I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and I hope you can extract your severely hungover uncles from your crawlspaces. Today is the traditional Capitalist holiday known as Black Friday, a day when people buy lots of stuff for gifts. I wasn’t really sure where the name actually came from, but it appears that it originated from Philadelphia police in the 1950s to refer to the chaos that came when hordes of suburbanites descended onto the city for the Army-Navy football game that weekend and then swarmed all the stores, causing all manner of trouble. I guess all those subsequent years of suburban moms shoving grandmas to the ground to get a Cabbage Patch Kid didn’t help, either.
The modern definition of Black Friday is, I hope, a little more tame, as thanks to how much shopping is done online, it’s a lot more difficult to smack someone’s grandpa with a lawn chair to get ahold of the last Furby than it used to be. Now we arrange to smack grandpas with lawn chairs on websites where all parties enthusiastically consent to the smacking, and everyone wins. Oh, and there’s still people buying stuff.
You know, we have stuff to buy, too, if you’re interested! Our Merch section is finally operational, and you can buy top-notch Autopian products there! Essentially, you can buy the only two known categories of objects in the universe: cloth upper body covers, known as “shirts” and small printed images that can be adhered to other objects, known as “stickers.”
Here’s the shirts:
…and here are the stickers:
Hot clams those are quality items! Oh! Wait! I forgot there’s a third category of object in the universe! Toy cars! And we have a special one of those, too, thanks to our collaboration with Candylab:
Yes, it’s the Official Autopian Land Low-Speed Record Car! A specially-prepared diesel Vanagon, designed for sustained low speeds! Stick it on your desk and pretend it’s the Salt Flats and you’re about to set the new land low-speed record! Trundling down at 24 mph while your buddy makes omelettes in the back! It’s thrilling!
And, there’s plenty of other amazing Candylab cars to choose from in our specially-curated shop! It’s like a dream!
Okay, enough sales pitching. We’ll be operating at a lower-capacity today, but all the posts will be about black cars, of any kind, so I hope everyone enjoys that!
The year that ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ was the item worth beating the crap out of other people to obtain, a radio station in the Raleigh-Durham area supposedly tied one to some helium balloons and released it. I don’t recall hearing anything about it afterward. Given the amount of development in the region, I’m sort of surprised no one has found the remains of the thing.
I’m so glad my family has unanimously switched to a present free holiday. Now we just put up the aluminum pole, perform feats of strength and air our grievances before a nice dinner of oatmeal.
The story I heard about Black Friday is that is was the day retailers moved out of the red and into the black, financially speaking. But I prefer this tale of Philadelphia Philadelphing.
I seriously hope you prepped The Bishop for the obligatory, deep cut Gino Vannelli reference.
https://youtu.be/5PvuNAoG0XY?si=jAHxSC0bxJt6UdAJ
I STILL have that cassette!!!
God, I’m old…
Saw him live back in the day. He had BIG hair! It was a great show.
Did you see Eugene Levy parody him on SCTV? Gold.
Of course, nobody mentioned that to me before I picked two white cars for SBSD…
Or the silver one for “It’s A Car”…
Matt: Remember to read the memo concerning posts on Black Friday.
Jason, Mercedes, David, Peter: Got it.
Matt: Great that covers everyone. Have a great Thanksgiving.
(2 days later)
Matt: Is there anybody I forgot to send the memo to?
You should smack Torch with a lawn chair and take his Furby.