Thanksgiving was about collectivism failing. Hanukkah was about assimilation to secularism failing. Happy Thanksgivukkah!
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 28, 2013
Everything Is About Modern Conservatism, When You Think About It
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What Are You Sincerely Thankful For?
Now that you're three courses deep into whatever misery/surprisingly pleasant interaction you're having with your family or friends or keyboard, let's put the cynicism aside for a bit and get down to it.
What are you actually grateful for? Maybe you're out of a job or you're doing great. Who knows? Wherever you're at, there's got to be something to be grateful for (maybe?). And that's what we want you to share. Let the positivity flow.
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No pecan pie today?
No pecan pie today? That's because the Chinese middle class ate them all (and pigs were hungry and it was rainy and you are cheap).
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[Shoppers spend their Thanksgiving evening relaxing with loved ones at the Brea Mall in Brea, Calif.
[Shoppers spend their Thanksgiving evening relaxing with loved ones at the Brea Mall in Brea, Calif. The mall opened at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving and will stay open until 10:00 p.m. Friday. Photo by Jae C. Hong via AP]
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The Best Walmart Thanksgiving Day Fight Videos
According to a Walmart press release, Thanksgiving was a day of record-breaking sales, sales that were "bigger, better, faster, cheaper and safer than ever."
Safer, huh? Let's examine the video evidence.
The fight above is at a Walmart store in Elkin, N.C., captured by New York Filmmaker Brian Spain. According to Spain, "I immediately had an employee — I assume the manager since he was the one that kicked me out — tell me that I had to turn my camera off and leave the store or I would be arrested for trespassing." The strategy for keeping the stores safer, you see, involves banning people from filming unsafe situations.
This fight at an unidentified Walmart shows a battle for televisions that ends with handcuffs:
And in Texas, everything is bigger. Including fights over DVD players and Garmins in Ft. Worth. The display cases cave under the weight of the madness, but the woman with a "heart problem" who is getting pushed around by "motherfuckers" provides the best commentary of this year's Thanksgiving Walmart fight videos:
Also worth noting, pictures of ambulances at Wal Mart:
Somebody done got hurt in the Walmart! #stretcher pic.twitter.com/8PZJOMzBIR
— Kara Honaker (@KaraMHonaker) November 29, 2013
And pictures of stretchers.
Really? At walmart, smh. pic.twitter.com/kltXr2s5E7
— Mary. (@validmary_) November 29, 2013
If you think any of this stopped shoppers, nope. The retailer did over 10 million cash register transactions between 6pm and 10pm Thursday alone.
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A Las Vegas man was shot Thursday evening while carrying a big-screen TV home from a Target store.
A Las Vegas man was shot Thursday evening while carrying a big-screen TV home from a Target store. According to the Associated Press, the victim will survive but it's "unclear what happened to the TV."
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Woman Fired After Calling Cops on Mom Drinking and Breastfeeding
A server at Gusano's Pizzeria in Conway, Ark. says she was fired after calling the police on a woman drinking alcohol and breastfeeding her child at the same time. She's now demanding answers from her former employer.
Jackie Conners said she watched Tasha Adams, 28, consume "drink after drink" last Wednesday and finally called the police. Conners told KARK 4, "Me being a mom, and just seeing something like that and seeing a baby that can't speak for itself having a parent do something like that is just unacceptable."
Adams was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a minor and the 7-month-old child was released to family members. According to the Daily Mail, Adams believes the incident was "blown out of proportion" and wants people to know she's "really a normal person."
Several days after the incident, Conners says she was fired for "taking the situation into her own hands." However, a manager at Gusano's said the call to police was "not the reason" she lost her job.
[Screenshot via KARK 4]
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For Retailers, Today Really Is the Shittiest Day of the Year
You've heard of Black Friday, the darkest day for American capitalism; Cyber Monday, where everyone gets out their latent shopping aggression online; now there's even Grey Thursday, as retailers open on Thanksgiving Eve to get an edge on the competition. But, friends, have you heard of Brown Friday?
On today's day-after-Thanksgiving madness, in their frenzy to GET THOSE DEALS, shoppers will make all sorts of bad decisions when it comes to properly evacuating their bowels. In fact, stores across America are already inevitably besmirched by poop. All of which is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that the entire country has just spent the past 24 hours eating their biggest meal of the year. (For the ones who make it to the toilet, Roto-Rooter sees a "substantial uptick in calls" for service on the day after Thanksgiving, says spokesman Paul Abrams. "Usually between 47 to 51 percent.")
It's a phenomenon that you likely haven't heard about unless you've worked in retail, but there are some scary stories out there if you know where to look.
Reddit user Dave_Versus_Volcano posted his story about working at a Best Buy one Brown Friday. When an estimated 1,500 people entered the building at 6:00 a.m., the line for the checkout snaked deep into the store, all the way into the appliance department. After responding to a customer's complaint, the employees discovered a "turd of good size" and "solid consistency" sitting in one of the dryers. "A lady who did not want to lose her spot opened the dryer, and shat right there in front of everyone," he reported.
