Black Friday Indeed

Apparently we Americans can't embarrass ourselves enough with an abysmally stupid president and Real Housewives of Orange County that we have to resort to broadcasting our depravity with pre-dawn Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

Who the f&ck are these losers who set their alarm clocks so they can get up and bruise their credit rating some more? According to various research companies, consumers planned to spend in the neighborhood of $800 on Black Friday. You think these people paid cash for their purchases? I think not. Credit cards wilted under the heat from friction endured by being swiped repeatedly; further damaging the economy in a macro sense, but reported as "healthy consumer activity" in the short term.

The term "Black Friday" refers to when retailers went from being unprofitable, or "in the red," to being profitable, or "in the black", at a time when accounting records were kept by hand and red indicated loss and black profit. Clever.

Most of the evening news on Friday night consisted of two major stories: the Black Friday shopping throngs and the tragic Bangladesh cyclone that has so far killed 3200 people. The juxtaposition of these two stories sickens, which leads one to believe that the term "Black Friday" refers not to an anachronistic accounting term but rather to the color of the shopper's souls.