Black Tuesday

This is getting ridiculous.

Black Friday is now Black Thursday evening, and my husband saw people camped out in tents, on concrete LAST night outside a Best Buy.

Seriously?

Maybe it’s some kind of a joke.

Apparently this started like 12 days ago.

Didn’t the whole “Black Friday” thing originate as something to do on a long holiday weekend when you just couldn’t force yourself to eat yet another turkey sandwich or have another raving argument conversation with your über-conservative brother-in-law? What about Thanksgiving? You know, friends, family, dry white meat, dressing that the kids will complain about (is that celery?), cooking a meal for 6 hours that takes everyone 10 minutes to eat, nobody wanting to do the dishes?

Brad Tuttle, writing for Time, suggests that perhaps Best Buy is paying them.

I guess that makes sense.

I think it all just makes us look that much more greedy and materialistic.

We refused on principle by buying our new TV yesterday.*  That’ll show ’em.

* (the 2nd Olevia died a couple months ago — anybody know how I can get a piece of some class action lawsuit against this terrible company?)

And for your enjoyment, in honor of this family-based holiday: Ze Frank on Scrabble

Olevia

Have any of you made the mistake of buying one of these TVs? We own two. The one “we” use (meaning the resident adults in the household) takes its own sweet time coming on. There are all kinds of pretty screens, blues and pinks and stripes and kind of chalky cloudy tones, which morph and fade in and out and sometimes become a blinding white light that I trust does not mean I’m about to meet my maker. We actually wondered tonight if we should play a game: we’ll watch another episode of West Wing if we’re still awake when the TV actually comes on.

The one downstairs, for the “children,” seems to be working fine. We’ve considered trading them, when nobody’s home. Then we can watch TV when we want to, and when they come up and complain about theirs we can berate them: “What? You broke the TV? Well, you’ll have to pay for it.”

Probably couldn’t do it with a straight face, though, which means we’d never get away with it.

Guess we’ll probably have to buy a new one, although the joy we feel when it does come on is hard to replicate in day-to-day living. Plus I don’t want to spend money on a TV; I want to buy clothes on sale at Garnet Hill and those slouchy black suede boots at Macy’s.

Alas.