When Black Friday Comes

Set my alarm clock for 4:15 am to make to Best Buy by 5:00. ‘cept this time when the alarm went off I decided to sleep ’till 7:00 instead. Maybe its because I’m not waking up regularly at 5:00 any more (different job & hours). Or maybe it’s because I’m broke (different job & pay). But I felt that sleep would bring me more joy this particular Black Friday than wandering the shelves of Best Buy in search of some amazing deal on a gadget I don’t really need. (Or is “gadget I don’t need” redundant?).

@Serolf Divad:
How un US American of you!

Just kidding, of course. My housemate once tried to get me to go to a New Years Day sale at 5am. I, too, chose sleep.

Rikki don’t lose that coupon.

So the Best Buy is right next to the Panera bread where I pick up the bagles that the family has on weekends and holidays. So heck, I figured as long as I’m here anyway…

At any rate, here’s the report from Best Buy at 8:00 am: this is the year for blue-ray. They had blue ray players for $99.00 and a name brand (Samsung) for $150.00. They also had a store brand 32″ LCD TV for $299.00… wow… not half bad picture, either.

Now if only the studios would release all their titles as Blue-ray/DVD two-packs I might actually buy a player. But I’m definitely not buying any blue ray titles if that means I won’t be able to watch them on my portable player or the DVD/TV combo machine we’ve got in the bedroom.

That said, it’s all academic anyway, since I’m broke. Window shopping only for me this season. Luckily my relatives are broke too (that’s one of the benefits of a global recession) so we’ve agreed we’re only buying gifts for each others’ kids.

I normally wait until the 23rd of December and go to my local independently gay-owned book store in the Castro and buy one book for each family member. That’s it. This year, I think I’m going to the used book store in the Haight and getting everyone a used paperback. My goal is to not spend more than $25 this year.

Mr. SFL gets a bottle of Tanq Ten. Thank FSM for BevMo.

I’m actually a little excited about x-mas this year because my unemployment has given me the perfect excuse to ignore all that crap. Ha! Ha!

NYE, on the other hand, looks grim. I just learned yesterday that my last uncoupled friend bit the dust and is now in a relationship.

I haven’t done Xmas shopping in a store since Amazon went online in 1995.

@Mistress Cynica: After 30 years of getting crap I didn’t want, need or like from my family, I instituted the gift card only xmas in the year of our Pasta two thousand and two. Since then, I’ve only had to drop by the Safeway gift card rack while grocery shopping. Black Friday is for suckers.

It’s fortunate that I don’t have a lot of family here and they all read which makes gift giving easy.

I hate shopping, especially at Xmas which is why I do most of my Xmas shopping just after Halloween. No more fighting for the last parking spot, getting sick eating the mall food and/or flu.

@redmanlaw: You win!

@ManchuCandidate: Amazon.com through the Stinque Linque. You can do this while watching football.

Question: if it’s such a big shopping day why is it called Black Friday?

@Benedick: Because it’s the day when most retail business become profitable for the year, i.e., go from being in the red for the year into being in the black. An insane percentage of retail sales occur during the holiday shopping season.

@Benedick:

It’s my rough, non-Googled understanding that most retailers make the majority of their money, and thus their profits, in the fourth quarter (specifically after Thanksgiving), so that’s when their books are “in the black.”

@Mistress Cynica:

Jinx!

; )

@Benedick: I cheated and used the Google. Apparently in the mid 60’s the Philadelphia police began using the term because of the gigantic traffic jam the shoppers caused. It began to spread to other locales. The booster-types in retail didn’t like that negative terminology and created the entire “from red ink to black ink” cover story.

@Dave H: Apparently the Philadelphia Story is disputed, but I don’t recall what I stumbled across the other day that took issue with it.

@Dave H: I appreciate the effort but it smells like a false etymology to me.

@Mistress Cynica: That makes sense.

From the shithole known as San Bernardino County: Customers fighting at 2:45 in the morning over shit made in China close down a $prawl-Mart for a few hours.

@SanFranLefty: Correction. Fights broke out at TWO different $prawl-Marts in the Inland Empire.

@SanFranLefty:
remember last year? a sprawlmart security guard was trampled to DEATH by shoppers when he opened the doors. morons.