I was in Death Valley National Park, hiking up Johnson Canyon to look at the ruins of Hungry Bill's Ranch. What were you doing on Black Friday?
-- Badtux the Desert Penguin
1 day ago
Saturday, November 26, 2011
12 comments:
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Went to the likker store, stopped and got some beer and wrenched on that fucking El Camino some more.
ReplyDeleteIt started and ran, my buddy spent hours fiber glassing the pieces of the lid for the heater core back together until he got too drunk to hit his ass with either hand.
He ain't done yet and neither am I.
The wife is less than pleased about the fucking thing to begin with and now she ain't even talking to me after I just spent another hundred bucks on a new crankshaft dampener and some hoses.
I think you might have had just a tad more fun than I did this weekend.
Good on ya.
Busted, the wrenching knucklehead.
I embraced the concept of buy nothing day. The weather here was unusually nice so, after a breakfast of pie, I drove out to the country with my dogs and hiked around for a while until I remembered it is still rifle season and I was wearing a brown coat. It occurred to me that I should have chosen a more urban walk. There would have been a much lower chance of getting shot in Detroit. LOL.
ReplyDeleteMy walk was pretty nice but your walk sounds better. I am guessing that it isn't too hot in Death Valley this time of year?
A friend where I was staying took me into town where I picked up a battery for the Astro Tiger RV that I did end up buying on Wednesday. It was because of a pretty much complete failure of this auxiliary battery that the whole charging system was compromised. Then drove the 200 south and it performed very well. We both had fun I think. There was no choice except to buy this on Friday.
ReplyDeleteWhat were you doing on Black Friday?
ReplyDeleteI went to the gym, laid down in the afternoon to sleep a bit so I could be rested for a midnight shift on the psych ward, and spent some time that night watching YouTubes about things like the Mall-Wart waffle riot. At work, I ranted to my co-workers about how "Black Friday" is meaningless statistical noise in the overall U.S. economy.
Sales during the year-end consumption frenzy comprise 3.4% of the U.S. GDP. Black Friday is but one day out of that 3.4%. Even as a wild exaggeration, say the one day's money-movement represents 1% of the total amount of economic activity for the year. If it's up or down 20% vs. the year before -- again, a wildly puffed-up rate of swing -- that would be 0.2% of the U.S. GDP. "Statistical noise" as Charles Hugh Smith (a guy who's even smarter than Tux, although not as broad-based in his commentary) says.
Yet we're fed all these stories by the cable noise networks and mainstream newspapers as though it's something significant. "The fate of the nation hangs upon overweight sheople mobbing stores to buy cheap Chinese crap!" How many babble-minutes on-air, how many deadtree columninches on paper, were devoted to this? The message-makers are throwing up a hologram of irrelevant infofakery, the better to delude the proles, for what purpose? Another sign of a civilization in terminal decline. We focus on illusion, not reality, because what's real is too scary.
I rolled my big ass out of bed at 3 am to be at work at the Homer Depot at 4am so all the friggin idiots standing outside could rush in and buy cheapass chinese import shit. Why everyone wants a pisspoor plastic vacuum cleaner is beyond me. As to myself, I was peddlin the hell out of appliances. We sold over $100k of appliance on Friday alone and ours is not a big volume store. Sure was glad when I finally managed to get clocked out after 10 hours.
ReplyDeleteBusted, next up I gotta fix the damage done to my Jeep when a Jeep club local to that area took me on a tour of a Jeep trail that was "easy". I learned there's several definitions of "easy", and what might be easy for their built-up Jeeps ain't so easy for a 100% stock Jeep :).
ReplyDeleteLynne, weather was beautiful in Death Valley. High 40's at night, high 60's during the day. Looking at what remains in Johnson Canyon was interesting too, as was hiking up to the top of Trail Canyon and doing some other explorations of the area.
One Fly, sorry to hear about having to buy something on Black Friday. At least auto parts stores aren't the zoos that the department stores are, though, at least ya got that.
Bukko, that was the one thing that sucked about my mother being a nurse, holidays weren't holidays. Sick people need someone to take care of them on holidays too, and since our family wasn't going out of town, and there was always the irresponsible gits who couldn't find a sitter for their kiddos or some shit and called in at the last moment, when she was younger she was low on the totem pole and would get called in, when she was older she was a supervisor and thus if couldn't find anybody else to cover the floor she ended up covering it. So even though she was officially scheduled only maybe 1/3rd of the time on Christmas and Thanksgiving when I was a kid, she ended up working most of them anyhow.
Dave, at least you didn't have to work dinner time on Thanksgiving Day. Give thanks for that much, at least. But don't worry, soon Black Friday will start at 6am on Thursday just to give a jumpstart to the economy. (Cue eyeroll, look @ Bukko's stats above for why).
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
I worked in my store. Retail sales. Had a quiet but OK day. Nothing like I hoped but then I am an optimist.
ReplyDeleteBeing an optimist means I think tomorrow will be a great day. Tomorrow may be but today never seems to meet expectations. I may have to re-think my
Sitting at home sipping on a bottle of Brandy.
ReplyDeleteYou visited a national park? What kind of Black Friday is that :)
ReplyDeleteNational Park? HA!
ReplyDeleteI visited my 82-yr-old M-I-L and my 90-yr-old mother, both in Toledo.
IIRC, there was pie involved.
Cheers!
JzB
Ruckus, yeah, I didn't make it into town on "Black Friday", but I heard that it was fairly disappointing for most retailers.
ReplyDeleteBBC, that's what you do every day.
Tom, I try to spend my holidays as far from "civilization" (it would be a good idea!) as possible.
JzB: I like pie. That is all :).
- Badtux the Heretic Penguin
I raked leaves. But I did like this video, which passes through Death Valley.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg