I think my time is worth more than any savings I would realize if going through this craziness.

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I saw on TV this morning that some woman in a Los Angeles Wal-Mart used pepper spray to reduce competition from fellow shoppers. My wife and I share this attitude about "Black Friday": Don't go there. Wait it out. Buy it later/ Or do without!

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Yuk. I guess Hitler or Mussolini were the first to capitalize on contolled indoctrination of the masses in celebration hysteria?

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I thought "Black Friday" was the day Kennedy was assassinated.

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I agree, Max. The web offers better product information, pricing, convenience and selection. My internet shopping is almost always with free shipping, and the avoidance of sales tax is just more gravy.

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Now you know you are to submit the AR Use Tax on those internet purchases or out-of-state purchases.

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I've always evaluated my consumer goods like I do my religion, blind faith, spurred on by advertising which often costs more than the products it sells. Not much difference between evangelicals and advertisers these days. Well, almost. At least advertisers deliver something you can touch or use. But for religionists it's

"Cakes in Heaven,
Crumbs on the street."

Never been to a single black Friday. Likely won't break a perfect record.

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Buy online now or forever hold your, you know?

http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov…

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Anyone else see the Small Business Saturday ads during yesterday's national news on NBC? They are asking consumers to buy one item on Saturday from local merchants to show your support for all the small local businesses that are so vital to every community:

http://smallbusinesssaturday.com/

If I buy anything at all tomorrow, it will be from a small local business to show my support.

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Where was the Waffle Maker Riot "at a Walmart near Little Rock"?

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THere is video online of the Waffle Maker Riot that occurred at a "WalMart near LR"

Anyone know where?

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A bomb scare at a local Wal-Mart, a Wal-Mart customer in other lands pepper sprays other customers away from a box of Wii junk......I'm going to start praying for China to invade us. Clearly we're too greedy and stupid to be a nation any more.

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I did buy something today, just not in one of the brick-and-mortar stores that forced their employees to report for work late Thanksgiving Day just to keep their jobs at or slightly above minimum wage, but definitely not a living wage.

I bought a plane ticket for my next visit to help my elderly parents. I surmised I would be one of the few doing so today, and guess what? The cost of my ticket was down 33% from the last time I checked a week or so ago. Just hope the planes I'll be flying on aren't made by the same folks as the cheapo goods being sold to consumers all across Amerika today.

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Here is a link to the video mudturtle referenced. I don't know which Walmart in the LR area this was but it certainly explains why I don't shop for Black Friday deals:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/25/wal-…

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Thank you for the link NVR. If this is in fact an actual video of an occurrence in a LR WalMart store, it's just another reason to do one's shopping over the Internet and therefore avoid situations such as this. From what I understand, there was shoving and rudeness going on at stores in LR other than WalMart.

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The story was reported by WBTV in Charlotte, NC, but the video was attributed to a Ms. Clark who is a Facebook (I think) poster. Someone, somehow, determined she was a resident of Little Rock. Assuming all this is correct -- and who knows, 'cause I don't -- I'd guess Ms. Clark is visiting eastern environs.
Then there's the man in Arizona who was reported slammed to the concrete floor in a Wal-Mart and knocked out, apparently because one of our "servers and protectors" decided he was a shoplifter. Seems in the shopping mayhem, a young'un was knocked down and Grampa stuck something (a game maybe?) in his waistband so he would have his hands free to pick up his own young grandson. So the story goes anyway.
Me? I decided long ago, I didn't do mob scenes of any kind if I can help it, and certainly not so I can spend money.
I have also decided to avoid Wal-Mart. Yeah, I backslide from time to time, but all this nonsense has made me renew that vow. Sometimes I have to work at it, but there's not much I need that I can't find elsewhere, and surprisingly, often at a lesser price -- well, except hubby's Glucerna.

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Being as the wife and I were visiting family in the Cave City/Ash Flat/Cherokee Village area, and we had the time, we decided to hit up the Ash Flat Wal-Mart for the PS3 bundle for my son. It will rank as one of the craziest things I have ever seen. People everywhere. People raking huge numbers of items into carts without actually seeing what they are selecting. People enraged over being the first loser on sale items sold out.

Don't weep for the future, it is already here.

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This shopping madness reinforces my long held practice not to enter any store between Thanksgiving and Christmas except a grocery store. Gotta eat, you know.

And my family decided to skip the whole Christmas thing years ago. Our closets got full of all the Christmas junk nobody used, wanted or needed.

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From Orwell's novel, "1984".

“He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices – women’s voices – had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep, loud ‘Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve. There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another’s hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats ! WHY WAS IT THAT THEY COULD NEVER SHOUT LIKE THAT ABOUT ANYTHING THAT MATTERED?”

Emphasis mine with a H/T to commenter DrLoveless at BJ.

Travel back another 100 years and you have the scene in "A Tale of Two Cities" where the wine cask falls and breaks open in front of DeFarge's wine shop and the peasants are sopping it up off the ground with their kerchiefs. Today, the elite 1% don't run children down with their carriages and leave them to die. They argue to make cuts in S-CHIP or medicaid or put their polluting industries in impoverished areas and kill them slowly. (See Crosset, AR + Koch Industries).

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Make that 200 years in your time travel machine. The French Revolution was 18th Century.

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I went by Hearne Fine Art and purchased a book.
My dad purchased two pizzas from Shotgun Dan's. That was the extent of our Black Friday purchases.

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