pileofcrapola

When you are facing a difficult choice, take a moment and imagine yourself in a successful or failed outcome to gain some clarity, suggests Robert Sutton, author of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting To More Without Settling For Less.

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Instead of heading straight for the MacBooks and 4K TVs, buy all the less expensive items on your holiday shopping list first. It stops you from having a distorted perception of value, researchers say.

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You've been told a hundred times that exercise is good for you, and it's true—but it's good for a lot more than just losing weight or building muscle. Here are 10 other benefits you'll see from just a little daily exercise.

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Got a lot of leftover shopping bags? Instead of throwing them in the recycle bin, Instructables user foobear put them to use by turning them into a strong, water-resistant rope. It's not too difficult, going by his guide, and he reckons that a single strand can take his weight. The best part? It can be done without any tools.

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Black Friday's not just for real-world goods; it's also arguably the biggest day of the year for sales on great apps. We've listed a ton of the best deals below, and we'll add more as we see them. If you know of any we missed, let us know in the comments!

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The nightmare scenario is something going wrong with the turkey, gravy or mashed potatoes just as your guests show up for Thanksgiving. But the good folks at Chow have made a short video with a bunch of quick fixes for common food disasters, like a dry turkey, lumpy gravy or burnt casserole.

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Some Black Friday shoppers brawl over discounted junk, and some people aren’t interested in paying those discounted prices at all. Not because they’re staying home: don’t be ridiculous. Brown Thursday turned dangerous in Illinois when a police officer shot an accused shoplifter. For shoplifting? No, for dragging a fellow officer whose arm was stuck in his car door.

Kohl’s opened their doors at 8 P.M. on Friday, and called the police over apparently shoplifters at 10:10 P.M. Police say that they arrived and confronted one of the accused shoplifters as he left the store. Instead of having a friendly chat, the man jumped into the passenger side of a car. An officer pursued the car on foot, but the suspect slammed the car door on the officers arm before he could be arrested. Then the car drove off,

A second officer on the scene ordered the driver to stop, eventually firing at the car and hitting the driver in the arm. The officer who was dragged sustained a shoulder injury.

The alleged shoplifter, the driver, and another apparent accomplice have all been arrested.

Cops shoot driver dragging officer in Black Friday incident at Romeoville Kohl’s [Sun-Times]

Can we pour one out for the memory of Thanksgiving, the once-loved holiday that took a shot to the gut yesterday when hordes of bargain-hunters chose to forego time with family and loved ones in favor of overhyped discounts on clearance items, and then died forever when the first punch was thrown, presumably minutes after the doors opened. For those of us who didn’t go shopping last night, here are some reminders why…

The shooter of this clip says he was booted from the Walmart while recording some moron bully people over what appears to be a crappy TV set. The store would rather eject the man recording the video than do anything about the violent, angry shopper:

More Black Friday nastiness from outside of Fort Worth, TX:

A scrum over TVs that will probably break within the first two months:

Meanwhile, here is our favorite image being passed around with the heavily trending #walmartfights hashtag.

Earlier this week, a Pizza Hut manager in Indiana was all over the news for taking a stand against his bosses’ demand to open the restaurant on Thanksgiving — and losing his job in the process. Now the folks at Pizza Hut HQ are finally talking about the subject and say it was all a big misunderstanding.

“We fully respect an employee’s right to not work on a holiday, which is why the vast majority of Pizza Huts in America are closed on Thanksgiving,” the company tells CNN. “As a result, we strongly recommended that the local franchisee reinstate the store manager and they have agreed. We look forward to them welcoming Tony back to the team.”

So will he go back to his 10-year gig at the Hut?

“That’s something I can’t decide right away,” he told CNN. “I’ll start looking into stuff tomorrow… All my friends are telling me how cool it is and how proud they are — ‘You’re my hero’ and stuff you don’t expect to hear. No, I’m just some guy who told his boss ‘No’ and got burned. There are people who save lives.”

Unless you are celebrating Thanksgiving with a group of ravenous piranhas, you’ll likely have food left over from your Turkey Day feast. Sure, you can spend the next week making delicious turkey and stuffing sandwiches, but there’s a lot of variety to be had from those ingredients stored in plastic containers in your fridge.

The one thing lots of people never think to do, but which is incredibly easy and useful, is to use the bones of the picked-apart bird to make stock. There are plenty of stock recipes out there; here’s one from the NY Times.

Philly.com went to four local chefs to get their takes on what to do with leftover turkey, like this sandwich that combines turkey and fried oysters, or this one that heaps smoked sausage and sour cabbage (complete with beer) on top.

Get all autumnal with the Washington Post’s recipe for Leftover Turkey Tetrazzini With Butternut Squash Sauce.

Gothamist has this piece about the completely misnamed (but potentially yummy) Turkey Sushi And Stuffing Waffles.

Over at Huffington Post, there’s a good roundup of interesting leftover-based recipes, covering everything from “Leftover Pop Tarts” to Turkey And Chorizo Breakfast Hash to Turkey Chinese Congee.

Of course, there’s always Alton Brown with his “Bird to the Last Drop” Turkey Leftover Soup.

