Insanity Friday

I did not partake in crazy Black Friday events this year. Though one of my fondest memories will always be squeezing past the unruly Black Friday mob at Best Buy with my dad one year and ending up the sixth and seventh people into the store, I decided that sleeping was a more valuable use of my time.

The family and I left the house around 2 to pick up some Black Friday scraps. Looking back, it was probably the safer and easier thing to do. At least we had less of a chance at being trampled to death. In these economic times, the level of crazy seems to rise exponentially to the dollar amount saved from a discount. When resources are scarce, people tend to revert back to a more primal nature and gather as much of the resources for themselves with even less regard for the well-being of those around them.

To avoid all of that, we casually strolled through the piles of clothes tossed haphazardly across store floors, around the DVD bins whose contents had long been ransacked, and past flustered and angry store personnel just waiting for their shifts to end. I managed to snag a few good DVDs - Pan's Labyrinth and Primal Fear being two of them. Pan's Labyrinth is an excellent movie if anyone has not yet seen it. And Edward Norton debuted his major movie acting career with Primal Fear. How could I resist?

Personally, I love how casual we were this year about Black Friday. I don't know if it's a sign of the current economic struggle or just our timing, but there were no mobs and no insanely long lines at the cash registers. There were always free parking spaces. But I think the best reward for our nonchalance is the 40% discount we received on a new laptop at 9:30PM, hours after most people were done Black Friday shopping.

Microsoft was offering a 40% discount on anything in the HP online store if you searched with Live.com. Of course the whole system was backed up, and most people couldn't make it past the customary "Oops, the page you are looking for does not exist. Please try again later" page. The thrill of possibly getting such a discount reminded me of my old Neopets days, hitting refresh just hoping to get that rare, pixelated item. I had fun just constantly refreshing the page while playing Super Smash Brothers on a separate screen. Persistence paid off, and once again, I can say that Black Friday was a complete success.