#39 “Tomorrow is Black Friday”

Dear Don1001,

I started the day reading the Thanksgiving edition of the New York Times from 2008, 2009? So why not treat the day like Thanksgiving? So now I’m tweaked out of my skull. It started with a big cup of coffee (from Kenyan beans that had been hoarded) and a joint of Jack Herer/Blueberry the size of a small Louisville Slugger, and trying to do a crossword puzzle from the Times. After about a third of the way through the crossword puzzle, I started chewing a big wad of Khat, which kicked in the African Coffee, so my BP went to about 200 over 140, so then I ate a thumbnail size chunk of refined opium and fired up another spliff, just to take the edge off a bit. So I was occasionally nodding off, gritting my teeth, while trying to finish the fucking cross word puzzle, when I saw the article about how tomorrow was Black Friday and it was high anxiety time for merchants. I’m not sure they could be as tense as I was at that moment, but as I read, I realized the correlation between the drug world and mass consumerism was uncomfortably close. Nothing is as near to pure capitalism as drug dealing. You have a one on one viewpoint of what something is worth and how much customer satisfaction it gives. There’s also something else to drug dealing, good dealers know how much product their customers can buy before they’re dead customers. The question is do the merchants of America know how much their customers can buy before they overdose on too much needless shit and too much debt? On those rare occasions when drugs are plentiful, dealers sit on their stash, until demand returns or they lower prices to undercut their competitors. It’s that simple. So are the guys sitting in the boardroom as smart as the guys working the corners, slinging out “eightballs” and "dime bundles"? I don’t think so. Ever hear of many drug dealers that lose money? Oh it happens, but not for long, if you’re being fronted and you lose money, either you’re beat down or killed. Just imagine if the head of GM was told that if he lost money, that "Ray-Ray" and “Little Joey" would beat him to death and bury him in a cornfield. I have a gut feeling that homeboy would be a little more diligent about the running of his company and most of all customer satisfaction, because if people don’t buy his products, Mr. CEO will be fertilizing Orville Redenbacher’s next Popcorn crop. Which gets us back to Black Friday, (actually Friday, Saturday and Sunday) where some stores do as much as 20% of their years’ entire business. Which is like a yuppie binge drug user coming in and buying your whole supply, which disrupts everything, because when your "regulars" come in, you're out of merchandise. Dealers like steady, everything is about flow, and their favorite customers are the people that have worked their drug habit within their financial framework and like clockwork are there after every payday. Occasionally if you are a “regular” you may get something fronted, as long as you pay soon. The problem is that Big Business of America has stopped “working the corner” and lost track of how much they could front the people and small businesses. And now after pumping too much “product” onto the streets, Big Business is starting to realize that the credit overdoses won’t stop until they stop fronting to people that can’t pay. But Big Business started dipping into it’s own stash a few years back and now has a King-Hell sized addiction to credit. So it will be interesting to see, which can get their addiction to “free money” under control sooner, Big Business or the American people.

                                Trying not to pop an artery, Brother Gregory

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