Black Friday Survival Guide: This is Not a Drill

There are numerous guides on the interwebs about Black Friday shopping. Some tell you were to find deal upon deal and others provide a rudimentary "guide" for navigating your big day. Rubbish, all of them. These sites, as useful as they appear to be, do not convey the life or death seriousness of Black Friday. It's real in these here streets, and you need to come out of this as king of the mountain. Luckily for you, I've prepared the definitive guide on making it out alive.

1. Bring a Bodyguard


Do you know anyone that will take a bullet for you? Anyone who would be willing to be trampled for you? Over a $39 digital camera? Can you easily maneuver so that if it comes down to you or them it's you? There's your bodyguard.

2. Learn Karate



If you are serious about Black Friday, you started this months ago. But don't worry if you're a new convert, it's not too late to learn the basics. Okay, forget the basics. All you need to know is how to do a roundhouse kick. Chuck Norris the sh*t out of everyone. Hand out one or two of these and the other shoppers will present their goods to you along with their daughters' hands in marriage and huge tracts of land.

3. Carry a Concealed Weapon


That seasonally-appropriate-festive-red sweater selling for an unheard of $19.99 at Kohls? It's yours. Yours. "No" is a foreign language to you today, and as a foreigner, you have diplomatic immunity. Brandish that gun with abandon and pistol whip those sales associates like they owe you money.

4. Get a Decoy


It's 2011. Everyone wants to be famous. You've got to know at least one stage mom with a cute-ish kid she'll let you borrow for a song. While little Suzy creates a diversion, singing and tap-dancing in aisle 6, you sneak off and gather your treasures. Make two trips if you have to and jet off in your car while your little star closes with the big number (jazz hands!). Suzy's fine, she'll find a ride home.


These fail-safe precautions will ensure that you, your new TomTom GPS and and your dignity make it out of the supermart in one piece. You will return home a hero, a ballad will be composed in your honour and generations of your people will sing it with gusto, heart over hand. Black Friday. The day you shopped. And lived.