Black Thankgiving Christmas Shopping Begins My Season of Woe

The stores are all flogging "Black Friday" shopping the day after Thanksgiving, and more and more of them are pushing "Black Thursday," trying to get people to put down their turkey drumsticks pronto on Thanksgiving and get shopping, NOW!

Everybody knows I hate, hate, hate, the whole Christmas demands that we shop until we drop. I'm not even sure why I have such a viceral contempt for the constant harping to buy, buy, buy.

Who in their right mind would want to be in this
crowd during the Thanksgiving holiday?

I guess it's because of my disdain for anything that smacks of desperation. The constant ads, the continual push to begin the so called shopping season earlier, the news reports that suggest it's our duty to shop ourselves off our own fiscal cliffs for the supposed good of the economy, really scream "desperation."

We're supposed to be happy about all this, too. The ads are feature the cloying jingle bells, smiles, warm fuzzies, all in the name of dictating that emotions other than glee are hereby banned.

That's another thing that drives me crazy about the Christmas shopping season. I'm generally a happy person, but I resent it when somebody else demands that I be happy. What right does anybody tell me how to feel?

The shopping frenzy is always a turn off, too. Every year, the news is the same. People trample each other dashing through the doors for the "door buster" sales. Door buster here being literal, since they always have to fix the doors people mow down to get at their flat screen TVs.

People fight, ripping the latest hot toys out of each other's hands, because if their kid doesn't get said hot toy, the world would end, supposedly. 

Even if you don't get caught in a riot and a cloud of pepper spray during the Black Thursday/Friday sales, do you really want to burn through three tanks of gas in the traffic jams on the way to the mall? No thanks.

And what about the people who have to work at the stores in all this madness? Especially on Thanksgiving, when they probably want to be with family. Sure, some want to work on Thanksgiving to collect a bit of extra money, but I'm not sure everybody wants to deal with bloated, nauseated and nausous customers. demanding the impossible.

The stores are also all laughing themselves to the bank.  Their Black Thursday and Friday sales have a few items with low, low prices, but all the other items have jacked up price tags. The retailers know people will spend an extra $100 while they think they're saving $5 on a some stupid video game.

Not everyone has my negative attitude toward Black Thursday/Friday, of course. Somebody arrived at a California Best Buy a week before the sale began to save money on flat screen TVs and such.  To me, if you can afford to camp in a Best Buy parking lot for a week and not work, you can afford full price for a flat screen TV.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong with retailers trying to sell their stuff.  That's what they're supposed to do. Many people like the sales frenzy. It's a game, a hobby, a social experience, a way of life. More power to them. I just want to be left out of it.

 I also like giving Christmas gifts to people I like. There are aspects of shopping that can be kind of fun.  But like Christmas oveall, the demands of the retailer take something that is inherently a good idea, doing something nice for someone, and turning it into an ordeal that they demand we enjoy.

Yes, I know it's illegal to be negative during this season, but I will anyway: I want no part of Black Thursday and Black Friday. Pass the turkey and the gravy, please.

Wildly Colorful "Inversion Sunset" in Vermont

In the late autumn and winter in Vermont, some of the best sunsets come when there's a weather inversion, which is relatively common in the cold season.

The colorful sunset southwest of St. Albans,
 Vermont Sunday evening

An inversion is when it's colder in the valleys than in the mountains, which is the opposite of the usual arrangement.

The pic in this post, taken late this Sunday afternoon, shows what happens sometimes during an inversion.

(As always, click on the pick to make it nice and big and get a good view)

The high thin clouds lit up by the setting sun are a sign of warm air moving in high up above us. It's hazy in the valleys: Smoke and moisture are trapped in the low spots by the warm air above.

At sunset, the high clouds and the haze combine to create a wonderful burst of color during what can be a blah time of year.

Gasoline + Woodpile = Bang! + Hilarity + Injury

In the next couple of weeks, I'll need to set fire to the brush pile in my yard. As always, I'll get a burn permit from the town, I'll do it on a day when it won't spread out of control, I'll have stuff ready to tone it down in case it gets out of hand, and most importantly, I'll set it alight in a completely opposite way than the guys in the video below.

