No thanks- the ginormous TV's not going to watch itself.

I remember my late sister-in-law used to make a sport out of going out on the Friday after Thanksgiving to go shopping. And, she'd get pretty much all of her Christmas gift-buying done.

Personally, I thought she was absolutely insane- and this was years before anyone came up with the "Black Friday" moniker.

It's amazing how fast the dipshits in the media will tag an event with some cataclysmic nickname in an effort to get the maximum panic out of people. Any idea of some of the other events to wear the "Black Friday" moniker?

The first recorded incident I could find to receive the label occurred on September 24, 1869- when two speculators’ efforts to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange set off a financial panic in the United States. The events leading to that particular “Black Friday” are also known as the Fisk/Gould scandal.

Twelve years later, there was the Black Friday Eyemouth disaster- a severe windstorm that struck the southern coast of Scotland on 14 October 1881 and ended up killing 189 fishermen.

The name went unused for a while after that. Perhaps the media decided that, maybe, using the name after the 1881 incident would have been in bad taste. What am I saying? It’s the media. Of course they didn’t- they probably just weren’t “lucky” enough for something salacious to happen on a Friday.

That string was broken on January 13, 1939, in Victoria, Australia, when the Black Friday fires flared up.

The blazes, widely considered one of the worst natural bushfires in the world, scorched almost five million square miles of land, destroying a number of towns (including five that were razed and never rebuilt), more than 3,700 buildings and killing 71 people. Three quarters of the State of Victoria was reported to be directly or indirectly affected by the disaster.

In the spring of 1950, there was the Red River Flood in the Dakotas and Manitoba. On May 5, Winnipeg had to be partially evacuated when the Red River reached its highest level since 1861 and flooded most of the Red River Valley. Eight dikes gave way and flooded much of the city, turning 600 square miles into a lake.

Four of the eleven bridges to the city were destroyed and nearly 100,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes and businesses. Fortunately, only on Canadian lost there life to the flood, but the monetary damages were between $600 million to over a billion dollars.

Reports of damages in the Dakotas vary, as does the death toll- which is listed from five to over 400.

Thirteen years later, on a November afternoon in Dallas, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.

In September of 1978, the Shah of Iran’s security forces fired on a group of protesters in Tehran. Though accounts of which group fired first vary, as do reports of the death toll (said to be between 64 and 84), the event was seen as the end of any chance between reconciliation between the ruling Shah and the Revolutionary forces that ended up overthrowing the government.

On May 31, 1985, a tornado outbreak in the United States and Canada saw 43 twisters touch down between Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario. Eighty-eight people were killed in what was the third costliest tornado outbreak in U.S. history- causing $450 million in damages here, while the Canadian damaged totaled an estimated $100 million.

Notice any common themes between those incidents? Let me point out the one that jumps out at me: for the most part, all of those events were beyond the control of the victims. Our current “Black Friday,” though? Well, not so much..

People going out today, I just don't get it. Do they have some deep need to be faceless in the midst of a throng of inconsiderate tools (or is it just me who always seems to encounter those people)? Some pathological need to save 20% on some crap they didn't need to start with?

To paraphrase Han Solo, "no bargain is worth that."

Yes, it’s too bad if Bubba’s wife gets stepped on down at the W-Mart because she got between Bertha and the muumuu that was on sale in aisle six, but did Mrs. Bubba really have any kind of expectation of common courtesy on a day specifically engineered by retailers to turn us all into bargain-crazed retards (and, even more so- common courtesy at that store on any day)?

Give me a break, already. Yeah, it’s too bad, but I don’t care- all the unpleasantness and media sanctioned “tragedies” could be avoided simply with some common sense. Or just plain old laziness.

Hello, couch…

It's been a while...

Yeah, it's been a while since I last posted, but- what do you do? I'm lazy.

Just wanted to share my thoughts on the Crosby, Stills & Nash/Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers show at Philips Arena last night.

CSN was tremendously enjoyable- much more so than I even had anticipated. I was also surprised to find out Stephen Stills is a guitar virtuoso. I mean, I figured CSN's part of the show would be sort of a mellow, 70's radio-type throwback show- heavy on the acoustic and vocal, with not a lot of emphasis on the rest of the performance.

While the songs definitely took you back, I was not expecting for CSN to rock the way they did. The solid, intense rhythm section held together the mostly electric set, featuring some seriously blistering, bluesy guitar solos from Stephen Stills (another surprise- I didn't realize he was such a virtuoso).

Age has robbed Crosby and Stills of some of their vocal abilities, but Graham Nash seems to have found some sort of Fountain of Youth for his throat- and they put on an outstanding show.

Tom Petty and crew, of course, were awesome. They cranked up the volume, which was already plenty loud, as they rolled through their not inconsiderable catalog to get the crowd going, and the five or so tracks they did from their new album ("Mojo") were great. (A bonus is that you get a free download of the album with the purchase of a ticket to the show).

Petty's distinct voice has shown no real signs of aging and the Heartbreakers were incredibly solid- you could tell these guys have been together a while, and have formed a wonderful working dynamic that plays up everyone's strengths to the fullest.

Also, Philips is a pretty good place to see a show.

Unfortunately (and you knew there was one coming) most of the people in the crowd around us seemed to be more interested in flapping their face holes than watching the show. Seriously, the people around us talked non-stop for the entire show.

The only time we weren't being assaulted by the prattling of the two beefheads behind us was when they went to get more beer which, unfortunately, meant they'd come back even more intoxicated and their volume would go up even more as they regaled each other with their fucktarded tales of beer and whiskey and whatever other inane crap they found more interesting than the goddamned show itself.

Not like they were the only ones (just the loudest), plenty of people up and down the rows just kept right on vomiting their inanities on us throughout the show- all the while escalating their volume to be heard over the music.

I mean, really- we were there with out of town guests and we didn't spend the show talking- I always figured if I paid good money for a concert ticket I'd do something novel, like enjoy the damned concert!

So, what I'm left with is- I loved the show, but I hate people (no, that's not really news). Why can't they just shut the hell up instead of foisting their fuckery on the rest of us?