It’s beginning to look a lot like Xmas….

And it gets less appealing every year. Bah Humbug!

I can’t think of anything short of the Elixir of Life that could get me to camp out in front of a wal-mart for four days. I spent this BF like I’ve spent all the other BFs: sleeping and relaxing.

I’m just finishing up ‘work’ myself – having successfully caught the eye of the Jefe de los Jefes, as one of only 7 people in the office today.

Now – time for Big Lots!

America: The only nation on Earth that has managed to turn eating into a spectator sport is doing its level best to make shoppng an Oylmpic event.

No doubt just a matter of time, it’s the FOX News model already. Run stories about the impending Socialist takeover, create the Tea Party to protest it, including actually stage-managing their rallies, then spend years running stories about what an important and influential grass-roots movement this “Tea Party” phenomenon has become.

My thought is that a lot of people are paid “guarilla marketers”. I dont see real people camping out for days to save $50 on TV

The story of the Tea Party is what to use whenever a discussion of third parties and spoilerism is started.

The original TEA (“Taxed Enough Already”) Party was set up as a genuine honest-to-goodness third party, operating from the conservative side of the spectrum. Their existence as a true third party was, of course, an electoral threat to the Republicans, who immediately moved to assimilate them — not so much by changing GOP politics to be more conservative, but by dropping bags of money on the Teepers.

Here’s how they did it: Dick Armey and the Kochs set up a Potemkin outfit called the Tea Party Express, hired people like Sarah Palin to be the public faces of the outfit, and sent them on lavishly-funded cross-country bus tours, seeking to Hoover up interested conservatives before they could join the real TEA Party. The Tea Party Express offered boatloads of cash for prospective candidates — but with these provisos: The candidates had to back the Republican Party platform, and, once elected, caucus with “like-minded representatives” — aka those of the GOP.

Thus did the Republican Party succeed in Borging the Teepers back into the fold before they could play true third-party spoilers against the GOP. One must also bear in mind that the GOP funds the Greens and other lefty third parties to play spoilers against the Dems.

“It’s a trap” — Admiral Ackbar

Trample people for things the day after we give thanks for the things we have.

As during national elections, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a time of becoming Buddhist, lighting candles and chanting calming syllables; I refuse to yell at children on the lawn, divest as it will be of seasonal celebration. I pray mightily that I won’t destroy, in a fit of disgust, any of the currently working electronics that happen to reside here, as the process of replacing them is an incalulable risk to my spiritual harmony. Ohhhmmmmmmmm.

Took the dog out to the dog park, which is in a rural area northeast of LA. Drove home through the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains on winding roads…..only to be tail-gated menacingly by giant Land Rovers and GMC Suburbans that pulled right up on our bumper until we pulled over and let them roar past, the cartons of wide-screen TVS protruding from their back gates. Assholes.

This is why I don’t watch the news– because It. Is. Not. News.

I would turn on the TV to watch the news, and at the five minute mark, the reporters were down in the lobby, asking people: “which is better, Ipod or Drone?” Then a commercial break, and then a segment about some new “radical” restaurant that is doing great business in its first week.

No wonder I was told so often during this recent election cycle, that “I’m not sure what our economy is really about.” In Cronkite’s day, voters were given some insight into pertinent facts. Were the news given the same attention to detail in this era, people would know that Corporate Welfare is humongous, and is growing larger every year.” That Bernanke’s gifts from the Fed to the Elite were more money than the state of California will spend in the next 133 years!

The news rooms don’t have money to get in their damn news van and come out one County away from Sacramento to report on a fire that was larger than the one they were covering, sporadically, in Colorado. (When I called the station to say, “Couldn’t you cover a California fire, one that is affecting people that watch your station?” the station mgr said, “Well, if we report on the Colorado fire, our affiliate does all the work and assumes all the expense.” End of story.

These reporters recently did something that is earning them kudos over on Facebook – they walked off the job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LB6nWS1vpbQ

Slept in.
Stayed home all day, reading off and on.
Snacked.
Slowly sipping a nice Russian River white wine.
No intention of joining the Black Friday story at any point.
Maybe I’ll get off my ass and workout, but kinda doubt it.

The cricket household and especially the kittehs hope everyone has a good T-Day weekend, kicking off a nice holiday season.

Never forget. Black Friday is in honor of those who gave their lives shopping till they dropped. Literally. [Shopping till you drop includes, but is not limited to; dropping dead Breitbart style, trampled to death, stabbed to death, and especially in FL, shot by a stand your ground shopper.] Bless their hearts.

