Posts Tagged ‘Black Friday’

All is well

November 24, 2021

It’s nearly kickoff time for the 2021 Cavalcade of Consumerism, so grab yourself a sammich and a frosty beverage and settle into the La-Z-Boy for the Big Game.

The NPD Group advises us that 30 percent of respondents to a recent survey yearn for the door-busting, clerk-trampling, no-holds-barred combat of Black Friday, in which sleep-deprived, half-frozen fatties who spent Thanksgiving night camped outside a Lubbock Best Buy do it hand to hand over dubious bargains on giant TVs that will watch them like famished zopilotes and suggest other must-have items based upon their observed activity, if any.

“Damn, another ad for Weight Watchers. And Planet Fitness. Who has the time? Pass the Fritos and bean dip.”

NPD doesn’t explain their survey methodology, but you know they didn’t ask for my thoughts, because 100 percent of me would rather stuff an angry ferret down his bibs than head for the trough on Black Friday to see what the Waltons are serving to the sneezers and wheezers (there’s still a plague going on, you may recall). Let ’em make their bacon out of the NPD’s dummies.

We plan a muted Thanksgiving here at El Rancho Pendejo. Herself will collect her mom from The Facility and we will do a late lunch —  cider-braised turkey thighs with taters and apples, stir-fried succotash with edamame, some class of a green salad, and Herself’s famous lemon bars. The ladies will enjoy a dram or two of wine, while I make do with a bottle of fake beer.

I bought the fixins on Monday to avoid the rush. There were just two cashiers at Sprouts and the queued natives were restless. If we get through the weekend without gunplay it will be a holiday miracle.

Take me up; cast me away

November 28, 2020

Behold Exchequer, given to me by the Lady of the Other Home Office, on the condition that I fulfill any request she might make, the first and foremost of these being that I not use this magical weapon to acquire any more expensive, useless bullshit, f’chrissakes, can you do that for me, hon’? Pretty please?

Another Black Friday passeth without my being compelled by bitter circumstance and/or simple covetousness to draw the mighty card, Exchequer, from its ripstop scabbard. The realm remains unencumbered by debt and grails.

TGI(B)F?

November 27, 2020

If the image appears a tad blurry it’s because pretty much everything out there is in vigorous motion.

Well, it’s not what I would call black, but then neither is it exactly a bright, bright, sunshiny Friday out there.

We are presently enjoying a thundering east wind that is extreme even by New Mexican standards, and as a consequence the options for working off yesterday’s holiday feast seem limited.

What a fine day for huddling indoors and bargain-hunting at a Bug®-safe distance! Coincidentally, my in-box runneth over with various pitches, entreaties, and pleas. A cantankerous senior citizen on a fixed income is a target demographic? Who knew?

B&H Photo & Video, for starters. They were first to pound on my digital door, at 4:18 a.m. The early bird catches the worm, don’t you know. They were followed in quick succession by Guitar Center, Brydge, Rudy Project, Brazos Walking Sticks, GoPro, Gore Wear, and Outdoor Research, all before 8 a.m.

And this is just the lot that made it past my extensive network of junk filters, mind you.

They sense my frailty. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute some marketing poge gets a click-through from his email blast, he gets stronger. Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter. …

Wide Load Wednesday

November 22, 2017

Comedy is easy. Gravity is hard.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and come Black Friday you’re gonna need to go for a long, slow, fat-burning ride to recover from the turkey flu. Sweat a little gravy. Know what I’m talkin’ about?

But your kit won’t fit anymore for some strange reason.

What to do?

Good news, Tub-o. We can’t help you for this holiday, but if you act now, you can have your official Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter kit ready to roll by Christmas.

Just click here to take advantage of our special holiday offer* and you, some anonymous porker who happens to be wearing your XXXXL underwear, or a gravity-challenged friend, co-worker or family member, can be trundling along in style like a Clydesdale hauling a beer wagon, just in time for the New Year.

We even have a long-sleeved model now, the better for mopping grease from your chins.

• The fine print: Some restrictions apply.** One jersey per customer.*** Offer void where prohibited by law.****

* Actually, it’s not that special.

