I must say, there is lousy tv tonight. Everything is a repeat and/or just not good. After spending the day cooking/baking it'd be nice to relax with a good movie or something. With all the cable channels available 75 per cent are, what I call, bullshit channels.
Even HBO runs the same movies over and over. However, I see the Bourne Ultimatum is on at 8:00 on HBO. I may watch that, even though I have the video. It's been a while.


TIS

Um, The GODFATHER is on. What do you mean, there's nothing good on???

I can't believe that my family stayed until almost 11:30. There are holidays when I think that they're just going to move freaking in. And the only reason that they left when they did is because I looked at my watch at 5 to 11 and said, "I've been up since 6. Get out."

The day was very nice, though. The turkey was really, really good. It was golden on the outside and moist on the inside. And I hid the leftover stuffing so nobody could take it home.

They always play the Godfather films during the holidays.

Hope everyone here had a lovely Thanksgiving!

I enjoyed getting together with family today, and certainly appreciated the time off. I'll now spend the rest of the break either working on two papers or procrastinating on them. I'll let you know later which one I ended up choosing.

I get stressed just doing regular shopping, so I don't think I'm up for Black Friday. Not to mention I'd have to stay up all night to make it, since I'm no early bird.

TIS, let us know if you end up with any good deals! And BL, hope you feel better.

SB, I saw this morning that Godfather would be on, and just had to mention it to my mom. My dad and I have gone absolutely overboard with it, where we play it whenever it's on TV, mostly as a joke on her...she can't believe how often it plays, nor how often we're willing to watch it.

What does Thanksgiving celebrate?

Sorry for my stupidity, But I come from the land down under da da da da...

It goes back to the early days here in America... it basically is a festival celebrating bountiful harvests and food before the onset of winter.

The "Black Friday" (today) is generally meant to represent the "official" start of the Christmas shopping rush. Most stores have major sales luring shoppers in with REALLY low prices on a limited number of items... it's become a tradition for many to line up for hours before the stores open up at 6:00 a.m. and then rush into the store in a wild frenzy. Fights, trampled people and pure greed is what it has become. I'm sick of watching all these suckers repeat this every year. I say we should allow them to arm themselves with automatic weapons and flamethrowers and make it REALLY interesting.

Some years ago I worked for Wal*Mart and I wanted to experience this phenemonon first hand so I went to the store early and went in through the Employee entrance - we were not allowed to participate in the sales if we did this, but I wanted to see what the rush was like... I almost got bowled over as this mob (over 1,000 people) came RUSHING in ... people were shoving each other... it was FUCKING SICKENING!!

There was already a report of someone dying from a heart attack this morning while rushing into a store here on Long Island.

I wouldn't be surprised. I want to get a GPS for Mr. Babe for Christmas. But there was no way I was going to get caught up in the feeding frenzy. I'll pay an extra $30 and sleep in. Or maybe I'll take advantage of Cyber Monday.

I must be crazy, but it' 7:20 here and I'm tempted to take a peek for bargains. I have a Walmart, Target, Marhsalls, Mervyns (which is going out of business as well) in my area. It's early, I might catch some sale. Yet, I don't have any one thing I am looking for. Do I really want to join the mad rush???? (Jeopardy music playing)

TIS

No TIS, you don't. You don't need anything. Stay home and enjoy it.

Stay home, TIS. They're fucking animals out there today!

The report from the Long Island Wal*Mart that I mentioned earlier - it was a 34 year old employee that was crushed to death by the mob rushing into the store... the fuckers actually bent the door frames as they rushed into the store. This employee (stupidly) was trying to hold back the crowd. An eight month pregnant woman was also injured in the rush. Fucking people were carrying sale televisions and stepping over the bodies of those hurt so that they could pay for their goodies.

FUCKING ANIMALS!!!

Oh my God!!! That's awful. Geez, what vultures!!! I'm not that into bargains.

TIS

The police closed down the store shortly afterwards... (they probably had to have a few hundred cops to do that). So far, the store is still closed and it MAY be closed all day.

You just know there are some fuckers down in Bentonville, Arkansas (the corporate headquarters for Wal*Mart) bitching and moaning about that now.

Dear me. Crazy,scary stuff that!

I don't know what gets into people sometimes?

I thought those mad killer dashes were mostly for "must have" "rare" items-of-the-year like Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tickle Me Elmos, Beanie Babies, Wii's, etc...

But yeah, never too early to start thinking about Christmas. I love this video...

That is crazy. Geez. Calm down people, It's only a sale.

SC, that is unbelievable. I can't imagine wanting anything that badly. I read that he was only a temporary worker, too, poor thing!

My father hated shopping (his version of Christmas shopping was to go to my uncle's jewelry store and tell Aunt Clara to pick out something nice for my mother). I wanted a Baby Party one Christmas and it was apparently a rather difficult item to find. Somehow my mother found out that a local department store was going to have it, so she sent my dad to get it.

He came home visibly shaken. He said that he didn't know where the toy department was, but it didn't matter because he was swept there with the crowd of shoppers that had gathered outside waiting for the store to open. He said that the women were kicking and clawing to get at the dolls. He grabbed one and ran for his life.

He told my mother that he would never, ever do something like that again.

Sick Sick Sick Motherfuckers! It's just totally unbelievable!

