American Blood Sport: 2014 Black Friday Carnage Begins Earlier than Ever

Don’t even bother with the formalities of the traditional family Thanksgiving dinner this year. Just grab a turkey sandwich on the way out the door to the earlier than ever Black Friday sales events. In an ongoing race to the bottom, American retailers have gradually shifted their "door buster" sales extravaganzas from midnight on Friday into turkey day itself. Perhaps I am too old fashioned in that I find it abhorrent that a cherished annual holiday is being poisoned by the now obvious flaws in the American character. It just seems like greed, sloth,  selfishness, the need for that narcotic hit of instant gratification and most of all the suffocating dumbness that is so prevalent in late 2014 just did not exist back in the ‘good old days’. 

Despite my contempt for many stupid national rituals I have always been a sucker for Thanksgiving and a day when eating like a pig for once has an excuse. Other than having to occasionally deal with obnoxious family members like a virulently racist stepfather, an overbearing Jewish narcissist of a mother in law and other quirky personalities it is usually a good day. Food, drink and plenty of football. I get it that the real pilgrims were religious zealots cast out of England for their insane ways and sent to early America to kill "injuns" but fuck it, I just love this one particular holiday. It has yet to be completely ruined in the way that Christmas has but it isn't for lack of trying on the behalf of the greedy bastards who have run this once great country into the ground. 

The big retailers were throwing their doors open to the rampaging hordes as early as 6 pm yesterday. This was just around halftime of the humiliating stomping administered to Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys by the Philadelphia Eagles. One of the great joys of Thanksgiving day is when the Cowboys lose and seeing that lemon-sucking, plastic surgery enhanced face of Jones as his asshole puckers. Such was a day yesterday when former Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the legendary, career killing “butt fumble” to batter America’s team. The brutality on the field at the gargantuan electronic hippodrome in Arlington was however no match for the now traditional spectacle of idiots pummeling each other over limited quantities of deeply discounted made in China crap.

The inevitable videos of in store violence have already been popping up with two women in a California Wal-Mart throwing down over a Barbie doll. A stocky dude in Indiana wearing a Chicago Bears jersey very aggressively going after a home entertainment component with more vigor than an actual member of the NFL team and a brawl between two women at a Kohl’s store in California. The madness has even spread across the pond where one of this year’s best early internet videos has a knock-down, drag-out fight over cheap panties in a Victoria’s Secret outlet in the UK. There were  also reports of Michael Brown supporters boycotting stores in Ferguson (no reports of looting) and the usual myriad of the scrums of desperate and stupid people behaving badly.

People who have a certain sick sense of humor revel in the reports of in store slugfests and a good share of them always seem to take place at Wal-Mart locations. In a sign that the mega-chain that ate America is developing some sensitivity over the Black Friday bloodbaths this year there was an emphasis on getting the word out that the sales would spread over a five day period.  Big Smiley just endured the indignity of having to yank an ad about “fat girl” Halloween costumes that inflamed the political correctness Nazis and seems to be grappling with an identity crisis. Not that I can understand why “fat girl” costumes would present an image problem considering the parade of human livestock that on any given day shops there, but there is more competition for fewer dollars in the economic wasteland of Obamastan these days.

I am sure that the reports of fighting at the Big Smiley mosh pits will continue to break as the day goes on and more eyewitnesses are able to upload their smartphone videos to You Tube. 

Black Friday Devours Thanksgiving

I wonder what the over/under Vegas betting line is on people who will be trampled to death this coming Black Thursday-Friday weekend is? The biggest and baddest shopping day of the year for maxed-out and busted-down Americans has now been extended into Thanksgiving Day itself so we could be hearing the stories before the turkey gravy has had adequate time to congeal. On a positive note it offers an exit strategy from having to deal with those annoying relatives that one must tolerate for the holidays, when Uncle Dan has become heavily intoxicated and is ranting about Obama the Muslim, the “queers” getting married and America going to hell over legalized pot. Why hang around when you can go and mingle with even bigger assholes down at your friendly local big box retail outlet? As it sits right now Black Friday has officially jumped the shark with the bleed over into Thanksgiving as well as all of the “fun” of anticipating the deals being spoiled. Most of the big retailers have already released their ads and the deals are not what they once were.

Wal-Mart, the emporium of the burgeoining underclass opens at 6 on turkey day, there are such deals as a $98 thirty-two inch LED HDTV, a $38 Blu-Ray player and $299 iPad mini’s with a $100 gift card that you can use to buy even more Chinese made junk in the store. The variation of the normal retail bait and switch is Big Smiley’s 1 hour in stock guarantee on these and other coveted sale items. Guaranteed along with the inevitable deep discounts on movies, video games etc to generate a violent stampede through the big box store that will demolish all in it’s wake as it roars into the electronics department, normally located in the back of the store. The big day is always good for at least one horrendous incident at Wally World whether it be a stomping as the doors are thrown open or some poor old lady betting sucked under by a mob destroying the discount DVD displays. It should be mandatory for every Wal-Mart Super Store to have paramedics circling the building in the event that a victim is in need of immediate evacuation. I always get a kick out of the pictorial features of The People of Wal-Mart and just taking a gander at the dregs of humanity on display should have any sane person wanting to stay the hell away.

There will be early openings at Target, Best Buy, Toys R Us, Kohls, and the list is growing but none are as shameless as K-Mart though which has drawn criticism for plans to open at 6 in the morning on Thanksgiving Day and stay open for 41 hours straight.  It is not only dishonorable to family unity but is nothing less than sheer unadulterated greed, the real losers being the poor, forlorn employees who not only are unable to spend the day with their family but have to man the frontlines when the hooligans are unleashed - their employer could at least provide them with store colored riot gear. Plumbing the bottom of the barrel though is Macy’s who gussied up their 8 pm opening with the hogwash that the deals would begin “after families across the country have finished their holiday meals and celebrations”. My God where has the humility gone? The greedy bastards have been taking a ding in sales as the  government barometer of “consumer confidence” has taken a tumble so they are all in on Thanksgiving openings. What’s next in this soul less husk of a country, post-Christmas clearing sales at 11:59 on December 24th? What a disgusting orgy of consumerism, the Fox-o-sphere and crazy religious freaks constantly wail that the dirty liberals have “taken the Christ out of Christmas” but fail to hold retail giants to the same standards. That is a story for another time though.

There are those who bemoan the destruction of the American family and you can put down Black Friday’s absorbtion of Thanksgiving as Exhibit A on the list of culprits.  We really have so little time as it is and should honor tradition and spend the holidays with loved (and loathed) ones, after all they are family.  While I thankfully don’t have an obnoxious drunken “Uncle Dan” to tolerate during the annual pig-out feast I do have the misfortune of having to deal with my chronically bitching Jewish mother in law, a woman whose guiding philosophy of life is that everyone exists solely to kiss her big ass and once you get that straight well just sit back and enjoy the sweet potato pie. I also have a bigoted stepfather from some ass backwards Louisiana town down behind the cornbread curtain who could do everyone a favor and just find a local klavern hall to hang out in with others who share his views.  I am very thankful that  I don’t have to deal with him on turkey day but like the proverbial “jelly of the month club” he is the gift that keeps on giving come Christmas. While they are both annoying pains in the ass they are after all family,  the ones that people should be spending the holidays with instead of throwing down with total strangers in a scrum at the big box outlet. Sometimes it is best to just follow Bluto Blutarsky’s advice by drinking heavily.