Gunslingers (part 2 of ‘Black Friday’)

Modern day bad asses or just old school vigilantes? You make the call. You sometimes can cross paths with them at an intersection, or on the highway. The highway gunslingers are the ones that stay at a constant speed in the left lane in your blind spot, and causes you to not be able to pass a semi that would be going about 50 mph. I use to get this a lot on the highway. Nowadays, I get people who think they can get away with being the first person to turn left at a green light, not knowing (or not even caring) that when you turn left, you have to wait for everyone to clear out from in front of you and check for any pedestrians that could be crossing the street. The drivers in Pittsburgh don’t give a shit about letting pedestrians have the right of way. Then again, the “Don’t walk/Walk” signs are pretty jacked up too. They only stay on “Walk” for maybe five seconds. Since this entry is a part 2 of my Black Friday entry, I brought up the topic of senseless driving because it always seems to happen during Black Friday. The streets should have posted signs marked, “no-man’s land.”
Those ‘other’ types of gunslingers are the ones who you don’t dare talk to at the mall, the ones that look like they are destined and on a mission. You don’t talk to those people unless you want to be left scrabbling around on the ground in search of a better reason why you’re at the mall in the first place. Those types of gunslingers are fucking nuts. Dane cook could probably state it better.[1]

© Garrett L. Knott


[1] Inspired by Dane Cook’s “The Wall” skit.

11-23-07 a.k.a. “Black Friday”

Black Friday, it’s clearly the biggest shopping day of the year. For those of you who are hermits, cave dwellers ECT, Black Friday is the Friday after thanksgiving, and where almost every soccer mom is out shopping for Christmas. Ah hah, again the impenetrable women’s liberation front hard at work. Personally I don’t go out shopping until a couple weeks before Christmas. I wouldn’t be caught dead scrabbling around in the fortification of middle-aged people trying to jump over each other in hot pursuit of the checkout counter. Honestly, I think its fun watching them scrabble about, it’s like watching the Spaniards letting the bulls loose through the village and chasing everyone down the street.
I’ve been resorting to online shopping lately. I like browsing around on a store’s website a little more than actually traveling out to the store to try and find something that isn’t always there, you can also save on gas. It seems to me that the reason why almost everyone that is out on black Friday is trying to attain some steely resolve before the year is over. More times than not, it’s not needed. It’s all fun and games until someone gets their eye gouged out by a cornucopia from the day before.

© Garrett L. Knott, 2007

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind” --John F. Kennedy

It seems that when you think of a veteran, the sensory image that pops into your head is someone older and who has been around for a good while. You swine have it all wrong! Nowadays a veteran can well easily be an 18-year old right out of high school with his/her diploma and their significant other right there at the graduation snapping photos for MySpace and Facebook. More times than not, the student at the ceremony is where they would last see their significant other before being sent off to boot camp and squeezed through the ringer, chewed up, digested, and thrown out like a wet loose shit across the pavement.
While I was at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, a friend of mine, who was also majoring in photography was a recent combat Vet in Iraq. I still remember him telling me how one-sided the television news is. I could agree that it was obvious that news channels like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News strive to tell the public that our soldiers are just fine and fighting “the good fight for freedom.” Do me a favor and catch the next flight that’s going to the Middle East and report back to me on what you see. Photos would also be greatly appreciated. First, you might want to make sure you have a strong stomach to handle all the blood and guts that might be lying around caked in sand and being pecked at by vultures and swine.

©Garrett L. Knott, 2007

Entry for 11/6/07 a.k.a. “Election Day”

The great American political pastime, voting. Yeah sure it’s all fair and just, unless if you’re in Florida. Sometimes I think if the population from Florida was taken advantage of back in 2000 for being from the South. God forbid call them unintelligent, but you sometimes can’t help but wonder why the re-counts and manual hand counts were so prominent. When I voted today, I came to find out that even in Cambridge-this small-ass hick town-had switched over to all electronic voting machines. Personally I thought it was really convenient to insert a card, the same size as a credit card, and tap through the instructions on the screen. Let’s also not forget about the ladies working the sign-in book, nobody could get past them unless they made sure they saw your I.D., thanks to the impenetrable women’s liberation front hard at work.
I also wonder what happens to the candidates that don’t win. For example, if Bush wouldn’t have won the re-election in 2004, then what would he be doing now? The same would also go for the upcoming presidential hopefuls. Let’s say Barack Obama wins the election, then what would Hillary Clinton do? Or Rudy Giuliani? Or John Edwards? Yeah, I guess a few of them would still be in Congress. I guess we’ll have to find out after next year.
©Garrett L. Knott, 2007