Why the hell do people buy home fireworks?How many fingers and eyebrows do they have to lose? How many trailer parks have to burn down before they learn?
What parent in his right mind with children would set off something called a 12 in
ch “strike force missile”? Or a “Mad Dog”, “Bazooka Bear”, “Titanium Cracker”, “Dragon’s Wrath”, “Big Mama Jama”, “Brutal Force”,“Nuke Power”, “Pull String Grenade”, “Assorted Color Ammo Smoke”, “Caliber Blast”, “Car Bomb”, “Big Earthquake”, “Jumboshell Fountain”, “Pyrogyro”, “Cracker Jack in a Box”, “Deadly Fire”, “Battle of New Orleans”, “Pay Back”, “Mucho Grande – small” (isn’t that an oxymoron?), “Air Raid”, or of course the ever popular “So X*@! Good”?Explain to me where these are “safe and SANE”.
Better to go to a city park, ballpark, or Steven Spielberg’s house. Enter a 5K race, cheer on a parade and pray that the grand marshall is someone more impressive than Bob Sagett.
Have a wonderful day. Display your flag proudly. And celebrate the greatness that was America – 1776 to October 2000.
*echoing footsteps*
ReplyDelete*whistles* Geez, I guess as the token Canuck around here, I'm the only one who's here to say Happy 4th of July, Ken (and the other 99.9% of your regular readers/commenters).
Stacey
Canadians have a fourth of July too, Stacy. Please enjoy yours as well.
ReplyDeleteFireworks are all fun and games until someone loses a finger or two...then it's just hilarious.
ReplyDeleteHere in the home of Woody Boyd, there's the inexplicable deal, "Buy 1, Get 5 Free!" Seriously.
ReplyDeleteYou may have thought those Hanover jokes were just jokes...
The bicentennial fireworks show in lower New York Harbor in 1976 was great, but a few people were actually stupid enough to drive down there with roughly 1 million people in the area of Battery Park, and one car trying to push through the crowd up Water Street after the show caught fire when someone tossed a few fireworks under the vehicle. Made for an interesting post-spectacular spectacular.
ReplyDeleteDown here in Texas last year we had one of those $140 fireworks packages ready to shoot off near a home at the edge of town when it was interrupted by a paranoid meth user who came running down the road claiming a guy in a pickup was after her with a gun. That also attracted local law enforcement, who not only took her away to detox, but informed us that there was a burn ban on due to dry weather, and the fireworks show had to be shut down.
So right now there's about $125 worth of one-year old fireworks sitting around waiting to be detonated, and with the recent monsoons, the main concern will be both rogue holiday meth users and the stability of one-year-old fireworks. We plan to stand very clear when those things go off.
Um yeah. Not really all that hilarious, actually.
ReplyDeleteBe warned, these images are graphic.
http://fiendfolio.blogspot.com/2007/07/hand-wound-monday-medley-of-firework.html
John,
ReplyDeleteYou have succeeded in depressing me on the 4th. Got anything for Bastille Day?
Hi there:
ReplyDeleteI've been a nurse for nearly thirty years, and I've never been able to understand how parents can let their kids play with something that can blow their finger off. We see it every year in our emergency room. Fireworks are nasty.
I like your blog. I'll be back.
Mother Jones, RN
Your last line just floored me. I had to think for a second, then dissolved into laughter. Thanks Ken, the best humor also makes you think.
ReplyDeleteFireworks are fun. I've been using them for nearly two decades with no concerns for safety. Only morons blow off their fingers. It's Darwin weeding out people too stupid to use a puck (lighting stick).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fireworks.com/fireworks_gallery/photo.asp?pid=445
Or I mean punk, not puck.
ReplyDeleteI like Bob Saget.
ReplyDeleteWe always had those "safe and sane" fireworks while growing up in the Valley in the 60's and 70's. Made a special trip to San Fernando just to get them. Oh the fountains were beautiful, and running around with the sparklers was great fun! And I always made my dad buy that cardboard log cabin one, and all it ever did was smoke through the little cardboard chimney. I kept expecting an explosion or flames to shoot out of the windows, but instead it was just the Lincoln family at home for the evening. What a rip.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to America!!! I'm wondering about the child labors in our country who are working in fireworks factory...
ReplyDeleteLow Cost European Roadside assistance
Oh the memories.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was growing up in Kentucky, Tennessee was this mystical place (it hurts to write that statement) that allowed you to buy all sorts of magical fireworks, especially the ones that blow shit up. It seemed as though every cool kid had a small box full of bottle rockets, Black Cat firecrackers, and the illicit looking M-80s.
All of these items were typically at least 2 years old, with fuses that either a) never lit, b) lit and went out leaving a two millimeter bit of fuse sticking out, or c) went from tip to firework in 0.5 seconds.
We had great fun tossing them, taping lightning bugs to bottle rockets, putting firecrackers in the pinchers of crawdads, and other activities that would probably make profilers classify us as serial killers in training. I stopped lighting them off when I almost killed my wife with a whistling chaser.
