Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Black Friday And Decorated Golf Carts

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in these United States and as Deb/Den are leaving VERY early in the morning to visit family in Wisconsin, I'll be 'home alone' in sunny Buttonwood Bay for a few days. Home alone with Pixie I mean.

Hope she likes turkey.

Based on the fact that I didn't trash the car the other day when I drove it for the first time, I'm being allowed to 'have it' whilst they are up in the frozen north. I'm already Mapquesting the route to Grand Canyon ! See previous post.

As well as being a semi decent movie, the day after tomorrow is Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, if you believe the retail industry. Maybe that's the last Saturday before Christmas, which would be my guess. In any case, delusional, sorry, hopeful bargain hunters will rise on Friday at the crack of 2am, stand for hours outside the major stores and then run like Usain Bolt when the doors open to try and get to the big sale items which in reality were snapped up by the employees the day before.

So instead of the 55" LCD 3D Sony TV for $199 which is now residing in some pimply salesman's living room, they'll have to settle for a 37" Plasma Vizio for $499 which was the price last month. BUT as you'll get it on Black Friday it'll be a steal.....yes ?

Since the advent and growth of online shopping, Black Friday has had to be reinvented. Many deals can now be found online as well as in the stores and so only your fingers need to be awake at 2am. Seriously proficient multitaskers can remain blissfully asleep or even doing other things that adults do in bed whilst they max out their credit cards on items they don't really want but feel they need due to the deal prices.

But things change every year. Nowadays, there are online ONLY deals on Black Friday. And some stores start their deals at midnight on Thanksgiving. Others start in the week leading up to Black Friday. It's an evolving trend that may end up affecting the whole Nov/Dec retail period.

As I see it, next year Black Friday will be replaced by Black November which will start in late October. Thanksgiving Day will be merged with Christmas Day (to be named Thanks For Christmas Day) to give the endangered turkey population a chance to regroup and this will fall on the last Thursday in December so that workers can have a long weekend as no one will ever turn up for work on the Friday anyway.

As an aside, US citizens will be outraged when Facebook and Twitter messages announce that the White House plans to name their tree the "Thanks For The Holidays Tree." Snopes and Urban Legends will add to the storm of protest by finally going along with the scam by saying it's true. Very naughty.

There will be a new public holiday called Returns Day which will fall on the Monday AFTER Thanks For Christmas Day when people will get up at 2am to line up outside those very same stores to try and get their money back for all the items they bought in Black November and which are now on sale at even lower prices.

It's all good fun but Pixie and I plan on giving it all a wide berth this year. If she gets up at 2am on Friday, she's on her own !

Another approaching tradition is the Buttonwood Bay Christmas Golf Cart Parade which will start at 5:30pm on December 11th.

I only mention this event as from early November, my blog gets a dramatic surge of new visitors who have used any combination of 'cart' 'parade' 'golf' 'decorate' and 'Christmas' in a Google Search as my post from 2007 will pop up on the first page of the search results.

If I get some decent photos of the 2011 event, I will have to publish them in a new post as one has to be relevant you know and a post from 2007 is just so "back in the day."

Actually we're thinking about decorating our golf cart as a mobile WalMart store. Dennis will be the greeter, Debby will be the checkout lady and I will be the stressed returns guy, shouting obscenities at everyone along the parade route.

It'll be a sure winner in the Black November Thanks For Christmas Holiday Returns Day Buttonwood Bay Golf Cart Parade.

2 comments:

Jennytc said...

Go on, do it! I dare you!

rhymeswithplague said...

If only the BNTFCHRDBBGC parade could be telecast nationally! With the winning team from Dancing With the Stars as grand marshalls.

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