Well, yesterday was Black Friday. In case you don’t know, Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving. It is called Black Friday because it is the day when most retailers start to turn a profit for the year.

Black Friday is also the busiest shopping day of the year. Because of this, many store open early and have special sales.

Here in Grand Rapids, shoppers pitched tents outside of Best Buys on Thursday afternoon in anticipation of the 4AM Friday morning sales. A few years ago, a Walmart shopper in Grand Rapids was trampled when Walmart opened their doors at 6AM on Black Friday.

Well, Black Friday set a new first yesterday. It seems that a Walmart worker was trampled to death when Walmart shoppers broke down the  doors for the Friday sales.

I guess we now have a new reason to call Black Friday Black Friday.

Some one reported to the police that there was a piano in the woods in the Cape Cod area. When the police got there they discovered that it was a Baldwin Acrosonic. And, it seemed to be in good condition.

The Baldwin Acrosonic was the result of Madison Ave and not the music industry. In short, the Acrosonic was more marketing hype than a quality piano. And, most piano technicians hate working on them.

Maybe someone dumped it just to get rid of it.

Zoo keepers in Japan were perplexed as to why their polar bears wouldn’t mate.  After trying for 6 months, they decided that they needed to examine the bears.  As it turned out, both of the bears were female and that is why they weren’t mating.

Maybe they should have shipped the bears to the San Francisco zoo.

A good friend and co-worker of mine is Chinese. So is her husband. She claims that her husband doesn’t like American food so he only eats Chinese.

Out of curiosity, I asked her want she considered to be American food. She said foods like spaghetti and lasagna. I pointed out the her that those foods are Italian. She responded with a “huh?” I told her that those foods are Italian but that Amerians eat them.

She then said that he doesn’t like foods like Tacos and Burritos either. I told her that those foods were Mexican and not American.

The conversation got me to thinking about American foods. Most of the foods that we eat are from another countries. Only a few items are originally American and even then, they are an off shoot of a foreign cuisine.

Turkey and corn come to mind as American foods. General Tso chicken came from New York and Fortune Cookies from San Francisco so theoretically they are American dishes that are passed off as Chinese. Buffalo wings came from Buffalo so I get they count as American. But, for the most part, there is no such thing as American foods. There is just ethnic foods eaten by Americans.

In the fall of last year on the way to church, we noticed a tree along the road with some sort of fruit hanging from it. The fruit was about the size of a grapefruit and was bright green.

I spoke to one of my co-workers about it. Since he had a PhD in forestry, I figured that he would know what it was. He tried to tell me that it was a walnut tree but I assured him that it wasn’t.

Well this fall on our way to church, we kept an eye out for this strange fruit tree. Two Sundays ago, Kathy spotted it and last Sunday, we picked up some fruit off of the road.

Since we were on our way to church anyway, we took the fruit in with us. One guy tried to tell us that it was a crab apple but we dismissed that. Finally, some friends from church told us that it was an Osage Orange.

When we got back from church, we looked it up on line and sure enough, it was an Osage Orange. And according to folk lore, if you put one of these in your house, it will repel spiders and mice.

The fruit itself is not edible but squirrels will often rip it apart for the seeds. The inside of the fruit looks a lot like that of a Kiwi.

I don’t know what we are going to do with the thing now that we have it. The main thing was to identify it.

The sign at our Arbys reads “Cheddar Metls 5 for $5”. Dyslexics of the world untie.

I was in a  sporting goods store the other day when a notice a micro fabric shirt on one of the mannequins.  It was light brown and looked just like swayed leather.

I was impressed with the looks of it so I started feeling how soft it was.  That is when this clerk gave me a very strange look.

I wondered what her problem was.  Surely other people have touched the fabric before.  Just then, I realized that I was rubbing the mannequins breast.

I wonder if that constitutes sexual harassment?

I have a group of spammers that hit my blog daily. Whenever I check my blog, I can expect 50 to 100 spam mails from them trying to sell drugs or porn. In fact, these folks are so regular that if I don’t hear from them, I worry that something is dreadfully wrong.

They have names such as diesel, neo, jane, aaron and heel. I know that there are more names but these are just a few that come to mind.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, the blog went blank. No spam mail. I became worried that something was wrong with my blog site so I sent my self some comments to see if worked. They came through with no problem. Then, after a few weeks, the spammers were back just as before.

I like consistency.

The India navy recently sunk a pirate ship.  They claimed that the pirates were getting out of control.

Hello?  Any piracy is out of control.  What is India’s problem?  Do they think that pirates should only attack wealthy boaters and not commercial ships?

Come on India, all piracy is criminal and should be eliminated at all cost.

I just bought a new Marshall guitar amplifier. It is a half stack with a 4 channel 100 watt head and a 280 watt 4-12 cabinet ala 1960. This is the same gear used by many rock bands.

It seems that John Entwhistle, bass player for the Who, was having trouble hearing himself as the drummer for the Who, Keith Moon, played too loud. So to counteract this, he had Marshall build him a special amp arrangement, the Marshall stack. Not only was the stack louder that Keith, it also provided a barrier between John and the drums.

And, just as a fine Stradivarius has a unique sound, so does the Marshall stack. I fell in love with that sound back in the 60s but haven’t been able to afford it until now.

I am sure that it will last me a life time.