A few years ago, Indiana (which is just across the river) realized that their law allowed for the sale of these types of fireworks, as long as you immediately left the state with them. Ever since they discovered this, the Louisville area has been full of rednecks willing to plunk down the cost of an Iphone to buy things to burn down their neighborhood. The result is that almost anywhere you go you can see really spectacular displays. That and I'm sure our ERs are full this entire week.
This just in....
ReplyDeleteCNN's lead story is about a woman who suffered severe head injuries when she was hit with mortar shell after looking DIRECTLY AT IT when she lit it and it didn't go off.
I feel sorry for her kids, but how dumb do you have to be to go up to a firework you just lit and look directly into it. By the looks of the thing that they showed on TV, there were about 25 shells about 2 inches in diameter.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070704/NEWS02/707040347
Well, my last son just graduated and left home, so we are off the fireworks ride. Maybe I've just read too many old books, but somehow there's a little bitty part of me that loves to flout authority (and I also love sparklers and those little black snakes).
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I look forward to a wholehearted celebration under a new admin. @#*)$*@*$
A Glorious Fourth to us All!
Jenny
John,
ReplyDeleteYou have succeeded in depressing me on the 4th. Got anything for Bastille Day?
If the meth fiend gets arrested again this year, we'll try to storm the local jail and liberate her, then we'll guillotine the guards and the King of Texas on the 14th (hey, even Republicans down here don't like Gov. Rick Perry because of those child vaccine and toll road thingys, so no big loss there).
The main problem with fireworks and serious injuries is A.) Unsupervised kids, who decide to either light off fireworks with fuses that are way too short for safety, or who try to bulk explode everything at one time (YouTube has some examples of that stategerie -- cool but really dangerous); or B.) Drunk adults who don't take the proper precautions with the heavy-duty fireworks, like securing the tubing and/or making sure the tubes are able to handle shooting off the big arse explosives.
We'll be both under the legal limit and shooting the stuff off into an irrigated field tonight, which should prevent any unexpected problems (and if not, I'll let you know on Thursday, if I have any fingers left to type with by then).
Oh, Otto, there are fewer great things in life than quitting a shitty job on the 4th of July, and this was the second time in my life I have had this fortunate timing, so indeed it was a great, great, great day for me today... from all the way up here in Canada. Independence Day rulez!!
ReplyDeleteStacey
Crutnacker's first posting confirms what I learned from NatLamp decades ago: no matter where you live, fireworks are only legal across the state line. "If you live in Indiana, you have to go to Illinois, and vice versa."
ReplyDeleteAnyway, somehow the right wing has made this kind of thing into a cultural ball-test, what with their love of The Dangerous Book for Boys and their fantasy of a left-wing conspiracy against it.
And only 1 1/2 years to go. Are we crawling to the finish line yet?
ReplyDeleteMy oldest sister used to sell fireworks in her small town in Missouri. It was too far to go for a big sponsored show, so she'd have a family reunion at the same time and we'd set off everything she hadn't sold by evening. We also had a tradition where all the adult males and boys over the age of 13 got 10 of those long strands of firecrackers. They'd line the street on both sides with them (they'd go about a block, maybe more), then set them off at the same time. Neighbors would show up to watch.. we were deaf for about 30 minutes, but wow! what memories!!
ReplyDeleteGod Bless America, and God Bless George W. Bush - I thought all you lefties went to Canada in 2000 - I see that not just the politicans lie....
ReplyDeleteHey Mike D,
ReplyDeleteYou're not one of those deluded idiots who lets their kids buy grenades for the 4th of July and goes fishing with dynamite, are you?
PS. Still seething about Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence. You go to jail for years for robbing 20 bucks from a liquor store. Betray your country by outing an undercover CIA agent and they lying about it and you get off.
Bush thought the sentence was "too severe." Oh yeah, he's the expert on the law. Didn't he used to kill indigent and mentally ill people in Texas and then laugh about it?
All the fireworks and patriotic hoopla just left a bitter taste. We've lost our country to corporate fascists. Nothing to celebrate this year.
What's more dangerous than playing with home fireworks?
ReplyDeleteBeing around when Dick Cheney plays with home fireworks.
Somewhere Harry Whittington is sitting in a dark room, quivering in fear.
I'm still seething about this Congress that won't try and stop Bush-Cheney, are we really better off?
ReplyDeleteI must assume your reference to October 2000 was that was the last time the Yankees won the World Series. Or were you referring to the last time "Fire up the bong" was heard in the White House?
ReplyDeleteI wish you lefties had gotten as upset over the Marc Rich pardon as you apparently are over the Libby commutation. Try to be less hypocritical. And yes, America is still a great country, even when someone with whom you disagree with politically is in power. Of course, some people are too immature and/or unintelligent to realize this. Ken, why don't you move to another country if it's so terrible here? Oh, right - it's easier to make silly comments than actually take action. Also, what did Bill Clinton do in his last two months in office that was so horrible? Or are you acknowledging the Rich pardon after all?
ReplyDeleteI have one rule. Have the balls to not be anonymous. But I guess it's easier to just hide behind your misguided beliefs than identify yourself and stand by them.
ReplyDeleteFor all my silly comments I at least give my name.
There are plenty of other blogs out there that celebrate your point of view. Please read them instead of mine. You'll be so much happier.