Susan's Scribblings the Blog

So I just came from the Walnut Street Theatre’s new production of “Elf.” Yes, it’s a musical version of the hit movie. Yes, this is just the week after Halloween. And yes, some audience members around me felt that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s bad enough that we spend seven months out of the year with our clocks set one hour ahead, but Christmas ads started cropping up the day after Halloween. Sure, some people like the holidays and can’t wait to start celebrating; they decorate starting on Labor Day. So do the holiday food processing plants. Just keep your eye on a box of holiday wrapped candy in your local department store and watch it sit there from September until somebody desperate for something to put under the tree grabs it up. Also makes you think about the preservatives going into that lunchmeat log on display in a cooler in the middle of the mall.

But I digress.

It’s not that I don’t have any holiday spirit; it’s just that it’s TOO  #@&#! EARLY!

Remember when the Thanksgiving Day parade was the measurement of when the holiday season started? Santa Claus used to clinb a ladder into Gimbel’s to set up the toy department overnight for the kids (and their parents) for Black Friday. Now Santa takes up early residence in the mall while the Halloween store is closing out its costumes two stores down the hall.

Now I never saw the movie “Elf.” I only watch one or two holiday films every year, “Christmas Story” being one of them. At least there is a story beyond little Ralphie’s hankering for an air rifle. Now that I’ve seen the musical, I can honestly say I’ve heard enough Christmas music for the season, and it was something other than the twelve standard songs rehashed by countless singers over generations. The songs were great, the dance numbers perky and the plot s simple joy to watch. None of us was ready to think about Christmas this early; it was like going down the shore in a swimsuit. Just bad timing.

Ask me about all of this on December 26th, when I’ll be in a better frame of mind to look back on it all.

Every time an electronic gadget is improved upon, it seems everybody rushes to buy the new version and get stuck with all the bugs that come along with them. Apple fans camp out for a new gizmo every month, it seems.  Windows users like me, on the other hand, enjoy long periods of peace before something new comes along. Unfortunately the problems persist.

Windows 8 is a good example. Sure, it has lots of bells and whistles, like interactive touch screen apps, but the first thing people complained about was the lack of a discernible home base from which to start exploring, because somebody removed the “Start” button. Finally the release of Windows 8.1 (which probably means that they neglected to fix nine-tenths of what will eventually become Windows 9) should have solved the problem. I haven’t been able to deal with it.

First, it took nearly twelve hours to install. You might do well to load it while you’re sleeping late into the weekend, and don’t intend to approach your computer with a hangover, because adjusting to some of the changes to Windows 8.1 might make your head explode.

The first thing that happened to me was that I received a message that not all the changes were compatible with Internet Explorer. Then, when I logged in the next day, Windows had replaced my PC login with my Microsoft login. Also, I have never been able to access Office programs such as Word and Excel without being on the Internet, so working offline seems to have disappeared from the galaxy as well.

One of my favorite Windows 8 games, Tap Tiles (R), was compromised by the new install, as I now have a “please wait” swirl of dots ghosting the middle of my screen.

I know that it’s probably a problem with trying to put so much computer language into a program which takes billions of bits of mathematical lingo just to turn on the darned machine, but if one releases a fix for a problem which isn’t itself one hundred percent ready, are you fixing something that is broken, or just putting a bandage on a severed limb?

Oh, and I haven’t yet touched a “Start” button.

Tic tac toe. The pound key. Hashtag. No wonder we get so confused about the world we live in, when symbols have more lives than a cat.

Do people still play tic tac toe anymore? I don’t see it as an app anywhere.  Sure it’s hard to win when you’re a kid playing against older wiser folk, and computers make winning impossible anytime, but it is a strategic game and a time passer.

The first time I started hearing “press the pound key now” on the phone, I knew that the British use the tic tac toe sign for weight, but getting customer phone calls from confused people took years to get under control.

Now we have the hashtag on Twitter.  I never had a tutorial about Twitter, and therefore I have not used a hashtag on any tweets. I’m sure there is information on there somewhere about it, so I’ll have to actually take the time to. . . .skip to the next paragraph, men. . . .read the directions.

Our world has been reduced to symbolism and innuendo. Fortunately we still need words to talk about them.

