Time To Rethink

Not politics related, but it's time for some people out there to step away from the "Black Friday" sales and chill the fuck out.

(CNN) -- Three violent deaths in two stores marred the opening of the Christmas shopping season Friday.

In the first, a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.

In the second, unrelated incident, two men were shot dead in a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California, after they argued in the store, police said.

The toy company and authorities said the California shootings had nothing to do with shopping on Black Friday, which is historically one of the year's busiest shopping days.

The Wal-Mart worker, whom authorities did not identify, was 34 and lived in Queens, said Nassau County police Detective Lt. Michael Fleming.

"This was utter chaos as these men tried to open the door this morning," Fleming said.

There are two things I hate with unbridled passion: talking to people on the phone (blame it on several years in call center jobs); and holiday shopping crowds.

We made precisely one stop yesterday at Costco, a couple of hours after the place opened. We picked up a couple of discounted iTunes gift cards and some grocery type items we needed anyways. It was busy, but not much worse than a weekend day.

We're talking my two sons out today, mostly to look for ideas, though if we find a deal for them, we'll pick it up at the time. The bulk of my shopping will be online.

I'll gladly pay a premium not to have to deal with nasty, passive-aggressive holiday shoppers. Also, since I will be out of town for the holiday, I'll order most of it and just ship it straight to where I'll be staying.

As for the deaths above, there is no holiday gift out there worth your life, or someone else's. It's amazing this even has to be explained to people, but that's where we're at.