I fail to see what most of the hubbub about Black Friday is all about. Stores keep their ultra-top secret Black Friday sales flyers hidden until Thanksgiving (by "hidden" I mean that you have to search more than two minutes to find them online), and then stock only a handful of the big ticket items. Foolish Kool-Aid drinkers (my wife is one of them) then wait for hours on end for a chance to save 50% or more. Stores try to salvage shoppers' dignity by issuing tickets and the like (hence trying to avoid the bum rush for the electronics section) but inevitably ignorant shoppers make the news when they trample over one another for that 80-inch plasma/LED TV they gotta have. They couldn't afford it at $3,000 and really can't afford to pay the sale price of $19.99, but that TV is suddenly a necessity.

Some of the lesser advertised sales are worth going to later in the day, when the crowd dies down, but I've consistently pissed off the wife by refusing to plan my day around the sales. Even the internet sales are hardly worth staying up till midnight and dealing with overloaded websites in hopes of checking out before everything is sold out or the website crashes. My wife doesn't see it my way, but if I wait in line for three hours to save $50 I just lost another $70.

In short, I guess I can understand your ire at having "Black Friday" advertisements thrown in your face year round.