ancona
Praying Mantis
And so the post-Thanksgiving spectacle of black Friday begins in earnest. Some retailers, the greedier ones, opened their doors at eight o’clock last night to thousands upon thousands of crazed consumatards, all of them climbing over top of one another to get some shiny gadget or another. As usual, a number of people got trampled like roaches in the mad scramble, and yet more were injured in the inevitable riots that erupt as mob mentality takes over where common sense should rule. As it all unfolded on TV, commentators ran clips showing lines of tents filled with idiots waiting in line, hoping to be first in the store. A few of these knuckleheads have been camping out for a week in the cold so they could buy a fucking TV set. Did you read that? A fucking TV set. What in Gods name are these fucking dimwits thinking about? Is the economy really that good that folks can afford to take a week or more off of work to save a couple hundred bucks on a plasma TV?!?!? The sheep have been properly indoctrinated to go and buy their shiny plastic shit on cue, and if necessary, kill to do so. If this is how the masses act when offered a discount on blue jeans or sneakers, I don’t want to see how they act when the ATM’s stop working and the EBT cards don’t get re-loaded.
Year after year this scene devolves deeper in to an orgy of consumerism and greed, farther and farther away from the day of thanks for all of the blessings we have enjoyed in the previous year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and all other holidays for that matter, have been completely subsumed within the corporate playbook and turned in to sick commercials of their previous meanings. I can remember as a kid, if you ran out of something on Thanksgiving day, you were waiting until Saturday to buy some more. Period. Everyone was home with their families for the holiday without exception and all stores were closed. The main drag in my little burg was a ghost town, wonderfully quiet and devoid of traffic and people. Today, the roads are jammed with idiots racing against some imaginary clock to be the first dumbass in line at Wal-Mart so they can buy up more crap they neither need nor can afford.
Yup, the holidays get me down these years, because they have been stripped of their meaning. Gone are the days when kids were let out of school for a couple of weeks to celebrate Christmas, now it is Winter Festival, all so we could pacify a few vocal atheists who were “offended” by the use of the word Christ. Gone are the nativity scenes at City Hall, replaced by the religio-neutral “Happy Holidays” signs, or “Seasons Greetings”. Gone are the days of picking up a few gifts for your loved ones and having a quiet morning opening them up and later, having an agreeable ham dinner with yams and ‘taters. Cue in Black Friday and hordes of shoppers lining up to see who can spend the most and impress their friends, families and relatives with meaningless purchases of plastic shit. I have acquaintances that spend thousands of dollars on their darling children every single year. They are compelled by some force or another to buy extremely expensive and unnecessary gifts that more often than not, are either returned for cash or used a few times and forgotten. In a sad testament to their compulsion, these folks are perpetually in debt, with no hope of ever digging themselves out.
This year in Anconaland, we will be observing the holidays for their original meaning and foregoing the consumerist bullshit that has so deeply infiltrated and perverted them. We have agreed that in our home, gifts may only be purchased for one another as a result of your own free volition and that we will no longer be compelled by some unwritten rule that we simply must spend, spend, spend on Christmas. No longer will we pray to the High Priest of the Holy Retailers, we have abdicated and will now opt-out of their conditioning.
Sorry about the rant.
Year after year this scene devolves deeper in to an orgy of consumerism and greed, farther and farther away from the day of thanks for all of the blessings we have enjoyed in the previous year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and all other holidays for that matter, have been completely subsumed within the corporate playbook and turned in to sick commercials of their previous meanings. I can remember as a kid, if you ran out of something on Thanksgiving day, you were waiting until Saturday to buy some more. Period. Everyone was home with their families for the holiday without exception and all stores were closed. The main drag in my little burg was a ghost town, wonderfully quiet and devoid of traffic and people. Today, the roads are jammed with idiots racing against some imaginary clock to be the first dumbass in line at Wal-Mart so they can buy up more crap they neither need nor can afford.
Yup, the holidays get me down these years, because they have been stripped of their meaning. Gone are the days when kids were let out of school for a couple of weeks to celebrate Christmas, now it is Winter Festival, all so we could pacify a few vocal atheists who were “offended” by the use of the word Christ. Gone are the nativity scenes at City Hall, replaced by the religio-neutral “Happy Holidays” signs, or “Seasons Greetings”. Gone are the days of picking up a few gifts for your loved ones and having a quiet morning opening them up and later, having an agreeable ham dinner with yams and ‘taters. Cue in Black Friday and hordes of shoppers lining up to see who can spend the most and impress their friends, families and relatives with meaningless purchases of plastic shit. I have acquaintances that spend thousands of dollars on their darling children every single year. They are compelled by some force or another to buy extremely expensive and unnecessary gifts that more often than not, are either returned for cash or used a few times and forgotten. In a sad testament to their compulsion, these folks are perpetually in debt, with no hope of ever digging themselves out.
This year in Anconaland, we will be observing the holidays for their original meaning and foregoing the consumerist bullshit that has so deeply infiltrated and perverted them. We have agreed that in our home, gifts may only be purchased for one another as a result of your own free volition and that we will no longer be compelled by some unwritten rule that we simply must spend, spend, spend on Christmas. No longer will we pray to the High Priest of the Holy Retailers, we have abdicated and will now opt-out of their conditioning.
Sorry about the rant.