Black Friday

I'm sitting here staring at the blinking cursor trying to figure out a post for this month.  Two things are causing me epic writer block.  The first is the fact that thanks to my family, I've finally been let in on the secret of "What Does the Fox Say?"  I'm firm in my belief I could have gone to my grave without that earworm rooting in my head.

The second issue that slows my thought process down is the entire Christmas franchise we have going on in this country.  Do you want to take something really awesome and instantly rub all the shiny off of it?  Great – send it to ‘Murrica.  We can commercialize anything.  Thank you, ‘Murrica, for Black Friday.  You couldn’t have picked a better name.  It describes my mood and the bruises I got.

Forget that we’ll have a dying fir tree propped up in our family rooms shedding needles that will embed themselves in our feet for the rest of the year.  This is why I decorate trees while I’m drunk on cheap beer and use an overhand technique I learned at the bowling alley.

Forget that we’ll be outside, precariously balanced on a rickety ladder hanging lights on everything taller than ourselves.  Meanwhile, Canada is pumping air colder than my freezer down on us.  It will take a month for the feeling to return to my fingers and toes.

I don’t know about you out there in reader-land, but what really irritates me is the fact that American Christmas starts on Black Friday and doesn’t really stop until the after-after-after-Christmas sales trickle out around March.  This orgy of consumer gluttony is accompanied by a schlock-y mix of the most heinous Christmas music ever inflicted on the human eardrum.

Because that’s not torture enough, every store across the country has geared up for this orgy of debt spending by marking their wares up by 25% and then – just for us – offering them at 10% off.  The crap left in the warehouse from last year is marked off at a 50% rate.

This mysterious accounting attracts every single bargain shopper for miles around.  Enjoy hiking three miles from the last parking spot in the county so you can get rammed out of the way by an angry, spandex-clad WalMartian who will claw your eyes out just to get the last ShamWow on the shelf.  Everyone wants one of those gems.

If you’re like me – fairly large – you might withstand the hip checks and Stooge-worthy eye jabs.  But every collision in the toy area further dislodges the gravy train of food that’s packing my intestines.  Of the 46 million turkeys orgied upon this year, I have at least three-quarters of one lodged somewhere between my stomach and my good idea generator.  Cleanup in aisle five.

I know at least half of you are sitting out there, sipping your last pumpkin-spiced whatever and thinking, “Dear Lord, this man is one ball of bitter.”  The other half of you are giggling at the poop jokes I just managed to make up there in the preceding paragraph.

So get ready to watch your credit cards get visibly thinner with each swipe.  Know that within months, every store you spent money in will have a security breach with your account information stolen.  Make sure you wish someone a Merry Christmas.  If you do it loud enough, you’ll be sure to offend someone sensitive who thinks their rights are violated when you say that.

Have a Non-Sucky That-Part-of-the-Year
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