were great, and every time I go back to the apartment, it gives me a laugh. I realize that this would not improve my reputation among the more sophisticated social circles, or endear me to the more genteel elements of society, and in fact, even Gigi is pretending that she doesn't know me.
On the other hand, I'm not doing as badly as the person who called me at work last week, and when I answered the phone and identified myself, tossed this opening salvo at me: "Fifteen minutes okay?" Since I had no idea who was calling, and I didn't remember making any immediate plans with anyone, I was reluctant to agree to what I considered a curious query on their part. The best I could muster under the circumstances was, "I'm sorry?" Totally unfazed, the caller plowed right on ahead: "Fifteen minutes. It's Mike. You said I should call you when I got here." I found myself saying, "Ummmm" while I was trying to determine the best way to unravel this apparent case of mistaken identity in the simplest way. Growing suspicious, my new quasi-friend Mike demanded: "Isn't this Stella?" Oh no, I assured him, and once again identified myself, more clearly this time, with the name of the hospital and the department that he had inadvertently called while trying to hook up with the elusive Stella. That seemed to straighten things out in his mind, so that he could take steps to correct the discrepancy that led him to inviting me to meet him in quarter of an hour, and frankly, I don't know which of us would have been more surprised. But he really had me going there for a minute, I can tell you.
Also at work, these have obviously been challenging times for our crack (or is that, cracked?) staff in the IT department, and no place for the faint-hearted, which I might call an understatement of mythic proportions, but I wouldn't want to offend my friends the dinosaurs. Lately it seems that anyone whose computer is connected to the hospital network has experienced one problem after another, from balky and unpredictable performance, all the way to outright failures, often at the most inopportune moments. I said to Bill that for an entire week, it seems that my computer crashes every single day, and sometimes more than once in the same day, at all different times and while I'm doing different things, which is what first led me to suspect that the problem was not with my computer, but the server it's connected to. (It was my complaints about these daily crashes that led one co-worker to quip that at least I knew what to expect on a regular basis, which was not exactly the kind of empathy I was hoping for.) Yesterday I happened to bump into one of our IT techs in the hallway of our building, where he was being abused by irate users having computer problems that made it impossible for them to do their work, some of which, like Payroll, have a specific time-frame in which things have to be completed, and no excuses. It made me realize that my computer problems were inconvenient, but not critical like these other departments, where everything they did depended on their computer working right all the time. They were busy calling him names and giving him a hard time, so when I went by, I said hello to him just like a normal person, and because he looked like he could really use a friend, I added that I wasn't going to turn on him, and would be glad to be in his Fan Club besides. He beamed, like this was the first nice thing anyone had said to him all year, but it caused one of his abusers to observe sourly that being in his Fan Club must be awfully lonely. Now, that is what I call just plain stone cold.
Mind you, if I was going to complain at that moment, I would have mentioned the repeated notifications that I've been getting in my incoming email every day, purportedly from the System Administrator, with the arresting subject line: "Undeliverable - Returned Mail." Normally, this would mean that the hospital server was unable to deliver some of my email that I had sent to a vendor, or someone else at the hospital, and I would check the body of the notification to see which message of mine needed to be re-sent or follow-up with a phone call instead. But every time it's been the same thing, which is some spurious misinformation of a supposed message from me to those close personal friends at penis_nexus.com (AS IF!) that didn't get through. (I don't doubt it!) Anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm all full of those tricks, sending email every day from work to any place called penis_nexus.com, so you can imagine how thrilled I am to be getting these notifications every day that "my" messages to them were undeliverable, thanks not. Frankly, I'm a busy person, and I don't have time for this sort of inconsequential nonsense, I can assure you. After all, it's the third week in November, and with "holiday creep" the way it is, I'd better hurry up and start getting ready for Easter. Now where did I put that Easter Gingerbread House Kit?
Elle
Well, I don't know about you, but I find it hard to believe that next week is Thanksgiving, of all things, and while I hate to be an alarmist, I have to point out that the Sunday after this one is Advent already, so that has to tell you something right there. (Except, of course, for the God-less communists in the KGB who may be monitoring my email, and heaven knows their name is legion, who don't realize that means there are only four Sundays until it's actually Christmas, by golly.) In fact, I was stopped in the hallway at the hospital by a co-worker who announced that radio station 106.7 has already started playing Christmas music, and I need hardly point out, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. That may not be the end of the world as we know it, since the pernicious effects of "holiday creep" have been with us for years by now, but it's certainly a wake-up call for those of us who may not be as prepared for the jolly old elf and his reindeer octet as we might like to be at this time. Once again, it's the poor Pilgrims that get short shrift, and their shrift has been getting shorter and shorter every year it seems to me, and at this rate, it won't be long until like poor Christopher Columbus and Armistice Day before them, they're relegated to the dust heap of holiday history, remembered only by the purists and crackpots, although the dinosaurs and I prefer to be called "traditionalists," thank you very much.
Speaking of holidays, I recently stumbled across a seasonal surprise that I wasn't expecting. I've gotten used to the idea that certain games in FaceBook offer topical rewards to their users, like spooky decorations for your farm, or pumpkin pie in your restaurant. I hadn't seen any of that being available at my zoo, which seems to be a more serious application, that always seems to be lecturing us about habitat destruction and extinction. But I was at my zoo last night, watching the virtual patrons wandering around enjoying the exhibits and amenities, when I spotted some small brown things trotting along that I had never seen before. I had to zoom in on them, but sure enough, they turned out to be turkeys mixed in with the visitors, and that was when I noticed that some of the other guests were dressed as Pilgrims, in that unmistakable style so unexpected in a 21st century zoo, that's for sure. For people who take themselves so seriously, this was about the funniest thing I could think of for my zoo to be doing, and I got a real chuckle out of it. Especially since they obviously fought off the encroachment of "holiday creep" with their Pilgrims and turkeys, instead of stuffing my zoo full of elves and reindeers, and if that doesn't give us all a reason to be thankful, I don't know what would.
