Archive for December, 2007

black friday post thanksgiving pre christmas

Add comment December 4th, 2007

     Now I don’t want to be one of those curmudgeonly Grinches who want to steal the heart warming, made-for-TV sentimentality of the Christmas holidays, but……. Well….. SOMEBODY’S got to stand up and say enough is really quite enough.  I mean when you got folks sittin 6-8 hours the same night as Thanksgiving, 25 degrees out and they’re pitching lawn chairs and tents outside Tyee Store so they can get first shot at the Black Friday specials, c’mon, digest your 5 pounds of turkey, half ton of dressing, a bucket of mashed potatoes, a quarter bog of cranberry sauce and 3 slabs of pie with ice cream BEFORE moving into the next holiday.
     Thanksgiving.  That was the celebration where the Pilgrims offered the natives platinum cards, no annual fee, 2% frequent flyer miles, generous monthly minimum payments, wasn’t it???  Eat up, Chief, we’re all headed down to Plymouth Rock Mall tonight, be first in line at the Best Buy for their dawn opening, great sales on convection oven Franklin stoves before the Jamestown mob gets wind….. 
     The huddled masses parked outside the Tyee Store entrance, illuminated by the 75 watt yellow bug light, sure seemed festive, like maybe Don and Helen, the owners, were gonna be handing out free E-coli leftover rotisserie turkey dogs along with those Christmas specials.  But you all know, like I did, the real meaning of Christmas is the camaraderie and the sharing of all those cheerful consumers waiting patiently for a real good deal.  Oh, I know, they had a couple of altercations and some jostling at the door, and things did turn ominous when they discovered the specials were mostly in the outdated dairy department.  But in the end nobody got more than their feelings hurt.  Not enough to dampen the true spirit of the season/.
     Christmas on the South End …….  It never really ends.  

stanwoodopolis ablaze

Add comment December 4th, 2007

        I’m probably the last yahoo on earth who still reads a newspaper.  Off line.  Mostly cause I need the kindling to start my stove fires.  I like the Stanwood News the best ———– for starting fires.  The editorial page practically combusts BEFORE I can get it into the stove.  Last week they ran a full page ad paid for som guy who really doesn’t seem to care who exactly is elected president so long as it isn’t Hilary.  Ran her picture – or some horrible doctored up version that was less than flattering and probably actionable — and I guess he figured to scare us with it.  Ugly woman.  Bad president. 
      I’m scared all right.  Way right.  So far right I might vote for that guy Abra Cadabra Jihad, the president of Iran who disputes the Holocaust.  Mostly tho, I’m scared to get this week’s paper.  The editorials should torch off in my mailbox.  Stores’ll probably go up in smoke.  Vending machines will explode on the streets of Stanwoodopolis like IED’s.  You Beach Patrollers will be on Code Red Alert.
     Freedom of Speech is a great thing.  Unless you’re the unlucky audience…………… wait! You ARE the unlucky audience.  But lately I’ve been starting to rethink this whole idea that one man’s opinion is just as valid as anybody else’s.   Course, I’m Jeffersonian enuff to know we can’t really impinge on other folks’ right to speak out.  But you can’t yell fire in a theater and I think maybe Dave Pinkham, the editor of the Stanwoodopolis Gazette, will probably have to be more circumspect after this week’s editorial fires burn half the town down.

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