Or, to steal a line from Patton Oswalt, you could just pile all of the leftovers into a single bowl and plow through it like a death row prisoner on suicide watch:

A Sears Hometown franchise owner is standing up to her corporate overlords and refusing to open on Thanksgiving. Opening their doors at 6 A.M. on Black Friday? Sure. No Brown Thursday at her store, though. 

Sears Hometown are mini stores in small communities, run by franchisees. Hometown and Outlet stores were spun off into their own company, but carry Sears products. They’re like an old-fashioned general store where you can buy Craftsman and Kenmore products.

It wasn’t a difficult decision for the store owner to stay open. “We are not going to let corporate retailers rule over our family values and take this away from us,” she told local TV news.

Customers that TV reporters interviewed were supportive of the decision. “I wouldn’t want to go shopping on Thanksgiving, really,” one local resident pointed out. Sears thinks that some Americans do: apparently we’ll find out tomorrow.

What the news report didn’t specify was what consequences there might be for the store owner. We’ve already heard about one Pizza Hut manager who walked off the job rather than open up on Thanksgiving Day. We’re sure this isn’t the last story we’ll hear about conscientious objectors to Brown Thursday.

Sears owner refuses to open on Thanksgiving [WMUR] (Thanks, Jeremiah!)

A 10-year employee of Pizza Hut claims he was given no choice but to leave his job when faced with the company’s demand that the restaurant open on Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only two days that they’re closed in the whole year and they’re the only two days that those people are guaranteed to have off and spend it with their families,” the Indiana resident tells WSBT-TV.

He says that during the meeting where it was announced that being open on Thanksgiving would be mandatory, he asked, “Why can’t we be the company that stands up and says we care about our employees and they can have the day off?”

Though Pizza Hut HQ has remained quiet on the topic, one of the manager’s bosses tells WSBT that he quit.

The former manager did write a letter explaining his position, which reads, “I am not quitting. I do not resign, however I accept that the refusal to comply with this greedy, immoral request means the end of my tenure with this company… I hope you realize that it’s the people at the bottom of the totem pole that make your life possible.”

[via HuffPo]

Everyone loved the online ad from GoldieBlox that used a parody version of the Beastie Boys song “Girls” to help make its point about encouraging girls to be interested in toys that are more science-y than princess-y. Even the Beastie Boys praised the ad…but that doesn’t mean they want their music used to sell a commercial product.

“As creative as it is, make no mistake, your video is an advertisement that is designed to sell a product,” the surviving band members wrote in an open letter to Goldieblox. No exceptions, even for adorable future engineers.

The toy company took their ad down later today. It’s been replaced with a version featuring instrumental music on the company’s website, and the original YouTube video is no longer public.

“We want you to know that when we posted the video, we were completely unaware that the late, great Adam Yauch had requested in his will that the Beastie Boys songs never be used in advertising,” the company wrote in their blog post announcing their plan to back down on the whole “parody” and “fair use” argument. Of course, if Team Goldieblox were paying attention last summer when the Beastie Boys sued Monster Energy Drink over their distribution of the group’s tunes, they would know that the late Adam Yauch had a clause in his will that specifically prohibited the use of any of his music in ads. Not that the group allowed it when he was alive, either.

Here’s the new version of the ad, with a similar but not copyright-violating instrumental song as the backdrop.

Our letter to the Beastie Boys [Goldieblox blog]

- Friday, 7:45 a.m.: How to make sure you're getting the best deals? AP's Joseph Pisani writes about five shopping apps to bring with you.

- Just three months after Kenbriel Hearn emerged from a coma, the 18-year-old football star scored the most memorable touchdown of his life.

- A couple accused of abandoning the adopted 9-year-old son they raised from infancy didn't tell him they were giving him to child welfare officials, according to documents filed by a prosecutor.

- The Obama administration is delaying yet another aspect of the health care law, putting off until next November the launch of an online portal to the health insurance marketplace for small businesses.

Two people, one from Arlington, say United Airlines' Petsafe program treated their pets horribly.

- Eighty hogs were killed after a tractor trailer hauling the animals crashed in Suffolk.

It appears the Peet's-ification of the D.C. region's Caribou Coffee locations is about to begin.

A lot of refrigerators are stuffed the morning after Thanksgiving with all kinds of remnants of the big holiday meal. Storing all that food properly is important.

A state transportation spokeswoman says the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel wasn't damaged when a fire suppression and valve system was activated by accident.

A woman used a stun gun during a fight during Black Friday shopping at a mall near Philadelphia, Pa. 

Toyota has freshened up the looks of its CT 200h compact luxury hybrid to make it more like the rest of the lineup, added a few other touches and kept the price the same.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren't just for buying toys, clothes and jewelry anymore. Hotels, resorts, cruise lines and online travel sites such as Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity are also trumpeting their holiday sales.

Fire officials say a small house is completely destroyed after a fire in Manassas.

Learning is the theme with these hot holiday toys

Puppy 'Duncan Lou Who' only has two legs. But don't tell him that.

There are no babies in our immediate future.

My apologies if you saw this comic yesterday. We had a Thanksgiving glitch. Check yesterdays comic. You might not have seen that one. We put the fun in malfunction.