Comments & Curiosities:

Do you shop? A lot of people do. I do, but with very tight constraints.

I handle the food. That’s it. I like it though; always have.

Roaming the aisles, reading the labels, trying to decide between the Gruyere or the Gouda, wondering what trans-fat is. But as far as real world, serious, go-to-a-mall shopping is concerned, I’d rather eat a bug.

Maybe that’s why I am so totally and completely fascinated with Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving/line-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night/I-hope-they-have-one-left-madness.

Certainly you’ve caught some of the endless coverage of Black Friday in ads and in the news: stores opening at oh-dark-thirty, people stacked up at the door like marathoners at the starting line, desperate to get their hands on the 50-inch high-def plasma screen for $199 or the one-eighth-carat earrings for $19.95.

I can’t stand to watch it and I can’t stand not to. It’s what psychologists called OCRBFD — Obsessive-Compulsive-Repulsive-Black Friday Disorder.

You’ve probably heard the explanation of why it’s called Black Friday.

Supposedly, the sales volume on Black Friday is so huge that it can put an otherwise struggling retailer in the black. But according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, known to retail industry insiders as the International Council of Shopping Centers, that is totally bogus.

The day after T-Day has never been the busiest shopping day of the year, doorbusters or not. Since 1995, the busiest shopping days of the year have been between Dec. 18 and Dec. 23, with the majority of them Dec. 21 to 23.

Even though a mind-boggling one-third of the population of the United States — that’s about 130 million of us — hit at least one store on Black Friday, only about a third of the thundering horde actually buys anything. What are the other 85 million people doing in a dark parking lot at 4 a.m., with people behind them pushing and shoving and yelling bad things at them? I have no idea. There are things that are better left unasked and unanswered.

So how did things go this Black Friday? In our corner of the universe, it was very, well, black, which is a good thing if you’re a retailer. According to Debra Gunn Downing, the Marketing Meister at South Coast Plaza, by midday, sales were up 6% over last year.