I would be willing to go stand in line with a few thousand people in freezing cold weather for a few hours if they were handing out free bags of $100 bills....or gold bricks...I would go for those too.

 2 Minute Noodles.

Wow... I was watching the noon news and there were already camping out and tailgating in front of the Best Buy near my place today in anticipation of the BF deals. And it's been dang cold and will be getting down to about 12ºF tonight not counting wind chills.

Sorry, but they could be offering turns to nail Jessica Alba and I'd still pass that up. At least I know that I'll be sleeping in a nice warm bed tonight and not freezing my bits off.

I'm back from Circuit City.

Got there at 9 pm along with 5 or 6 friends...I had like 3 layers on, along with a sleeping bag, blankets, and a chair. That was pretty much the norm for everyone there.

The first couple hours, we just stood around and talked, about 5 other friends came and brought us hot chocolate, cookies, White Castle, whatever. After that, I played some DS to keep me busy around 1 or 2 am...and then from 2:30-3:30 I took a nap.

It was below freezing temperatures, but as long as I was bundled up nicely, it wasn't too bad. At 4 am, the employees arrived, and at 4:30 they handed out vouchers for the big ticket items.

I was about 30 from the front, which was plenty good. At midnight, there was about 100 people...by 4 am, there was about 700.

So I got in at 5 am, bought my monitor, rejoiced, came home, plugged it in, OMG it's HUGE!, and now I'm ready to sleep!

It was a good Black Friday...I'd hate to have to drive around stores later today hehe.

So on one of your very few days off (Americans have like 10 days off a year, am I right?) you spend the whole night in the freezing cold in front of a store with millions of fellow Americans????

Congratulations, I'm absolutely sure your economy cannot ever die with that much consumer passion!

please!, pictures of the madness!!

I got back from Wal Mart a few hours ago. I left my house at 4:20 AM, got to Wal-Mart at 4:30, and stood by a 32" Polaroid TV while my dad stood next to the 42" Polaroid TVs. As soon as it was 5, the employees opened the tape around the boxes, and we both got the TVs we were standing next to. We went to check out (only had two people in front of us in the line we were standing in), and we left at about 5:10. And so for the past 2 hours I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy on the 42". It's amazing!! (I would post pictures, but I don't know how)

A few pictures and a nice article:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/23/news/economy/black_friday/index.htm?cnn=yes


StarcraftManiac said:

U Americans spend WAY too much cash!... Just damn, no wonder why ur economy is falling behind the EU's or China's... Hint: $ vs Euro's or ur problems with people who can't repay lent money from banks...


You're very wrong here, consumer spending is one of the most important drivers to the economy and the United States are still the biggest economy in the world.
Low dollar might become a problem, but not only to Americans. For example European export products are become relatively expensive while american products become relatively cheap. On the other side European money is worth more, which makes it easier to take over American companies and dollar based commodities like oil are cheaper for us Europeans.

And there are a dozen more parameters that are influencing the economy in different ways.

Just to give you an idea of the expressions on women here in the US when the doors open.  Scary for our credit cards if you look at this.