Odds and Ends for Black Friday

Because I am still in my state of L-tryptophan-induced stupor, and am thus unable to generate coherent thoughts on a single theme, I thought I'd just dip into the Blog Fodder file for some odds and ends. Digital leftovers, if you will. Sit back and read on ...

You surely know by now that today is "Black Friday." This is not another self-congratulatory ethnic celebration, but the slang term for the day after Thanksgiving when - based on all-out attempts to generate huge sales - most retailers see their balance sheets go from the red of loss to the black of (well, at least this year) less loss. Many stores have been open since midnight, with bleary-eyed staffs looking to draw in customers clutching the few dollars they have left. If you have a death wish, go ahead and hit the malls. Me, I'm staying home to put up the Christmas decorations.

Turning to other important topics, like the end of the world ...

It has been known for some time that the calendar of the ancient Mayan civilization supposedly predicts that some sort of world-ending apocalypse will occur in 2012 (there was even a movie about it a few years ago). Well, now archaeologists in Mexico have supposedly discovered a second Mayan reference to 2012 as the year the world will end. Inscriptions on the Mayan temple at Comalcalco, when translated, appear to combine the names of evil Mayan deities such as Perry, Gingrich, Cain, and Bachmann, and a once-powerful but now less-worshiped demigod known as Obama, with reference to the year 2012. We're doomed.

The peaceful, fun-loving government of North Korea has announced its traditional holiday expression of goodwill and fellowship toward South Korea, threatening to turn the South into a "sea of fire" should the government of the South (referred to as "the group of traitors") "impair the dignity of (the North) again and fire one bullet or shell toward its inviolable territorial waters, sky and land." In a related story, the Republican National Committee has hired Kim Jong-Il to help draft GOP campaign slogans.

This weekend marks the official debut of the revised English-language Mass at Catholic churches around the country. There was flailing agony years ago when the Mass transitioned from the traditional Latin to English; now there's flailing agony as the Mass transitions from English to ... different English. Speaking as one who studied Latin in high school for three years (two of them trying to get out of Latin I), my advice is: stick with the English, however convoluted you think the new version is. You're better off.

And that's it for Black Friday 2011. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... you should be awake by then.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo