Black Friday

So today is called Black Friday here in the US...the 'official' start of the Christmas shopping season and the busiest shopping day of the year. I think it's ridiculous.

Stores are opening earlier and earlier each year with more and more insanely low prices in an effort to generate the most hype from consumers. And the consumers fall for it!!! I've done it once, and not for myself...I was coerced by a family member to go buy a TV and a DVD player from Wal*Mart. I arrived at 5am (the store was to open at 6am) and entered a queue of shoppers not unlike cattle waiting to be slaughtered. There were pallets wrapped in black plastic everywhere. It was insane how many people were there. We were lined up winding back and forth through the produce section waiting in line just to get a number to stand in line for a television. And since we were in the television line, there was no hope of getting one of the DVD players. When opening time came, clerks came by the pallets and cut the black plastic off with box cutters. The people went crazy. They were grabbing two and three DVD players, PlayStation games, board games, Barbie stuff galore, etc, etc ad nauseum. I ended up with a television, but nothing else. The pallets were empty in a matter of minutes. People had their carts piled high with merchandise that they more than likely couldn't afford and probably didn't even know what they had. It was really a sad sight.

I'm not against consumerism...not even a little bit. But there comes a time when it all just becomes too much. I like to shop and I like to get a good deal. But there is no way I will ever shop on this day again. It's just not worth it. I think it would be a wonderful thing for stores to offer lower prices every day instead of creating an artificial demand by offering an extremely limited quantity of a few items at nearly giveaway prices. It's just annoying to those of us who really could use a good deal but can't afford the time and loss of sanity required to shop on the day after Thanksgiving.

Midwest Weather

I may as well make it perfectly clear from the beginning...I love weather and talk about it, study it, photograph it a LOT. I watch The Weather Channel for fun. Really.

I hate the weather in the Midwest in general and Indiana in particular. Today it is snowing. Tonight it's supposed to turn to rain. I really prefer it this way rather than the all-too-often occurrence of what the demented weather people around here like to call 'Wintry Mix'. This is an innocuous-sounding term that actually means 'disgusting wet/frozen stuff falling from the sky, pelting you in the face and sticking and freezing to anything it hits'. It is my least favorite feature of the Midwest winter season. Well, perhaps that's not completely true...

The sun here in the Midwest goes behind a cloud along about the end of December and we don't see it again until March. It's awful. I love to see a nice gray/black storm bank rolling in and watching the storms, but this grayness that is our sky for a full two months of every year is enough to make a person go nuts...and it does happen from time to time around here...or maybe that's just me...hmmmmmmmm.

Welcome!

Okay, so I've decided to start a blog. I don't really know why, but why not? Perhaps at some point I'll have something important or at least mildly interesting to say that some poor soul will find themselves reading.

This entry is my first and since I really don't know what I'm going to do with this thing anyway, it will be short. So welcome to my blog and we'll see what develops from here!