Happy Black Friday! And now a reading from the Book of This One Christian-Inflected Advice Column I Just Found on the Internet, Via a Two-Second Google Search: "My 4-year-old son has a one track mind: I Want. Whatever he sees on TV, or on a toy aisle at Walmart, he wants. Like, N.O.W. This behavior is typical of a normal child. They believe the center of the world revolves around them. Our society seems to have digressed to a 4-year-old level, where entitlement and greed trump values such as patience, moderation, and abstinence. Greed and coveting go hand in hand.... What if you can't afford some of the things that your neighbor has. He has a better paying job, a nicer house, a nicer car, bigger TV, cooler garage toys, a pool, do I need to go on? You are still coveting. It is still a sin."

Meanwhile, outside Chicago, the bleary shopping frenzy at a suburban Kohl's was undisturbed, even after police shot a suspected member of shoplifting crew who allegedly tried driving off in a Pontiac Sunfire with a cop's arm stuck in the driver's door.

And how about—so we don't forget about the millions of cash register button-pushers forced to leave their families on a national holiday and its bloated aftermath in exchange for nowhere near enough money to live on— we mention raising the nation's pitiful minimum wage?

Good nuclear news! Iran is letting international inspectors internationally inspect one of its fuel-processing facilities.

Bad nuclear news! Perhaps observing the news on the détente with Iran, North Korea has decided to try restarting its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.

Afghan civilians, including a toddler, died in a recent NATO airstrike—sowing more angry talk of broken American promises and giving President Hamid Karzai more leverage to delay a pact that would keep US soldiers in the country for several more years.

China has declared war against Japan and the United States. Or something like that? Or not at all? I don't know. It's something about sending jets over the East China Sea, where the Americans and Japanese are about to hold regular joint military exercises.

This time, it was angry workers who set the fire, Bangladeshi authorities learned, after another garment sweatshop supplying Western retailers went ablaze.

The Church of England decides to offer "blessings," but not marriages, for queer couples—maybe qualifying as one of those times when it seems like> a British person is being polite, but that person is actually spitting in your face.

The nominee filibuster is dead. But! Senators can still block, just like always, judicial nominations they don't like—provided those nominations affect the courts in their home state.

RODNEY DANGERFIELD (REST IN PEACE) ALMOST HAD A SITCOM TWO DECADES AGO WITH BRECKIN MEYER AND PUNKY BREWSTER.