** No, they don’t.

*** Bullshit. We’ll run your credit card until it smokes. Buy as many as you can afford, and in ascending sizes, because you’re only gonna get bigger, bubbeleh. Eat, eat; like a skeleton you look.

**** Law? What law? You see any law around here lately? If we had any laws in this country we’d have a jail on every streetcorner instead of a Starbucks, and there would still be a waiting list to get in.

Black Friday redux

December 2, 2015
Happiness is a warm gun.

Happiness is a warm gun.

From our Hey, Look, There’s a Fire Over There, Let’s Pour a Record Amount of Gasoline On It Department. Boy, do I ever hate being right.

• Late update: Oh, good. The national barbecue continues unabated.

Barking dogs, fat flies and spider webs

November 24, 2012
Turkish delight

Turkish enjoys a sunny spot on the drawing board after a hard day of doing … well … not much of anything, really.

Whew. We appear to have survived another Thanksgiving-Black Friday combo. But it was a near thing. I don’t know how professional cooks survive all those hours on their feet — ’bout dark-thirty yesterday my dogs commenced to bark and they haven’t stopped yet.

A couple of friends popped round last night to split a bottle of sparking rosé and eat some leftovers, which I swear to God took nearly as long to reheat as the original meal did to cook. They also brought some killer green-chile-and-jack wontons with a guacamole garnish that put our heat-it-and-eat-it to shame.

Anyway, we stayed up too late and drank too much and today we all felt a tad listless for some reason, even the four-legged crowd, which does not imbibe (see Turkish, at right).

After a few hours of puttering around the ranch Herself toddled off for a short run and I took a break from work to ride the Jamis Supernova around Monument Valley Park, which proved a bad idea. I felt like a fat fly negotiating a spider web constructed of retractable dog leashes and feckin’ eejits.

Now I’m wrapping up the day’s paying chores, sipping a 5 Barrel Pale Ale and contemplating the evening meal. Whaddaya think? Turkey, turkey or … turkey?

Friday Funnies

November 23, 2012

Ah, Black Friday: The gift that keeps on giving. As some Walmart employees are agitating for a living wage, Sears customers in San Antonio are throwing hands and drawing firearms. Some people clearly did not enjoy enough mood-altering tryptophan on Thanksgiving.

At the higher-end shops, meanwhile, those mannequins you’re inspecting are inspecting you right back, with cameras and facial-recognition software not unlike that used by les flics. Hey, there’s one … whoops, nope, it’s just Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, here’s something to leave on the shelf, no matter where we are in the shopping season. And fuck Weepy John Boehner and the horses’ asses he rode in on.

Black Friday reds

November 26, 2010
Cowgirl up

No, Herself did not just win the Kentucky Derby astride a midget horse. We paid for the wreath and got the photo op' for nothin'.

OK, so we finally surrendered to the Dark Side, taking a huge gulp of the Konsumerist Kool-Aid intoxicating millions of our fellow citizens as chronicled by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Californian Derrick Love was clearly under the influence of something. He and lifelong pal David Martinez spent nearly two days camped outside an Oakland Best Buy so he could get a $600 Toshiba laptop for $349.

“We’re on a huge adventure,” Mr. Love told The Times. “One day I’m going to tell my grandkids about this, how we were the first.”

Ai, Chihuahua. If only John Steinbeck were still alive to chronicle this epic tale. Call it, “Toshiba Flat.”

Alas, we proved no more resistant to the siren song of shopping. At the crack of noon Herself and I ventured out to a local nursery, where we ordered up a Canadian red cherry tree to replace the defunct apple trees in our now-treeless back yard. In an orgy of extravagance we added a holiday wreath to the tab. Then Herself posed for a photo with a horse that someone had apparently washed and then popped into an overly hot dryer for an alarming period of time.

We overextended ourselves further by purchasing a couple sandwiches from a downtown eatery and taking them home for a gourmet lunch, after which Herself toddled off to the Humane Society to help a few fuzzy little faces find new homes for the holidays.

As for me, I Vespa’d down to the grog shop for a couple jugs of brain eraser and then spent the afternoon plinking away at the keyboard, composing a hymn to capitalism, American style. Dirty work, but someone has to do it.