I don't want to hear about the pardoned Thanksgiving Turkey anymore. One of these days he's going to go back to his old ways, embark on a three-state crime spree, and then we'll feel pretty stupid.
I also don't want to hear about Black Friday -- or, as we used to call it, Friday. It's "black" because retailers are lifted from the red side of the ledger and delivered unto the land of Profits, but you can't shake the other dire implications of the term, can you?
Imagine if the term was applied to other concepts:
The Black Death. It's the most value-oriented plague you've ever seen! Early symptoms include a rash, fever, enlarged coupons, bouts of chills up to 20 percent less than normal duration. Special "doorbuster" prices for the first 100 people to come through the store and collapse from systemic organ failure.
A Black Hole. Scientists say they're the densest objects in the universe, with gravity so strong it crushes the competition! First 100 people to enter the Event Horizon will appear to be suspended at that point in space for eternity, forever falling into a well of nothingness that could be a portal to another dimension, or just the luggage department.
In case you haven't noticed, Black Friday started earlier this week. Target had "Beat the Rush" signs up before Thanksgiving, which means that Black Friday has been pushed forward to Not Quite So Black Wednesday, and perhaps leaked into Charcoal Gray Tuesday. If there wasn't the firewall of Halloween at the end of October, Christmas would leak into September.
No use complaining: That horse is already out of the barn and standing in the checkout line. But there's something we can do about stores that open on Thanksgiving. We can avoid them.
No, the earlier shopping times shouldn't be banned by law. No, stores are not obligated to stay closed in order to honor some hoary old notion of Thanksgiving as a time where one communes with family, shovels in the yams and spends the rest of the day metabolizing a masticated fowl-wad in the La-Z-Boy.
