Toys R Death

Introducing the Zhu Zhu Pet, a little toy hamster that everyone really, really must have or someone might have to DIE.

On Black Friday, the day where shopping is more important than oh, thinking about Jesus, last year someone had to die for something. There was a rush at the opening of a WalMart in New York, and an immigrant from Haiti was crushed under the crowd. One of those ironies of life - all the way from the killing slums of Haiti to safe old America, only to be killed by the one thing we do well - consumption.

This is all due to a disorder in the DSM-IV-TR called "Holiday Shopping Frenzy". A dose or two of Adderal or a large amount of red wine usually calms the patient down, but the head-squeezing sensation of not having bought enough stuff will pester them until Christmas morning, after which it will be too late to feed the monkey; the aftermath of HSF is usually NYRD or "New Years' Returns Depression." The prospect of spending half of January in line at WalMart to return the ugliest purse you've ever seen cannot be ameliorated by any drug known to man.

Not all the feeding frenzies have been at WalMart this year, however. Toys R Us has had to deal with the madness associated with these little robotic pets. While the retail price runs around ten bucks, folks are scalping them on eBay for upwards of forty dollars a pop. Don't even include the little car. Pshaw.

I've seen several reports of police being called in to stem the tide of bloodshed.

There have been line-jumpers tased by more law-abiding non-line-jumpers, melees in WalMarts when folks started ripping open the shrink-wrap on pallets of merchandise that hadn't, you know, been merchandised yet. And apparently, a scuffle broke out in Sheboygan over GPS units. Not that big a deal, really, but writing "Sheboygan" is one of those rare pleasures.

My favorite awful irony is for the folks in Houston, Texas, whose cars were towed out of the Best Buy parking lot, because the tow-truck drivers assumed they were late night partiers at the bar/club across the way. Punished for being thought "a drunk," when all you are is "desperate to buy something."

Only in America in the 21st Century.

UPDATE

Not making this up:

One of Santa's little helpers charged with terrorist threats

'nuff said.

UPDATE

According to GoodGuide: "Antimony was measured at 93 parts per million in the hamster's fur and at 106 parts per million in its nose. Both readings exceed the allowable level of 60 parts per million, said [GoodGuide CEO Dara] O'Rourke, an associate professor of environmental science at the University of California, Berkeley."

I was just bein' a little sarcastic about the death part...

UPDATE

According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, these things are actually safe after all.

I don't know who to believe anymore.