Happy, Merry Whatever!

Well it seems as though the Christmas shopping season is in full blown mode. According to the numbers, Black Friday was a great financial success. All those 5:00 a.m. shoppers must have done some heavy duty plastic swiping. Personally getting up before the crack of dawn to go to a mall or retail store filled with thousands of hormonal women (and men) to fight for "tickle me Elmo" or whatever it is that they are fighting for this year, seems a bit neanderthal to me. It's like you have to be the first caveman out in the field to get the last or best bison.

DJ's sister did though. She lives directly across the street from a Meijer. I mean it is literally across the street from her condo. She can be there in 10 minuted by walking, 3 by car. She had her heart set on getting a 27' flat screen TV for the sale price of $59.99 (after a $40.00 mail-in-rebate) for her living room. She awoke at 4:00 a.m. after spending the biggest bar night of the year out consuming mass quantities of alcohol. Who knows, she probably never even went to bed. She arrived in the parking lot at 4:45 a.m. with about 250 other cars in the lot. At 5:00 a.m. she was going through the doors and began heading straight to the electronics department. As she passed by other early bird shoppers she noticed that many of them had their carts already filled with the very same TV she was going to purchase. Some even had two of them in their carts. You guessed it. By the time she made her way to the special priced TV banner, there were none left. This was at 5:10 a.m.

What does this tell me? That the employees had already ravaged this display the night before and left about 8 TVs for public consumption. Or that they only had five in stock and she saw those in carts as she made her way to pick up hers.

Then of course there is this whole PlayStation 3 fiasco. Why didn't Sony prepare for this onslaught of consumers and make enough of these to go around? Why? Because then they would have had to lower the price of them. People sat out in front of the local Best Buy for three days waiting to get these things. Hell, at one store a guy was shot, and at another store there was a stampede and the police had to intervene! CRAZY! Back when I was growing up, my mother would have never waited in line to get a gift for me or anyone else not to mention paying that much for a game. And if they had, that would be the only thing I got the entire next two YEARS! I remember being excited one year at Christmas because I got new underwear!

Today I heard on the news that Wal-Mart, trying to make everyone happy and to not offend, has decided to return to the "Merry Christmas" greeting instead of last year's "Happy Holidays". They are allowing the cashiers and their floor staff to "size up" each customer and then determine what greeting to use, whether it be Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or Happy Holidays. Please let's not offend anyone... so to all of you out there, my wish for you is to be happy and be safe...

and,

Merry Whatever!!