Saturday, November 29, 2014

Somebody’s going to emergency, somebody’s going to gaol

Well, if you’re looking for further signs that civilization is going to hell in a handbasket, I have a doozy for you.

Black Friday, it seems, is spreading beyond the borders of these United States.

And by Black Friday I’m referring not only to retailers advertising “deals” on their merchandise, but consumers acting like complete pillocks in the pursuit of these alleged bargains.

Viz.: Stories out of the UK are documenting the kinds of chaos and mayhem that we’ve experienced since the Cabbage Patch days. Yes, I’m talking grown humanoids engaging in knock-down-drag-outs over limited numbers of goods that are marked up only 135% instead of the normal 150% during “special” operating hours.

There was the whole build-up, with people mobbing outside various establishments in hopes of being the first through the door to get…whatever it is that’s worth waiting for half the night outside a store in late November. (In my mind, this would be…nothing; but I recognize that if the economy depended on my purchasing habits, we’d be in even deeper trouble than we are now.)


And local police and EMTs have been in overdrive, dealing with the mayhem and maiming. So I’m thinking that I’d add Black Friday to Remembrance Sunday on my list of Best Times to Knock Over a Liquor Store in Britain, since every cop in the country is engaged elsewhere and I’d be pretty well assured of a clean getaway.

But speaking of criminal stupidity, I got rather a kick out of this guy in The Guardian’s report from a North London Sainsbury’s: Andy Blackett, 30, had two carts full of merchandise. “I got two coffee makers, two tablets, two TVs and a stereo,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you the prices, but I know they’re bargains.”

Our financial master of the universe is—wait for it—a real estate agent.

His apparently small pal had the TV he’d bagged taken from him by someone bigger. Law of the retail jungle, baby.

(Well, it just occurred to me that Blackett may have plans of selling his swag on Craig’s List, or eBay. So maybe not as idiotic as I’d originally thought. His pal is still stuffed, though.)

At least he wasn’t arrested and didn’t require medical treatment, which was how the day started and ended for a number of people around the country.

And—okay—he also didn’t end up with an overpriced vacuum cleaner, like another shopper interviewed. She’d been unable to get the high-end electronics she’d come after, so she was standing there with a Dyson. There’s some kind of poetic something surrounding that, but I’ll be blowed if I know what it is.

Poor old Mother England—so eager to show moral and cultural superiority over our crass, money-grubbing American hegemony. And they end up importing something that only makes (limited) sense in the context of the day-after-Thanksgiving signaling the start of the Christmas shopping season. It seems bizarre that as we’re losing that context here, the Brits latch onto it and make it every bit as grubbily theirs as it used to be ours.

And, oh—you don’t believe me about the fights? Take a look, sunshine. Not so merry-old, eh?


Oh—but this is probably a windup:





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