So much is going on this week, including the ongoing government shutdown, bad weather, conflicts overseas (okay, so that’s another ongoing one since time immemorial), and I could rant about any of them, but instead I’m going to talk about a table in the office cafeteria.

Every Monday at lunchtime, I go to a particular table in the cafeteria, where I have the privilege of dining with two senior colleagues who show up later. Somebody sits at that table before me, and leaves it in a horrible state. There is usually smears of sauce or gravy of some kind, and by the time I arrive it has dried on, so I break out my handy pack of Clorox(R) wipes and apply elbow grease until it comes off. I figure nobody–executive or minimum wage peon–should have to sit at a dirty table.

Which brings me to the person who leaves this horrid mess. I imagine they are the same type of person who leaves ummentionable calling cards in restrooms and garbage within an inch radius of the drain and disposal. People of this caliber seem to thrive on general ill will and tend to super glue the chip to their shoulders. Even the lowliest person down on his luck can take a moment to clean up a space before leaving it. We should all follow by example or, if none has begun the trend, start it outright.

Sure, somebody else will take care of it, but the problem is that you and I are somebody else.

I have some great women friends, but many of them seem to have the same problems in common: with men.  Sure, some are happily married, and I’m thrilled for them, but I know so many who have gone through multiple marriages or messy marriages and/or divorces, and I wonder if I lucked out by being a contender for the woman with the longest unlucky streak in the world when it comes to the opposite sex.

I think it might be better to join a convent than deal with some of the card-carrying members of the Testosterone League out there.  Some of the best-dressed men I’ve encountered seem too full of themselves to consider as a potential date.  Some of the casually dressed ones seem too obsessed with jobs and money earning to want to date, and those with the beer bellies the size of pregnancy bumps usually take themselves out of the running just be being disgusting (as if being fat is a license to belch, cuss and act barbaric).

Now before anybody writes in and take umbrage, let me make it clear that I am well aware that decent men of all three types I’ve described above are actually out there and likely looking for love, too.  Unfortunately we are both in the wrong places, because I haven’t seen you yet.

On the season’s first episode of the CBS show “Undercover Boss,” Randy DeWitt, the CEO of a restaurant chain called Twin Peaks–another idea in line with the Hooters concept (and in partnership with that place’s former CEO Coby Brooks, who was also a former show participant)–heard directly from his staff that his concept of staying within the limits of decency in a sexy dress-up food joint didn’t always work as planned.  For example, the patrons can sometimes cross the line when they come to see the slim, curvy and abundantly busty women in tight clothing serving them beer, and a performance ranking system designed to empower the women to do well and earn privileges such as the best tables to wait upon was actually abused by the male senior staff. The undercover CEO actually brought in his Hooters buddy to test the waters, shaving his head and arriving disguised as a patron to harass his bartender and see what would happen.  Fortunately it did make the staff and other patrons uncomfortable, and the owner asked him to leave.  What I don’t understand is why this whole concept of letting women be pretty in a customer service environment makes some men think that it’s permitting them to be jerks.

Men seem to like pretty women, but then they go about destroying what makes them pretty.  They grab, they paw, they aim their hands and potty mouths for where it will do the most damage. As humans we stink in the way we destroy what we love, but this whole affair with denigrating women has to stop.

Some places go way overboard, shrouding women in head-to-toe cover-ups to lessen the urge.  Some places have succeeded in allowing topless bathing without having a flood of newscasts about women being inappropriately handled while getting the best tan. Somewhere in the middle of it is the solution to the problem, and men need to take a step back and find out what it is. We women will thank them for it.

For one thing, we are more than two chest appendages, just as you men are actually more than the appendage further down the torso.  Second, if you admire us for looking nice, leave it at that: don’t invade our space and put your grubby hands where they don’t belong (at least not until after the first date or so).  Third, if we don’t look like that centerfold model, it’s probably because we didn’t have makeup artists and dressers and highly trained cameramen making us that way: besides, when those models go home, they wear tee shirts and jeans just like you do, and the smoky eyes and pouty lavender lips are smeared all over a cotton ball in the trashcan.

Let’s all look nice, be nice and get along. Appreciate what is good and suck it up when things aren’t going as planned.  There is always something new coming up, but the kind of loyalty to what you already have is more valuable. We’re just too fickle a generation anymore.  But that can be changed.