I bet they’re like that the rest of the year,too.

Spent the day relaxing. Went out to mail a couple of bills, came back by way of the supermarket (kind of across the street from the post office). Neither was especially busy.

“shoppers gone apeshit with crap-lust”

That is a really elegant turn of phrase.

What are these things you call “stores”?

You know while some of that may be true, it looks like Rick Santelli really was the first one to call for anything called a new “Tea Party”, before that there were various libertarian tax protest groups and sometimes people referred to the original Boston Tea Party stories of course, but the people who organized the first Tea Party rallies referred to his famous rant as the kickoff.

And since he’s a trader and CNBC on air personality (the FOX News of the Stock Market) to me that really still makes it a propaganda product from day one. If this stuff is done skillfully, the people they incite to do the footwork don’t even know it, and will swear up and down that they weren’t influenced by anyone but themselves.

For the third year in a row, I purchased NOTHING. Not a single thing, absolutely zero cents added to some wretched total. I hope this movement catches on, “Buy Nothing Friday”.

A small thing, but I’m canceling out a single idiot waiting in line somewhere…

I work at a teevee station and, yep, our “enterprising” News Director would definitely send a crew to cover a food riot. Also, too, they’d have Marketing standing by to produce Soylent Green-style promos.

I’ve never tried to shop on the day after Thanksgiving, and about 15 years ago, I imposed a moratorium on stepping into ANY store, other than Kroger, my local bookstore, and if absolutely necessary, Walgreens) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s how much I hate the “shopping season.” It’s curious how I rarely meet anyone one-on-one that I dislike, but I HATE hate hate people in crowds. So, on a Thanksgiving day long ago, I told my family, “tell me what you want early enough for me to order it online or through a catalog, or you’re getting something from the bookstore.” These days I don’t even have to remind them; I’ve trained them that well.

The reason I hate the consumerist orgy so much is that it makes it impossible to make a quick trip to Target or just about anywhere else for essential things like laundry detergent, deodorant, shampoo, light bulbs….etc for a full month out of the year. That’s why Walgreen’s is on the list of places I will go, if I have to.

I highly recommend to others that they adopt my system. I tell you, it works like a charm – it’s a lot easier to enjoy the upcoming holiday if you don’t have to elbow through a bunch of bufords to get not just the stuff you need, but the stuff you want to buy as gifts.

I use a similar method–only I carry it a step further. There’s a 50% chance I inherited the “hoarding gene” from my mother, as I tend to stock up on soap, TP, kleenex, and other cleaners throughout the year. To prevent the relatives from discovering that by the time I’m ready for the home I have enough soap and TP in my closets to disinfect France and wipe it from the spot on the map of the EU it once occupied, I use my hatred of X-mas shopping to avoid buying non-perishables during between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. If people don’t put in their gift orders by Turkey Day, they get gift cards–which are available at the supermarket. And since I’m not buying soap, TP, cleaners, etc., there isn’t much of an increase in the usual food bill.

Of course some things you just can’t get through a catalog. Through trial and error, I have discovered that the best time to go to a local mall between Thanksgiving & X-mas is Tuesday or Wednesday nights. (YMMV….)

It’s so much fun buying groceries in a store where half the shoppers are from Somewhere Else, and apparently were there to sight-see. The other half were buying stuff to eat/drink during this afternoon’s football games.

You really have to appreciate the business model of local news stations who send “reporters” from the Live At 5 News Action Eyewitness Doppler Radar We Care Action Action Team down to the big box stores to hype the run-up to the Black Friday sales.

Its in Chapter VII of the TV News Director’s Manual – Covering the Holidays with Skeleton Staff. Especially in a small market like mine (Providence RI).
Tuesday: Send a reporter to a supermarket. Subtext: Hurry up the turkeys are flying away, you glutton slob.
Wednesday: a reporter to the airport to marvel at the Caluctta-like crowds. Backfired here this week – the airport was mostly empty, so they had to ad lib a story about how everybody left Tuesday, and drove.
Thursday: Run stories from the national reel, with maybe a visit to a nursing home and a soup kitchen.
Friday: The aforementioned BUY IT NOW NOW NOW! stories.

BTW last time I was in any mall was to buy a tie for my father’s funeral, in 2004. Sometimes at this time of year I’ll order on line for in store pickup, but actually “shop” there? I’d move the holiday to March, first.