Morford strikes true

Mark Morford, always quite good, is purely awesome today:

reposted from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/11/28/notes112807.DTL&nl=fix

Black Friday Die Die Die
America's most obscene shopping day meets its doom in an oily nightmare hell. All true!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Is this why they hate us? Why we hate ourselves? Is this why we seem to have no real idea who the hell we are anymore, or what it means to have a humane and thoughtful national identity, and therefore we happily scratch and claw and fight our way into giant fluorescent-lit hellpits for a chance at a $29 DVD player and some crappy plasma TVs and a pallet of heavily discounted spatulas?

More broadly: Is this why we're suffering such a general feeling of ennui and disgust and apathy in the culture right now, the nagging feeling that we have no center and God has abandoned us and we therefore simply cannot consume enough goods and technology to try and fill the void? The answer seems rather obvious.

I don't even know what Kohl's is. I'm guessing some sort of mass-crap superstore, like Best Buy or Target or T.J. Maxx or a weird amalgam of all of those and it doesn't really matter because last Friday they opened at 4 a.m. for the mad rush of Black Friday shoppers, because if there's one thing you want to do when your body is groggy and sleep tugs at your heart and your dreams have turned vacant and sad, it's grope cheap waffle makers before sunrise.

Wal-Mart opened at 5. Target opened at 6. Across America, gluttony ruled. There were stores that had nothing whatsoever to do with gifting or holiday largess, stores with names like Cabinetry and More or Rug Depot that nevertheless opened at 6 or 7 a.m. on that now-ominous, insane, fateful day, if for no other reason than to capitalize on the fact that there were so many franctic zombified credit-carded bodies swarming about and it would be foolish not to take advantage.

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P.S. I did not buy anything on Friday, except for a bus fare to work. For that matter, I didn't buy anything on Saturday either. And yes, I do feel smug about it, but my shopping footprint is rather minuscule at the best of times, and I am proud of that, too...