I sat through a physical examination yesterday to see if I can buy (more) life insurance. Nothing can harsh your buzz faster than being a sixty-year white guy trying to avoid not leaving his family money enough to afford more than kibbles and bits at the wake. And even that is starting to look like it may depend on how many RSVP. So today if you're looking for miles of smiles, perhaps someplace else is a good idea.
Quite frankly for much of my time here on the Big Blue Marble, what's going on inside my head is way more interesting to me than what's going on out here with you and all the rest of you. I'm not trying to be cute (too much effort and too little to work with). I find my life fascinating, chaotic, scary and delightful all at the same time. Your mileage may vary. Mine doesn't.
It looks like this year, large numbers of merchants are going to move Black Friday, those day after Thanksgiving Day too-good-to-be-true sales to Thanksgiving Day itself and open their stores. Lemming instinct is at play here since if Bill's Box o' Bricks Discount Barn opens, it's a stone cert Steve's Big A$$ Stack of Stuff will be doing likewise.
I've looked ahead to next month on the calendar and Jesus' birthday hasn't moved any closer. I grasp the economic imperative for the retailers but I'm not sure if they've tough this through. When you take six inches off the back of the blanket and sew it onto the front, you cannot claim the blanket is now afoot longer. Actually, of course, you can claim it but we all know it's not true. So unless Corporate America is planning on all of us to become Greek Orthodox and use their calendar, Christmas is where Christmas is. Unless it turns out the Mayans were correct. Except that we'd all be dead, that would be quite a hoot, nichts wahr?
As I said, I don't get into the real world that often because I bruise easily and then I sulk. A lot. So when I read one of the retailers mining for money was the fine folks from Walton Mountain-I remembered that little item. Don't get me wrong-I shop in their stores, but I am aware of the hidden costs of letting them into our cities and towns. Walmart isn't evil but we shop in it don't care about its morality and when we don't care, they don't care. We fixate on the low price but the low price isn't the total cost to our communities.
I have a suggestion for how you can satisfy your need to shop on Thanksgiving and still be able to look yourself in the mirror. Go shop for necessities to give to Walmart employees who are blewed, screwed, and tattooed by their employer in the name of shareholder profit margins. As you can read, you can even do it online, just like it was E-Bay or Amazon. What!? Told you I was cranky and yet you stayed anyway. Make yourself useful here on the sphere. Help make a corner of the world you stand on a better place one square inch at a time. Save the Earth (for dessert).
-bill kenny
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