Give Me A Break Day

Okay, this has to be a joke. Buy Nothing Day? Ha ha!

Am I the only one who looks forward to—gasp—saving money on the day after thanksgiving? The one day of the year where things truly cost somewhere near their actual price of production, and not the price of profit?

There are people in the world who have nothing better to do than dress up in shirts and make a mockery out of the current church of consumerism. And that’s fine, I respect their determination. But what I don’t respect is something so frivilous, so mind-numbing as a “campaign” that will, if anything, make the aisles in my local Wally World easier to traverse for the other few hundred people also wanting to find a bargain.

You could probably chase down a diamond from an engagement ring to some disgusting hole in the ground in the middle of Africa. A blood diamond mine, as it were. Maybe one day Pacha tried to steal one to feed his family for a month (or 40) and he got busted. Killed outright, blood washed off, shipped and cut and set, shipped to your local Jared’s for purchase.

That’s not real, you scoff. Doesn’t matter. Never did. You’re dealing with propaganda here, and propaganda just has to be plausible to be effective. This is the only reason the White House hasn’t been torn piece by piece from its bearings—somebody out there really thinks we’ve got a great president. Somebody believes the war is just and all that jazz.

This doesn’t stop the propaganda from both sides. And propaganda is a time-honored tradition in politics. It can be as simple as a rumor taken too seriously. It can be a campaign of fear (much like the magically colored alert levels) to keep people in line.

But what I really cannot stand are people so inundated with themselves as to think that this silly campaign will do any good. Is this my cynicism back in action? Because if somebody’s selling me a DVD box set for $15 or $20 bucks, you better get out of my way. There’s ebay in them there hills!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to search for the best Black Friday deals so my family can strategically save as much cash as possible this holiday season.

I can see it now: “I participated in Buy Nothing day and all I got was this lousy…ah, shit. This lousy feeling.”

Feelings are still free, ya know.

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