How Much Is Enough?

 
Hey! Good morning sunshine. Have you heard? The Man just announced we're in a Recession. Twelve months and counting, no less. Wake up! Up you wake. Do you see it all around you? Blink it into focus. You see? I don't. I look for it, but I can't quite grab it. Maybe The Man is lying. Not like he's got a great historical track record, this Man.

"...probably one of the top five Recessions in history..." is what I heard this morning from the brilliant mind of Joey "Da Mayor's Son" Scarborough. Really? People must not be hurting all that badly, seeing how they're willing to stomp a man to death in order to get their hands on toxic, plastic, Chinese shit discounted at Walmart. Some of my friends on the social network I recently joined boasted that they were out there at 3 a.m., wallets in hand, ready to go at it. How's that? Shop 'till you...
Yea.

In the 1930s we had soup and bread lines. In 2008, in the middle of a Recession, we have iPhone and iPod lines. Wake up! I am beyond disgusted at this time of year, watching B-roll of grinning, agitated consumers pressed flat against locked Walmart/Target/Macy's/Whateverthefucktheretailername's double doors, buzzing to get in. You've seen these hordes. News outlets cover them every year in the Ha-Ha Holiday Vibe and Cheer segments with which they jam the airwaves. These shopping machines have the same feverish, glazed with adrenaline look in their eyes the Hutu militia carried while chopping down the Tutsi with machetes in '94. I'm not reaching. Look at them. They're in a savage, weird shopping trance. Up you wake!

This Black Friday cash-strapped consumers spent 7.2% more on things they didn't need than last year. $10.6 billion in just one day, according to figures released by RCT ShopperTrak, a research firm that tracks total retail sales at more than 50,000 outlets. It's hard to stand it when even my close friends drop the age-old excuse of having held out all this time...all these years until it was beyond necessary...to finally buy new shit. Because for being prudent and frugal, Bhasundara the Goddess of Prosperity is rewarding them with up to 75% off that plastic garlic press made in China. And don't even get me started on the futility of "stocking stuffers."

Please excuse the Scrooge-like rant. I am usually more level-headed and methodical in my pieces for this esteemed site. I'll try to calm down and stealthily exit stage left, eeeven. But not without leaving you with one of my all-time favourite scenes from cinema history. It can applied to everything:

Message!