Gawd, the guy couldn't even safely climb the wood pile to soak it in gasoline. Yes, gasoline.  Hey, what can possibly go wrong when you only dump five gallons of gasoline on the woodpile?

The inevitable happens when they strike a match. They survived, but they are future Darwin Award winners.

So watch the vid and gloat about how much smarter you are than they.

"Dumb Ways to Die" Video is Catchy and Cute, Really!

The video in this post started rocketing around this here Internet thing today. It's a public service announcement, apparently from an Austrailian metro/train outfit.

The message is grim enough: There are a lot of really, really stupid ways people can die, among them tangling with trains.
The agency McCann Melbourne created the PSA for tghe Melbourne Metro. Says John Mescall of McCann: “We’ve got people eating superglue, sticking forks in toasters and selling both their kidneys. But truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and we still couldn’t come up with dumber ways to die than driving around boomgates and all the other things people do to put themselves in harm’s way around trains. The aim of this campaign is to engage an audience that really doesn’t want to hear any kind of safety message – and we think dumb ways to die will.”

The woman singing an incredibly catchy song about the dumb ways to die has a charming sweet voice, which really helps this.

The best part of the video, though, are all the simple cartoon characters that meet grim, dumb ends. Some of the moments of their deaths would really be regarded in most cases as gruesome, but even the death scenes are incredibly cute. Really!

Watch the video. You'll be humming the song all day, and you'll want to buy the adorable cartoon characters who demonstrate how to die stupidly. Here it is:

Hello There Racists Tumblr: Don't Know What to Think

I don't know what to think of a new Tumblr site called "Hello There, Racists."

"Hello, There Racists" searches out and displays Tweets and other social media posts from people who write boneheaded racists screeds against President Obama and others. Some of the offending Tweets seem to be assassination threats against the president.  

The site displays the Tweets, of course, but also includes as many facts about these racists as they could find. this includes the URLs for their Twitter and Facebook accounts, where they live and work, a bit about their background, and usually photographs of these offenders.

The photos, of course, are easy enough to find, since they're included on the social media sites where they write their screeds.

This Pennsylvania youth
used a racial slur to describe the president
and is among the many featured in "Hello
There, Racists" on Tumblr.

It's all about public shaming, which seems to be a trend on line. And I have seriously mixed views on this.

Of course, I don't want to protect racists. If they post stupid stuff on social media, in a sense it's fair game for anybody to react to it. It's in the public domain, after all.

Even so,   there's probably varying degrees of culpability among the people featured on Hello There, Racists. Some of them likely are like that all the time, just complete, unredeemable jerks.

 But some probably posted stuff in a dumb moment, and for whatever reason didn't remove the statements when they came to their senses. Or did remove them, but the statements were captured before they removed. them.

Again, no excuse for being racists, but I wonder if the punishment will fit the crime in all cases.  It's such a wild card on how people will react to the boneheads featured in "Hello There, Racists."

There can be all sorts of reactions. Do all of the people in the Tumblr site deserve to lose their jobs? Maybe. Maybe not. What if someone harasses them after seeing them on "Hello There, Racists." What if somebody harasses their families? Assaults or kills any of the people featured? Their families?

Unlikely, but possible.

The Tumblr site does have a disclaimer urging people not to engage in violence. But the people most likely to engage in violence don't pay attention to such disclaimers

"Hello There Racists" proves my point that there are a lot of nutjobs out there on social media. So one kook posts a vile, racists statement, and then another kook kills the racists?

And what if people are falsely accused? Everything spreads so fast these days. Remember this week the voice behind the Muppet Elmo was widely reported to have had improper sex with an underage guy. Turns out the "underage guy" lied, and was an adult who was in a consensual relationship and finally recanted.

But how much damage has been done to what turns out to be an criminally innocent Elmo guy?

