Friday, Bloody Friday

Well, it's that time of year again. That time of year where reasonably sane people - almost overwhelmingly of the female persuasion - completely lose their minds and set the human race back several thousands of years. That time of year is today - Black Friday.

Personally, I never liked the usage of the word "black" to denote anything negative. Call me racially sensitive or a complete idiot, but I never really cottoned to its usage. Actually, don't call me racially sensitive or any other kind of sensitive because the people who know me best know I am not the most politically correct person in the world. If you think about it, there's really nothing correct about politics at all. In fact, the notion of a two-party system has long outlived its usefulness....

Ok, now that I've driven that steaming pile of free-form nonsense off the cliff on Tangent Road, let me get back to my point. Black Friday is complete and utter ridiculouslessness on parade. Women camp out in front of department stores and malls all around the country like tie-dyed, shaggy haired neo-hippies waiting for Grateful Dead tickets to go on sale (yes, I am aware that Jerry Garcia died well over 10 years ago. Save the hate mail). Shivering and hostile, like Cold War-era Russians queuing up for potatoes and vodka, these maniacs are just suffering through the preamble before the doors are unlocked. That's when the real action starts.

Seeing as that I am a rational and level-headed idiot, I've never had the slightest desire to suffer through one of these retail feeding frenzies, so I'll just go on reports I've collected through the years, although I'm not above making stuff up just to make for better reading. Women, who spent hours in line filing their nails into razor-sharp weapons of death, start lunging at display tables, stepping over - and on - their competition, flinging helpless children to the side with mighty swipes of their paws. Helpless salespeople shiver in their chainmail armor or cower in corners as loud-mouth, wide-hipped Berthas come tear-assing through the Juniors Department to find something to fit their overly plump pre-teen daughters. Store security guards are easily overtaken by the bull rush of conspicuously-consumptive soccer moms hell-bent on getting the new Play Station - the very one that will be obsolete exactly 365 days from this very night. Like mother tigers training their young, divorced and unmarried 20-somethings are hurling their children into the toy section mosh pit, smiling proudly as their offspring pummels another child and rips the head off the latest craze in ugly dolls, thinking, "well, if my perfect child can't have it, nobody else's bastard child can have it!"

We men are simple creatures. We don't like to shop. Oh, we like to buy, but buying is a brief walk into the store, grabbing what we like, easing our way to the register and getting the hell out of there - all without breaking stride. Try things on? Absolutely not. We know what fits and what doesn't already. We're not trying to fool ourselves into thinking, "If I lose 10 pounds, I'll look great in this." No, all we care about is if it covers our ass crack when we bend over - and that's only if we REALLY care a LOT. Don't go throwing those metro-sexual guys in my face, either. We both know they are not really men; they're more like the bigfoot of men - the missing link between genders, just like women who can belch as long and loud as a water buffalo's fart. If we bring home clothing that doesn't fit us, we just say, "the hell with it" and toss it into the bottom dresser drawer with the unpaired socks, cardboard shirt collars and the Victoria Secret catalog we stole from our neighbor's mailbox five years ago.

But, back to the animals.

For some reason, these people cling desperately to the misguided notion that the customer is always right. Well, having worked in the service industry before, I can tell you one thing - the customer is not always right. More often than not, the customer is a freaking idiot. Except for the fem-bot perfume Nazis, most salespeople are scared to death of these cut-throat blowhards who demand they produce an item that sold out in five seconds with a wave of their plastic name tags. Unless someone has a name tag that says "Merlin" on it, just wait until the following week when you can buy the same damned thing for maybe 5% more money. It's like these lunatics declared Manifest Destiny with their holiday shopping lists and would rip your still-beating heart out of your rib cage if they think it could get them the last item left on the shelf.

This brings me to one of the chief instigators to this orgy of de-evolution - the "hot" gift. Allow me to rattle off a few to you and let me know if you are among the guilty who has committed the sin of adding to this insanity. In no particular chronological order:

Tickle Me Elmo - What in God's name was behind this nonsense? First of all, Elmo will never be a real Muppet in my eyes because he wasn't around in the 1970s when the Muppets were actually hip, cool and relevant. Second of all, Elmo is a fruit. I have nothing against people of alternative lifestyles, but even Rip Taylor would say Elmo is an over-the-top flamer. He's a wimpy nancy-boy who has directly contributed to the softening of an entire generation of kids who are coddled and suffocated by parents who think the Cookie Monster will irreparably harm their little angels because he likes Oreos. Yes, those same parents who think nothing of the dozens and dozens of Happy Meals and snack cakes they give their kids are worried about the Cookie Monster. These are the same idiot parents who want to take scoring out of youth games because it promotes competition and losing don't even consider for a second that it also promotes accomplishment, teamwork and sportsmanship and that life is all about losing and overcoming your losses. As the prophet George Carlin once remarked, "your kid is AVERAGE at best. There are some really smart ones, some really dumb ones and whole hell of a lot that are just AVERAGE." Once these idiot parents realize their kid has an outstanding chance of being average like the rest of us, maybe the kid can lead a healthy, well-adjusted life. But, back to Elmo. A "Tickle Me" doll? Does anyone else find this creepy besides me? It sounds one step away from the "Anatomically-Correct Creepy Uncle Phil Doll."

The Furby - Oh, they're soft and cute and look like the precious relatives of Gizmo from that Gremlins movie, and they can also apparently communicate with people. Personally, I think the people who snatched up this toy like free mints at the T.G.I.Fridays were more in love with the soft, fluffy name of this abomination than anything else. Apparently, Furbies were banned from many government workplaces because they could be used to record sensitive information. I can just see the new James Bond movie about this one: The Man With the Golden Furby, Live and Let Furby or The Furby Who Loved Me. It's basically a smart tape recorder plunged into a fricking teddy bear. Morons.

Beanie Babies - Bean bags. Shaped like animals. Fat women obsessed with bean bags shaped like animals. 'Nuff said.

Cabbage Patch Dolls - One of the pioneers of the hot gift craze, these abominations were about as ugly as your grandmother's feet. When future anthropologists unearth the shattered remains of our society hundreds of years from now, they'll uncover one of the dirtiest and shameful secrets of the 20th century in how the whole Cabbage Patch Doll mania practically brought America to its knees. For those who may read this decades from now, let me give you a brief description of what they looked like. Imagine a gigantic pierogi with fat arms and legs and yarn hair combined with a creepy small face and dimples riveted into place. Now imagine them with some equally-creepy birth certificates and adoption papers. I have to stop here because I'm getting a little spooked out.

Play Station 3 - These over-priced video game conveyance systems were selling for thousands of dollars on online auction sites within hours of their debut. Someone help me out here, but, I know, having been a kid for a decent part of my life, if I received this gift in January or February when my parents could have paid the normal retail price, I wouldn't throw myself into the path of a city bus or write some nihilistic death poetry on my MySpace page because I received it a month or two after someone's desperately-hip parent bought it for my friend for the holidays. You see, people are basically idiots when it comes to stuff like this.

Hey, call me crazy, call me handsome, call me one sexy beast, just don't call me from the Emergency Room because you voluntarily wandered into the war zone. But, if you ARE going out on Black Friday, well, at least pick me up something nice.