Hey Everybody--Don't Do Black Friday.

There's a commercial issue we still need to look at in this country regarding how "occasions" are used to sell us into participating in cheap consumerism, where we select times when we opt-out of participation in real life to sit outside of stores about to open for supposedly plush sales. Those sales are never all that. I submit that participating in them is a little weird--you are being conditioned to shop when the man says on the basis of sales that might not even represent true value.

All things considered, there is still sense in encouraging a "not one dime" day. I never understood why Thanksgiving needed to elide onto Xmas so seamlessly. But I completely understand why not investing in consumerism during an otherwise sacred holiday makes total sense. One shops to live, one does not live to shop.

I'm going to work, and don't plan on spending one dime. Unless I buy bagels for my crew. Or something holiday-ish like that.

No Black Friday--Well, For Me, Anyway

So, there is movement based out of social justice on behalf of Mike Brown and his slaying in Ferguson, which encourages people not to shop today of all days--of consumerism, the most high holy.
We all shouldn't shop today, anyway, though. I don't just say this because I'm going to be at work tomorrow at 8:30 sharpish. We shouldn't do this because people have been told they will work Thanksgiving or be fired.  We can do this in honor of striking Walmart workers.  We can jointly acknowledge that Black Friday isn't even the best day, necessarily to shop. 

I know, for me, I hate crowds and noise and bullshit. On any given Friday, I would just like to go to work. My actual shopping is a long, slow, loving hunter-gatherer experience that has a lot to do with looking at circulars and hitting the mall when it is not crowded with other bodies and touching merchandise and making thoughtful choices and not going -"Shit! Now! Buy this shit now! More shit now! ARGGGHHHH!".

The idea of standing in line in the cold outdoors in expectation of some kind of crazy sale is--so not gonna be me. So I feel like a right smug tart telling anyone this should not be you, either. But really--let this not be you. Maybe, even if consumerism has its place, making a holiday of consumerism is totally out of place, and we should really make a place for enjoying a post-Thanksgiving high that does not involve swiping a card and trying to buy love from our fam by getting them discounted consumer goods.

And yeah--consumerism sucks in general and I don't know how it relates to Ferguson, specifically. I don't care. Black Friday is tacky and sometimes even violent (anarchists targeted the Macy Parade this year)*.  I have no sympathy for it. I'm just saying, shopping does not deserve a holiday. People do.

*Nota bene: by anarchists, the newspaper article means "anarchists" and I mean "people who don't understand why a movement that signifies by pissing people off, will only serve to piss people off."