Along those lines, what happens if somebody featured on "Hello There, Racists," actually didn't make the statement that it looked like they did. Somebody could have hacked their account. Somebody could be pretending to be another person on line. The possibilities are endless.

I get a little worried about vigilante justice.

That said, looking through "Hello There, Racists" is morbidly fascinating, like viewing a train wreck in action. Some of the people whose pictures accompany their screeds look like the moronic bullies they probably are. But many others look normal, even sweet and innocent. Out of the mouths of babes, I guess.

I also wonder if this trend of outing people who make dumb comments on social media could get out of control. Everybody hates some opinion somewhere.

And as I said, there are a lot of crazies out there. It doesn't take many wackos to cause havoc.

What if somebody creates a Tumblr site attacking people, for, I don't know, liking chocolate chip cookies. If a small group of people really hate chocolate chip cookies, will they expose the chocolate chip lovers on a Tumblr or Facebook site, then go out and attack them?

Probably not over chocolate chip cookies. But you see my point. It's legitimate to criticize the viewpoints of racists, but when does attacking others' opinions become stupid or dangerous?

It's still a wild west on the web, I guess.

Free Advice: Don't Tell Secret Service You Want to Kill the Prez

Hat tip to Brian Drourr via Facebook for this little list of good advice, based on a news article Brian found about a tremendously stupid man in Florida:

1. Don't threaten the president's life. Even if you don't like him. Such threats are illegal and dumb.

2. Especially don't threaten the president on Facebook. Lots of people can read it. Including the Secret Service. The Secret Service really, really doesn't like threats on the president.

3. If the Secret Service sees your threat on Facebook and want to have a little chat with you, don't reinforce the threat when talking with the Secret Service by saying you want to "bitch slap him and beat the shit out of him."

Christopher Castillo allegedly made
threats to President Obama.

According to The Smoking Gun, a guy named Christopher Castillo, 28, of Melbourne, Florida did all of the above and now, not at all shockingly, he faces felony charges.

He was to be released, maybe, after they put a GPS device on him. Probably smart. Don't want him near the White House these days.

Florida Today reached Christopher's father, Frank, who said: “A lot of people say things on Facebook that they don’t mean, and I understand the Secret Service has to do what they have to do, it’s their job,” said Frank Castillo of Tyler, Texas. “I would imagine they would find some people out there that really are loose cannons. Christopher is not one of them.”

Except when talking to Secret Service agents, apparently.

I'm actually amazed by how many similar instances there have been lately of people putting out presidential threats on Twitter, Facebook and other media. Isn't the point of posting there a way to let a lot of people read about what you're thinking about? And that means pretty much anybody.

Was Castillo and his ilk surprised by Secret Service visits? Is the Secret Service hiring? I ask because they probably need a lot of people to follow up on all these threats.

There's probably just a quick spike in threats now because Obama won the election. I get it that people who voted for Romney are angry and upset by the outcome. Perfectly natural.

But for people who want a Republican in the White House, the best revenge is to vote that way the next time, even though some other Democrat, not Obama will run next time.

It's awfully hard to vote from jail, folks. Let logic be your guide, if that's possible in your limited brains, threat people.

My Two Boys, the Dogs, Play in the Sun

Lately, I haven't shown the two boys, as Jeff and I call Jackson, out black cocker spaniel, and Bailey, our, well, we think he's a Golden Retriever and Husky mix.

So they say hi to you all in photographs.

Bailey basks in the late autumn sun...

We had a nice afternoon recently on an Indian Summer type day in our St. Albans, Vermont yard.

Bailey, the older, wiser one, wandered around soberly in the late autumn sun, enjoying the smell of the outdoors while Jackson, the young 'un, rolled in the grass and leaves until he was disoriented, and chased birds and squirrels around the yard. You know, a dog's life

The two boys can teach us humans lessons on how to live a life.

(As aways, click on the pics to make them nice
and big.)

....while Jackson's ready for action

The wind and the aromas in the
air make Bailey happy

While Jackson's a bit disoriented from rolling around
in the leaves and grass for a long time.