The Slice: ‘Black Friday’ countdown starts now

Feel free to follow The Slice’s 21-day “Get Ready for Black Friday” program.

1. Resolve to rack up extra savings by staying home on Nov. 23.

2. Brainstorm ways you can help energize the Spokane area’s economy without being a mindless consumer.

3. Plan to go to work on the 23rd, so you can complain about those absent co-workers who regard Thanksgiving as a two-day holiday even though that’s not actually your company’s policy.

4. Practice cattle-herd mooing so you will be ready to watch TV coverage of Black Friday.

5. Work on excuses for getting out of attending the family Thanksgiving gathering.

6. See how many push-ups you can do.

7. Imagine how ticked off the little kids on your list would be if you stuck to your “Buy American” pledge.

8. Commit to making a better effort re: flossing.

9. Take your Santa suit to be dry-cleaned.

10. Befuddle a young person by asking if he or she can identify Jose Jimenez.

11. Start a betting pool based on Spokane’s likelihood of a white Christmas this year.

12. Post outstanding credit card balances on fridge.

13. Apologize to Stephanie Vigil.

14. Inform your relatives whose pets breed nonstop that, as an early Christmas present, you would take the animals for spaying/neutering.

15. Compare/contrast wild-eyed shopping fever with what happens to the undead.

16. Just nod politely when someone says “But think of the money I’ll save if I get in line at 1 a.m.”

17. Do not say “It’s obvious that you are grasping for ways to make your mundane life seem dramatic.”

18. Rehearse smiling and asking “So were you able to buy an SUV-filling load of cheaply made, marked-up crap no one needs?”

19. Make it your goal to hear someone say to you, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.”

20. Start randomly quoting Scrooge: “Are there no prisons?”

21. Bore everyone you can by retelling your story about how you originally thought that, instead of referring to business bottom lines, the expression “Black Friday” alluded to a sad shadow on the soul of society.

Today’s Slice question: Do you take for granted our area’s relatively low natural-disasters risk?