Yeah, but lots of people look at Black Friday as a sport. It’s not about the price, necessarily, but about the lengths people will go to get it and how much they’ll fight for it. It’s sort of like getting into a sports argument. Things get bloody over low stakes.
Robin
Be careful. I clicked on that link and was immediately presented with a popup for some fraudulent antivirus scanner (Antivirus 2009, pro-scanner-online.com) that tried to infect my computer.
Once in a while, a death can have comedic value but I don’t see anything funny about this particular death. The victim was apparently some poor schmuck, probably making minimum wage, just trying to do his job.
I think a funny death requires (1) the victim to have some combination of massive stupidity, greed, or just plain evil; (2) the victim acts on said stupidity, greed, or evil; and (3) these acts bring about the victim’s death in a fitting or ironic or way.
It’s just you.
:rolleyes: When ever I hear people talk about the “golden days”, I think they’re full of shit. People were NOT more polite, families were NOT stronger, the only reason divorce might not have been as prevalent is that it was seen scandalous. So you had people stuck in miserable marriages and the like. That’s just super, isn’t it?
You, of all people, should NOT be lecturing people on the quality of their posts.
This Fall, I took my son to a NINTENDO store event. Thousands and thousands of people waited in line for hours. One to two hours before the doors opened, Associates with colored rubberbands (wrist bands?) went through the line and give the first 200 people theirs. It was made clear that they got in first and that afterwards as someone else left, that number of people would be allowed it.
Worked like a charm.
[Jack McCoy jury closing]"My understanding is that using wrist bands is an ‘old hat’, well known way to handle lines and crowds. So, why doesn’t WALMART get it? What will it Take for WALMART to get it? When will they be held responsible? In your lifetime, when its your kids and grandkids working there between Semesters to make money before Christmas? Or right Here, right Now, while you can still go home and hug them and tell them you love them? Look over there at Mrs. Damours tears and tell me You want to sit in That seat…?
The Prosecution rests, your honor. "[/Jack McCoy jury closing]
Yeah- hubby went to our local Game Stop for the midnight roll-out of Wrath of the Lich King a few weeks ago, and hundreds of people, young and old, buzzed and sober, were very well-behaved. Not a single problem, even with all of the unsupervised teens milling about.
Noticing your location, I now understand the source of your general malaise, anger and discontent.
I think Guin is required by law to be as disdainful as possible when disagreeing with someone. Most of us ignore her; every now and again we’re reminded of why.
LOL. And from what I’ve read, the examples in this thread are pretty tame.
Not that there isn’t a certain amount of irony in you making a statement about another poster’s requisite level of disdain!
I think she’s a good example of ways in which how you say something can be as important as what you say. There are others in this thread who are also good examples.
“Black” was used here as a humorous pejorative to denote disaster, gloom, and doom. Police, transit workers, and store clerks in Philadelphia had at least by the mid-'60s come to regard that hectic, crowded Friday (perhaps filled with out-of-towners) sandwiched between Thanksgiving and the Army-Navy football game as a day of “catastrophe” in the city center; certainly by 1965 they had begun applying the “Black Friday” moniker to this day.
For the sake of comparison, a popular national and contemporaneous use of “Black Friday” (at least judging by its appearance in newspapers) served to identify a Friday the 13th. I think that comparison is more apt than the assocation with “black”-named financial crises mentioned in the Wikipedia piece.
– Tammi Terrell
Thanks for the explanation. We haven’t imported this american custom yet…
But still I can’t understand why Dio blames the little baby Jesus for this: It’s like blaming the jews for the black death.
In general I do, but in the case of your children I don’t: your wife says you are impotent so I can´t rule out divine intervention, France or your gardener.
Fucker
Yeah, but he can take a Viagra. You, on the other hand, are screwed; there ain’t no pill for stupid.
Perhaps you are not following the thread. I asked a question and he made fun of me instead of answering it. This my be the BBQ but this is the straight dope and it’s motto is fighting ignorance not perpetuating it.
So he is a fucker and so are you for defending him.
This all is making me giggle, because “Black Friday” was the one thing I used to point to when my friends would say, “Why does everything black have to have negative connotations?? Blackmail, Blacklist, Black ball, Black sheep, Black plague…” I really thought that ‘Black Friday’ referenced being back in the black, so it actually had no negative connotations that I could see. So, there goes that…
Brazil84, that sounds like nonsense to my ears. If there are people anywhere at any time that are not taking proper measures of safety when their jobs require them to, because they ‘don’t like being called racist’, then they are greater morons than the nitwits that would accuse them of being racist for increasing security at store in a high crime neighborhood. No pity for a moron like that.
Let’s say I knew that purple people were the type of people to molest their children. And it was my job to protect lil’ purple babies from their daddies getting dirty in the night. I could set up some kind of school programs maybe? I mean in the predominately purple neighborhoods that would teach the purple kiddies how to Say NO! Then Go! and Tell! (I think that is one of the programs I remember from school).
If I didn’t really step up those efforts in the purple neighborhoods because I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of being racist against the purple people, then I would be the biggest fool. Not the hypersensitive purple people.
ETA: To clarify, I meant, what if Purple People neighborhoods had the highest rate of child molestation. Not that the edit makes my analogy sound any less weird.
Actually, he did not mention the baby Jesus. He noted that the people responsible were doing it as part of a celebration of “Peace on Earth, good will towards man.”
Since “good will towards man” was supposed to have been one original purpose of the Christmas season and Thanksgiving is considered the start of the Christmas season, his comment was apropos.
ETA: If you read his actual post to which you responded, you will note that the only blame he assigned was to greedy people, not the actual season or its (purported) reason for existence.
To me Dio was blaming christmas or, at least, the way christmas is celebrated in America, but your interpretation of his post is better (that means I’m wrong).
My apologies.
How could she have known it would get anything remotely like that crazy?
Huh? What the hell does being from Pittsburgh have to do with it? Am I being whooshed, somehow?
And honestly, if you study history, you’ll see, the whole “Golden Era” is a myth. Times have not gotten worse-or gotten better. Just different. Some things have actually improved-ask any African American who lived through Jim Crow, or any gay invidual. And yes, some things have gotten worse.
But honestly, anyone who does the whole, “Back in MY day, things were so much better, now things are going to hell in a handbasket, blah blah blah” is completely full of shit. And it’s one of my major pet peeves.
(ETA: And I take it you’re not familiar with Carol Stream? Trust me, I’m probably not the only one who feels that way)