jrossi, I want to make a documentary about Black Friday next year. Can I interview you?

Sure! Just not actually ON Black Friday because by the time we left at 4AM, I was incredibly punch drunk and foulmouthed. (I was purposely trying to freak out my mom. Turns out after 35 years with me, she's completely immune to my lewdness.)

Ah, I'm guessing this was the new outlet mall in Limerick. I heard it was nuts.

Here's a question: when did the phrase "Black Friday" suddenly become common parlance? I don't remember anyone actually using the phrase last year; it seemed to be something retailers and the nightly news used exclusively.

Indeed, amro! Completely nuts. The traffic was so backed up trying to get in that we actually parked in another lot and walked.

It's been Black Friday for as long as I can remember, eamon.

Was yesterday Black Sunday, like the Cypress Hill record?

I want a list of days with colors in front of their names.

when did the phrase "Black Friday" suddenly become common parlance?

I learned it when I worked in retail in high school in 1986. When it migrated to the general populace, I don't know. You remind me of the word "end cap" which a lot of people know now, but used to be arcane retail jargon for the shelf at the end of an aisle.

eamon, I don't know when, but the phrase has been around for at least a few years, coined because it's the day retailers typically see their accounting books go into the black.

I think there's a broad trend, these days, of what used to be insider lingo passing into broader use.

want a list of days with colors in front of their names.
Blue Monday
Ruby Tuesday

You are a brave, brave woman. I can't imagine anything worse than being in a mall, any mall, at 4:00 am. Unless there are zombies outside and I'm in there with a couple of cute guys and some shotguns. Then I'd be happy enough, frying up the egg rolls in the food court and wearing lingerie.

I haven't bought a damn thing except beer, cigarettes and firewood since last Tuesday and I find that's working just beautifully for me. And when I got the firewood I also got to get my free frozen turkey for being such a loyal supermarket customer over the last few months and that was great - do you know that a frozen turkey would be, like, probably the perfect homicide weapon? Another plot device for a no doubt upcoming bad Black Friday murder mystery!

Then I'd be happy enough, frying up the egg rolls in the food court and wearing lingerie.

Ob. - This thread is worthless without photos.

eamondaly: I'm with you...I had heard the phrase "Black Friday" before and understood the meaning, but never have I heard it used so extensively before this year.

Today's Cyber Monday, don'tcha know?

it's the day retailers typically see their accounting books go into the black.

Though you hear that everywhere suspect that's actually a false etymology - it's too neat, and not quite accurate anyway. Instead, I think it just comes from the fact that it's an incredibly stressful day to work in retail, and I think it's probably built on the example of Black Tuesday (stock market crash) and the tradition of naming things "Black [whatever]" if they are onerous. Wikipedia seems to back that up with some early citations. About.com says "Black Friday is used to describe a number of historical Fridays in which an event led to public chaos or disaster." The American Dialect Society (which is way into antedating) has an earliest citation of "Black Friday" from 1857, though it refers to a financial panic rather than a shopping panic. In addition, in Western cultures Friday is traditionally the 'bad-luck' day - people didn't like their ships to leave port on Friday, Christ was supposedly crucified on Friday, Friday the 13th, etc.

The discussion about the term's meaning accords with my experience; I heard it in the 80s used only to describe the crowds of manic shoppers, with no reference to fourth-quarter earnings, and only began to hear the accounting explanation perhaps ten years later. A lot of words develop an apocryphal and perhaps cleverer explanation story after they become common, and I think this is one of those cases.

And "Cyber Monday" has to be one of the last living attempts to apply the word "cyber" to personal computer use.

Now that my divorce is final, this coming month I begin paying about $250 a month more than I'd been (voluntarily) paying in the way of child support (and now, my ex's attorney bill).

So....The only shopping I did was at the grocery store. Besides some odds and ends to round out dinners, I think the only "luxury" item was...my usual weekly bagful of canned goods to donate to the local shelter. As long as I can keep doing that, I will, 'cause it means I'm not that bad off.

(I place that bag in the grocery cart at church Sunday morning. I notice the cart's never anywhere near full, despite my church being in a prosperous part of town.)

I'm waiting to see if my son bitches when he doesn't get much in the way of presents from me this year. It'll be a learning opportunity for him. Unintended consequences an all that. 'Sides, his mom and his grandmother have been spoiling him despite my jeremiads basically all his life. I'll give him a Xmas card with a "A donation in your honor has been made to Westerville Area Resource Ministry" and the lyrics to the Kinks' song "Father Christmas."

I can't imagine anything worse than being in a mall, any mall, at 4:00 am. Unless there are zombies outside and I'm in there with a couple of cute guys and some shotguns. Then I'd be happy enough, frying up the egg rolls in the food court and wearing lingerie.

Oh man. I gotta watch Night of the Comet again.

Ever time I hear the phrase "Cyber Monday" I chuckle to myself.

Me too, drezdn.

Me three.

Yay deborah! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of that first and Romero second.

Pax, just out of curiosity, how old is your son? Because if he's real young, I'm going to have to give you a talking to.

Sounds like you had fun! It's cool to do things now and again that we wouldn't dream of normally. An experience like this was fun because you treated is as such - if you had gone out all serious and determined to do serious shopping, you would probably have had a miserable time.

jrossi4jr, he is twelve -- a very bright, at times surprisingly circumspect-for-his-age twelve. Possibly due to whatever his mother is or is not telling him, he does not communicate with me despite my continuing attempts for years now. Insufficient data. Maybe when he's in his 20s he'll tell me what's gone on.

He has more materially than many of his peers -- more, from what I've seen on my infrequent visits, than he can deal with responsibly. (I could tell you about how I had to micromanage him in cleaning his room when his mom "just couldn't" get him to.) He already has two videogames, an MP3 player, and a boom box in addition to the usual phalanx of games and toys. He does not usefully have a father, despite my urgings, pleas, and warnings about long-term consequences. He has an Uncle Daddy who is constrained to writing very large checks.

I can't be there with him (can't afford even a brief holiday visit from four states away). I can't afford to participate in showering him with material goods anymore -- and am thwarted from participating in parenting him. So I might as well prick his conscience in the hope that he'll become something like a man, even if he's irked at Dad for not giving him a gift certificate to GameStop. From everything I've seen, it's the only such pricking he's likely to get this Christmas season.

Instead of participating in the usual holiday wretched excess to the tiny degree I might, I'll use the money instead to put dinner on the table of an out-of-work neighbor family once, maybe twice -- and then tell him, truthfully, that I was thinking of him and missing him fiercely as I did it. Maybe he'll consider that he has a father to whom he's still the most significant person on earth, who believes in certain values, among them that some things -- like meals on dinner tables, like love -- are more important than Halo 3.

Now...about that talking-to...?