(Long Island, NY) I am still reeling from the news footage of the army of zombies, I mean shoppers, who invaded those shopping malls on Black Friday. It looked exactly like Dawn Of The Dead and felt like a reality show advert gone horribly wrong.
I remember the line from this old song by the Smiths, where pouty old Morrissey sings about how he’d “love to kick with the fray”. It seemed quite appropriate here, except I’d rather do anything but.
Don’t worry, this is not going to turn into a screed about commercialized holidays or any of that nonsense. Face it, America NEEDS Black Friday at this stage. It’s coming down to that for some retailers. No, what I am on about is the utterly bizarre actions of people willing to stay outside all night (in some cases starting at 2PM on Turkey Day) in order to save a hundred lousy bucks. It’s creepy. It’s bizarre. It’s a mindset I don’t understand at all.
Well, that’s how I felt until today. I got one of those lovely “Dear John” emails that freelance writers often get, the ones that say “Hey, we love you and all and you’re as brilliant as Oscar Wilde with half the calories. But we’re downsizing our budget and we gotta let you go.”
In other words, the economy is crap, finances are being squeezed, and we gotta squeeze you out or else get rid of the free coffee for our REAL employees.
Naturally I had to do some downsizing of my own in light of the wonder news that I’d be X amount of dollars short at the end of next month when all the holiday shopping bills come due. Is this how people with everyday jobs feel when the pink slips start coming out? The writing life is a strange one, and after you’ve been at it long enough you start to lose touch with the workaday world. You live in a freakish twilight zone where 8 hour days are a luxury and your weekends are your safety net against Monday’s deadlines.
So now I am starting to be a bit more sympathetic to the people so eager to save a hundred bucks that they would wait in line all night. But that video of the hundreds of people storming that mall we saw on the news all day and all night on Black Friday haunts me. Even with my anxiousness about saving money and earning enough to buy the requisite holiday madness gifts, I can’t see myself standing in the middle of that throng of people. One moment of hesitation and you are being run over, crushed quite possibly to death by a bunch of people with only one desire; to get their hands on the new PlayStation 3 shoot-em up or Tickle Me Elmo. Or some toy made in China coated in layer after layer of toxic lead paint.
I just can’t imagine being trampled to death for Chinese lead.
I mean REALLY. Haven’t these people heard of the INTERNET? That’s where I am doing ALL my holiday shopping. If enough of us could give up the in-person shopping ritual, we could cut down on emissions, end the crowds, and forget about whether or not we can find the car after it’s all said and done. Folks, PLEASE shop online. There’s no sales tax and you can get it pre-wrapped. Stop the insanity, to quote that nice fitness lady with
the Annie Lennox hairdo. Remember, there’s free shipping (in some cases) and you can do the whole transaction in your underwear. Try doing that at the mall, they’ll throw you in jail.
OK, this column has to end now, I gotta start thrashing around for a new writing gig to replace the one that dropped dead today. And I’ve got orders to place on Amazon.com. My holiday wishes for each of you:
- May all your shopping be discounted
- and done entirely online
- forget paying sales tax
- give the crowds the ax
- I didn’t mean to make that last bit rhyme
Carl Sandburg, I ain’t. Good luck, happy hunting, and start early. You’ll thank yourself later.
