I hate the name, but it has become the standard term for the mercenary free-for-all kickoff leading to the holiday shopping season.
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Sending as CIDU.
Is this “Bliss” as dark as I’m supposing it must be? As a comment on substance dependency, he is saying that 20,955 times the choice of liquor to consume has not fixed his problems, but there’s always the hope that a good choice this time will work.
But this comic is rarely that negative!
The second strip actually trips over the original reason for the name. It’s Black Friday because it used to be when a lot of retailers got into the black for the year, being in the red prior to that. (This in turn goes back to the accounting practice of using black ink for assets/income and red for debts/expenditures, so the ledger would be “in the black” when the black numbers added up to more than the red numbers.)
Dvandom: I’ve always found that origin story suspicious, and Brittanica doesn’t believe it either:
We were in France over US Thanksgiving week a few years ago, and I was surprised to find promotions for Black Friday sales on the major shopping streets. (They seemed to be multinational retailers.) I don’t know that France has a Thanksgiving Day, and if so it’s unlikely to be coordinated with US Thanksgiving Day.
Black Friday is around in the UK these days, though perhaps it is mainly visible in online shop promotions, and of course we don’t have US-style Thanksgiving. Traditionally Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) was the kickoff for our main sales season.
According to Wikipedia, the UK had a different “Black Friday” before the US-inspired shopping one showed up on our shores, though it also included violence and the need for medical attention: “In the United Kingdom, the term ‘Black Friday’ originated within the police and NHS to refer to the Friday before Christmas. It is the day when emergency services activate contingency plans to cope with the increase in workload due to many people going out drinking on the last Friday before Christmas. These plans can include setting up mobile field hospitals near city centre nightspots.”
We are down to needing to buy 2 Christmas gifts (no Chanukah gifts purchased as youngest in my family is in his late 20s).
So, how many gifts have we bought – none. Robert will buy himself a gift and we will buy something for his younger niece (in her teens) and that will take care of all of gift shopping.
I managed several years ago to convince Robert that, unlike all the mimes about wives and gifts, when I say I don’t want anything – I MEAN I don’t want anything! (Well, I was thinking about a new laundry basket as mine is broken at one handle – but tonight I found out that I have a second one which is fine, so no new one needed.)
Bought a large stuffed snake at Ikea for his younger niece – apparently she likes snakes.
We will see his sister and family tomorrow. His sister has written another book and paid to have it published. She will be reading from the book and selling them at local bookstore. (It surprises me that she writes books – not to be catty, but she always has had trouble reading them.) So our attendance is commanded at the reading. Since we won’t see them for Christmas we will give niece her gift when we see them.
One gift to buy down, one to go – what will he decide to get for Christmas and will we end up returning it before or after Christmas?
Comics I Don't Understand 
Sending as CIDU.
Is this “Bliss” as dark as I’m supposing it must be? As a comment on substance dependency, he is saying that 20,955 times the choice of liquor to consume has not fixed his problems, but there’s always the hope that a good choice this time will work.
But this comic is rarely that negative!
The second strip actually trips over the original reason for the name. It’s Black Friday because it used to be when a lot of retailers got into the black for the year, being in the red prior to that. (This in turn goes back to the accounting practice of using black ink for assets/income and red for debts/expenditures, so the ledger would be “in the black” when the black numbers added up to more than the red numbers.)
Dvandom: I’ve always found that origin story suspicious, and Brittanica doesn’t believe it either:
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-it-called-black-friday
Wikipedia includes that but it doesn’t sound canonical:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)
We were in France over US Thanksgiving week a few years ago, and I was surprised to find promotions for Black Friday sales on the major shopping streets. (They seemed to be multinational retailers.) I don’t know that France has a Thanksgiving Day, and if so it’s unlikely to be coordinated with US Thanksgiving Day.
Black Friday is around in the UK these days, though perhaps it is mainly visible in online shop promotions, and of course we don’t have US-style Thanksgiving. Traditionally Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) was the kickoff for our main sales season.
According to Wikipedia, the UK had a different “Black Friday” before the US-inspired shopping one showed up on our shores, though it also included violence and the need for medical attention: “In the United Kingdom, the term ‘Black Friday’ originated within the police and NHS to refer to the Friday before Christmas. It is the day when emergency services activate contingency plans to cope with the increase in workload due to many people going out drinking on the last Friday before Christmas. These plans can include setting up mobile field hospitals near city centre nightspots.”
We are down to needing to buy 2 Christmas gifts (no Chanukah gifts purchased as youngest in my family is in his late 20s).
So, how many gifts have we bought – none. Robert will buy himself a gift and we will buy something for his younger niece (in her teens) and that will take care of all of gift shopping.
I managed several years ago to convince Robert that, unlike all the mimes about wives and gifts, when I say I don’t want anything – I MEAN I don’t want anything! (Well, I was thinking about a new laundry basket as mine is broken at one handle – but tonight I found out that I have a second one which is fine, so no new one needed.)
Bought a large stuffed snake at Ikea for his younger niece – apparently she likes snakes.
We will see his sister and family tomorrow. His sister has written another book and paid to have it published. She will be reading from the book and selling them at local bookstore. (It surprises me that she writes books – not to be catty, but she always has had trouble reading them.) So our attendance is commanded at the reading. Since we won’t see them for Christmas we will give niece her gift when we see them.
One gift to buy down, one to go – what will he decide to get for Christmas and will we end up returning it before or after Christmas?