"African-American" Friday Madness!

For everyone wondering about the title, I figured I should address it right off the bat. I feel that "Black" Friday is way too racist and have since changed it to "African-American" Friday to be more PC, despite the fact that "Black" is the term for a business' profit, not the color of anybody's skin. But that didn't stop people from calling out black holes as racist. Plus, Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream where he envisioned a world where black people can stand side-by-side with white people at Wal-Marts across the nation at 5 AM, acting like jerks and spending money frivolously just like us whities! Plus, as it was pointed out to me, Sears' Black Friday commercials had nothing but black people in them. Equality indeed. I'm just wondering if Sears still sells those swank Cliff Huxtable sweaters.
Anyways, what was I talking about again? Ah yes, Black Friday (yeah, I'm already over being PC). Normally, I think the whole concept is stupid. Why wake up in the middle of the night after eating a crapton of turkey and mashed potatoes, just to sit at Wal-Mart so you can get 10% off of curtains? Plus, I've spent the last 10 years or so of my life in customer service, so I'm around idiots all the time. Why would I put myself through the torture of surrounding myself 100x the customers with 1000x the stupidity and 1,000,000x the bullshit sense of entitlement and NOT get paid for it? But in the week or so leading up to Thanksgiving, I saw quite a few deals online and thought it might be worth it. Oh, I'm not saying I was gonna put myself through all the things I mentioned above. I was smart. I did all my shopping through the magical wonder of the Internets. Of course, that wasn't without its fair share of problems either.

But before we get into the details, let's take a look at the sweet loot I managed to snag (or most of it as Blogger doesn't really feel like resizing the thing, click on it to see more):



So let's start at Thanksgiving day. Before I made the hour-long trek back home to spend it with my family, I dropped by Meijer to pick up some Skullcandy earbuds for $10 (normally about $16) to replace the buds that came with my mp3 player that also doubles as a cell phone (I know what my priorities are). They were a good pair but one of them went out after about 3 months. I had gotten another pair with my phone but they hurt my ears and the $10 ones I bought at Best Buy about a week earlier had a shittier sound quality than Walkman headphones from the '80s. Thankfully, since it was Thanksgiving morning, the store was pretty much dead, well, as dead as a Wal-Mart competitor can be. So I managed to grab some donuts for breakfast and some pumpkin pie as well.

So I go home, have a good Thanksgiving dinner, stuff my fat ass full of carbs, and drive back to my apartment. Best Buy put up their Black Friday deals online a few days early so I decided to place my order. I only got a few DVDs (Eastbound and Down Season 1 for $10 and Role Models, Behind The Mask and Hellraiser for about $5-$6 each) but for whatever reason, Best Buy's shipping and handling is figured out per item, not total. I thought something was amiss when I put in my first DVD and the shipping for that alone was another $3. Weak. So, all in all I spent about $36 on four DVDs, which is a pretty good deal, but it would've been a better deal if over $10 of that wasn't shipping.

So I move on to Office Max's website, which was to be my last stop. All I wanted to get was a 100pk spindle of blank DVDs and an 8GB microSD card for my phone to hold more mp3s and pictures, both of which being dropped down to $15 from $50-$60. A major deal for stuff I actually wanted instead of impulse purchases. So after midnight, which was technically Friday, I go to OfficeMax.com to place my order. However, the microSD card would not drop down to sale price, no matter how many times I revisited and refreshed the page. Plus, later on, I found out that the DVDs I wanted couldn't be put into the order cart for whatever reason. At that point, which was about 12:45, I gave up and started looking around to see if I could this stuff somewhere else online because God help me if I was gonna stand in line with a bunch of assholes.

So I finally settle on Amazon (which I think I've only ordered something from once in my life ever), which had an 8GB microSD card for about $18. Sure, it was about a couple bucks more than Office Max's price but the free shipping kicked in at $25, as opposed to Office Max's $50, which I wouldn't have reached anyway if I was only going to get the memory card and the DVDs. So I look around for other stuff to get on Amazon and end up spending over $70 on a bunch of stuff. In addition to the card, I grabbed Midnight Meat Train (greatest non-porn movie title EVER!) for about $9, House of the Dead Overkill and MadWorld for the Wii for about $15 each and a couple other things that I can't go into detail since they're Christmas presents for other people. Yeah, I decided not to be completely selfish, sue me. When I was done at Amazon, I went back to OfficeMax.com and, sure enough, everything I wanted was up for sale again. Ugh.

