Black Friday: I vote no

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Updated Dec 2, 2013

black_fridayWhen I woke up Friday morning, it was 19 degrees outside and there were people who had been standing in that 19 degrees for several hours, waiting for stores to open. Some would call these people thrifty or penny wise, I call them crazy. It’s cold, people. Go home. Don’t you know if no one shows up at Walmart on Black Friday, Walmart will reduce the everyday prices to Black Friday prices for the rest of the season, because it will scare them so damn bad they won’t have a choice? If you stay home and warm on Black Friday, you can stroll into Walmart anytime you feel the urge or have the time and buy that forty-leven-inch television for $9.99.

(This is possibly a lie, I’m not sure how much a forty-leven-inch television costs, because I think giant televisions are creepy and vulgar. Every man reading this just gasped. I don’t like the people on the screen to be the same size as me, it creeps me out and it’s completely unnecessary. Television people are tiny and imaginary and trapped inside a box. They do not belong in 3-D, draping themselves all over my living room.)

Don’t all the places opening at insane hours have those price match guarantee things, anyway? Am I the only lazy ass who thought about taking the ads in on Monday and buying stuff for crazy prices under the lazy-ass rules? I mean seriously, why do I have to show my devotion by camping out by the Best Buy? Can you please just sell me cheap stuff because I showed up and have money? I don’t care if you’re out of forty-leven-inch televisions, sell me a cheap computer and we’ll be cool.

We did Black Friday one time, and I felt like jerk because we ended up being herded into the store along with a bunch of people who had been waiting for a long time, when we had just walked up to find out where the line was. They opened the doors, and the crowd surged — we didn’t have a choice but to go forth and consume. And then we found everything we wanted by just walking along the check-out line and picking up things people who had gotten tired of standing in line for more than 15 minutes had abandoned where they stood. We didn’t have to look for anything, and ended up being pretty much in and out, and it seemed wrong. Other people were scurrying around and yelling at each other. I think sometimes people make things a lot harder than they need to be. Anyway, we suffered minimally, mostly just having to be awake and around hoards of people at 4 a.m. I was also super peeved to see the closer we got to Christmas, the closer the sale prices got to what we paid anyway, and seriously, for five or six bucks, I’ll stay home and wait it out.

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I’m celebrating Green Friday, Fat Saturday and Laundry Sunday this year. I’m going to put up Christmas trees and run around in the woods with the dogs on Friday (and hope not to be shot by some idiot illegally hunting on the farm). Fat Saturday will involve eating tons of leftovers while watching Ohio State beat the eyes out of Michigan. Laundry Sunday speaks for itself.

No glamor here, gravy stains wait for no one.