Saturday, November 27, 2010

Never Was Into the Whole Mass Consumption Thing

I never understood the appeal of overconsumption. The whole idea of getting up at 2AM in order to queue up in front of a store before engaging in a melee/feeding frenzy repulses me (and, for the record, I am often up at 2AM, and I actually enjoy fighting). I sat out Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, and will take a pass on Cyber Monday. Rather than brave the traffic near the malls, I headed over to the Hudson River for a walk before heading to work. The wind has been ferocious, with sustained speeds of thirty miles per hour, so the day felt a lot colder than the mercury would indicate. The wind raised whitecaps on the water's surface, and whipped spray over the seawall. The afternoon sun slanting through a break in the clouds suffused the gray waters with a faint golden hue:





The picture really doesn't do justice to the color of the water- it was an enchanting gray/gold (I am thinking of a non-existent poem now, Nothing Gray Can Stay- Borges would have handled this sort of thing with much more aplomb than I). Miraculously, I found some Concord grapes still clinging tenaciously to the vine, their faint sweetness combining with the cold ambient temperature to create a delicious effect.

I'll trade whitecaps on the Hudson for Black Friday in the mall anyday.

5 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I played golf in some pretty fierce winds on Saturday here.

It was a very pretty, albeit shivering round.
~

vacuumslayer said...

Oh
em
gee

Don't get me started. I've begun to do a LOT of my shopping online and thru catalogs because going out pre-holiday really makes my misanthropy bubble to the surface. People get RUDE...and lose any and all situational awareness...on the roads and in the stores. Fuck that noise.

Vonnie said...

I agree. Lovely post and lovely picture. I can picture gold/grey, so that's still awesome.

fish said...

You are not doing you part to rescue our economy. More spending. More. More. More.

WV agrees with me: gethad

Johnny Pez said...

I did my part. I bought $15 worth of groceries on Black Friday, unlike all you cheapskates. Because I love my country.