In other holiday news, I heard from an alert reader (thanks, Sam!) who had this observation to make about Halloween:
===========================
In the subject of Halloween, I'm sure you've noticed how it has become more popular than ever. Also, that the celebration has changed since we were kids. Thanks to the real-life horrors of today, "trick or treat" has somewhat fallen by the wayside. The days when a kid wandered alone for blocks to the houses of perfect strangers has gone. However, that has been replaced by other things, most of them borrowed from Christmas. We sent Halloween Cards even when we were kids (or rather received them from Grandma) so that's not new. In relatively recent times, people have been decorating their houses with orange lights and other Halloween-y things. There are all sorts of decorations, things that move and make sound, even Halloween ornaments. One day, I was in a convenience store and saw a "Halloween Gingerbread House Kit." Now, I like gingerbread and am happy to see its availability outside of Christmas, but this made me coin a phrase: "the Christmasization of Halloween." I wonder what's next?
===========================
Hmmmm. I think he may be on to something there. Of course, I say that as a person who has obviously lost her mind completely, and I have the award certificates to prove it. In YoVille, my virtual character Gigi has a virtual apartment, and I can buy furniture and accessories for it. I thought I could resist the door mat that says: HI, I'M MAT, but it proved to be too much of a temptation for me, in spite of all my efforts to talk myself out of it. I wish I could say that my feeble sales resistance had hit a new low at that point, and then rebounded sensibly from there, but that would be very far from the case. So when I saw the other door mat that says: NICE UNDERWEAR, I didn't even bother trying to talk myself out of it, because I knew it would be no use. I admit that I'm easily amused, and I find things funny that other people consider just plain weird or worse, but I thought those were great, and every time I go back to the apartment, it gives me a laugh. I realize that this would not improve my reputation among the more sophisticated social circles, or endear me to the more genteel elements of society, and in fact, even Gigi is pretending that she doesn't know me.
On the other hand, I'm not doing as badly as the person who called me at work last week, and when I answered the phone and identified myself, tossed this opening salvo at me: "Fifteen minutes okay?" Since I had no idea who was calling, and I didn't remember making any immediate plans with anyone, I was reluctant to agree to what I considered a curious query on their part. The best I could muster under the circumstances was, "I'm sorry?" Totally unfazed, the caller plowed right on ahead: "Fifteen minutes. It's Mike. You said I should call you when I got here." I found myself saying, "Ummmm" while I was trying to determine the best way to unravel this apparent case of mistaken identity in the simplest way. Growing suspicious, my new quasi-friend Mike demanded: "Isn't this Stella?" Oh no, I assured him, and once again identified myself, more clearly this time, with the name of the hospital and the department that he had inadvertently called while trying to hook up with the elusive Stella. That seemed to straighten things out in his mind, so that he could take steps to correct the discrepancy that led him to inviting me to meet him in quarter of an hour, and frankly, I don't know which of us would have been more surprised. But he really had me going there for a minute, I can tell you.
Also at work, these have obviously been challenging times for our crack (or is that, cracked?) staff in the IT department, and no place for the faint-hearted, which I might call an understatement of mythic proportions, but I wouldn't want to offend my friends the dinosaurs. Lately it seems that anyone whose computer is connected to the hospital network has experienced one problem after another, from balky and unpredictable performance, all the way to outright failures, often at the most inopportune moments. I said to Bill that for an entire week, it seems that my computer crashes every single day, and sometimes more than once in the same day, at all different times and while I'm doing different things, which is what first led me to suspect that the problem was not with my computer, but the server it's connected to. (It was my complaints about these daily crashes that led one co-worker to quip that at least I knew what to expect on a regular basis, which was not exactly the kind of empathy I was hoping for.) Yesterday I happened to bump into one of our IT techs in the hallway of our building, where he was being abused by irate users having computer problems that made it impossible for them to do their work, some of which, like Payroll, have a specific time-frame in which things have to be completed, and no excuses. It made me realize that my computer problems were inconvenient, but not critical like these other departments, where everything they did depended on their computer working right all the time. They were busy calling him names and giving him a hard time, so when I went by, I said hello to him just like a normal person, and because he looked like he could really use a friend, I added that I wasn't going to turn on him, and would be glad to be in his Fan Club besides. He beamed, like this was the first nice thing anyone had said to him all year, but it caused one of his abusers to observe sourly that being in his Fan Club must be awfully lonely. Now, that is what I call just plain stone cold.
Mind you, if I was going to complain at that moment, I would have mentioned the repeated notifications that I've been getting in my incoming email every day, purportedly from the System Administrator, with the arresting subject line: "Undeliverable - Returned Mail." Normally, this would mean that the hospital server was unable to deliver some of my email that I had sent to a vendor, or someone else at the hospital, and I would check the body of the notification to see which message of mine needed to be re-sent or follow-up with a phone call instead. But every time it's been the same thing, which is some spurious misinformation of a supposed message from me to those close personal friends at penis_nexus.com (AS IF!) that didn't get through. (I don't doubt it!) Anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm all full of those tricks, sending email every day from work to any place called penis_nexus.com, so you can imagine how thrilled I am to be getting these notifications every day that "my" messages to them were undeliverable, thanks not. Frankly, I'm a busy person, and I don't have time for this sort of inconsequential nonsense, I can assure you. After all, it's the third week in November, and with "holiday creep" the way it is, I'd better hurry up and start getting ready for Easter. Now where did I put that Easter Gingerbread House Kit?
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:04 PM
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