I don’t have
to be stateside to know who’s making the biggest splat this week. It’s the
Black Friday mob, hands-down. (Actually,
this is more of a hands-up crowd, because you can’t split someone’s lip over a toaster with your dukes in your pocket.)
Moments
after a good ol’ fashioned waist-busting on Thursday, they’ll make tracks for a
Big Box and some good ol’ fashioned door-busting.
As citizens
watch the economy shrink, their appetite for the deal expands. (It’s tempting
to blame Congress for this, but the origins of Black Friday shenanigans can be
traced back to prehistoric times. Anthropologists have uncovered drawings that
depict cavemen, post-feast, clubbing each other at dawn over limited quantities
of full-sized mastodons at half-price.)
Retailers
fed the beast this year by opening as early as 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving.
That might've been good enough for 2012 but in another 365 days, the beast will want
more. Sooner. Cheaper.
Black Friday
stories have always been about the numbers and they still are. But revenue figures don't grab the headlines anymore; crime statistics do. Last
year we heard about a grandfather who got knocked out in Arizona (never mind that he might have been shoplifting), patrons who pepper-sprayed each other in California, and fisticuffs over $2 waffle-makers in Arkansas.
The beast,
like much of the country, is destined for morbid obesity unless somebody hurries
up and gets it a lap-band.
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