At about 2:00 AM, I finally decided to stop but unfortunately I couldn't find the blank DVDs anywhere at a comparable price. After much deliberation, I decided to man up and actually go out into the madness that is Black Friday shopping. Luckily, Office Max didn't open up until 7:00 compared to everyone else's 5:00 so I was able to sleep until 6:30. So I head out and the amount of cars everywhere was insane! I've never seen parking lots so full. I passed by a Wal-Mart and the lot was packed to the gills. The plaza with Office Max, which also had a Best Buy, a Target and a Dick's Sporting Goods (heh, Dicks) was full as well and difficult to navigate but luckily Office Max had their own side lot which had a few spots left. So I waited outside for about 10-15 minutes before the store opened, grabbed my DVDs (which there weren't many of), waited in line for about 20 minutes, almost got stuck in the parking lot because douchebag drivers wouldn't let me out and then got back to my apartment and went back to sleep. All in all, I was only out for about an hour and there were no casualties but still, that was an hour I would've rather spent sleeping.

Of course, my trouble didn't stop there. I still had to wait to receive my stuff via the Pony Express. Before I continue, let me ask you readers this: Now that we're living in the technological age of instant gratification, how come the delivery window for UPS is wider than the hole in the Cleveland Browns' defensive line? Oh wow, you better mark this moment down for posterity, this may be the ONLY time in my life that I'll EVER make a sports-related joke! That's how bad the Cleveland Browns suck, that people that don't know shit about sports like me can even make fun of them. Anyways, I went to UPS.com to track my package and they said that the package could be delivered between "8:00 AM and 6:00 PM". Really, that narrows it down. That's like saying to your friend "Hey bro, wanna hang out at the bar this weekend? I'll be there sometime between Friday night and Tuesday morning." So the first time UPS delivered, I was at work and no one was at the apartment to receive it. No problem. I wasn't supposed to work the next day but I got called in, so I figured the same thing would happen and I'd just call them to arrange a pick-up since they'll send a package back after the third attempted delivery. Inconvenient but no problem because I've done this before when I ordered stuff to build my computer earlier this year.

But instead, I get home from work and my package had been delivered successfully...somehow. Apparently, my roommate got home before I did and the box was just sitting in front of our door. First of all, Amazon specified that the package was only to be handed over with a signature, but no one was there to sign. Secondly, you have to be buzzed in to be let in the building in the first place, but no one was there to buzz them in. I was so lucky that my stuff didn't get stolen. And this was my Amazon order too. I probably would've been mad if something happened to my $36 Best Buy order but not as mad as if someone stole my $73 Amazon order. I'm not too angry since I still got my stuff but it definitely made me wary of any future UPS shipments. As an aside, my Best Buy order came from the USPS the next day. When I got my package, I saw that the return address was for Findlay, a town about an hour-and-a-half south of Toledo. So how come the package had to go through Kentucky, the exact opposite direction it was supposed to be sent to? Whatever.

So I got all my swag safe and sound. Hooray! All in all, I spent about $130 on about $250-$300 worth of stuff. My 8GB microSD card is working in my phone like a dream and I've only used about 1GB so far. I still need to find stuff to burn to my DVDs. I started playing House of the Dead Overkill a couple nights ago, which has an awesome '70s grindhouse feel to it, but I haven't started MadWorld yet. I probably could've started playing that instead of typing this. I already had seen Role Models but I wanted a copy for myself. I watched all six episodes of Eastbound and Down Thursday night and loved it. As for Hellraiser, Behind The Mask and Midnight Meat Train, I haven't seen them yet. Nope, not even the classic Hellraiser, though I have seen bits and pieces of it. As it stands, I'll probably be spending Christmas Day by myself (don't cry readers, all my Christmas celebrations with my family are taking place prior) so I might have a horror movie marathon and spend my Christmas like Patton Oswalt.