"Creeking More In The ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)" Episode #50

Oh boy!  It's here!!  THE 50TH EPISODE OF "CREEKING MORE IN THE ATL (WITH YOUR HOST NATE CREEKMORE)"!!!!

Can you believe we've already done 50 episodes?!  Man, so many great stories, anecdotes, and observations!  There've been bus rides and heartbreaks and zombies!  There've been bicycles in the street and pollen particles in the air!  Some of you might even remember that banned episode wherein I went to Margaret Mitchell's grave down at Oakland Cemetery and burned a copy of "Gone With The Wind" whilst standing atop her buried corpse..!

*sigh*  So many memories...

So, are you ready for the 50th episode extravaganza?!!?  It's going to be AMAZING!!!

...actually, it's pretty much just going to be okay.  I tried to get some old fan favorites to come back for guest appearances, like that cockroach from Taco Mac...

...and Old Man Creek from that episode where I walk down 10th street late at night...

I even tried to get Tate to drop in...

But that cockroach has since died of human shoe, Old Man Creek doesn't own a working telephone, and Tate hasn't been seen since episode #45, so there won't be any guest stars at all.  Just more of the same old same.

Let's get to it, shall we?!!?

I'm not from Atlanta, but I live here, and (because I live here) people who don't live here ask me, "Creek, what's Atlanta really like?"  I don't know what Atlanta is really like, but if you'd like to know what it's like for me, I invite you to sit back and enjoy another episode of "CREEKING MORE IN THE ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!!!

[Of Blades And/Or Bullets]

In the city of Atlanta, it's not uncommon to drive around and see this sticker on the back of someone's motor vehicle:

As perverse and disturbing images of African conflicts and Eastern Block arms dealers and late 20th century Schwarzenegger films swim through your mind, you might be inclined to drive up next to the vehicle to get a good look at the face of the sort of person who'd voluntarily attach such a sticker to his conveyance.  And, when you do, you might be surprised to see that the person looks like this:

Just a normal guy.

So you start to ponder the sticker's meaning.  Is it an imperative?  Should I assault all life in general?  Should I choose one life in particular to assault?  Am I to metaphorically approach my own life with a violent brand of vigorous vim?

...does the sticker advocate for a life lived by way of an assault rifle..?

In my formative years, as the child of an oft-deployed career soldier, I was frequently in the company of servicemen.  In such an environment, one may occasionally hear stories about assault rifles, what they can do to human flesh, what it can be like to encounter one in the hands of an adversary...

A soldier wouldn't display such cavalier sentiment in so flippant a fashion, would he..?

...look, I don't know what to make of firearms and bearing arms and the rights and wrongs thereof.  I know that if I was at a church or an elementary school or a movie theater (places wherein I might reasonably expect to be shot at) and someone came in and started throwing bullets around and a magic genie appeared and offered me a gun of my own, I'd most likely take it.

Heck, as long as we're sitting around with magic genies, I'd like to go ahead and wish that there weren't any guns at all.  But not because I'm some kind of peace-loving goodnik (people should absolutely be allowed to continue killing one another; it's one of our proudest and oldest traditions), I just think we'd all be much better off if we did our manslaying with swords.  So what I'm saying, magical genie, is that I want you to replace every gun with a sword.

In my gunless world, a world wherein all knowledge of guns and missiles and the science and manufacture thereof has been forgotten forever, things would be instantly way better.

Today, any disaffected nihilist with a working index finger can (and often does) become a mass murderer.

But in this world, this gunless planet, things aren't quite so easy.

Just think about it.  How difficult would it be to pull off a drive-by swording?  Or if you stood up in the middle of a school play and decided to start swording people, you'd only be able to get about one or two folks before all the other bladesters in the audience took you down.  Because EVERYONE would have swords.  You'd just wear them openly and they'd be fashionable AND useful.

Are you a lumberjacky kind of hipster?  How about a medieval broadsword?

Are you a sage, elderly gentleman?  Grab a couple of katanas.

Are you flirty and fun?  Have a cutlass!

And feel free to customize your blade!

Swords are just flat out cooler than guns.  Everything about them is cooler.  A dojo is cooler than a gun range.  Scabbards are cooler than holsters.  Swordfights are cooler than gunfights.  Even characters with swords are cooler than characters with guns.  For example...

Leonardo is cooler than Robocop.

Conan is cooler than Rambo.

Li Mu Bai is cooler than The Punisher.

Swords are just better, Better, BETTER in every single category.

...wait, what was I talking about again?  Oh, right.  That enigmatic bumper sticker...

I think I finally figured out what it means.  It's not really about assualt rifles at all.  It's about AK-47, or, as he's legally known, Andrei Kirilenko, the former NBA standout from Russia who wore the number 47 on the back of his jersey and, when combined with his initials, gave him his memorable sobriquet.

The sticker is an homage to ol' Andrei.  It's about living your life the way Kirilenko played the game of basketball; it's about Kirilenko Life.  He was pretty good.  Heck, I might need to go ahead and get a couple of those stickers for myself...

There you have it foks, another exciting episode of "Creeking More In The ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!  Be sure and come back for the next installment wherein we discuss this topic further.  I'm kind of on the fence about bows and arrows. Spears are cool, I guess...