In a nutshell there is no doubt that people are just out of control animals with this black friday bullshit!

But the retail businesses in general have gotten so greedy and out of control with these ridiculous hours. Something needs to be done to stop this insanity and this fucking obsession with all this black friday hoopla. Perhaps the workers in these retail store shoud ban together and start to refuse to work these ridiculous hours under those kinds of conditions!



Greed Greed Greed.

The family of that employee and that pregnant girl should sue the fucking shit out of Wal-Mart! The co-workers should walk out of the other Wal-Mart stores and refuse to ever work those kinds of hours and under those dangerous conditions! And hopefully the other retailers will get scared and cease all this black friday opening in the middle of the night bullshit.

Too right, DC. It used to be that the stores started opening at 8, then 7, and earlier and earlier each year. The frenzy begins because people know that the stores usually only get a handful of the loss leaders, so they want to get the few that are there, seemingly at any price.

Hey, I'd run my grandmother over if it means getting 30% off of one of those singing Christmas frogs.

I shop until the CASHIER drops.

Oh I'm sure there will be lawsuits coming from this, as I read another article saying that the pregnant girl miscarried.

But playing devils advocate here suing wal-mart or any other retailer over this is totally stupid, and makes the families just as greedy if not more.

That employee f*cked up when he tried to hold the people back, and that pregnant girl well she was kind of stupid IMHO for putting herself/and her unborn child in that situation in the first place.

Actually, the poor man was trampled at 5:03am when the crowd, angry that the employees hadn't opened the store yet, literally broke the doors down and trampled the poor man for being in his way. So he wasn't being "dumb", he just showed up to do his job. I just saw video of the police doing CPR on him as people rushed past and continued to shop. The store has reopened already.

As for the pregnant woman, luckily she and her baby are just fine.

Btw, a shopper was trampled at another WalMart in Long Island. Is this a WalMart thing or a Long Island thing? One thing I know for sure - it's a pretty fucked up thing.

How horrible.

I thought that no one had any money to spend anymore?
I've never understood why anyone in the best of times would be lining up to give their hard earned money away. And these aren't the best of times.

Believe me, I feel terrible for the dead guy and his family, but he should not have tried to prevent the mob from entering. A big mistake.




In Farmingdale. I've worked in three different Wal*Mart stores on Long Island and I'll tell you one thing - they don't give a crap about the safety of the workers or employees (despite what the corporate headquarters said in response to the death in Valley Stream).

I'm sure XDC will agree with me on that.

My mother worked at Wal-Mart for about 15 years, after retiring from her real job. She always said they treated their employees like shit.

Yep.

The potential problem is that his death occurred while he was acting in the course and scope of his employment, which places this matter in the realm of workers' compensation. Workers' comp legislation among all the states is a trade-off between employer and employee where the injured worker can collect benefits through administrative tribunals for his family and himself in an expedited process that circumvents the delays of state courts. They generally receive 2/3 of their salary. In return, the employee is barred generally from suing the employer for negligence. This keeps their insurance premiums down.

Where an employee dies from a work injury in many states (I can't speak for NY), a fatal claim petition may be brought by the deceased's spouse or dependents. Normally, a fiancee can not file the claim, but if the deceased's child is born, that child may be entitled to workers' comp benefits until he's 18 or, if he goes to college, old enough to support himself.

While an injured worker has very limited recourse against the employer outside of the WC Act, he can file third party suits against other individuals. Any recovery from the third party suit is offset against any workers' comp received. For instance, if a worker cuts his fingers off at work from a defective meat slicer, he receives WC benefits and can sue the manufacturer. If his product liability suit settles for $100,000 in 5 years, during which time he received $150,000 in workers' comp, he may be obligated to turn over his award to workers' comp. Normally the WC carrier is willing to accept pennies on the dollar of their lien;otherwise workers would have no incentive to file athird party suit.

Anyway, his offspring is certainly entitled to benefits in this situation. You don't have to prove liability. I hope Wal-Mart does the right thing and takes care of the mother of his baby as well.

I never felt the desire to participate in Black Friday, but if people enjoy it and it helps the economy, so be it. This morning when I woke up, my brother in law's girl friend came into the house and said she got great deals at Wal-Mart at 3:30 AM. I jokingly told her that there's no such thing as a good deal at 3:30 AM.

Here in CA, there was a shooting at a Palm Desert Toys R Us of all places. Can you imagine? Evidenly, this was not fighting over a sale item or related to Black Friday BUT started with two women fighting and two men dying.

For God's sake, who brings a gun to Toys R Us and not only that, can you imagine how awful it was for he kids there, not to mention everyone else. What is it? Tough times, economy, etc that bring out the dangerous crazies?

TIS



Toys R Us shooting

I heard here that it was gang-related. While still unfortunate, this type of shooting wasn't related at all to the holidays or to the state of the economy... it could have happened at any time of year. Maybe that makes it even scarier.

One of the local tv stations is reporting that at least two of the shoppers who were thrown to the floor and hurt in the stampede at the Valley Stream Wal*Mart are now suing the store.

It's only gonna help their cases that some of the assistant store managers admitted (to reporters) that the store didn't have enough security on hand for the event.

1. Can you spell "end-of-career" to those assistants?

2. Wal*Mart will come up with a defense that it's not their fault.

How typical, *tsk*!