End Black Friday chaos with a clickety-click

You’re either a Black Friday type, or you’re not.

A review of the video chronicles shot at Hawaii retailers and then posted online show a definite carnival atmosphere among those waiting in the wee hours for the midnight sales bonanza and then bursting through the doors. Amid all the chaotic scrambling for bargain-priced adult and kid toys were lots of smiling faces. Clearly, some people find this fun.

For those repelled by all this: Today may be your day. The first Monday after Thanksgiving has come to be known in the retail biz as Cyber Monday, when we can log on and let our fingers and credit cards walk through the virtual malls. Clickety-click. Ah, that’s more like it.

Something to be thankful for in New Zealand

The chance rescue on Thanksgiving Day of three teenage boys who had spent 50 days adrift in a 12-foot boat in the South Pacific gave the region a small but uplifting moment days after a mining disaster killed 29 men in New Zealand.

They had set out on a short trip between atolls in Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand, when the boat’s engine died and the craft began to drift. The boys survived on rainwater, two coconuts, flying fish and a seagull that landed on the boat.

When a fishing trawler spotted the boat, it was 240 miles from the closest land, Fiji, and 800 miles from Tokelau. Two weeks earlier, the boys had been declared dead and their village held a memorial to mourn them.

This time they shed tears of joy.