Some commit their Brown Friday acts even more brazenly, says Reddit user galindafiedify, who posted a similar story of working in a department store. During a chaotic midnight opening, a man was spotted doing something suspicious. Shortly thereafter, customers rapidly lost their holiday cheer as they realized the mysterious substance collecting at the bottom of the escalator... was actually shit. "One of the managers showed up and tried calming people down. Housekeeping was called and they turned off the escalator and barricaded it off. Now, while all this was happening people had been tracking shit all over the tile floor," galindafiedify writes. "Later I found out that the guy just dropped his pants at the bottom of the escalator and pooped."
Some Brown Friday customers don't even use their own feces. Old Navy employee Amanda Atkinson was cleaning up clothing under the clearance racks when the smell hit her. "Somebody had gone out of their way to stuff into the very center of the pile, not the bottom, mind you, but the dead center of the pile, a shitty diaper," she told Raw Story. "To the point that we couldn't do anything with the clothes, we had to throw it all out. We couldn't even go through the clothes and see what we were throwing out because it was just too much of a biohazard. We just threw it all in trash bags and took it outside."
Why do people do this? Pooping in stores—malls, specifically—is actually not altogether rare (just search for the videos), for the same reasons that people commit all sorts of deviant behavior in public. But while some of the Brown Friday incidents are certainly the result of what you might be able to call inconvenience—like, say, not being able to find a mall restroom when you really, really gotta go—it would appear that others are trying to take advantage of what's already an anarchistic situation. Throwing fecal fuel on the fire, as it was.
Personally, I feel horrible for the employees working Brown Friday. Not only do they have to clean up after our ridiculous shopping spree shit, but now they have to clean up actual shit as well.
Image: AP Photo/John Minchillo
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Deadspin Iowa Man Accused Of Drunk Driving, Fighting Police While Naked | Gizmodo Sex 'n Spas: The
Deadspin Iowa Man Accused Of Drunk Driving, Fighting Police While Naked | Gizmodo Sex 'n Spas: The Future (And Not So Future) of In-Flight Entertainment | Jezebel What's With All the Dick Stories This Week? | Kotaku Lady Gaga Just Out-Cuted Japan | Valleywag Kanye West Courts Silicon Valley Investors, But VCs Don't Want DONDA
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Some Black Friday fights at Walmart are worth fighting.
Some Black Friday fights
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Cop Accused of Killing Man Who Longed To Be Killed and Eaten
A German police officer was arrested Wednesday and accused of killing and chopping up a man he met online. According to authorities, the man he murdered had "long fantasized" about being killed and eaten.
The 55-year-old handwriting and document analyst, identified as "Detlev G," was arrested at the Criminal Technical Institute in Dresden. He admitted to stabbing the 59-year-old victim in the throat four hours after the two met in person for the first time on Nov. 4.
The victim, who was first reported missing Nov. 11, had traveled over 250 miles by bus for the murder dinner date with G. Two days after being reported missing, "witnesses" told officers that "the missing man had fantasized since his youth about being killed and eaten by another person."
According to the prosecutor Lorenz Haase, "There is no indication at this point that the suspect ate body parts, and the suspect denied having done so." The suspect also made no mention of sexual relations with the victim; he only said that "his victim wanted to be killed and he fulfilled this wish." After killing the man, the suspect reportedly buried his remains in small pieces in the garden.
More details:
Investigator Maik Mainda said the victim and the suspected killer maintained "very intense contact by chat, by mail, by SMS but also by telephone" after first becoming acquainted in early October. The website they used says it deals with "exotic meat."
According to the Daily Star, the men met through "a lurid internet chatroom for people obsessed with cannibalism as a sexual thrill."
This is a strangely familiar story for Germans as many are already pointing out the parallels to Germany's 2002 Arwin Meiwes case. But, according to city police chief Dieter Kroll, increasing technology has made cannibalism even easier and more people than ever are using the Internet to "exchange their perversions in increasingly crass manner."
[Image via Shutterstock]
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Why Is A Mascot Getting Hurt Funny?
Mississippi State mascot Bully was hit by an ESPN golf cart during yesterday's Ole Miss-Mississippi State game, injuring the leg of the person inside. The photo you see is Bully, still fully costumed, wearing an air cast and being taken away in a stretcher.
The student inside Bully had surgery for a compound fracture Thursday night, according to SB Nation.
Medical personnel applying air cast to Miss. State mascot. (Female Bully) pic.twitter.com/4kcIPayQ67
— Matt Hinton (@MattRHinton) November 29, 2013
state's mascot was just run over by the ESPN golf cart... pic.twitter.com/0NmjbzYHRT
— Luke Shemwell (@Lucipher_Shem) November 29, 2013
OK, this is not funny. This should not be funny. I should not be thinking about how Bully's frozen, anguished face accurately reflects the injury sustained by the person inside of it. This isn't—dammit, why is it funny?
On a serious note, may the person inside Bully experience a quick, easy recovery from injury. But let's look at the big question: Why is it amusing when a mascot gets hurt? Maybe I'm the only sociopath, but mascots that experience non-serious injuries are humorous. Let's be clear that I'm not wishing for more mascots to get hurt for my amusement, but sometimes, it happens. It's a workplace accident.
For example, remember Rocky, the Denver Nuggets mascot
Or how about when the Ohio Bobcats' Rufus legitimately started fighting Brutus Buckeye before a Ohio-Ohio State game?
Or when the University of Nevada's Wolfie fell off of the top of a dugout while trying to moonwalk?
Or Sky Hawk smacking his beak against the rim on a dunk attempt?
Or the all-time classic Toronto Raptors' mascot on roller skates? (The piano music in this video is a lovely touch.)
Would any of those examples have been as amusing if the mascot was replaced with a regular person? Of course not. It's the costume. The dumb, goofy animal with the permanent facial expression—whether it's grinning, snarling, or some combination of the two—provides the disconnect and makes us forget there's a real person inside.
If a regular person had been hit by a golf cart or lowered unconscious on a harness, it would immediately be concerning. But because a mascot is not supposed to allow the public to see who he/she is, it becomes funny when a mascot is taken out of its dancing, "go team!" character and treat it as another regular human, such as Bully on the stretcher, costume fully intact while being wheeled away, face immobile, silently screaming.
Lead photo via @Lucipher_Shem
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Mitt Romney's Son Wants Everyone to Know He's a Hero
Was first on scene to big accident, see pic of car in the house. I lifted 4 people out to safety. All ok. Thankful. pic.twitter.com/j8aDzFZwla
— Josh Romney (@joshromney) November 29, 2013
Josh Romney then retold the story to NBC News: "I opened the driver side door and spoke with the four passengers inside the car. Miraculously, they appeared to have no major injuries. I was able to help each of them get out of the car and lift them down to the ground."
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Sexual frustration impairs the health of fruit flies and causes premature death, according to new re
Sexual frustration impairs the health of fruit flies and causes premature death, according to new research that explains why you should hit up your hometown bar tonight.
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Tell Us About Your Crazy Black Friday Experience
It's Black Friday 2013 and Walmart sales are up, Walmart shoppers are down, online sales continue to grow, and the working poor can't even afford to buy the discounted goods they're selling. No matter where you are in the United States, it's hard to escape the reach of the shopping madness, something everyone pretends to hate until they have a bargain-priced new television in their family room.
So we're asking you—the shoppers, the employees, the protestors, and the hungover—to share your Black Friday tales with all of us. Did you see or hear anything crazy at the mall? Do you want to admit where you got an incredibly good deal on Christmas presents? Or do you just want to complain about corporate America while everyone else talks about how all wine is 30% off at Whole Foods today?
We're listening.
[Image via Shutterstock]
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[Six-month-old puppy Dexter was reunited with his owner, Guardsman Spc.
[Six-month-old puppy Dexter was reunited with his owner, Guardsman Spc. Jacob Montgomery, nine days after a tornado destroyed their apartment in Washington, Ill. Buried in the rubble, Dexter was found by a neighbor and coaxed out with hot dogs. Photo by Illinois National Guard via AP]
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As part of his hazing ritual for joining Manchester United, a young David Beckham had to jerk off to
As part of his hazing ritual for joining Manchester United, a young David Beckham had to jerk off to a picture of another dude in front of his jeering teammates.
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Man Shoots, Kills Wandering Man With Advanced Alzheimer's
A 34-year-old man shot and killed a 72-year-old man he thought was a prowler on Wednesday in Walker County, Ga. But instead of shooting a prowler, Joe Hendrix shot Ronald Westbrook, an elderly man with advanced Alzheimer's disease.
According to Sheriff Steve Wilson, at the time of the shooting, Westbrook had been wandering lost and confused for over four hours, wearing only a light jacket in sub-freezing temperatures and walking his two dogs. At around 2:30 a.m., Westbrook was stopped by a sheriff's deputy as he stood in front of a mailbox; he told the deputy he was just checking his mail and that he lived up the hill. In fact, Westbrook had lived at the home years before.
The sheriff left and at 4:00 a.m., Westbrook rang the doorbell and tried to open the front door of a nearby home. Hendrix, who had just moved into the home two weeks before, woke up to the noise and his fiancé called 911 to report the disturbance. She spoke with the dispatcher for around 10 minutes but before help arrived, Hendrix went outside with a .40 caliber handgun and saw the elderly man's silhouette outside the house. Hendrix gave Westbrook a command to stop moving and when he did not, Hendrix fired four shots, killing the elderly man with fatal shot in the chest.
When Westbrook was killed, he was still holding the mail he had retrieved from the other home.
No charges have been filed against Hendrix and according to Wilson, Hendrix is "saddened and heartbroken" and will have to "live with his actions for the rest of his life."
Westbrook's family did not know he was missing until around the time the shooting occurred.
[Screenshot via WRCB]
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Why trample someone on Black Friday when you can use a stun gun?
Why trample someone on Black Friday when you can use a stun gun? There's now a video of a woman at the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia zapping someone while shopping at 2:30 a.m.
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Black Friday in Egypt
[An Egyptian riot policeman fires tear gas in Cairo on Friday to disperse hundreds of Islamist demonstrators defying a new protest law that has drawn widespread criticism from the international community and democracy advocates. Photo by Ahmed Gomaa via AP]
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